Creative Watercolor Sketchbook: Paint Loose Landscape

1. About the Class: Friends. Welcome to my class on painting loose watercolor, landscapes and sketchbook. I'm an Carayala, passionate watercolor artist, Skillfort, top teacher, and I work with brands like Schminka and Silver Brush Limited. I truly believe that painting is for everyone and I'm here to inspire you to discover and pursue your creative passion. In this course, you will learn fundamental watercolor techniques that will enable you to create captivating landscape paintings within the pages of your own watercolor journal. For a class project. In a single spread of your sketchbook, we will create a dynamic and vibrant spring landscape that captures the essence of the season, Expressive brush strokes and a playful approach. We will paint a scene filled with blossoming flowers, lush greeneries, and a gentle touch of sunlight On the same spread of your sketchbook, we'll create a lively and spontaneous depiction of a yellow flower with loose and fluid inclines combined with vibrant watercolor washes, we'll capture the essence of this beautiful bloom in a fresh and expressive manner. Lastly, we'll complete the sketchbook spread with some color notes and text and pencil. I can't wait to see you Create stunning watercolor artworks and bring your sketchbook to life. See in the first lesson. 2. Materials and Class Project: Before we begin, let's go over the materials you'll need for this class. Feel free to use whatever supplies you have at home. But for your reference, the materials that I will be using are as follows. For the watercolor paints, I squeeze out paints from tubes from Schenka. The colors I'll be using are burned. China cobalt torquoise, deep sea violet. You can use the oxyzene violet as an alternative. Cobalt violet, olive green, Pruscian blue, and new gumboge. For the brushes I use silver brush, Renaissance round brush, size ten. It is made of natural sable hair, which makes it perfect for creating broad strokes, soft washes and blending colors. Its size ten is ideal for larger areas in your painting. Another brush that I use is silver silk eight ales for round brush size ten. This brush is known for its fine, deep, and versatility. It's great for adding intricate details and delicate brushwork to your landscape paintings. Lastly, this black velvet liner brush size one. This brush has a long and thin shape, perfect for creating fine lines, tree branches, or any other delicate elements you may want to include in your landscape. Watercolor paper is a very important element in your painting. I highly recommend that you use 100% cotton, 300 GSM paper. This sketchbook is a custom made sketchbook composing of Bahn artists grade watercolor paper. An excellent paper can handle watercolor paints without warping. Bam paper with 300 GSM is a great choice as it provides a sturdy surface. You'll also need a water sprayer, a P, or container filled with water for diluting your paints and cleaning your brushes. Keep some tissue paper handy to block excess water from your brushes or to create texture in your painting. Prepare also a pencil and eraser. The basic growing tools will help you sketch your composition on the sketchbook before you start painting. Lastly, a waterproof growing pen for our ink sketch. That concludes our materials overview for painting landscapes on sketchbooks. Make sure you gather all these materials before our next class. Now let's go over the simple steps to upload your project and leave a review on skillshare your project. Upload and review not only showcase your beautiful artwork, but also serve as a great encouragement for me as a teacher, to upload a class project, log into your Skillshare account and navigate to the class page. Scroll down to the Projects and Resources section and click on the Create Project button. Add a catchy title to your project that represents your artwork. Feel free to create a brief description or story behind your piece. Click on the Upload button to add an image of your completed work. Ensure that the image showcases your painting beautiful. Once you're satisfied with your project details and images, click on the published button to make your project visible to the skillshare community. Now to leave a class review, stay on the class page and sprawl down to the review section. Click on the Leave a Review button. Choose the rating that reflects your overall experience and satisfaction with the class. Next, share your thoughts and feedback about the watercolor class. You can mention techniques that you enjoyed, how the class inspired you, or any improvements you'd suggest. Once you're done writing your review, click on the Submit button to publish it. As I review your class projects, I'll be providing individual feedback on your artwork, offering guidance and celebrating your achievements. I really value your dedication and efforts and I'm excited to see your interpretations through water color. If you have any questions, feel free to ask. And I'm excited to see your creativity come to life in our upcoming painting sessions. See you in the next lesson. 3. Pencil Sketch: Pencil sketch, I decide first where to position our main subject. I will be painting a spring landscape here on the upper left side of the page. I don't use masking tape around my sketchbook for a loose feel. I draw a light sketch of the border and the size is more than half of the page. On the lower side part of the page is where I'll place the color nodes in the line art sketch of the flower. Let's start the simple drawing. Draw the horizon line here on the lower third of the landscape. Then I draw slopes to show the shape of the land. Then with a quick stroke, I draw a curve line for the road. I do the same thing on the left side. I draw the shape of the valley. Then draw a simple house on the area. I start with the roof, then draw some trees surrounding the house. Next, I draw the other side of the road. Let's finish off the drawing with another small tree on the right, and then add a few strokes of grass as our guide here on the foreground. This is our pencil sketch. I provided a downloadable copy of this drawing together with other class resources. 4. Painting the Landscape: Let's start the painting process. I begin with petting the sky fragment with clean water. Using my Renaissance round brush, I make sure the entire fragment is evenly wet. The level of wetness should be just right, not running dry or moist, and not too watery that there's a pool of water in it already. Next, I prepare my sky color using cobol torquoise and deep sea violet. You may use the oxyzen violet. For this, the goal is tone down the torquoise color. Using violet, I get a nice rich mix of these two colors and try to achieve a cool mix while the paper is still wet. I paint strips of blue in the sky to portray the clouds. I want you to think of it as a negative painting. We paint the sky with blue, so the white painted parts will be the illusion of clouds. Be careful not to fill everything with blue, that we won't have enough space to create impression of clouds. You will notice also that the color spread in a controlled manner despite being painted on wet surface. The reason for that is number one, the paint's consistency is creamy. And number two, the wetness of the paper is just right. If you achieve the correct balance between the two elements, you'll get the same result. Now let's define the clouds by blending the color with a damp brush. I clean my brush, then dab it on a towel to remove excess water. Then I gently lift the edge of the blue strokes to enhance the picture of the clouds. Do this step gently with a damp brush to avoid watercolor blooms. Now I'll add a few more paint on some sky areas to enhance the depth. You can do this step as long as your paper is still wet. Just make sure that the brush doesn't contain much water in it to get a nice layer and avoid watercolor blooms. Now let's move on to painting the valley. I take olive green and nuca boots for a fresh yellowish green shade perfect for a spring landscape. Since this portion is still wet, you'll see a soft blend of color on your paper. It's okay if the colors are starting to move. It gives us a loose effect. Now let's continue painting towards the foreground. This part may look a bit tricky because you'll see watercolor puddles, but I tell you, just enjoy the watercolor flow. I load my brush with pigment and water to paint the middle ground, then slowly paint it with horizontal strokes. Next, I take my water sprayer and spray some water in a downward direction so the paint would flow down. Don't be scared of watercolor flow. In fact, it's so relaxing to watch the colors move while the area is still wet. Splatter some yellow paints to create the impression of yellow flowers in the valley. As you do this, you can cover the brush with your hand so the paints wouldn't go to the sky fragment. Since I want also to lead your eyes to the direction of the road, we can add some watercolor splashes leading towards the left side. I add a few more strokes of green for the grass in the foreground and we can let it. As is for now. Now let's move on to painting the road using burn channa, diluted in water. I paint the road with a quick gliding motion to achieve that dry brush texture. We want this to introduce a rough texture appropriate for the road. I make a slightly darker brown shade using burn channa and deep sea violet to create more depth on the road. Now I'm noticing that the green paint for the valley is somehow starting to cover the sky fragment. I get a dump brush and lift the green color to control the movement of paint. I also try to sip in the water puddle with my thirsty brush. Next, let's paint the left side part of the valley. Make sure not to paint over the small house. I try to paint this side with creamier paints and with more controlled strokes, so we can also define the shape of the house. While painting the greens, I want to darken also this part of the valley a little bit more to create subtle details. And of course, some more grass strokes in the foreground. Sometimes it's tempting to add a lot of strokes, but if I really want to keep our painting fresh and loose, we need to control ourselves from placing too many details. I take my liner brush and a few dots of green paint in the side of the road to define the shapes and enhance the picture. Small tiny strokes are sufficient to make the picture come alive. Again, you don't have to paint the side of the road end to end. Suggestive strokes are enough. I will now define the left side with some brown strokes of paint. You see me dabbing my finger and I do this to smoothly blend the paint. On the initial layer, I try to add some dark brown shade and dots here in the foreground for more depth and dimension. Now I get my round brush again and get olive green, prussian blue and gumbo to define the middle ground even more. This step is optional. I do this only because I feel that the water from the paper is diluting my pain so much causing the pain to feed as it rise. If you feel that yours is just right, you don't have to do this step. I splatter some more yellow paints in the foreground for the impression of the flowers. And this time, since the paper is quite dry, we get a more defined dots of paint. Here, I'm discovering the unpainted portions around the house and defining the road a little bit more. I get my liner brush to paint the tree trunk with dry strokes. The paint has to be thick here, so it will pop in the picture. Avoid also using a watery brush so you won't leave a puddle of paint on the paper. Using the same brush, I paint the shadow on the ground with darker green color. These will help make the tree look connected to the ground. I also rub my brush to create impressions of trees. Now I'm adding a few more dark dots of paint to emphasize the curve on the row and also the movement of the grass. I want to create an impression of wind blowing the grass and flowers towards the left using Cobot violet with lots of water in it. I paint the front side of the house and I painted it very light to keep the landscape airy and fresh. Next I take my synthetic brush, the silver silk 88, to paint a defined stroke of the roof. The stroke has to be really crisp and dark to create enough contrast. And then here I take my green mix to slightly darken the base of the house and to connect it to the ground. This way the house won't look like a cut out. Pasted in the picture using the same brush, I create a darker green mix to make the shadowed portion of the tree. I do some rubbing strokes, then dab it with my finger to blend. I do the same for the tree on the left side of the house, for the tree on the right side of the valley. Keep it very light, less detailed and almost blurry, so it won't take the attention away from our focal point. This is our spring landscape, painted in a very loose style. In the next lesson, let's draw and paint the yellow flower and complete our sketchbook spread with some color notes. 5. Ink and Watercolor Flower: Let's draw the flower here in the lower right side and add the color nodes on the left for a more dynamic composition. I start with the center of the flower with some dots. As you draw, keep in mind that our goal is to stay loose. We focus on the big shapes to draw the essence and not to make it look realistic. Then I draw each petal looking at its general shape and the direction of the petal, and also the size. This way we maintain the overall balance of the petals to make them look cohesive. Next, I draw the stem and some leaves. Now let's trace it with a waterproof pen, still beginning at the center. Trace the tiny dots, then move on to tracing the stem and leaves. I try to make the tracing as neat as possible by not going over the same petal anymore. It's okay if you don't trace it exactly as how it was drawn, since you can still erase the pencil marks afterwards. Now that I'm done, I'll just erase the pencil marks before putting some paint. Once you have painted it, the marks become permanent. Using my same mix for the landscape, I paint the stem and leaves. Feel free to paint loosely, and it's okay to go beyond the outline. I press my brush to create white strokes as I paint the leaves, and not simply paint it like a hollering book. Next I splatter some yellow pins for extra fun effect. Then I spread some yellow color to fill in each petal with color. With just a few limited strokes, I deepen the center of the flower by adding a bit of yellow orange in it. I also splatter some green to unite all colors in the picture. Let's finish the spread by putting the color nodes. These are basically the swatches of color mixes that we use to paint the landscape. I start with the bluish mix for the sky. This is made of cobal turquoise and deep sea violet. Then I watch the green shades that I use for the valley. This is olive green, new gamboge and Prussian blue. The brown mix for the road, which is made of burn channa, of deep sea violet. And then the yellow mix for the flower which is from new gum bog. Don't forget to ride on the color combinations for your guide in the future. This is our final project. You may see and download the photo of this class project together with other class resources. I hope you had a wonderful learning time with me. Painting loose may sometimes feel frustrating, but encourage you to trust yourself, trust the process, and just enjoy painting. Your painting is always a reflection of how you were and how you felt as you paint. See in the next video for some helpful tips that I can share to help you more in your journey. 6. Final Thoughts: Thank you so much for joining me in this class. I hope you've gained valuable insights into watercolor techniques and learned how to bring your sketch book to life with vibrant landscapes. Now armed with new skills and a refreshed creative spirit, I encourage you to continue exploring your artistic journey and sharing your beautiful creations with the world. Don't forget to tag me on Instagram at Bacarella so I can see your work and feature you on my page. If you have any questions, feel free to send a message on Instagram and I'd be glad to help you if you're hungry for more. I invite you to join my classes on skillshare. Here are some of my recommended classes. First, Watercolor, Landscapes, and Sketchbook. In this class, we will take a closer look at the special technique to build color connection in your paintings. And learn how to design your sketchbook spread in a way that beautifully tells your story. Next, watercolor, travel. Develop your style in 14 days of landscape painting. In this class, I will take you through 14 days of self discovery, practice, and watercolor exploration as we paint diverse landscapes from 14 amazing destinations around the world. Taking this 14 day challenge will help you build a consistent painting habit, which is essential in developing your painting skills. And lastly, free flow watercolor. Seven days of relaxing landscape painting. You will learn unconventional watercolor techniques and how to apply them to create beautiful, free flowing landscapes that reflect the natural world around us in a unique way. Enjoy creating without fear. Let's go of the need to control the outcome and discover fun, new relationships between water and pigment as we experiment. Observant. Thank you so much again for joining me here today. Paint from the heart paint to inspire see you in my other classes.