Document Your Week with Clouds | Watercolor Skyscapes

1. Welcome to this Class: Lovely skies, majestic clouds, colorful combinations, and smooth transitions. How do we translate what we see above into our paper? Skies have always been an intimidating subject for me when I was just starting out with water colors. But with enough experience, I can now share with you how I paint this heavenly beauty. Hi, I'm Duncan lose track. A watercolor is from Madonna's Philippines. It has always brought me joy to share what I've learned with my watercolor journey to others. In this class, we will paint seven skies gapes, while exploring different color combinations and watercolor techniques in creating simple yet beautiful watercolors. Guys. Along with this painting, I will provide you a prompt as a journal entry to complete the project. Once you have conquered this mean the series, you can now try and beat others guys games on your own. And use this to jumpstart your landscape being, being journey. Whether you're new to watercolors or unexperienced why? You are welcome to join, define, and together. Next document or weeks with this colorful skies gapes. Let's get started. 2. Please Prepare These: Here are the art materials that we'll be needing for this class. I have a scrap watercolor paper where I will quickly demo the techniques before doing the actual painting. A ceramic palette, my watercolor paints, a water jar. Please prepare at least to my five by seven watercolor sheets. Cold pressed 300 GSM, 100% cotton, a mop brush and a small round brush, mop brush for recovering large areas. And brown brush for the details. Masking tape for a neat border will also need the synthetic brush. Wet wipes and B, bring towel for NIF thing. A white crayon or a candle, a gel pen, and that's it. Here are some optional materials. Once you're ready, see you in the next video and let's get started. 3. Day 1: My week started with a rainy day and I consider it a blessing and farness day sky ski. We will use a wax as our masking material. I have prepared Indigo for my sky color, the white crayon as my masking item. If you can find a white crayon, you may opt for a white candle instead on a scrap watercolor paper. Let me quickly demonstrate how I do a rainy sky. I'll start by drawing diagonal lines following one direction, but varying their length and placement once then just paint directly over it. And to make them evident, the lines use a dark color like indigo. I will also rinse my brush as I Rich and a bottom half and create a gradient effect just like that. And you have a rainy sky painting. Let's do it one more time on a fresh supply of water color beeper. I have faith the upper part of my five by seven water color paper, creating a square and leaving some space at the bottom for my journal entry liter. Again, I'll start by drawing my raindrops with white crayon until I'm satisfied. You may tilt your paper or bring it closer to your light source to check if you're a satisfying leader lines. I personally love using this technique when painting with kids and working on an art project that we call secret message. The message is written with white crayons and is revealed the dark paint. And that's the same approach we're doing here. Then I'll load my mop brush with water first and wet the bottom part. This is because I'm working on a bigger beeper now compared to ours craft paper, and I don't want it to dry too fast. That element is my chance to mix a smooth gradient background. Then I'll paint the upper part there regularly with indigo and make some parts darker than the others for variation. You'll notice that I didn't actually copy the reference clip showed earlier. I just made an impression of rainy sky with white lines and cool dark background. The vista dry before removing the tape. And let's work on our prompt for our journal entry. I want you to think of the simple blessings that you are grateful for at this very moment with the same sky color alright card that they today. It's a Sunday for me. And I wonder what day it is for you. And with my gel pen, I'd like to remember this. They as a blessing, they, though it was rainy. I am genuinely thankful for the food on our table, roof on my head, especially during a star me season. And the people that I love and cherish. I'm just grateful that only basic needs are met. And some of my 1D or even given to me. Take this time to count your blessings and I'll see you tomorrow for another simple, meaningful skyscraper painting. 4. Day 2: Monday, back to work. And this guy seems to agree for this clear sky. Let's try lifting with wet wipes. I have prepared my cobalt blue mixture and wet wipes. Another simple monochromatic painting for today. If you don't have wet wipes in your kit at the moment, you may grab a paper towel or a rag and slightly damp it with water. Let's try this technique first by wetting the area with clean water and dropping our colors and lifting some cloud shapes with a wet wipes. Have you ever tried this technique before? I have discovered this during Sandy Olmecs demo and I'm really grateful to learn it. I've always used De Shu sin, the epic Rosh and melamine phone or much expunge, but never attempted to use wet wipes when it comes to this thing. Now let's try and lift colors from this area. You'll notice that as we lift some colors in logs by the colors, move back and invade that space. Once again. That's because the paper is wet enough and the pigments can freely travel back to that area. And since our wives are also wet, it doesn't stop the movement of the pigment. In contrary to the first study, I will directly paint the sky area with cobalt blue. And this time the paper is dire and the lifted spots should be more noticeable than the first one. Let's give it a try. You will have to crumple, rotate an angle your wives to produce organic shapes as you see me doing. And as expected, that do have a slightly different result. Next, let's apply this technique on our project. I have prepared, might be bird the same way as yesterday, and replenished my stock of wet wipes. I load my brush with cobalt blue and quickly covered the sky area with a mop brush. You would want to do the same and work as fast as he can to avoid the pigments from drying before you're able to lift them off. Making sure that all of the areas covering and it's wet enough for me to do the lifting. Bart. Now lift and have fun with this part. It's quite unpredictable and challenging to get organic shapes, but I'm loving the effect that it creates. You may use the video clips shown earlier in shaping your clouds or be completely free and paint how you feel following your intuition. There is no need for a realistic look. We are documenting our week with this guy's gapes. And it's up to us how we want to immortalize this day. And even encourage you to come up with their own series of skyscrapers. Depending on how the clouds actually look like on the day you are painting. And just use the techniques shared in this class that are irrelevant to your style. I'm liking how this soft clouds are shaped and I'm excited to see how this looks once complete with a short entry. Let's leave this to dry and write something about Mondays. My painting has dried and I have removed the tapes to reveal the crisp border. I like how this one looks, so cool and calm. So far Today's prompt. I want you to write how you feel about Mondays. Love it. I use carried of it. Or does it make you feel busy? Personally? I don't hate Mondays. I'm actually grateful that I get to be BZ on Mondays because that means a God, something to do. And I still have a job that I can go back to. Sometimes I just miss weekends because they failed to short, but I don't really hate Mondays. Fight about you. Take this time to assess how you see Mondays. And let's meet up tomorrow for another skyscraper painting. 5. Day 3: Today's another day to create. Let's do some lifting of pigments again. But this time with a paper towel. And yes, we're using two colors now. Quinacridone rose, and Sierra Leon blue. I have might be short paper or a paper towel RAD the on the site. I will create my own version of the clips shown in the intro and go for an expressive luke Allen randomly populate this area with the combination of these scholars on my palette and immediately grab my paper towel, crown bullet, and lift some paint. Make sure that the paper is still wet before lifting. To achieve this effect. I'm rotating my paper towel every so often and making organic shapes with every lift gift doing this until you're satisfied. Now, let's compare that with our wet wipes clouds. There is an obvious difference with the edges and softness of the clouds. Grabbing a fresh water color paper and let's work on our project. I'll do the same. Load my brush with a combination of quin rose and zeros, and use them purely on some areas. I'll work fast and make sure that the paper is still wet for the lifting method to work. I am also trying to achieve a gradient effect with these scholars. I'm going back and forth and making sure that all area is covered. And Weinstein grab the paper towel for a defined part. Now lift to your heart's content. You may use the clip shown earlier as your reference. Or you may paint what you like and apply this technique, haiku I'm doing here. What I will focus here is not reproducing a copy of this guy shown earlier, but making use of the new technique we learned. Is this your first time lifting with a paper towel? Or have you use this technique before? Now, this is looking too simple, don't you think? Let's use the same colors are leftover paint and add some shadows. Don't overthink this part too much, and just focus on painting shadows to separate the clouds. M randomly painting shapes than Al grab my smaller brush and soften the edges. Keep doing this until it looks credible enough. Then leave it to dry for our journal entry. For today's entry, I want you to review your day and bake one highlight. It could be as simple as a hearty breakfast. A message from a friend, a flower bloomed, your outfit of the day. Some good news as saying that made you smile or a simple hello from someone. I'm writing about a phone call, I meet with my family or a year. I do this once a week and make sure to say hi, asked their whereabouts and show them I still care and remember them. Even though we're not living under the same roof anymore. I'm thankful for the connection that the Internet provides and the liberty to see them and hear their voices, even through video calls and from a big family. So this definitely warms my day. See you tomorrow for another cityscape. I'll leave you to document your highlight of the day. 6. Day 4: Majestic allows for today. Let's do some negative painting for our sky scape. I have prepared manganese blue for my sky color. Using my mop brush, I will draw an outline of the big cloud shape shown in the clip earlier. Just the middle part. Don't think too much about the shape and aim to copy the Cloud exactly as you see it. As long as you get a shape that looks like a cloud, then that would do You wouldn't want this outline too dry. So as soon as you're done with it, color in the sky with the same pigment. Next, let's add some shadows using indigo. I'll switch to my smaller brush, grab a bit of the blue color and add shadows. Let's assume that the sun is shining bright, that the left side. So the shadows should sit at the right side of the clouds, soften the edges for a smoother transition. And while the shadows are still wet, grab a darker indigo mixture and drop on some parts for evaluation. Next, for an additional brightening effect, Let's add a tiny bit of Naples yellow on the left side, where the sun is supposed to be. Just a tiny bit of dark color to make an illusion is enough. It's time for our actual project. The approach will be the same, except that I will make this guy a little bigger by giving it more space out the top. The colors used are the same. Manganese blue for the sky color, indigo for the shadows, and Naples, yellow for a Dalit bard of the Cloud. You may check the clip shown earlier as your reference, or better, look outside your window and tried to capture how the sky looks like with these colors and techniques. If it is a gloomy or a rainy day or it's already night, then put your imagination in charge and paint freely. When I started trying out whether callers, I hope always avoided painting clouds. They seem impossible to replicate. And my skills don't match the complexity of this heavenly beauties. I always thought that it would take me years and years and years just to be able to paint or a craze and impressionistic version of this guy that I am staring at. But I was wrong. So long as I'm willing to try and get to know my materials, which brush to use, which pigment is perfect for the colors and rich fever I should grab. Combined with a few simple techniques and theme, theme, these Muse's, I was able to create my own version of what AAC up above. I wasn't aiming for a realistic maintain, but I do want my skies to look credible enough, especially on a landscape composition as how I am doing with this glass. Right? I'm now working on the shadows and using a thinned down version of the indigo to lay down the base shadow shapes. Not forgetting to soften some of the edges for the clean brush while the shadows are still wet. I'm not minding the shadow shapes too much. But if you made the decision that the sun is on the left, then it would look consistent. If you make the right side of the cloud darker. This is one way of simplifying painting clouds. I am now dropping darker indigo, meaning more paint than water, while this is still wet for variation. Notice how I am avoiding touching the sky color to by leaving a thin white space between the shadow shapes and the blue sky. This is because the sky is still down. And I don't want to disturb that and produce unintentional blooms or what they call the cauliflower effect on this guy. I wanted bright and neat. Just like what I showed earlier, a small patch of Naples yellow on the left side will make this go out, look brightly lit by the sun. Just a touch, no need to go overboard. Avoid letting the Naples yellow and indigo touch and mix with each other. For a cleaner, look. Few more details and we can live this a dry. Then legs lift some edges, have your flats and that the brush ready for this technique, if that is not available than a round synthetic brush like this one that I'm using right now. We'll do. This painting has completely dried now and I have even remove the masking tape since that's not needed for the lifting Bart. Pride. My cloud looks like a scene from cartoons. And I want to get read of that look by lifting some edges. I'll do that with a flat synthetic brush. Simply wet with clean water and lightly scrub it on areas you want to soften, then tap your paper towel on that, reactivate the paint, the choline it. Lifting while the paint is wet and while a disk drive has different effects, you definitely have more control when the thing dry paint, but it's a bit harder to do. What's more. If your paint is not being lifted, it might be because of your Bieber or disdaining reading off your pigment. So go ahead and research your beeper or pigments brand and you'll see some information on the brand's website. I love using a small synthetic flat brush, but any other brush would also work. I just find it easier to control. Keep lifting until you're satisfied. No need to lift all of the edges. Okay, Finally, let's write about something new. Our prompt for today is anything new that give tried during the past week or you want to try? I am currently working on a daily habit of disconnecting myself from the online world and our before and after sleep. It is a healthy reminder to myself that I don't always mean to be available to everybody, which is the reality. The hybrid connective Internet sometimes make me feel more tired than I already am. So building this habit is a self-care routine for me. And it does something new. In this way. I can spend the first hour of the day undisturbed. And the same goes for the last hour of the day. What about you? Is there something different you're doing for the first time? Are planning to, is there a place you want to visit? Food? You want to try, a skill you want to learn, or a memory that you want to grade. Right about that. And I'll see you tomorrow. 7. Day 5: I love leaping censored for today, where we'll be using wet on wet watercolor technique. This is quin rose mixed with buff titanium. And over here, manganese blue with indigo for a darker blue. What the sky area first with clean water, bank random cloud patterns with pink first, leaving space for blue. Then job the manganese blue, and indigo mixture. This produces a different effect where the succeeding demos, where we will drop the secondary color on top of the first one. I want to keep my sky clean. That's why I'm painting blue on the whitespaces. After dropping, think. Instead of painting the whole area would think, then dropping blue on top of it. I hope that makes sense. And it will later. We are beeping the colors side-by-side and not layer per layer on a wet paper. You can mix the areas in between them with the same brush. Now, onto our actual project. I mixed buffeted Vimeo, do tone down my pink. But if you want the stronger pink, then no need for this step. If you don't have buffeted being you, you may try chinese white or titanium white instead to create a pastel pink color. Same procedure as the quick demo earlier. But the whole area with clean water first, preferably with a bigger brush. Then drop your callers starting with the lightest line. In this case, quin rose and Buffet be in your mixture. I used that clip earlier only as a reference for the callers. I won't focus too much on the cloud shape since I want the candy colored up, Blaine can be colored sky for it. Today's painting. Loading my brush with my blue mixture and filling the whitespaces with this color. Again, I am deliberately avoiding dropping it on top of my pink to keep the colors fresh. If you want to experiment and make the whole sky would think first, then dropping blue on some areas, then you are free to dissolve. I'm just sharing my approach for a cotton candy sky. Switching to a smaller brush and darkening my pink spots while I'm on it. I'll also makes the areas where the blue and pink MIT. For a smoother transition. I decided to mix the two for a dark purple and drop it on some areas to make it look more interesting. This kind of looks like a mess right now. But I swear once it dries, it is lovely. Depending on the beeper you are using though, the colors might look feathery as they spread across your Bieber. If it is, there is an alert technique that I will show. If you happen to have a goat's hair brush, go grab that for, we will need it. Here's the one I got. Using a light pressure. Gently scrap the whole area that you want to smooth then using only the tip of the brush. I've seen many other artists do this and it's a really cool hack. Make sure that the brush is dry. Before you do this. 0, 3 above those Brazil here is that they will fall out of the brush. I'll just wait for this to dry before a moving them. A half k brush can also be used as an alternative. Now we're ready for our journal entry. If there is someone or something that you are missing at this moment, you may write about that. But first, let's remove the bristles on our Bain thing. It was a cheap generic brush. So this is expected, but I honestly don't mind it when this happens and it always happen, so no worries. Okay. For our journal entry, what are you missing right now? If you can think of any, then look around you for something that you will definitely miss once it's gone, either temporarily or permanently. Look around you are in you is there's something that you think you might be taking for granted. For me, it must give a face. I fell ill a couple of weeks before filming this class, and I lost my sense of phase. That's when I valued it so much. No matter how beautiful the percentage a food is, but you cannot taste it, then I think the experience is not complete. That's why this can be coloured skies keep reminded me off. So I encourage you to look for something or think of people you will dearly miss once you lose it. Or them. Abundance is the enemy of appreciation. Isn't it? See you tomorrow for day 6 of cloud being thing. 8. Day 6: Wow, it's Day 6 already. And far today, we have a large sky. Let's use the wet on wet technique again, but a bit different than what we did yesterday. My Naples yellow and cadmium orange are prepared on my palette. I'm only looking at the center part of the sky today as my reference. And I will agree above those gray cloud surrounding it. I'll just focus on the warm colors, yellows and oranges. Painting half of the sky with Naples yellow and the bottom half with cadmium orange. While those colors are both wet, I will mix a bit of quinn read with my orange to make it darker and drop it at the top of my gradient background to mimic clouds. This is what I meant with the previous video. One color sits at the top of the other while the paper is still wet. In contrast to what we did yesterday where we lead the colors side-by-side. This time, we are layering our colors with the wet on wet technique. Let's work on our project. I reveal my Naples yellow and cadmium orange. Again, I will just focus on the alarm callers of the sky today and really push myself to use these warm colors. A small note about Naples yellow. Make sure that your water is clean and your brush is rinsed completely, really clean, okay. Because a tiny bit of other pigments, like blue or green, will there'd be this beautiful yellow pigment. I personally don't like working with warm colors, reds, yellows, and oranges. I think they are my witness. I'm more of a blue, pink, and purple person. But for today, I'm getting out of my comfort zone and playing with these stones. I think it has something to do with my personality too. I love the signs that are dainty, pastureland color and minimalist. I am rarely attracted to bright, bold and loud designs and color combinations. But I know that I can't avoid these colors forever. So this is a perfect chance to do so. Even this guy is challenging me to do it. Anyways, I'm working on the smaller clump of clouds now and added green red to my cadmium orange to make it darker. I'm using the tip of my mop brush to produce this unpredictable shapes. I'll even leave those colors that are already feathering due to the sizing of my paper. Leave this to dry. And let's write something about conquering for the base. And dri. I want you to think of anything, no matter how small it is that you think you have conquered something you did, which required you to think outside the box, step out of your comfort zone, face the thing you fear or something that made you feel courageous. It can be conquering this week, offering help, initiating an action, using a healthy food that you dislike. Trying out a new skill or finishing a task. I've already shared mind during the demo. And that is working with warm colors, specifically orange. I don't know why, but I'm just not comfortable with using bright pigments. I'm even squinting my eyes when painting this. And even now that I'm writing. So I consider that conquered. Looking forward to our last day of skyscrapers tomorrow, CIA. 9. Day 7: Last day of armies guys gave series for this painting. Let me demo how you can avoid peeping greens on your sky. Our video clip showed a gradation of blue to yellow. But by doing this, we might accidentally mix two colors and produce green on our sky. And I once heard that there are no greens in skies. Depending on your style. This might be something that you want to avoid. Like what I did here, Naples yellow and manganese blue. If I just use those two colors and let them meet and bleed with each other, a green will be produced. The best way to avoid that is to test our colors. Instead of manganese blue. I'll swap in indigo, beautiful, the blue color and see if that will work. Here goes our Naples yellow, then our Indigo. The combination didn't produce green. And it's somewhat close to our reference video of this guy for today. I guess I'll use them. But there's another way. And it is to mix a bit of red or pink in between the two to avoid accidentally mixing green. It will turn into purple when mixed with blue and gray out the yellow. Since I'm leaning towards the color combination at the center. Let me finish this small study quickly by loading my brush with more indigo and dropping it on my still wet paper to mimic the clouds. Now onto our watercolor project. As always, I will start with the lightest color first, with just Naples, yellow. I'll cover about half of my painting area with that color. And just to be on the safe side, let me squeeze in a bit of quinacridone rose before I transition. And they go. Now loading my brush with a thin bound version of indigo to complete the battleground. I'm also making the pop bards darker. For the clouds, I'll switch to my round brush, loaded with more indigo pigment, less water this time, and paint random cloud shapes. But following the general shape of this guy shown earlier. Since I'm using mean than bow home while they're colored paper, which is called breast, it is known to have resizing than arch. There is a bit of feathering with the clouds that I am painting. If you are using a different Rab of paper, you might get a different effect. Again, I'm only sharing this technique for those who don't want any greens on their sky. Of course, you're free to pick any colors you want for your own paintings. But for those who mind clear, credible guys, make it a habit to test your colors first before doing the actual painting. Especially if there's a yellow to blue gradient or vice versa. I'm using my rinsed brush, which I also tapped my rag to remove excess water to soften some of the feathery effect, but I will go overboard or I might overwork this painting. Final details before I leave this to dry. And now it's time for our last entry. What excites you today? I always find myself excited about Sundays because that's the time I get to rest. To my heart's content. Not always, but most of the time. That's also when they get to stare at this guy. As much as I want while enjoying a cup of tea in the garden. But above you, is there a recipe? You're really excited to try a package that you're reading to be delivered or a news that he can't wait to share with your loved ones. For even a simple as completing this mean the water College Challenge. Ponder about that for a while. And I'll see you in the next video where I will share with you what you can do next. When what you just learned. I'm looking forward to seeing your sky scape paintings. 10. What to do Next: Yeah, you've finished. We painted seven simple, the loveliest guy escapes while applying different water color techniques. Which one's your favorite? I hope through this class, you've got to know your colors better. You discovered what your brush can do and enjoy the various ways to paint skies in watercolors. With that knowledge, you can now try being things guys on your own. And even a full landscape composition with cloudy background and silhouettes. I really hope to see your artworks, so please share them through the projects and gallery tab. And to further improve my future classes. I appreciate your class review too. I hope to see you on my other classes and together, let's make this world a little bit more colourful with our creations. Enjoy your week.