Combining Watercolor and Gouache: Loose Natural Landscapes

1. Introduction: Hello, and welcome. In this class, we'll be painting two natural landscapes with a combination of water color and guash. Guash is an opaque watercolor which allows you to create stunning highlights. In this class, we'll be using a variety of wet and wet techniques and wet and dry techniques in order to paint both scenes. We'll go through my three step process of painting, light shadows and finishing touches, which will allow you to paint any landscape. Subject planning is crucial. In this class, I will show you how to simplify shapes and sketch in large ones such as sky, water, trees, grass, and land. Getting in those large components accurately beforehand is essential for your painting to make sense. So join me in this class. I'm looking forward to show you how to use water, color, and guash together to create some beautiful landscape paintings. 2. Materials Required: So the two bits of paper here I'm using is 100% cotton watercolor paper. Do recommend you getting some of this stuff. It's great for landscape painting, allows you to get in textures a lot easier. Fine, especially with the texture. Your brush skips over parts of the paper and creates some natural highlights and kind of blends that you can't get when you're using paper that is flat or hot press. So landscape painters, I tend to recommend a more medium or rough textured paper for that particular reason. Also blends better when you're using wet and wet techniques. Some of you may not have access to cotton water color paper in that case. Make sure you have some textured paper, at least even if it's a cellulose paper here on top, I've got a bunch of brushes, and these are my mop brushes. And mop brushes are great for getting in large areas. If you see in the background of some of these scenes here, these trees, the darkness, the water, sky, these areas here, these golden yellow colors as well. These brushes are fantastic for that because they pick up a lot of water. But they also allow you to cut around a bit of the surrounding shapes as well, so you don't get that yellow all over the place. So you want to leave some of it free for the water, especially with a bit of the blue running through the center there for the little details. So you see the trunks of the trees, even some of the rocks and things like that. I use these two brushes here. This is a round brush and a flat brush. Okay, synthetics. They don't pick up very much water at all, but you don't need them to. So they allow you to get a bit more control detail in. I use that probably after I do the main washes with those mop brushes. These are some specialty brushes that I use. So these ones here, I've got a little rigger brush here, I've got a Filbert brush. The rigger brush is great for getting in little details such as, for example, these tiny little branches coming off in the background, or the little branches coming off the top of these trees, bits of grass, that kind of thing. Especially even wet and wet areas like these. I use the rigger brush as well, so the paint doesn't spread all that much. If you're using a thicker brush, you find that, yeah, By the time you paint wet and wet, it looks thin but then it expands out too much. Here is a little specialty brush that I use as well. This is a F brush, and F brushes are great for getting in textures and large areas of grass. And you can see I've used a lot of this technique here with these grass bits of grass Here I've used guash as well over the top get different layers of colors and textures running through. This is a great little hack because you don't have to draw in every little blade of grass as people would think. Last one here, this is a Filbert brush. Filbert Brush allows you to lift off paint and also a magical brush because sometimes when you've finished off at the painting, you'll find there's just too many sharp edges in some areas or just some areas that you want to blend in better and draw less attention to. I've done that around here, especially near the water, where I found the reflections were a little bit too exaggerated before. But I've lifted off some paint, soften off some of this area, and so it's just blended a bit more into the water. Great little brush. Just add a bit of water rub onto an area and if you've got a tissue or something, just lift off that paint. You can use it to blend edges together as well. So if you might want to blend a bit of this yellow with the darkness of the trunk, that's your brush. In terms of the guash, the only color that you need for your guache is just white. And the reason why is because we're mainly just going to be using this for highlights. So if you look here on the trees in the background, we've got these yellowy green sort of highlights here in the background. I'm just using a bit of white mixed in with some yellow. You can see some of it's already pre mixed here and you can use yellow ochre. You can use a more vibrant yellow as well. You can even use the gash straight off as is, if you want to create some really stark white contrast. I haven't quite done it here, but it's something that people do from time to time. That's about it for the gosh. But let's go a bit more through the water color paints, using a couple yellows here. I'm using a bit of nacodone, yellow here in the front. And also a bit of this yellow ochre. Yellow ochre is a lot more subdued, less saturated than the nacone, yellow. Racon yellow gets you this beautiful golden color that you get some of these houses, I've got a bit of that nace yellow on there. It's almost like a fiery color. Difficult to get with other sort of yellows here. I get a similar effect with Hansa yellow light. That works pretty well too. Very light wash of color. Do use a tiny bit of orange in there as well. A little bit of craco and orange in there too. And you notice out in the background, I've got a whole bunch of colors. I've used a tiny bit of red here for some of these trees in the back, most of it's just blue and green washes, you know, especially for these trees. So I've got a dark green. Use a Hookers green. You can mix up your own green by using a bit of this blue here. This is ultramarine blue. You can mix it with a bit of yellow to create different kind of greens. And more blue means that you get a darker green. If you use less blue, more yellow get a more lighter green. Play around with the different mixtures. And some of the lighter greens I've used here in the ground as well to get in some strands of grass. I don't want to attract too much attention to the area, I want to preserve the light there. So I didn't want to use something like that on there. In some areas, you'll see that there's definitely some sharper bits of the paint where I've used darker greens or just darker contrasts. But that's few and far between all the other areas which are mainly light. A little secret tool that I use as well is a pocket knife or just a little blade and you can use that to scratch off high lights as you can see here, just these little highlights. And you've got to wait till the paint has almost dried, About 80% dried, and you see a little sheen on the paper. You can get that knife in there, just scratch off little highlights in there and avoid using the guash. I think it looks more natural as well, so something to keep in mind. But apart from that, you might need a little bit of brown. Sometimes a bit of brown for the background just gives it a more earthen kind of look. But that's about it. 3. Forest: Drawing: So this reference photo is actually quite wide. And I'll probably have to reduce it down a bit, but at the same time I think we can fit in most of the details. I think we'll just have to perhaps lengthen some of the trees. But yeah, it's more like a rectangular and a longer scene, almost cinematic. What I'm going to do is I'm going to put in a mark roughly around where the bottom of these houses are. I'd say about here. It's not a half of the way through, but almost. Okay, just to give me an example, now we have to put in these houses first. I think that's probably going to be the most challenging part of the scene because most of the other bits and pieces are actually quite easy In terms of the trees and the shrubs, it's all going to be done in brushwork afterwards, what I'm doing here is, and I'm just forming the roof and the boundaries of the house. Now we can see here that part of the house is covered on the left. It's very difficult to see because you've got a tree here coming up and something like that to the left of it. Okay? But you've got a triangular roof here over the top. Okay. The back part of that roof as well, just to get in a bit of that three D element goes like that. Okay. Then of course in front of the house you've got all this, what you call it shrubs and things like that. I'm just putting in the, the rooftop first. Okay. We know that it comes down roughly to here all just about here. We've also got a fence sitting around here. I'm going to just draw in a bit of this fence and remind myself later to perhaps leave out some of those highlights as well. We cut, leaving a bit of that light on the fence, okay, It's quite dark behind this little house as well. You're going to see there's a bunch of windows here. We can just put in little indications of those windows. Just rectangular bits like that there. Here. The house behind, we've got it like coming up with like that, another triangular type roof. And I'll join it up here. That triangular type, you can't see too much of it as well. You find a lot of it just covered. But you have, of course, this general rooftop like that. And then this disappears off into the back of the scene. Sometimes you can just zoom in a little bit, but it's not a big deal. I'm just going to keep it, keep it a bit like that. Two houses or something just overlapping a bit with each other. And then in the background you've got trees and everything like that here to the left as well. A lot of these shrubs and larger trees there all the way to the foreground. You've got all this stuff here and I'm not even going to bother getting most of it. In A lot of it we can figure out along the way, it looks like there's a path or something running down like this somewhere. And I don't want to, just thinking I can mark this out. But I reckon what we can do is scratch out some high lights as well later to help form that path. It's not a big deal. The only thing I think it's important to put in these tree trunks and they go all the way out and exit the top of the scene like this. Okay, this one may be branches off, but the easy thing about these trees is that they just kind of go directly, straight up. So there's not a whole lot of work, but composition wise, you're wanting to balance these out a little bit. This one I going on a left, left angle. This one going almost just directly up. If you keep them all looking exactly the same, I find that it just looks kind of boring. So this is why I like to change things up a little bit. This one here, I might just have overlapping and coming out on like an angle here to the right. Okay. Another one here as well like that. We're going to just paint these in later with a bit of negative cutting around work. Okay, you can see the trees start to grow further down and that also implies the terrain. It's one of those techniques that you can get away with like that just lengthening the trunks more. Again, I'm just trying to create some variation in these trees so that they're not the same. Some of them got a bit of a nook around there. All across the bottom you've got the shrubs and stuff growing here as well overlap with the trees. Okay? But of course you got this slight wood path that goes around this bend, okay, and some shrubs here. We have to think about how we're going to imply that in the background we've got trees as well, little ones, just thinner ones just going up off into the back of the scene. And they're thinner as well because they're further back. It's funny they almost look like like bamboo or something like that. But they're not. It's just only because they're so far in the distance. Okay. I really like these verticals as well, these trees. There's probably going to be some more that I put in afterwards, but I think this is a good starting point. Afterwards, we can get in guash as well, just to bring out some smaller bits and pieces, smaller trunks in the distance. Okay, just mark out this rooftop a bit better. And this one too can be tricky at times, but you need to make sure that these main elements of the houses are quite strongly added in there. I'm not thinking too much when we're going in with some of the paint. Okay, that's it, let's get started with the painting. 4. Forest: First Wash: And I'm going to be firstly getting some of my mop brushes out. Over here, I've got a couple of smaller mop brushes. As you can see, this one is probably the one I'm going to use to start off with just a smaller mop brush. Okay, We'll go in first with all the warm colors. And I'm actually going to start off with a bit of golden yellow and start on the top of this house like that. Okay? Just modifying it a bit, seeing how dark you need to make it as well. This is just a Acro dome yellow. I find this is a nice color if you want to imply a light light source. Do you have a little bit of this stuff as well, which is buff titanium? It's an off white color. I'll use some of that in there as well just for this second house to try to blend some of this stuff together. Okay, good, like that. At times you'll find some inconsistencies as well. It's not going to be completely, completely the same color all the way through. Set. Have to change it up a little bit in areas. Okay. Just drop in a bit of extra paint like that and soften it off that rooftops. Got a bit of something in it. Okay, let's have a look in the trees now. There's a bit of the yellow tinge that you can see on some of the trees. Just putting in some of that in areas even here, just a little bit of that yellow tinge of color like this. You don't need to worry because essentially what will happen afterwards, once we get in all the greens, all this is going to just disappear. And we'll have some of the yellow left behind. But most of it will be gone, okay, mostly be green afterwards. This is just the initial steps, I think, to get in those highlights of yellow. Often you'll find that if you leave this to the end, you're going to have a lot of trouble. Because the greens, once they start mixing in here, will muddy the waters and everything starts to look green. I try to get in as much of these yellows as I can. To start off with, also carry around a little spray bottle. The spray bottle helps to keep things a little bit moist, especially on a hot day like this. A bit more yellow, you might have a bit here. Another thing, I'm keeping being mindful of some of the tree trunks, I want to leave some of them more white. Just the white of the paper exposed. Okay, let's pick up it a green and let's drop some of that in just a bit that I've picked up here. Light sources coming from the left. I want to make sure that I've got more darks and stuff on the right hand side and I'm cutting again the bits and pieces for the trees. This is just a bit of darker green that I've got. It doesn't matter what green you use. Just as long as it's dark, you can mix up your own greens as well with a bit of blue and yellow. Okay, Look at that. I'm just using this brush in the most efficient way and I'm using a lot of water in here as well. I would I would say it's mostly water. 20% paint or ten to 20% paint and lots of water in there Cutting a I'm also being careful of these houses as well so that I don't go into the yellows. I might actually come back and do that bit in a moment, once I'm more confident that that's dried. But over here I can play around and add some more green. The few brush strokes don't be afraid to also leave some little bits of white on the paper. You don't have to color everything in more here on the left hand side. Okay, you'll notice that. All the yellows are just mixing in very nicely and forming a beautiful blend. You can only do this while the paper is wet. Look at how quickly I'm getting in this stuff. I'm just dropping in that pat as quick as I can like that. Letting that paint spread around. Even with one quick brush stroke to do that, it's not a huge amount of work. Okay, let's put in some more here near the foreground, and of course we've got little bits for the green and shrubs in here as well. I'm just adding a bit of it to motel up some of this yellow in here. Again, if it's starting to dry, you can just spray that page a little bit like this. Then suddenly you've got a bit more time to mix around these colors. As you can see here, because it's mostly green. We need to make sure we've got nuff those greens in there. I like this sense of dark darkness here as well on the tree to the right. And then we've got the more lighter golden color in front here. We are just mixing that through, not minding if I leave little bits of white on the paper. Just continue on. I can even put in a bit of purple here. A tiny bit of purple. This is to bring out some of the darker contrasts in the shadows and then the bushes and things like that here as well. Just wet and wet work. We're looking at the reference photo and we're trying to find areas of darkness. Light and darkness just emphasize that we're doing in the background. I really like the darks too, but I want to make sure that I've got enough green area here behind the houses. Just a lighter green I suppose running through, being careful just to cut over the top there. I'm going to have to do this again anyway. Afterwards in the darker color, something like that, I will actually swap to just swap to this brush here, which is a smaller flat brush. If I can actually pull this off, just get in that sharpness on the house like that I thought might make it a bit easier for me if I need to redo it afterwards, I will. Okay. Just cutting around those houses in dark color, this is just purple that I've picked up. Put in a little bit more green in the background here, just in that section. Use this other brush, this same flat brush to cut around. Just get in some of this foliage on the trees in the background. I think what we're going to have to do is also darken off that right hand side of the house a bit. And I want to just get it to blend slightly. I'm going to use some of this purple, a very light wash of purple. Let's give this a shot. I just want to add in a little bit of darkness on the right side of the roof. Okay. Like that here too. I think if we do this all wet into wet, it's going to be easier rather than leave it till at least blends together. It looks more natural this way. Of course, we can leave out some tiny highlights and stuff like that as well, but it blends in nicely with the oranges and things as well, which is what I like just a little touch of that. Okay, Look at that, We've got an indication of those two houses. All right, paints still wet, so we can go in and continue to add a bit more color in areas. But for the most part, I want to let a lot of that dry off, so then we can actually go in with a darker color afterwards. I will, however, start to put in a bit, maybe a bit more color down the base. Just spraying a bit to get a bit of water and things running through like that. Get that fan brush out. The fan brush is going to help me to get in some smaller details. I also just mixing up the rest of this green as well and dropping it in to layer. I'm probably to just mix up my own green, run out a little bit of ultramarine blue. If I can pick up some of this nacodone yellow as well, which I'm also running out of. Okay, get in some of this areas of the greens because that paper has started to dry off a little bit. When you put in this darker paint and it's thick as well, you have to make sure that it is thicker than the surrounding paint. It actually, it actually doesn't move that much. Just what you want. Darker bits there might even put in a bit of black at the bottom like that, into this green. So we can have some shade of green. Or you can also pick up purple that works well. It looks fairly dark when you drop it in, but actually the paint will spread around as we continue. Just don't add too much in there. Here's some more like on that side that's already starting to dry off A bit of water spray up that section a bit. Fan brush has a nice effect in that it feathers that color in without too much hassle. It's more of a subtle effect as well. For example here I might have a bit of that bit of purple in there as well. Here might just drop in a bit more. And I'll mix up additional green. A bit more green here, especially near the base of this forest where you've got this transition between the light and the dark as well. There are just a few little stray marks like that to indicate some smaller shrubs you're looking to join it on in ways just having a test to see how that back area is looking. It's a dried, I going to go into it, I'll start roughly about there. I'm testing the waters to see which bits are dried, which bits are not. I've got that small flat brush as you can see here. Another nice little thing to do is you can scratch out a little highlights. We'll probably have to just wait a moment to do this, but areas like this, for example, you can scratch out a little bit of detail like that. It's mostly when that paper is almost dry, you still have to wait for it. But I'm going to go in a little bit at the top, pick up a bit of this green and I'm going to tap a bit of it here onto the page. Just flick some of that green around to get some random effects like that. I want that gold to really permeate through the entire scene. Okay, background, I'm going to pick up really just black and purple, maybe a bit of brown. I go to dark colors, Let's try here. It's looking decent. The aim here is really just to cut around these branches and stuff. As you can see, I might change up the color of them later as well, but you can also imply ones that are in the background like that, keeping it pretty loose using this flat brush. Okay, here's another bit there. Bring that down. This, I need more paint than this, some of that stuff here. This is interesting. I hadn't anticipated that much light coming through, but I don't know. I'll leave that in. Could be something else. More purple and more darker colors. Of course, you've got this area here that overlaps with the sharpness of the black and the darker colors here. I'm just trying to imply that while the paints wet as well, I hope it settles in nicely. Feather it in a bit like that so it looks more natural. Some of it may be come up like that as well. Bits of darkness running through the areas of light. But try not to get rid of all the light. Keep some of it. You have to keep that light in there, especially there. Otherwise it's going to look completely dark. Not interesting at all. Okay. Look at that. Just some more of that color in the background. Going to cut around these houses a bit more extra black here. I'm trying to get that maximum contrast for the house. Okay, good. Now we're working our way off into the background, that distance. Now, while I'm cutting around all that color, I'm also leaving some of this background stuff on the page as well. Okay, the background color of that green. We can also swap over an experiment. Say if I use this brush, this is just a normal round brush. Okay? I'll dry it off quickly. On that left side, some more purple running through here. I'm using a larger flat brush as well for more efficiency. Okay, That stronger and more broad brush strokes, there is this tree here. Let's get that in. I'm just going to cut around it. Okay. Just leave out a little bit of the light here for that tree. We get that in more detailed afterwards. But just cut around it like I've done here. There's even a little shadow on the house like that to the left. The rest of this is going to continue downwards and feather some of this darkness into the ground. Okay. We've even got parts of the trees that are just got light on it like this one. So I can just leave out. A bit of that, like that, continue downwards, you know. Look at that. Just a few little quick brush strokes but this one as well. A bit of black in here and there. Okay, I'm just going to do a little bit of scratching out around here as well, Some more color. I think down the bottom more greens would be good. Again, just to bring out everything in the foreground. Just some more darks spray bottle, give it a quick misting brings it back to life again. Especially when you've got some of these edges that you want to feather out a bit, soften off slightly. You've got this ability to do that with this fan brush on the house as well. You'll notice these little shrubs and things that just join onto it. And having a bit of paint in there, darker paint is going to help. Okay. Just that front, the foreground was bugging me a little bit. It needed to be darker. Okay? But still have enough of that light shining through and look at that. I'm just getting the tiny little bits of blades of grass or whatever, what we were talking about before we creating this sense of this road or whatever. Often you'll get the shrubs and things that grow around the edges of the road. Okay. I'll leave the center untouched and just a bit of those shrubs running around. Okay. This is slightly sharper looking as you can tell. A bit more here, a bit more darkness, just where you can see perhaps a little bit of darkness in there that you've missed out. I always like to rejig bits of this as I go. Okay, great. Let's move further down towards that left hand side. You can see, look how sharp these bits of grass eye. I can just spray it down a little bit to soften off that edge. Take that edge off, I want it to be somewhat sharp but not too much, that it draws attention away from the rest of the scene. But you see those little sharp areas in there are actually looking fantastic. They really help to create a sense of texture and different, a different sort of feel rather than that same old stuff that you get. Look at that just a bit of black. And I'm using black and purple. Okay, just for some of these areas in the background. I can also use the little flat brush to do that. That helps as well to get in some little bits and pieces like that, Again, helping to draw out the maximum contrast for some of these trees. I want to make the trunks as well, on the right hand side, significantly darker. Notice I've just used some pure black, really on the right hand side of these trees. This is just a technique to create a strong sense of shadow. Okay. It's just mostly paint. There's only a tiny bit of water in there to activate it. But what you're going to find is that because this area in the background is still slightly wet, it has a natural look to it because it blends into the background quite well. Okay, so just bits and pieces here and there. This one crosses over, I think I'll get that one going in the front and the back one like that. Okay? Maybe a bit here as well. These ones are going to be tricky because they're so dark already that. Alright, let's give this a dry. 5. Forest: Second Wash: Right now to put in all the little finishing touches, I actually just scratched off a bit of paint as well. While it was drying, you can see this little bit of texture that I've created. I'm going to be using mainly a flat brush. Now I'm going to be going over bits and pieces of this area, especially over here near the house. Just some little highlights. Draw out some highlights by creating darkness in between some parts. For example, here you might get this fence or putting it in before. But there are these segments in between. Just drawing up the fence, if you think about the light source, you're going to have that light coming in from the left and maybe cast a bit of a shadow underneath. And then to the left hand side of these posts. Okay. Something like that might extend it off a bit more to the right like that. Let's have a bit of a look underneath the house. You might get a bit of sharpness here. Bit of sharpness like that, Something there underneath this rooftop. Maybe a bit of darkness here as we. Just something like that here. Just bringing out some tiny little details just put in this. It's like a window or something here. Just a couple of windows. Okay. Quick indications of them. Anyway, this one might have a couple as well. I'll just put in that a bit of darkness and a bit of shadow on the house like that. Let's feather in a bit of highlights and bits and pieces down the bottom. You can also just go over the top with a bit of this fan brush like that. Get some sharper brush strokes just running through. Okay, I'm going to pick up a bit of guash, bit of yellow guash and let's see if I can get myself in a few indications of some grass and stuff like that. You'll get it even over here. That light source to the left bit of white or just a warmer color for the top of the houses like there. We get some of this going off all into the distance as well. Just again, increasing a sense of complexity and details back there. Just with the gash and I find with the guash you can do a lot of magical stuff with it and bring back extra details. Most of these are just vertical. Actually, I've changed them up to have them go in on more different angles. A bit more dramatic, I suppose you can see here as well, there's a few. Can even pick up a little rigger brush and it will accomplish this task a bit better, faster. Like this, some vertical bits and pieces, it's quite tricky to get in some yellows back here after you've used so much green, everything just tends to turn to a green color. But it's okay, look at these little indications of these trees off in the distance of. In more details, you can even just increase some of the offshoots of the branches and things like this. Some more of this grass here. A little bit of that. I've squeezed out a bit of white quash and a bit of Hansa yellow. And I'll mix these together to create a more stark looking yellow. Let's take a look, what can we do here? We can perhaps bring out some of these little highlights of this tree that get that rooftop in a bit better as well. It's a tree off in the distance. There Just get a bit more of that rooftop in just some areas that you might want to bring back some highlights and stuff find. The Gah is just perfect for these finishing touches on the window sills of this. But again, these little trees and stuff that we had in here as well, I think it helps to get in a bit more sharpness in areas, you can just bring them out a bit like this. Suddenly that starts to come through a bit of that light. The trees as well, some of them anyway, have a bit more of this golden quality to it. I'm just going over the top of some of them. A bit of that. A more water, more yellow, some smaller sharper marks with the grass and things here as well. Just get some little highlights back in spots. Just using that same flat brush to do this here. They could get in some little bits of the tree like that leaves, bring some of those back. Balance it out by just adding some sharper lines and highlights and things over the left side as well. Again, just trying to scrub, scratch out a few leaves and things in here with the gosh, okay. Just give it a bit of light in areas, but remembering not to get rid of all that darkness in the background as well, I'm going to need some of that showing through more brush here. This is just a touch of gash for some of these shrubs and things, just blending it downwards. Okay, so we've got the water colors that show through the transparency of the water colors, and then we've got this indication of guash at the top. I think the combination of them creates quite an interesting sort of look. If you don't, you can see the benefits of using both at the same time. Just pick up a bit of darker color. Just go over some of this stuff here and off a bit of that trunk with some gray color. Just darken off a bit of it. I don't want all of it to be too bright. I got some black here. And I'm gonna restate some of these shadows. Did wooden boards over the house and be a shadow like that for the windows? Separate out that yellow would touch and that's finished. 6. River: Drawing: All right, we're going to get started with this drawing. And the first thing I'm going to put in is the area right at the back where we've got the trees. Right where the trees touch the ground, the land. And we've also got a little bit of a river running down as well. So just that darker area. And I would say that's about a third of the way through the scene and perhaps even just above the midway point like here. Okay, So keeping it pretty loose, holding my pencil right at the end, something like that. And probably the easiest thing to do at this stage is I want to just get in this area of the river bank here. There's a little bit of this grass there, but as you can see it comes down. There's a bit of a mini waterfall or something here. It's difficult to see like that. There's a bit of land that comes in like that as well. Okay. Comes all the way out here. Okay. Comes in. There's a rock of some sort here as well, with some shrub covering it in the front there. There's bits and pieces in the water. Goes all the way over, lots of stuff going on, all the way into the right hand side of the scene like that till it disappears off. Okay, let's go ahead and do that right hand side. Now I've got a bit of that coming across in the water. There are reflections of this in the water as well. I just want to be mindful of that Leaves some space there, but we can see actually the trees, the reflections of the trees coming down. We'll sort that one out later. All here is just the nice yellowy grass that you see all over the entire scene. Everything out in the back really isn't a huge deal. I mean, I'm just going to quickly a little bit of this out in the back. That tree there, this reddish looking one there as well like that. There are even another tree line right at the back. You can barely see it in there. I don't know whether I'll actually put it in, but we'll see how we go. Okay, that of course the main feature of the scene, this tree. Now, I'm going to spend a bit of time drawing this. We know it comes up like that. I may even change it up. We'll see how we go, something like this and it comes out there's like a Y shape like that. Okay. Don't feel like you have to copy the reference picture. Exactly. Okay. It doesn't matter that there there's actually another branch that runs off to the side here, splinters off like that. All very dark branches. Mind you, this is going to make it a bit easier. There's a shadow running, the light source coming from the right. So we've got shadows to the left of the scene. Okay, let's just get in a bit more of this tree trunk here. It looks like an offshoot of that tree of some sort. They come up and then we've got a bit of the actual tree there. Main thing is just to get in a good indication of that trunk so that you've got a good guide for later. Just decrease the width of that, a touch like this, okay. There's even a bit of twig or something running here and another tree to the right like that just comes up and joins on Quite naturally, it's hard to see what is going on up there, but the main thing is just to get in these trunks, the bases of them. Anyway, another one here. This one looks a bit more conventional, straight up. And then another one here. Okay, this is going to be interesting because they're going to be reflections of them off in the water and a bit more detail up the top as well. I'm just trying to mark out roughly where they finish off. Something like that. Okay. I think that's pretty good. Just having a look to see what else do we want to potentially put in here? That's just a rock, a shadow there. You can even see there is some shrub here that's casting a shadow to the left. Just a reminder of that. A lot of this is you can see there is a shadow inside here in between the mounds and things like that as well. That I'm going to actually put in a bit of work for these reflections just quickly if I can, Like this. Okay. So that I don't have to think too much later on. Okay, The thing with the reflection is you've got this one coming over to the left, that tree coming to the left. So you want to imitate that the reflection also comes over to the left a bit. Then the bits and pieces, that Y shape of the tree, just imitate that. Coming down disappears off like that. You've got this one here, curves a bit to the left, so we're going to curve that one also bit over to the left, assuming this is the river bank about there. Okay. This joins on like that. What have we got here? I've got two more little ones. Just something like that. It has a bend to it, something like this. I'll just quickly imitate that in this one as well. Look at that, just that bend towards the left. Quick little reflections. And these are going to be a little bit easy to do because we don't have too much light. Just a little bit of light on the right hand side of the trees. Most of it is just dark, very dark in there. The reflection is going to be quite similar as well. There's also reflections here in the background like the reflections of that large tree there. Even over here you can see it, the reflections of the yellow as well in the water. So something that we're going to have to keep in mind through this scene. You can see the reflections are even a bit sharper up in the foreground. And there's a bit of a tricky distinction between the land and the reflection here, but that we'll sort that out later. 7. River: First Wash: First things first, I'm going to go pick up a mop brush like this. Very small, considering the size of the paper. And I'm going to pick up a bit of yellow over here. I've got a bit of Australian red gold and it's a Quinacridone yellow. I'm going to use this in a good amount, good amount of the scene, especially with all the yellow that we have running through like that. Just making sure that I've got enough on the tree. This is, um, very light wash of yellow. Some of it I can carry a little bit further up like that just into some of the trees. Okay. But mainly you want a lot of this yellow in the land. We leave out that river by the way. Remember, don't color the entire river in as well because we need to get some blue in there. Just about 10% paint. And the rest of it just water, very vibrant. Seen, you don't have to make it this vibrant as well. You can. We've got some yellow ochre which is more of a subdued yellow. Have a look at that. It's a bit more subdued. You can put a bit of that in as well. Okay. Down near the river bank. I'm just darkening it off to touch. Okay. Sometimes a bit of darker color, like what you call it. Burnt Sienna works well. Okay. Other than that, it's just getting in this golden color as much as we can. You can see a bit here. Okay. Like that. I'm trying to be quick with this as well so that I don't spend too much time fiddling around with all the little details because I want to get in the rest of it as well. While the page is wet, even in the water. See the tiny little reflections of the grass and things up above a tiny bit there. I'm just putting it in like that. Okay, This will probably dry a little bit before I actually get in the blue, but that's okay. More of that yellow. Bring that over to the left. If you leave a bit of white in the paper, that's fine, as we don't stress about that. A bit more here to the left of the scene and over that rock as well. Just a nice golden color running through that. I'll be able to get in some more of the details of it later, but for the time being, I don't really mind. I always try to start off with the yellows and the reason being is that they'll turn it to greens if you're not careful. Okay, let's go and work on a bit of this stuff in the background, I've got a little bit of red, believe a bit of red in these trees. A tiny, it's very subtle but touch of that, Okay. Near the tops of it as well. Just a little indication of that. I don't want to overdo it. I've also got a bit of purple, which I can just add in here at the base there. Nice bit of purple if I can get that to blend in a bit with the yellow as well, because the yellow is still wet. Mind you, it creates a nice blend while the paper is like that. Like an indication of the softness of the grass. Okay, let it blend in and do its thing a bit more here. The red of this area. Tiny little bit, not really too obvious in this water. I'm going to put in a little bit of, a tiny bit of that red as well, but not too much. And a bit of that purple. See if I can blend some of this into the yellow like this. And you can see how it melts in nicely. Because that yellow is still, that's the aim here, just to get in a bit of the reflection of what's happening above. Okay, and a bit of the darker purple underneath here. It's fairly dark. Okay, just a little bit more of it, letting it come down to page a touch like this. Okay, good Over here in the background we've really got some Cerulean And we've got Cerulean in the sky as well. And I will put a quick wash of green on some of these trees like this area here. Just a light wash of green. It's darker green. You can mix it up yourself as well, something like that. And just blend it on with all the yellow that we have here so that we've got a bit of continuity. A bit more bit darker green and purple mixed together as well, just to create a bit more something going on here in the back. Okay, a little bit of suli. Now I'm mixing this up quite thick. Actually, I want to start off firstly, let's start off in the sky. A little bit of a light wash of it. About 20% paint, 80% water. Okay, look at that. Just come through and I want to blend in the touch of bit like this Okay. Quickly. But I'm leaving out little white highlights as well, so it doesn't all have to be colored in. Okay. Something like that. Look at how it just blends in with the trees and everything done. Okay, there we go. It's a bit darker up the top as well. You find I can just indicate some of these clouds by lifting off some of the paint. See, while it's drying, just pick up a bit of water and then just touch it onto the paper and wipe it off. That's how you get these cloudy effects here in the background. Misty ness almost in areas. Okay. So just do a bit of that till you're happy continuing down the page. I really want to make sure I've got in some blues in here while I can another thing you'll find that the tops. But there's little bits of white coming through for the waterfall, like the tiny little waterfall there. So I've left a bit in there and then as I move across and also pick up a smaller flat brush to get in extra details like this. There's a lot of white on the water, just the reflections showing through. I want to indicate some of that, leave some of that showing through the page. There's actually a bit of golden color running across here, yet runs across the scene like this. I forgot to get it in there before. But it joins up slightly. Let's get in some more blue around here. You can see how I'm just getting that sky. Miking that sky. Okay. Just drop in that blue, like this, light blue. It's probably a bit too dark at the moment, but I'll just add in some more water and drag this down a touch. Okay, that just coming down the page and over the top of these reflections in the water joining on to the yellow like this. Fantastic. Okay, just a quick little misting over the top to just rewet it a touch. I'm looking around and just seeing what else do I want to add on here. While the paper is still wet, I've still got some opportunities to add in some shadows and things like that we're not thinking of really detailing much in here. All we're trying to do is just get in slight shadows and things like that. Mainly, most of this lighter color is the important thing. You can almost see it's like an orangey color come out in some spots here. Okay, so just a bit of extra color there. Bit of orange like that. And the photo has been exaggerated a fair bit by whoever edited the photo. It's actually a lot more vibrant colorful than it probably probably is. Okay. But it doesn't matter. We can still change it up a bit of orangeade. Orange here, drop in a bit a little bit here. See these tiny shrubs and things like that, you can get in a bit of that. Yeah. I'm going to preserve the lighter colors. The lighter yellow right at the back as well. I don't want there to be too much going on in there, but look, I'm just adding in touches of color. And especially this left side. I think I need to spray it down a touch as well. I'm just little rush to get in some details. I'm going to pick up some of this purple color, purple mixed with black. We can just place in some small variations, like you can see these clumps of bits and pieces near the river bank. And it will mark out the river bank as well. Much better if you do this, just touch and go in areas like that. This should probably have some more blue in this section here. Just drawing that up a bit. But I'm using paint that's almost unmixed, just a little bit of water added in there to activate it. I'm using that to just create these darker shapes. You can see them also in the trees here in the back. You can even pick up a little rigger brush. The rigger brush allows you to get in shapes like taller shapes and things like that, these little branches, it will blend in. The trick here is just using a lot of paint on the brush, not using much water at all. That way it actually melts in nicely. You don't get polls, puddles of water. You can see that these are branches, soft looking branches. It pushes them back into the distance so it doesn't look like a whole lot going on in there. Okay? Because as we move further into the back, one thing you don't want to do is just add in too much detail. You want to decrease a sense of detail at the back so that it looks like it's receding and we've got additional details in the front that are more drawing attention. A little bit like that. You can see things there. That's something I might pick up a bit of brown. And I'll drop in some here as well. Just where I can potentially detail add in some extra colors and bulk as well. Out the back. I'll try to do that in areas. Okay. There is some like what do you call it, mountain or whatever in the back. I don't know if I'll get that in actually, it's tricky to do. It goes all right in behind and it's quite a dark blue color. I can just try to do something like that, but nothing too serious. Might look like a bit of a mountain or something back there. Not concerned at the exact details. Okay, going around here, let's go pick out some more bits and pieces. You can see here, look these tiny little bits near the river. You can get in a bit more here as well. Just drop in the paint and you'll notice it spread and move around. And you want to make sure that you have some of these in as well that just making the river bank. This here is like the rock, little rock. Going to just mark it in with the darker paint like that. You can see it just go behind in front. We've got some of this like shrub or whatever, just mark a bit of that roughly where it is, even here, you can see there's a shadow which is actually pretty soft shadow. Just spray that down a touch. It's actually sharper than I thought. I don't want to make it too sharp. Another bit of shadow, just shadows marking out the shrubs and things that are around here near the water as well, some bits of twigs. And how I'm doing this is just basically looking at the dark areas that are running through this at the bottom and trying to get in some of that darkness. Look here on the left, touch of color here. This is also part of that river system, just running over to the left. But you see more of the reflections here in the water. From the yellow shrubs and things. Okay. A little bit of this rigger brush, maybe around here dropping a touch of that orange Naco done orange that I'm using as well. Here near the bank or whatever that that yeah. Yeah. I just want to put some more of these yellows and things running up as well for the smaller shrubs coming through like that. Okay. Now the paper is all wet. You just want to take the time to do this kind of thing. Little green drop some in here, especially on the left hand side of these hypothetical trees that we see here mix a bit of black in there as well. Purple bit of reflection here in the water as well. The fan brush might be good for this. Just some indications of shrubs in the water, like reflections of them in the water like that, dragging that downwards here as well here, again, kind of making this area quite dark or the paint that you're using fairly dark so that you have the opportunity to let it sort of sink in and mix around. Okay, These are just more sharper shapes I'm trying to get in. The yellows and the little shrubs just can run through this mix. Okay, near the banks, you've just got extra bit of color darkness. That's the way I'm using that bit of color, just darker yellow to draw out the edges of the bank of yellow oaks. Well, you can actually see quite a few of these little shrubs just go up and disappear off into the scene. Darker paint, just putting a few bits and pieces here that the, I can draw out some more contrasts, especially between the background. I'll do that just near the yellows as well, so you get a sharper contrast like this. Looking at where else I could do this, the water bit here. Great, okay, excellent, More there, a bit of darkness on that, trees to the right, just just green and a bit of purple mixed together to get in more of a sharper shape as well. With some of these broken edges that the fan brush is really good for implying so little details. That's why I like to use this feathering technique. As you can see underneath these trees is going to be shade due to the shadow cast by the trees that probably go over there as well. Bits of softness running through the foreground. Little spray down like that. Okay, just some who knows exactly what. Okay, soften off that line a bit. Okay, good. Maybe put a few more brush strokes in here, and other than that, I think we can actually give it a get into the next next bits. 8. River: Second Wash: So what I've done here is that I've actually used a little blade, and while the paper is still wet, you can scratch off these tiny little highlights like this. Okay? You need to wait until the paper is partially dried, but you're able to do this and create tiny little areas. What I've done, I've created this pattern of these shrubs and reeds going around the river, almost positioning where the river is, okay? See around here. Scratching that out. You can see that just lines all the way around. It makes it much easier to define the river bank by using this technique. Give it a try if you've got a little knife or something like that or if you've got a credit card, that works nicely as well. Okay, that's essentially all that I've done here. Near the front, I just put in some sharper looking ones and larger ones as well. Okay. But I don't want to overdo it. I've done a lot of it so far. Maybe some sharp ones could be nice like that, Tiny little sharp ones. It makes this very easy to indicate some textures and things like that. That if you tried to do this with the paint brush, you'd probably be spending an enormous amount of time. I just scratch off a bit of this stuff. Okay, Some more around here. I'm holding right at the tip. Getting the tip to do most of the work, to get some finer sort of marks in. Okay. It doesn't look like much, but afterwards altogether, it will seem like there is so much detail in there when there really isn't these little trees and stuff here at the back as well. Why not get in some of the branches and the sharpness of that running through as well? For some parts you can darken that down if I need to later, but that's a pretty good point place to start. Okay, so once you're happy with that result, let's continue on and work on some of the shadows and the trees. Specifically, this tree here. I'm going to I'm going to pick up just some black paint. This is Luna or any kind of black paint is fine. You can even mix up your own. Let's drop this in. So we've got the main trunk of the tree like this coming down and it hits the bushes, the shrubs and things and then you go across like that. Okay, let's have a look. You've got the top of it like this there. Let's get in this one. There's like a branch coming over to the left like that, just in front. Okay. We'll have a smaller brush to play around with. I'll stick with this one. It's okay. Or even the little flat brush works too. Just gives you a sharper point at the edge. Okay. There's another one. Another bit of tree or something here. I'm going to leave a bit of that light on the right hand side of the tree as well. Okay, like that. Like this here. There. Okay, good. We know these all go up and form into the larger branches and it gets lost up the top there really areas where it joins on. Sure that makes it look better like that. You can also use a little brush. The rigger brush creates sharper looking edges and fine marks, fine lines with things like little branches. And that thing just put in a little water to activate it. You can bring this one up and make it just connect up. This one can also do something that try not to overthink it, it's weird. The more, the faster that you do it. I mean, with intention of course. And a bit of a plan, the better it looks it, this tree trunk in a bit better. A bit more detailed thing I'm annoyed with is just this area at the top. I want it to be touch darker. I'm going to put in a bit of purple and black together to get in some dark marks on the left hand side of these trees. They also, you see some of them go straight up into the sky. And really for more of these sharper marks, I just experiment around and darken up a bit. For that reason really this has gone outside the, the reference photo, but it doesn't matter. It's more green, may be in the purple, that just some more darkness. Because this tree needs to come forward more. Even this tree to the right hand side needs to be darker. I will need to darken that off a touch. If you get an old brush like this one here, an old round brush, these can be good for this technique where you just scratch and scrabble way on the edges of the foliage like that. That just creates some irregular like effects for the foliage. And it stops it from overthinking things as well because really there's just a lot of darkness in here, a bit running through and showing that previous layer is so important as well. Being careful not to over exaggerate, overdo this effect here that the moment it starts looking good for you, I'd say just be careful and maybe stop, because there's always that risk of overdoing things. I'll stop now with that and pick up a bit of green or whatever that's left here on the palette. It looks like a greeny color. I'm going to feather some of this darker color underneath here for the shadow of the tree. Just feather it in a bit to the bottom of the trees. Maybe bring some of it over that right hand side to like this. There are some sp details near the water Might put some more black in there as well. Just to get a bit more something running through, I want to do the reflections as well. Just pick up a bit of black. I'm just going to m bits and pieces of the trees just like this that maybe flat brush would be a bit easier to do this. It doesn't pick up as much paint. Okay, This one here, just running down, look to the left almost that you just imitating what you've got in there because obviously we've got a tiny bit of that drawing left. It makes it a touch easier to paint in. Okay. Just a little indication of that is all you need. Just lift off a touch of this paint. I thought I've gone through a bit too dark. But we'll be okay. We'll be fine. Now, I want to put in some indications of these leaves as well. Bits of something like that soften up the shadow, the reflections in the water. There we go. Let me see if I can get some of the. I want to just get some dry brush. I've picked up a bit of darker paint and dry the brush off. And just flicking some of this paint downwards like this to get in some sharper looking, I guess, reflections in the water. Okay, a bit of purple. Rub that brush off on a piece, on a bit of cloth. Okay, good. Just redo this one a bit more, little fill bit brush with this. I'm just going to lift off some areas of sharpness that I don't really want in there. If that's too much, I can just scrub this area. Touch and just lift off. Okay. Let me just regain some parts of the paper back like that. This yeah, Soften that a bit as well. Soften this bit and lift off of the tissue, you get this kind of misty look. What's that misty looking effect in areas? Okay, I like to do this in parts of my painting to yeah, just create softness I suppose in areas that it just joins here as well. You might think there's actually a bit of light in there. I can just lift off a touch of color in that section. If I want to get in more of an indication of the light hitting these trees, I can just lift off a bit on the right hand side of the tree like that. Something like that. Shadows look a little bit to reflection. Just look a bit too sharp. I want to just soften off the edge is a touch. Sometimes you get these bits of water that cut through the center of them like this as well. This is a, something I just decided to do now. See if it works like this. Lift off here as well where the cerulean is. White bits on the water. Yeah, I'll join that on a bit. Here's where good, I think that that water sort of effect looks nice. Let's see if I can lift off some of that stuff here. This waterfall like effect, I just scratch off, scrub off a bit of that to make it look like the water is coming downwards. Okay. It off on this funny angle as well there, here. It's just indication and as long as it spurs the imagination, it should be okay. Just lift. I'm just using a little bit of water on the brush, scrubbing that area. Lifting off. Okay, that's all I'm doing. Nothing special. Maybe I do a bit over here as well, Softening details. It's a subtle effect really. But you wouldn't believe how important it is to help the image the painting have this atmospheric softness that I don't know, I guess I wanted to add in here. Okay, good time to add in some of the little details and finishing touches. So I'm going to be using some black paint and I want to bring out the details of this rock and other things better, okay? Just something like this. I can just go in there and get better indication of it. Whether you want to actually do that or not is up to you for some of you may think you're happy with how it looks, but I just want to put in something like that here, this rock and cut around these shrubs and things as well if I can. Okay. That shadow is fine. I don't need to touch that. Some really simple marks like this indicate some sharper details for the shrubs. See just tiny little spot effects. Okay. Not much be sparing when you're doing this, but you can see how it creates yet another layer of contrast running through here. So you sit near the water, you see these little little bits that are popping up like that. Tiny, darker indications. I don't have to be much in there. Just something like that here as well. Maybe on the right hand side, a bit more black. Even if you've got that, is that fan brush here. I need it, bits like this. The fan brush is quicker, but it's not as accurate. You can't control where each individual strand goes, but also that's an advantage. Funny enough, because then you're not over thinking everything. Put a bit more running through here. Look at these little flicks of paint that I'm just adding to this section out in the back. And it just creates this sense of detail, especially moving into the distance. But you want to make sure they're small off the distance, not too long, like the grass here in the foreground. You can treat these bits a lot longer, but that's about it, fine. A bit of white guash and a bit of yellow. To finish this one off, just to add in some final highlights. Okay, let's do this. I'm using this flat brush thinking what we should do. Probably go with a bit of the yellow mixed in first, Got some Hansa yellow and a bit of white, yellow and white gush, and a bit of yellow ochre as well. To create a lighter color, we can start off for example here, let's just put in something like that. Tested out thing with gases that you have to use sparingly. Otherwise, yeah. Otherwise it looks too intense. Have a look, maybe a little bit of that. On the right hand side of the tree that even if it skips over the page, that's actually a good thing she exposes a bit of the texture of the paper. Okay, my aim here is just to put in a bit of it on the right hand side of the trees. And that will imply that it's that light source to the right. Okay. Here's another bit there. This larger tree I need to be careful with. Okay. A bit like that. Maybe here, Yeah. Yeah, there, there. Okay. A little bit of that in the water as well, for the reflected light on the tree. I don't want to overdo it, but just some something like that. Okay. Might think of a bit of a tree and things in the background like this. I can just put in some tiny indications in the background. Maybe this tree could have some bit of quash, the bit of lighter color might even do it up here in some of the branches and things like quick strokes, not too much, but tiny little marks indicate perhaps some sunlight. I don't overdo it. Some of this stuff off in the background as well. Just trying to get in a bit of it. Okay? These trees here. Maybe a apart from that, it's not all too much to add in. You can also do things like for example here, this rock I might want to add in better indication of light on top of that rock there. It brings it forward. I could put a bit here on that rock as well. You can even make up rocks, other types of rocks and things running through here or here. More yellow, yellow through there. Actually, there on believe what a tiny bit of gash can do, just elevate that scene to something else. I don't even do it here. Just pretend that there's rocks here. So just a little bit of a bit of light in some parts. Mm hmm. That I've forgotten. Trey here, actually, just a little touch of that as well. Through you can even do tiny little indications of these shrubs and things here. See just feather in a few extra strokes here and there. I wouldn't overdo it. Just a bit like that. Perhaps near the water here. Here. Okay, here's that little a brush pick up some more black. And I'll see if I can just put in extra branches, tiny little branches, quick ones to increase that level of detail in areas up here. Ah, something else happening? Something else going on. Just a little twigs and things coming out from the tree. Because I want to make it look more interesting. I feel that some parts of it are just not. I don't have enough detail in there. You see some of these areas out in the back. You can get in a few small indications of these trees. And the thing is that if you dry brush out the back, it's going to look a bit better. You might have a couple of sharp looking trees in there. But for the most part you want to dry brush because it makes it pushes it further back into the distance. So you can focus more on this section. More darker marks near the water, again to indicate something happening there. Perhaps some shadow for those little rocks that I've invented here as well could be good. Just a little darkness running behind them like that. Soften that touch. Okay. And that's finished.