Dreamy Winter Landscape in Watercolors

1. Introduction: Winter is one of the coldest seasons. It is a magical time of the year when the weather gets cooler and the people enjoy the weather around them. The essence of winter cannot be described in one word. It is the hot cup of coffee in the morning. It is the wall you get from the fireplace. The fun of making a snowman is what forms the essence of winter season. There is a charm about slope field mountains, winter Kevin's, and dreamy skies. The winter months offer incredible frozen beauty and often soft diffused light. We will be capturing this Fintech a sense in this class by painting a dreamy winter landscape. Hi everyone. I'm Charlie kg into a business consultant, a watercolor artist, and a Skillshare teacher. I have been documenting my watercolor journey on Instagram and go by the handle name at the rate, Schultes chronicles. In this class, we will cover some of the basic watercolor techniques, like wet-on-wet. Using the wet-on-wet technique, we paint a color sky and also learn how do we get the cloud effect into the sky. With the techniques learned from this class, you will be able to paint wonderful skies and clouds for your own projects. We will also learn how to paint the winter trees and combined all the different components to paint this dreamy landscape without any further delay. Let's move on to the next section and look at the materials that we require for this class. 2. Materials : Let us have a look at the materials that we require for this class. For the paper, I'll be using our cheese, 300 GSM, 100% cotton paper. I have this paper pad with me. What I've done is I've cut this one sheet of paper into four smaller sheets. And this is what we will use for the class project. You can go ahead with any size of paper that you have. But I would suggest using 100% cotton, 300 GSM paper for this class as we will be working on wet-on-wet technique, I have listed down some other options in the description section. Moving on, The next, we need our brushes. I will be using these four brushes. The first one is a mop brush, large size, which I'll use to wet my paper. The second is a medium-size brush. I'll be using this one on the brand's liver will wait size six. And the next two are the detailing brushes from the brand Princeton. One is a long round brush of size four, and other is the detailing brush of size 12 by zero. You can go ahead with any large size brush, medium-size brush, and a detailing brush. Moving on to the colors, I will be using two types of colors. One is a pan set from the brand Art Philosophy Co, based on dreams. I will be using two colors from the set. The other or the tube colors that I'll be using from the brand medulla machine gourd. The colors will be discussed in detail with alternate options in the next section. But you can go ahead with any type of colors that you have, any brand. Beat, a pan set or tubes. Next, we need a palette. I will be using this palette to take out and mix my colors, will also need masking tapes. I'll be using two different types of masking tape for today's class project. One is the thick one, which I'll use to tape down the paper on my writing board. And the thin masking tape. I will be using that to mask the horizon line. We will also need two jars of water. One, we will keep it clean to apply an even coat of water. And other we can use to wash your brushes, will need a pencil and eraser to sketch our cable. I'll also be using this kneading eraser to tap on, Sketch and lighten the graphite marks. And the last is tissue or rough cloth to wipe your brushes. Gather the materials that you have. And let's move on to the next section to understand the color sheets that we will be needing for this class. 3. Colours: Let us have a look at the colors that we require for this class. First is crimson. I will be using it from the brand Art Philosophy Co. But this is a common sheet available in all our watercolor sets. Be it a pan set or a tube set. You can use the color of any other brand that you have. Next is bumblebee. Again, I'm using it from the brand art philosophy called the alternate colors that you can use is yellow gamboge hue. And this is also a common sheet available in all the watercolor sets. You can also go ahead and use any other bright yellow that you have. I have already taken out the colors from the cubes into my palette. The next color is permanent yellow deep. This is not a common sheet. I'm using it on the brand Magellan Mission Gold. You can use orange as an alternate shade for this color. The next is yellow ocher. This is like a transition shade between bright yellows, oranges, and earthy tones. This color looks like the color of sand and mud. This shape is also commonly available in the watercolor sets. Next color is raw sienna, moving towards more of browns and, or the sheets. Next is burnt sienna. Next shade is similar to burnt sienna. Darker color called as red brown. You can use a darker shade of burnt sienna. If you don't have that brown, just add jeff Payne's gray to dark when you burnt sienna. The next shape is a very common color, black. We will use this to paint our trees. Next two sheets of gold as indigo, but they are made of different pigments, hence differentiates. This indigo is grayish in shade from the brand Magellan mission. This indigo is bluish shade from the brand Sennelier. I'll just show you the difference. The one from the medulla mission. If you look at the pigment names, it's P B29, be B27, and PB K7. Whereas pigments from Sennelier are Pb, pb 15 colon one can PB K7, although both are called indigo. But because of the difference and pigment names, the shades are different. If you don't have the indigo with gray shade, you can use Payne's gray as an alternative. And if you don't have indigo with bluish shade, then you can use Prussian blue as an alternative. The last sheet is white gouache or white watercolor. I will be using the Winsor and Newton design a gouache for this. So these are the colors that we will be requiring for today's class project. Let's move on to the next section and learn some of the techniques. 4. Techniques - Sky/Cloud: Okay, so for the techniques I'll be using this watercolor block. And what I'll do is I'll split this block into two with a masking tape. The three-fourths of the paper will use that section to learn the technique for painting skies. And the rest one-fourth, will learn the technique to paint trees. The technique that we'll be using to paint the sky is called as the wet on wet technique. What does this actually mean? This means we'll be applying wet colors, which is basically when you add water to your watercolors to activate it, that is the wet part of the colors will apply this wet color on the wet paper. Now how do we wet the paper? Basically, we apply an even coat of water onto the paper. Let the papers soak the water. So this makes your paper wet. And when you apply wet color on top of it, so it's basically wet color on top of wet paper, hence the wet on wet technique. Let me show that to you. Before we wet the paper, I'll just take out some colors from the pants into the palette. Activate them, keep them ready so that we can paint as soon as we're done with wetting the paper. Now, applying an even coat of clean water onto the paper generously and multiple times. Make sure no section of the paper is dry. Spent some time on this, and totally and generously wet your paper. The more time you spend on this step, the more time you will get to work on your sky as the moisture in the paper will stay humid for a longer duration of time. Okay, So we are already taking in the color. So let's see what happens if I apply a stroke off crimson color onto the paper. This, the color bleeds beautifully onto the paper. This happens because the paper is wet and we apply the wet color. Hence, natural spreading of colors onto the paper happens. Applying more strokes. I'll just keep some of the whitespaces onto the papers as we're painting sky with two different colors. I've used the same color combination just to give you an idea on how we are going to paint it into the class project. But the same technique can be used with a combination of different colors to paint sky. It can be a combination of blue and pink. It can be combination of blue and yellow. Wish beat any sky, any color technique remains the same. Now what I'll do is I see, because the water content in my color is almost same as the water content on the paper. The color is bleeding a lot. So I'll just take more consistency of the color, less of water and then apply the strokes. You see the difference before the color was bleeding a lot. I was not able to see my strokes. Now because I've taken color directly from the pan, I have not added in more water. The color is thick versus the water content on the paper. And hence you are able to see the strokes of the crimson color. Now adding in yellow in-between the whitespaces, or even on top of crimson. Now as yellow and crimson when combined together give a beautiful shade of orange. Hence, we're able to work together with these two shapes. Because of this wet on wet technique, you can see how beautifully and naturally the colors spread the combined with each other and give a beautiful contrast, beautiful shade. Although we have just used two colors, but as you can see on the sky, we get an effect of three colors. Just because of the bleeding and blending of colors happening naturally. Just adding in more yellow to have a little more brighter and distinct effect. Just one caution while working on wet-on-wet technique is you just work on the paper. The paper is wet. As soon you find papers is starting to get dry and your strokes are leaving out harsh edges. We should stop all the bleeding of colors that was living supernatural will have harsh lines and will not look so beautiful. Now say, we want to add in the clouds as the paper has now started to get little Dr. This is the time when you can add clouds to your Skype. For that, what I'm doing is I've just taken violet, purple shade onto my palette. I've activated it with very little water. So the water content of your color should be less than that of your paper to get prominent strokes. And when you are painting clouds, we want at permanent strokes. So taking the color, dabbing on the excess water onto the tissue or the clock. And then just adding in cloud-like strokes onto the painting. You see as the paper is still wet and we have water content in a color as well. It is bleeding, but it's not bleeding a lot. This gives the natural effect of the clouds being part of the sky. Again, taking in more color, dabbing on excess water onto your tissue paper or your cloth. And working on the strokes. As the water content of a violet color is less than that of the paper. Because the paper has now almost started to drive. And we have not taken a lot of water into a violet color. You see these strokes, the tape prominent, they do not bleed. As the paper is now starting to get dry. You can see in the top patches it has become drier. It's better. We stop with the painting now. The main concept of wet-on-wet is to paint only till the paper is wet and stop, as well as the paper starts to get dry. This technique can be used to paint multiple sky's chi gradients. Even if we don't want to paint a cloud, just two colors blending together to give a beautiful sky. You can use the same technique. This was the first technique that we will be using to paint our dreamy winter Skype. Let's move on to the next technique and understand how do we paint the bearing or the winter trees. 5. Techniques - Trees: The second technique will be used to paint the winter trees or the parent trees. I'll be using my detailing brush for the same and black color. So taking some color on the brush during the winter season, all the leaves from the trees fall off and treats remained barren with the trunk, the branches and the tiniest branches being visible. So we start with the trunk of the tree. As the natural trees are not straight. They are grouped from places. That is what we will try to paint in this technique. So here I'm starting with the trunk. And as we go above, we can split this tree trunk into 34 main branches. And then we split those three for individual branches into more sub-branches to get the effect of the tree. So here I have split the trunk into two main branches, and then the branches have split more into sub branches. And then using the tiniest detailing brush or a detailing brush with a good tip, we paint out small thin branches from each of them spreading out across and giving the shape of a tree. To have the natural effect. You can have group lines for the branches. The branches might not be straight, they might be tone twisted. The technique using which we have we did the tree comes under the category of wet on dry, which means that paper was dry and we have applied wet paint on top of it. Near the main tree, we can have some smaller trees are small bushes also painted in the similar manner. So these are the two main techniques that is used in watercolor. Wet on wet, wet on dry. So combining these two is what we will be painting a class project today. 6. Project - Sketch: Let us start the class project. Hyper paper head on the writing part using the masking tape. Let's take down the paper on all the four edges. Let me show that to you. While applying the basicity, make sure to run your fingers between the people and the masking tape so as to not leave any gaps between them. As we are working on wet-on-wet, there is a chance color leading into the corners. If the masking tape is applied properly. We're ready to sketch a class project. It's going to be a very simple sketch. On the top to torque would be our sky. And one thought would be a ground. Let me just draw the horizon line. Now let's sketch the Cuban. Okay, so we're done with it. Just adding on some trees around the Caribbean area. Okay, so here we are done with the sketch. I just use the kneading eraser and tap onto the graphite marks to just lighten them. As I mentioned in the materials section, I'll be using to masking tapes. So the tin masking tape with elastic and capability, I'll just apply it on the horizon line. As we will be working on wet-on-wet technique. I don't want the water to spillover to the bottom ground area. If you don't have the masking tape, It's okay. Just make sure while applying the water, be very careful to not let the water seep into the bottom area. Okay, so here we are ready with the sketch. Let's move on to the next section and paint this guy. 7. Project - Sky: Let's start with the painting. We will be working on wet-on-wet technique. Let's apply a thin, even coat of water on the sky area. Here I am using my larger size brush and applying an even coat of the Clean Water. Be very careful to not apply water onto the roof area. Apply multiple layers of water. This is just to make sure that the paper gets caudally vet. And this makes it easier to walk on for a longer duration of time. Just taking the tissue and dabbing excess water from the corners. Again, apply an even coat of water to keep the paper wet. So crimson, yellow, gamboge, and permanent orange are the colors that we will be using for this guy. Plus little tinge of wallet as well. So you can keep these four colors ready on your palate. Starting to paint the sky with crimson. I'm just taking some color onto my palette. I'm going with the horizontal stroke, like we saw in the technique section. Keeping some whitespaces. Similarly, let's add in yellow gamboge or bumblebee into the white areas, as well as on top of some of the crimson area. Got some yellow and the blue. So just take some tissue paper and dabbing off the colored with it. Now baking simple mint orange and similarly applying some strokes or to the sky area. So taking more crimson as the color looks dull and applying another coat of the crimson color onto the sky area. Similarly, adding another layer of yellow to get it through more brightness. You can play around this guy. Keep on adding more colors till you're happy with the brightness of the sky. Just make sure that you work on this guy will get in. The paper is wet. As soon as the paper starts to dry, please stop. Else you will get harsh edges on the Skype from the brush strokes. Here. I'm happy with this guy. Now what I'm going to do this, I'll just take little while it, a tick concentration with less water than one, the excess water onto the tissue paper or the love of God. And as we saw in the technique section, we will just create some cloud-like strokes. So here I'm just creating those clouds strokes. Okay, so that's all we have for the clouds. Now as you can see, the colored is spreading and we have thread-like structure of the violet color. So I'll just take some little bit of yellow and I just apply and clean up the area below the clouds. And similarly, I just clean up my brush with just damp brush soaking in all the excess water on the tissue paper. I'll just run my brush through the clouds to avoid having the thread like structure. The last thing that we do is using indigo or the Payne's gray and dabbing off excess water. Because now our paper has started to get right. And before it completely dries, we will add just some bush like structures on the horizon. So this gives an effect of some verified trees and bushes, which are not very clear and as it's wet on wet bleeds beautifully into the background. Okay, so here we are done with the sky and the background. Let's wait for this to dry before we move on and paint the foreground and the first given layer. 8. Project - Foreground + Cabin : Okay, so our sky has dried and now we can remove the masking tape. For the foreground. We're again going to paint wet on wet. So again, taking the large brush and some clean water will apply even layer of water on the ground area. Being careful around the horizon line and the Caribbean. The paper is now wet. The foreground has known as the sky has the shades of yellow, pink, and orange. Those are the colors that will also be found on the ground because of the reflection on the snow. So just randomly applying those colors, taking some yellow and applying the random strokes on the ground like this, followed by crimson. We will not cover the whole of the ground. We will have some whitespaces, some crimson, and also some indigo, the bluish indigo, to get just a bluish tinge of showing the snow over the ground. So going ahead with some crimson and then indigo, you can go ahead with any blue that you have. That's it. Our ground is ready. Let's wait for this to dry before we paint on. The ground area has dried and now let's paint the cabin. So again, we will use the wet-on-wet technique, but as the area is small, I use my size six brush and applying even coat of water on the wooden area of the cube it. So here I am applying the even coat of water. And once it's done using the yellow ocher, that is the lowest shade of orange tones that we have. We'll just apply some color on the window area. It's okay if the color spreads across the cabin as the cavemen is a wooden cabin, we will have different shades of food across the Caribbean. So using that concept is what we are going to paint a cave in, starting with the lowest shade, which is the yellow ocher. Then we'll move to raw sienna and drop in some colors across the Caribbean like this. So here I am just dropping in some of the raw sienna. Moving to the next sheet, which is then burnt sienna. Specifically around the ages, it would be slightly darker. So applying the tone of burnt sienna over there. And then just using clean water or a damp brush, blending out all the colors. Once done, taking the red, brown or darker, burnt sienna shade. We'll apply this color again on the edges where there might be darker wooden shades. Using the damp brush just again, blending out the colors. Just taking bit of yellow ocher and applying it all over the window area just to get that in just orangeish color back, sticking more of red brown and just highlighting the darker areas of the shed. It's okay if the color spreads because this is just the first layer. Okay, so here we are done. You can see we have brighter shades of colors around the window. And as we move further from there, the shade of brown darkens. Let's wait for this to dry before we add in more details onto the cable. 9. Project - Cabin + Background trees: We will be using grayish indigo to paint the door of the shed or the keeping that they just take out some of the indigo on my palette. And it would be a flat wash of color across the door. So this is done. The roof of the shared has no so some sky deflection would also be dead on the roof. So just using the wet-on-wet technique, again, applying water and then dropping some of the crimson and yellow gamboge onto the roof. It's okay if it is not perfect. Because we will be painting some snow effect on the top of the roof. Now using my detailing brush and the color black, we will paint the trees in the background, starting with the tree. So as you can see, this is Christmas tree painting. Leaves downward, starting from top with less leaves versus as we come down, the number of leaves are increasing. And so, as you can see, the thickness of the brushstrokes also increases. Just dropping some cluster of leaves structures will paint two of these trees. So in a similar manner, we'll paint a shorter one beside this. And the same approach at the top, the number of leaves is less so we have less scribbling of the brush. And then as we come down, we tried to paint and give effect of more leaves on the tree. So the next tree is like the one that we learned with the technique section. So I'm starting with the top two branches, which are divergent from the same trunk. We're going to paint on more branches like the tiny lines. As it's winter, it's bearing. So we will have more of the brands effect versus the nice effect compared to the previous tree. Similarly painting another one on the right side. Similarly painting the one behind the cabin. Just go with the random strokes. The line doesn't have to be very straight. The trunk of the tree doesn't have to be very straight as it's all natural. You can have a big sack moment. Okay, so we're done with the trees. Let's wait for this to dry before adding the final details. The Caribbean and the painting. 10. Project - Final Details: Using black and the detailing brush, Let's add the window details to the cabin. Okay. Now using my smallest detailing brush, which is size 12, mix of burnt sienna and red brown or you can use darker shade of burnt sienna, will just add in these word-like lines across the Caribbean. Now in some places they could be dark, in some places they could be light. These depict the wooden pains of the Caribbean, which are somewhere darker and some were lighter. Using the same color, darkening the areas near the edges of the cube it just highlighting. And given different contrast of dark and light colored wood. Adding some strokes on the ground. Now, taking some white quash onto my palate, we paint the snow effects on the landscape. Starting with the roof. Just being things that move with the white quash to give the effect of a layer of snow on top of the roof. The consistency of the course is very thick. I have not added water to it as the water content in the color. If you just move your brush with the color, it will give some dry effect. The colors spreading would not be as good as with a paint that has a water container. Continue with the dry brush stroke on the tooth. Adding some frozen ice drop structures across the roof area. Adding the dry brush pattern onto the ground area. It just helps give the landscape or Dimension 3D effect. Applying the gouache onto the trees as if some snow has collected on it after a fresh snow fall. Adding this effect that randomly across all trees. Adding some more dry brush patterns on the edge of the trees. The very clear bifurcation between the ground and the trees that can be awarded with this dry brush technique. Now let's wait for this to dry. We are done with the painting. Once tried, we can remove the masking tape. And this is how the final painting looks like. Doesn't this look like a dreamy winter landscape? 11. Conclusion: Congratulations, You made it to the end of the class. I hope this class was helpful and you learn the techniques, especially painting the skies and the clouds. Don't worry if you didn't get it correct on the first try. With practice. And over time, you will be able to paint beautiful skies, like I have been able to do. If I can do it. So can you, if you like the class, please do share review, and don't forget to upload your class project. I will be looking forward to have a look at them till we meet again. Happy painting. Buh-bye.