Easy Landscape Paintings In Gouache

1. Introduction: Welcome to the class Easy Landscape paintings in Guach where you will learn to paint three landscape paintings with the M three method using gouache colors. My name is Mandar Marat. I'm an artist, and I have taught over 11,000 students through my studio workshops and online courses like these. I will be leading you through this course. Guash medium is very similar to watercolor, but with an important addition of opaque white color. This makes it easy even for beginners to get great results. If you have used any opaque medium like acrylics or oils, wash can produce very similar results, but with the convenience of watercolor. MT method of painting evolved from my teaching over the last many years. It breaks down the painting process into three steps of composition, block in, and detail, which even beginners can follow and paint confidently. To further simplify things, we just use three colors and less than three brushes for the entire painting. Each demo in this course clearly demonstrates these three steps and also gives you the reference photo so that you can download it and use it for your own paintings. By the end of this course, you will not only learn the M three method of painting, but we also learn the effective use of uh medium and will be able to approach any painting with confidence. This course is right for you, even if you're a complete beginner or an intermediate artist who wants to bring some structure to the painting process. You don't need any prior experience to take this course and benefit from it. Feel free to look through the description and the curriculum of this course, and I look forward to seeing you inside. Happy painting. 2. Afternoon At Mulshi Step 1: Welcome to this painting project. We'll be using the M three method of painting to compose the picture, block in the colors, and add details to complete a painting. This is a photograph which I clicked near Mushi and I'll be using this as my reference photo for today's painting. I'm going to choose a canvas in this shape, a rectangle. And I'm going to use elements from this to compose a picture. Obviously, I see that there is a lot of area here which doesn't add any value to the painting, but this will be my focal area. I'm going to have this big tree here as the, focal point and here will be the base of the mountain. Instead of having these two hills, I'll be having just one mountain like this in the background. I'll have this fence and it's shadow as the light is coming in from this side, this part of this bush and the tree will be in shadow. And that will cast a shadow like this. I can show the unevenness or slope in the foreground by changing the shape of this shadow. If I show it completely straight, then it will suggest that this land here is very plain, whereas if I have some undulations in that, it will suggest that the land is having some kind of unevenness, and that's what I want to do. There'll be another bush here, maybe I'll add it, maybe I'll not add it, but this will be something which I'll decide while painting. Instead of these two, I made it into one mountain shape. But then I'll add a few bushes here towards the base of the mountain, something like this. This will be my compositional sketch for this painting. Obviously, this will be slightly darker than the foreground. So this is step number one. Step number two will be blocking, and step number three will be details. So this one is composition. So that's what we have done now. See you in the step number two where we block in. This time we'll be using watercolors, but I'll be also using white in watercolor and use the colors like wash and not very transparent watercolors, see you in step number two. 3. Afternoon At Mulshi Step 2: Welcome to step number two, in which we'll first draw the outline of the major shapes here on this paper and then we'll start painting in or blocking in. I'm using watercolor as I mentioned in the previous lecture, and this is cobalt blue. This is chrome yellow. This is burnt sienna and this is titanium white. I'll be using only these colors and I'll be mostly using this flat brush. It's number 12 and a small round brush if I need to add in few details. So let's start with first laying in the outline. I'm using some of the cobalt blue, and I'll first indicate this line. This is the line of the pathway. And there'll be these posts here. And this big tree will be here. Then there'll be some leaves here. And the mountain will be something like this and few bushes here and there. Something like this. Now let me start by even though this is watercolor and I'll be using it as guash, which means I'll be adding white to make some parts of the painting opaque, I still recommend that you start painting from lighter colors towards darker colors and from background towards foreground. So we'll be doing sky first, and for that, I'm mixing this cobalt blue. With a lot of water. And as we always say, the sky is darker at the top and gets lighter towards the horizon. I'll be using very fast brushstrokes to lay in this color. I'll thin out the color as we come towards the base or towards the horizon. Maybe I can add some darker blue here towards the top of the. I have not leaned this paper against something like this, which will make it slightly flow better or the colors will flow down better. I think I need to do that and I'll add something like this here. This is better. Now let's come to the mountain first. In the mountain, I'm going to have a a color which is very much like yellow ochre. So I'm creating I'm mixing a color which is like yellow ochre. And I want to keep it very, very light. So I'm mixing white in it. But I don't want it very saturated. That's why I want to add some blue to make it dull because the mountain is at a distance, the color of the grass which makes it yellow or of the clay or soil, it will not be as yellow as it would appear when it is in the foreground. So I'll be using this now, and I can make it even lighter, I guess, and slightly more bluish. This seems a better color, and I'm simply laying in the color here. I don't want to leave any space for this tree right now because anyway, the tree will be darker in color and it can easily overlap the lighter color of this mountain. Again, this mountain will be slightly having more foliage or more trees as we come towards the bottom of the mountain. I'm going to make this color slightly more greenish. But I still want to make it light. You can see the slight shift in color. But again, still, it is very, very light. I'll have this color come down till here. As this is watercolor and not pure gouache, it doesn't have that much of opacity and that's where adding white helps. Now I want to come in and add a few bushes towards the bottom of the mountain because as the color is still wet, it will merge or the bushes we add right now will be more fuzzy and that's what we want. Won't have any sharp edges. Let's see how this looks. Seems okay. I'm going to add a few bushes here. And you can see how the color is slightly spreading in the earlier late color. I want that effect. And I'm trying to avoid any uniformity in the size and shape of these trees. I can add slight white in it and some more blue. I wipe my brush dry and I'm using the, the color which is already there to make some marks outside its edge just to make these slightly more rough edged. I don't want them to show very sharp edge because they are at a distance. Now let me add the next color, which is the color of the foreground the color of the foreground will be it's a sunny scene so I don't want to add any white right now in the foreground color and I'll keep it transparent and very, very thin some places I can add some yellow. I want to lay in this color very roughly. I don't intend to make this very smooth hence I'm applying it. I applied it roughly. We might have to change the value of this color once we lay in some trees or suggest some trees on the mountain in the background, but let's wait for that. Now comes, I think the darkest part, which is the tree. Let me mix a color. Blue and burn sienna. And I'll start laying in that. And the tree will have its base here somewhere. And for the tree trunk, I'll be using this round brush, and I'll mix a dark color. And I'll try to draw the tree trunk. And the leaves on that, again, I'll have to do with this brush. First, the leaves on this side will be slightly darker. So I'm using a darker green, let me see how this goes. I'm roughly creating this tree or leaf like structure. As I go towards the right, I'm going to add more yellow to it to suggest the light which is falling on those leaves because the light is coming in from this side. I'm using a thick colour, and that's why it's creating these dry brush kind of marks. And I think I can go slightly more darker this side. So I'll mix a darker color again. A So this completes the blocking stage of this painting in which we have covered the complete paper with some kind of color. And then in the third stage, we will add more details to this. So see you in the next lecture. I 4. Afternoon At Mulshi Step 3: Come back to this stage. This is the stage three or step three of three Method of painting in which we'll be adding details to this landscape, and this is where sometimes we feel frustrated or unhappy about the painting which we are making. But because at this stage, the painting doesn't look quite nice. But then the whole point is to go through all these steps and then decide whether you like the painting or not. And remember that each painting is a Remember that each painting gives you practice and the resulting painting is not only is, Remember that each painting gives you practice and that's one of the major outputs of this exercise, and a successful painting is not always the only output which you need or get from any painting exercise. Let's begin adding details to this painting. I'll start again with the mountain and for that on the mountain, I need to add some areas of trees. I'll have some color which is something like this, which we used here, but I'll make it even more lighter. I'm adding white and I'll also add some blue so that it becomes more bluish. Let's try this color on this. This looks okay to me, let's see how this works. This is too blue, I guess, so I need to add slight brown. Et's see how this works. Yes. This looks better than the earlier color. And I want to indicate that this is some kind of tree cover on this mountain. So I'm going to make sure that it creates shapes like this. Let me do this with bigger brush. The bigger brush creates much more looser strokes or more free strokes than small brush. And then it gives that painterly character to the art or the painting which you are making. So it's always better to use a larger brush than a smaller one. So I'm slightly wearing the color as I come towards the bottom of the mountain. You can see it's become slightly more bluish and darker in value. I want to slightly soften this edge which was too sharp for an object which is so far off from us. With these brush marks, I made this edge slightly more detailed because these kind of shaves will suggest some trees on the mountaintop. That's what I want. Now, let's come to the shadow here. And for that, again, I'll be using this broad brush. And I want the shadow to be dark. Hence a lot of brown or burnt sienna and some blue to make it dark. This trees shadow will fall here nearby and this tree shadow will fall somewhere here. I want to I'll suggest the undulations in this ground by suggesting or drawing the shadow like that. This is the shadow of this tree. And this is the shadow of the bigger tree, and I want to keep it thinner like this here. I'm using the corner of this brush and I added some water in the brush later on to make the shadow thinner here or the color slightly more thinner than what I had for this shadow. Still, it looks too straight lined. I'm going to vary the shape of this shadow. This looks better than earlier. Now I want to make this part of this tree darker than what it is. Again, dark mix. I'll add some green or some yellow to make it slightly greenish, not green. And let's test this. This looks good. Now since this is the final color on this area of the painting, I want to lay it in nicely and also suggest some small leaves or small branches poking out. As I come towards this side, I'll make my brush lighter to touch so that it doesn't deposit so much of color. And I can, in fact, use the same color to make some leaves here darker than what they are right now because they are towards the far end of this tree. I want to suggest some darker leaves even here because these leaves will cast a shadow on this side, this side, and then that's what makes it dark. A because we painted the sky first, these sky holes look very natural now. If we had painted this tree first and then tried to paint the sky, the sky holes would have been or we would have had to work on it a lot to make them look natural. So depending on what kind of painting you are attempting, you have to think about in what sequence you're going to paint the various shapes to make your life easy. Now, this area of the ground is not looking as it should. This should be darker because these trees also will cast a shadow here somewhere, and also I want the attention to be here. I want to make this slightly darker. I'll use the same color but thin it a lot and make it slightly more reddish. Let's see how it looks. I want to use a dry brush technique, so I'll first test it here, I just wipe the brush here so that I get rid of extra color. And then I'm just laying in the color like this. You can see how light it is, how light I'm applying the color. And I want to show a path here. I'm going to mix light brown color. And let's test it here. Looks good. I don't want it to be overly contrast. This is a mud road, so it will not have any sharp or definite or straight line edges. Let's make it slightly more lighter in color in some places, at least. Like this. And to get rid of the monotony of the flat land here. I'm brushing in some color. And I want to show some darker posts here. So I'm mixing again a dark. And let's see how this looks. The posts will be taller on this side. And as we go towards the tree, they look smaller and smaller. I'm not drawing them parallel to each other because each one will have its own angle of standing. And each one also will cast a shadow the shadow also will be in this direction just like this tree has. That's what you have to remember. And I'm also not drawing these shadows in a straight line because that will suggest a very smooth surfaced road which it is not. And let me suggest some barbed wire in between them. Now, what's left is I want to add some lighter color on these trees. Though they are at a distance, they will also have some highlight however faint it is. Let's try this color. I'm taking in a very light green color, and I need to add slightly more brown to it. Too much. This looks good. Just a suggestion that they're not lumps of same color. Now I need to add some highlight on this tree here. Even though it's dark, a so I'm adding these lighter touches to the side of this tree. And because there is blue color underneath, it looks like green, even though we are just applying yellow to it. I think I need to make this road even lighter at some point. Because I'm using titanium white and not pure gouache, it tends to become transparent as it dries. If you use guash, then it's much more opaque. So you can use any of these colors depending on how you want, how much opacity you want. I might have to do the shadows of the fence posts again because I added some color later on. I need a stone here somewhere just to add some interest to this area. I'll add something like this. Just a suggestion of a rock or a stone. And do the shadows again of the lamp posts. This is the advantage of using opaque colors. So if you're not comfortable with using the transparency of watercolors, or if you think this style of painting suits you better, then by all means, use the white color and paint like this. This wire is in straight line of this shadow which is causing confusion, so I'm just wiping that out. And I need to add some more darker color in these trees somewhere at some places like this. And let me see if I can or how it looks if I add some highlights to this mountain here, somewhere at some places. Yes, this looks good. This also brings the feel of it being very sunny time. But I'll add it sparingly and not all over. That's enough, I guess. Maybe there is some small grass here, which is just to break this area into smaller some interest to this area, some variation in the color. I'm dragging my brush dry brush. Nothing too fancy. No. I think that's it. Let me add one more dot of color here. I think I'm happy with this sketch. So let's remove the tape and see how it looks. I always love this part of the painting process. And here goes the last tape. And and that's it. Just to summarize what we did in today's painting is we started with a photograph and then we compose this as part of first step of three method of painting. Then we blocked in the colors main colors of each area, and then we added details to finish the painting. We have used watercolors like wash in opaque manner by adding white. So I hope you enjoyed this painting and you will also make an attempt to paint using the same photograph which I'm attaching to this video, and you will make a painting based on that. I'll see you in the next video. Happy painting till then. 5. Farm Road Step 1: Hello, and welcome to this painting project. If you have already watched my previous videos, you would know that we use the three method of painting which simplifies things even for beginners. If you are new here, let me explain what this three method of painting is in one or two sentences, and then we can get back to project. Three method of painting involves three steps. The first one is composition where we use reference photographs and compose a picture. The second step involves the blocking of basic colors, and the third step involves adding just light amount of details so that we can call the painting as complete. We also use just three colors and two or maximum three brushes to complete the whole painting. This way, the things are kept very simple so that even beginners and intermediate level artists can use this method and get great results. So now let's get back to this week's painting project. I was out on a weekend trip and where I clicked many photographs, and I'm going to use two of these photographs and make one painting out of that. Which is this is one photograph, which I'm going to use. I'm going to use certain parts of this photograph and then I'm going to use some part of this photograph, which is this big tree and the shadow below that. I'm going to combine these two things or these two photographs and create one composition. As usual, I'm going to use a horizontal or landscape mode of canvas or paper. I'm going to let's first look at this photograph. From this photograph, I'm going to take the mountain this tree, but I will reduce the size of this tree when I bring it in here and some part of the road. I'm also going to change the angle of the road. I'm going to make the road go something like this, and I will make it look as if the road goes past the tree which will be here. This will be the big tree from the other photograph, and then the road will somehow turn like this. This will be a suggestion. I'll not make the road very obvious. This mountain will be here. While doing that, I will make sure that none of these points divide the vertical into exact two halves. This is somewhere which is the half distance of this paper. I'm not going to have any line cutting the canvas here. This is the mountain and this is the road. Then I'll be reducing the size of this tree or I can pick this tree which is already of a smaller size, and then I'll place it somewhere here. I also make it slightly taller than wider because I don't want this tree and the big tree to have the same shape. Now I'll come to this photograph and use this big tree as the reference and again, the bushes here on this side of the road. There'll be something here, which is just to point the viewers attention towards this. This is the focal point. There'll be shadow here. There'll be some shadow here also, and this tree this part of the tree will be in shadow, there will be some areas of shadow and light here and there'll be some bushes here towards the base of the mountain and there'll be this area which is going to suggest some field, a farm or something like that. It's basically a very simple composition again. This is the u end result of the first step of entry method, which is the composition. This will be slightly darker than the sky. How many big shapes do we have here? This foreground is number one. This big tree is number two, three, four, and maybe five. We have five big shapes which complete this painting. Now let's go to the step number two in which we draw this on the actual paper and we also block in the major colors. See you in the step number two. 6. Farm Road Step 2: Welcome to the step number two of this painting project. I'm going to use watercolors in the fashion of gouache colors, which means I'll be adding white to the colors and applying them on the paper. This is 150 or 140 GSM paper. I've taped all the corners, all the sides so that it can give me a clean edge when I finish the painting. I'm using just three colors and white. This is ultramarine blue. This is chrome yellow. This is burnt sienna, and this is titanium white or Chinese white. All these are watercolors and since I'm going to use these colors in the fashion of gouache, which means applying thick paint and adding white wherever necessary, I'm going to use a glass palette. Otherwise, if it was a transparent watercolor painting, I would have used a palette with the ls, which is typical of any watercolor artist. But I'm going to use a glass palette this time. We are going to use just two brushes. This one is a flat brush number 12, and this one is a small rigor brush size number six. I'm going to take some ultramarine blue, add a lot of water to it because at this stage of drawing, I need the outlines to be very light. I'm looking at the composition and I'm going to draw the ground here and there'll be road, something like this. I'm avoiding the corner of the painting and the big tree will be something like this and there'll be some bushes here. And the big mountain will be something like this. And then be a small hill beyond that, which can be seen somewhere. To some extent, it can be seen here. And then just to balance this big shape of this tree, I'll be having one small tree here, a taller tree, which will be something like this. Or I might want to shift it towards this side slightly. And then there'll be some bushes here towards the base of the mountain. But I'm going to show these very small so that it creates the illusion of this mountain being very far off. Maybe I can shift the base of the mountain here. And there'll be some indication or some lines which cut through this, which will indicate that this is a farm and maybe some posts like this fence posts, and that will be it. I'm going to have the light coming in from here somewhere so that this part of the tree, this part will be lighter and this will be darker on the similar lines, this part of the sky will be darker than this. There'll be slight gradation from here to here. Now let's go on and start with the background. I'm going to have this ultramarine and white added to it. Let's see how blue this is and let's test on this side. It can be slightly more blue. As I go towards this side, I'll add more and more white to it. Okay. And as we come towards the bottom of towards the horizon, the blue colour has to be lighter and I'm adding more white to it. And similar white I'll carry towards this side. I'm adding water just to make this paint flow. I don't want any hard edge here. Again, here I'll add some more white. For now, I will cover this tree even because anyway I'll come in with a darker color to show the tree. And this side will be even lighter because of the sun light coming from this side. I'm applying this color in thick fashion and not typical watercolor. I can slightly make it more bluish somewhere in some parts. But towards the top of the sky or top of the painting to be precise. Now let's come to this mountain, and this will be slightly more bluish than this because it's still a solid mass. But I want to make it slightly grayish, and that's why I'm adding a bit of burnt sienna to it to make it slightly gray. And let's test this on the paper. Yes. This looks better. And let me add some water just to make the paint. M. Remember, this is the blocking stage, so I'm not worried too much about the details. Also, I don't want to make this edge very sharp because the mountain is at such a distance. I'm making it slightly blurred. I want to show this mountain now, which is towards the even behind this big mountain there is some he'll here, which has to be different color than the mountain in the foreground and maybe that color will continue here. It will not be very obvious because of the distance of the mountain from us or from the viewer, but there'll be slight change in the value. Let me have some of that color here also. If we may not use it in the final painting, but let me at least cover it right now. Now let's come to the foreground color. Let me wash the brush. The foreground will be a light green color. So let's mix a light green colour. I'm here adding some white to it. And let's test this. Yes, it looks good. So let me apply this over this whole area. And I'm going to apply this slightly thinner. Here and I don't want a hard edge here, so I'm just running my finger over the edge which makes the edge less sharp. As I come towards the bottom of the painting, I'm going to add some more blue to it so that it becomes darker. The green becomes darker. As this is going to be a farmland, I don't want a very smooth painted surface. I'm okay with rough texture. On this side, where there is grass, I'm going to add a slight amount of burnt sienna to change the color slightly and make it less Less fresher color. Just to add some variation and anyway, I don't want the viewers attention to be brought here too much. Then what remains are these three things the road, these bushes, and this tree. Let's start with the road. For the road, I'm going to use transparent color, at least right now. Later on, I might add opaque color. I'm using the burnt Siena here. Though I had drawn or avoided going into this corner somehow while painting, I forgot that or I missed that. I'm going to cover that part and bring the road slightly towards this side. Because having any line going out of the corner is a compositional mistake. I mix this color again. And I'm going to cover that part of the road. I might have this applied in some areas in between. Now let me add color to these bushes. So this is the second last area of darkest color. Again, I'm mixing blue and brown and some white to give it opacity. So let me apply this colour to suggest some bushes. I don't want this edge to be sharp. Maybe these are some small trees or dried bushes or something like that. Now let's add dark color to the big tree. Again, at this stage, I'm adding or applying very dark color. As we said, darks will be on this side more and this will be a lighter part of the tree. I'm going to start from here. A Let me cover this up right now. If required, I'll cut through this color later on. In this color, I'm not adding any white because I want that color to be dark. This is the area which will receive the least amount of light. Maybe some of this area also will have some shadow. Then I'll also had a suggestion of the tree here, but I want that tree to be slightly lighter in color as there is a distance between this tree and this tree in terms of depth, it will be slightly less dark so I'm mixing burnt sienna, ultramarine and some white. Maybe the tree will be here. Something like this. You can see that I'm using the corner of this brush. And this tree will not be near the bottom of the mountain. I'll be slightly towards us, it will have it will be based here. And while I'm at it, let me add some more white to it and suggest the bushes at the base of the mountain. As per the aerial perspective theory, as the objects move away from us, they become lighter, so I added white and bluer because of the atmospheric color. That's why I added some more blue to it. Now let's test this color can be slightly more blue and darker. Adding blue makes it darker, so I'm using a dry brush, not added too much of water to it because I don't want this brush strokes to be very sharp. Because they are at a distance, these trees or bushes will not have any sharp edge or sharp outline. I think that's enough of a blocking. Only thing remains to be blocked is the highlight color of the tree, which will again, green, but will be darker than this. Let's test this. Yes. Looks okay right now. We can modify this later if we want, but for now, it's okay. In painting, you need to adjust colors depending on what surrounds it. There is no absolute color or absolutely correct color when you mix it on the palette. Only after you apply it on the paper or canvas, you actually know whether it's right or wrong. And most of the time it needs some kind of adjustment later on. This completes the blocking stage. I'll allow this painting to dry up slightly, and I'll be back in the next video after about 5 minutes, I'll start painting the next step, which is the detailed step. See you in that lecture. 7. Farm Road Step 3: Come back to this stage of painting, which is the third stage. This paint has dried, and I'm going to add details to this painting now. So in this stage, we'll be going one shape after the other and add details. So what I want to do first is add some darks here towards the base of these trees. So let me grab some dark blue. And let's test this. This looks good. And I'm using a drier brush. So I just wiped extra paint off my brush and I'm making the bottom part of these trees slightly darker. A Now let's turn to the grass or the crop. So some yellow and some white to make it slightly more opaque. I can go slightly more lighter green towards this side. I'm now going to cover this trunk of this tree so that it looks much more appropriate. And I'm going to use this on top of this underlying layer randomly. And as I come towards the bottom part, I'm going to make it slightly darker and you can see that this is a very dry brush. Let's test this on the edge and I'm just scrubbing it just to indicate some grassy things. And I might suggest a line here. Just to add some variety to this area. Also, this side can be slightly darker because I don't want the viewers attention to go out from here. Okay. In earlier I can make this area slightly more lighter. So I'm going to use more of yellow and white. And let's see how this looks. I need to make it slightly more opaque. Yeah, this looks good. Might add some color here, but I want to keep this area dark. I'm adding this lighter color here because I want to show the shadow dark. That contrast adds to the darkness. Now let's add maybe a touch of darker blue to the mountain. But I not add it all over maybe a line which suggests a ridge. I want this color to be thin. This is a kind of highlight for the mountain because there's some white added to it. But I don't want to go overboard and suggest a lot of details in it. So I'll leave it at that. Now let me come to this tree, and I want to slightly darken it up towards the bottom. So blue and some brown and this looks too uniform or too singular. So let me add something here, which might be another bush just behind this tree just to make it non symmetric. And I can use the same dark color here. I'll just suggest darker foliage here. See how loosely I'm using the brush. That gives or that naturally adds randomness to the strokes, which is what we want in landscape paintings like this. I'll use this color again at the bottom of the tree. And I want to add some lighter green here because it's looking too predictable. So let's try this. Looks good. I'm using a thick dark color or thick colour, not dark. And this is suggesting some branches which are coming towards me or towards the viewer. And now let me suggest the shadow of this big tree. So I want it to be more bluish than brown. And so the shadow will be something like this. I'll make the shadow more brown here where the road is. Again, this part of the bushes will be in shadow. I'm carrying over that same color here. So this is negative painting which brings these bushes towards me and pushes this part of the bushes back. Similarly, this tree will also have its shadow below it. Only thing is it will not be as dark as this. A That's enough of a shadow for this tree. Now I'll make this area of the bushes slightly darker with brush strokes like these. Vertical ones just to suggest some tall grass or something like that. Nothing too fancy or detailed added here. And now I need some fence posts here and there, which were also there, I guess, if I remember correctly in the photograph. But even if they were not, I can still use my artistic license and add a few stumps like this and maybe some dark line like this. I think enough. I don't want to add them in too many places. Only thing remains is I need to paint their shadow also. Otherwise, they'll not look real. I might want to add some lighter brown on the road just to highlight it at some places. I'll use this very light brown color burn Siena, let's see how this looks. It needs to be still lighter. Only at some places. This will anyway become more transparent as it dries up. But I think I don't need to add anything more. Let's see. This vast expanse of the sky looks a bit boring because of because there are no clouds in it. I want to add some clouds in it with white color, but I don't want to overdo them. Otherwise, they'll shift attention from the rest of the thing here. Let's see how this looks. This is too dull. This looks okay. And I can add lighter or make it lighter towards the horizon, which will make these trees even more stark, which is a good thing for me. I think I'll stop at this point. So to summarize, what we did is we first made this composition based on the two photographs which I showed. Then I drew that on this piece of paper with light blue color. And then in the next step, we added the basic colors of all the shapes. And in the final stage, we added details to all the shapes and pull together the painting. So I think it's time to remove the tape and let's see how the final painting looks. While removing the tape, you need to be careful that you don't peel off any layer of the paper which happens sometimes it's like it's happening right now. But for that reason, you have to pull the tape away from the painting so that even if it damages or peels off some layer, it doesn't peel off the painting layer. Now let's try this. Yes. And that's it. I hope you like this painting and the demo, and I'm attaching the reference photographs with this lecture so that you can use that and compose your own paintings and then paint with whatever colours you choose. This method of painting will remain same, even if you use oils or acrylics or even watercolor in the Gouache style. So I hope to see you in the next video, happy paint. Y 8. Monsoon at Malavali Step 1: A. Welcome to this painting project. Here I have a reference photograph which I clicked near the Mali Village, which is on the way from Mumbai to Pune. During monsoon season, this region of India receives a lot of rain and there is a lot of greenery around, and that's what we will try to depict in our painting. The major shapes from this photograph which I want to use are the sky, this mountain, this foreground, which has a lot of green grass and some puddles of water and one or two big trees. So I've chosen a landscape format of the paper, and the horizon line or the bottom of the mountain in this case, will be somewhere here. Remember not to cut the vertical into halves with any lines, and then I'll have this mountain something like this. And I'll have some trees here. Most of these trees will be silhouetted because of the You can see it's cloudy weather, there'll be clouds in the sky. But there'll be some light towards this point. There'll be clouds like this and there'll be a big tree here which will tower over the mountain line. There'll be a big tree here. And there'll be some shrubs here and there. This will be one shrub and towards the base of the mountain, there'll be some shrubs. And so on. And this all will be either reddish due to the earth or green due to the grass which grows in this region. So though I've shown this tree as elliptical, I'll make sure that I paint it realistically. But just to identify the shapes, this foreground will be shape number one. This mountain will be shaped number two, the sky will be shaped number three, and this will be four and maybe five and so on. I won't count these small shapes separately, but we have approximately five to six shapes in this painting, and this simplification will help us in the next stage. See you in the step number two where we will draw this sketch or composed painting onto the canvas or paper which we are going to use and then block in the main colors, see you there. 9. Monsoon at Malavali Step 2: Welcome to the second step of this painting project. I have this paper here. It's 140 GSM watercolor paper. I've taped the sides of this paper to get a nice edge when I complete the painting. I have the colors here. As I said, we use only three colors and white. This is Prussian blue, this is chrome yellow. This is burnt sienna, and this is Chinese white or titanium white. And I'll be using just two brushes. This one is a flat brush of size 12, and this is a round thin brush of size six, and I'll be using this mainly to draw the outline and add details in the next step. Let's start with some drawing first. This is the composition which we did in the first step, and as for that, I'll be making or drawing the big shapes here. So this is the bottom of the mountain and the mountain will go something like this. Maybe it'll have a dip here and again go up and there'll be a tree here. There'll be some piece of land here and there'll be a puddle of water here. And it'll be a big tree here, which will rise above the line of the mountain. And there'll be another bush here and maybe one or two bushes, one here and towards the bottom of the mountain somewhere here. That's the broad outline which I'm going to have and I don't want people's attention to go here, there'll be some bushes or something like that here in this corner. O. And there'll be clouds in the but I won't draw the clouds outline of the clouds, but I'll I'll paint them directly because I don't want the outlines to show because we may not paint the clouds so thickly. So now since I want to maintain some yellow white area here, I'm going to start with white and add some yellow to it just to lighten it or just to give it some tinge of yellow. And I'll start laying in the color here. You may not see it right now because it's not very different from the color of the paper, but it will be obvious when we lay in the other colors. I'll let this color dry before I come in for the next layer on top of that. I'll have now the blue color and I want this to be light. I might add some of this color into it, which I had premixed. Let me see how this looks. I want this color to be the sky color wherever there are no clouds. I've lightened it further and I'll be applying it on the sky. Let me make it slightly thin and I can apply it now. I'll go over this tree also because I can then have some sky holes. I'll make it slightly dark or more bluish as I go towards the top of the sky. You can see that I'm applying it rather in a dry fashion and not completely fluid color because I want to have control over what it does. I'll have some of this overlap on this also because I don't want any hard edge here. Now, I'll let this color dry before I add in the clouds. I'm washing my brush and now I'll come in with the color for the mountain. Actually, I did not have cleaned the brush, but anyway. Now I'll start. I want to paint this mountain in a dark tone, but an opaque one. I'm mixing Prussian blue, some burnt sienna to gray down and white to make it opaque. I want to test this color now. Let's see how this looks. I think it I'll have to make it slightly more bluish. Let me get some more blue color. Psienblue has very high tinting strength. So whenever you use it, you have to be careful. It gets dark very fast. Now let me test this. This looks okay. I'm going to apply this. I might want to make it slightly darker here. Some amount of white and some brown. I'll add a little bit more white to it because I want this tree also to show up against that. I'll cover the tree for now. And I don't want this edge to be very sharp, hence I'll run my finger over it. To make the edge blurred. I'll cover this tree shape also. I'll come in with a darker color anyway later on. And here also. I just want to get rid of the white of the paper here. I know that I'll be covering this whole thing with darker color for the tree, but I just want to make sure it's not white at this stage. Just to add some character to the mountain, I'll make the shape a little bit definite. I'll leave it at that. Now I can come in with a color for the base of the mountain or the green area in the painting. I want it to be green, but still I want it also to be dark because it's an evening time painting. So it will be green, but it'll be darker green. Let's test this color. Seems okay to me. And there'll be some ground here. And maybe it'll be browner here. And as I come towards the bottom of the painting or towards the immediate foreground, I'll start to add in some texture by using the brush like this. And I'll have this color come towards this point now. And there'll be land here also. It's something like an island or something with some puddles of water around. I don't want this edge to be sharp. Again, I should have done it earlier, but I can do it now. I can go in and add some bushes with the same color. I want them to be hazy or blurred because they are at such a distance. This also makes this separation or the edge between the foreground or the ground and mountain less important or less obvious. Now I'll come in with darks for the big trees. Again, a very dark color, darker than the ground because these are the silhouetted trees and make them slightly more brownish and some yellow. These will be more brownish than greenish. I've added more of brown and a little bit of yellow. Let's see how this looks. Yes, seems good. I'm using the brush like this. This way, I can make the strokes very light and fluid because I don't want any sharp edges right now and there'll be a bush here. You can see that this is darker than the bushes in the background for obvious reasons. Maybe there'll be some bushes here. And now I lay some of that for the big tree. And now I'll have to design the tree basically because this is the final shape of the tree. I can't be or I can't get away with a elliptical shape now. So I have to be careful how I lean or design the shape of the tree. I don't want it symmetric. And also, I don't want the tree to be completely standing upright. I want some tilt in the shape. As I come towards the bottom of the tree, the color will be darker. Let me suggest the trunk of the tree. Something like this. And some bushes here, which are also in the shade. There is very less light, I won't say shade. That completes the second stage of painting, which is the blocking. We have color in every part of the painting and all the shapes have been given their base color in the next step, I will add the right amount of details to complete the painting. S in the next part of this project. H 10. Monsoon at Malavali Step 3: Welcome to the third part of this painting project, which is the section in which we add details to the painting. And now I will start by adding details to one shape after the other. I will start this time by adding clouds to the shape of the sky. And for the clouds, I need a gray color. So I'll make a gray color using I need some Prussian blue again. So I'll make the gray using blue and burnt sienna. This burnt sienna has dried because I had a gap of some time until when I wanted this color to dry. After I add white, we'll get a gray. This is still a greenish gray and I want to get rid of the greenish tinge. I'll add more blue to it. Let's see what happens when we add some brown that color seems to be good and it has less of a green tinge now. Let's see how dark this looks when we apply it here. Let's test this. This is too dark. What I'll do is I'll add more white to it. Now let's test this. This seems right. I'll still make it slightly more bluish. I'll also use a dry brush. I'm wiping my brush on this piece of cloth, and let's see how this works. I want a cloud to come in from here. I'm using a dry brush, and that ensures that the color doesn't spread on its own. This is the speciality of using watercolors in the gouache style where we add in white to it, which means that we spread the color in the area where we want it. Otherwise, in watercolor, if you use in a transparent, more fluid fashion, the color spreads on its own. And let me see where I can add a few more clouds. I'm keeping the color very dry. I'm adding just enough water so that I can spread the color on the paper. These are some clouds which are still in the sky after the rain shower has passed. They do have some moisture in them, but not enough that it will rain again. I want this side to be slightly more darker now. M. I now need a lighter touch here, lighter color of clouds because they'll be distant clouds and they'll be smaller in size. And I'm looking at the painting from a distance just to see what needs some tuning or some correction. I think. What I'll do is I'll stop working on the sky and go ahead with other areas and then again revisit the sky area. I want to show some light coming here on this part of the mountain and for that, I need a lighter blue. So let me mix of color here. So I'm adding this Prussian blue and some white, and I'm going to test this. Let me see it here. And this is slightly lighter than what I want. So I'll make it slightly dark, adding more blue to it. This seems good. These are some areas where more light is falling. This gives more dimension to the whole mountain. Now I'll come to this area or this tree because I want something which obstructs the viewers attention from going down like this and going out. But this time I'll use a smaller brush and I need a color which is so dark. Again, using blue and brown. This burnt sienna has dried up. Yeah. Now I'll try to do something which should prevent the viewers attention from going out, something like this. And this color also has to be very much darker than this color for it to be in front or near the viewer. Otherwise, we won't get that illusion of depth. I'll just brush it over some areas like this. And also a line like this. Is creating some texture a thin layer of that here somewhere just to add some variety in value. I also don't want this area to be completely white. I'll use very thin layer of this color and just drop it in few areas because that's the reflection of the sky. It's enough to suggest that it is water which is reflecting the sky. I'll come to this part of the painting now. I need some darks here. Again, blue and brown. You can see that when we use a limited palette like this, how easy it is to mix colors. And it doesn't create any confusion. Things are very easy to control. When you have a lot of colors, it actually makes our job very difficult as to which colors to mix and what to do in each area of the painting. So having a limited palette is always a good thing. It unifies the painting in a lot better fashion than using a palette which has a lot of colors. I mean, you can use a lot of colors, lot more colors, but you should know what you're doing. Otherwise, it tends to become a hodgepodge of different colors and doesn't add any value to the painting. I might add some opaques here of lighter green and for that, I'm going to use the big brush and I want this color to be thick. I want it to be very light green, something like this. Let's see how this looks. I'm trying it on the side or on the portion of tape. Let's see how this looks. This looks okay. Let me add this at some places. Just to indicate some areas which is receiving some light from the sky. I don't want to overdo it. I'm also now. I'm now again looking at the painting from a distance to see what can be improved. I think this area of the mountain can still be lighter. I'm going to have another go at it. Mixing a blue which is lighter in shade than this, and I want it to be thick and opaque let's see how this looks. I'll try it here. Yeah, this looks cool. I want to use this sparingly, I don't want to use it everywhere. But now I make I wiped out the extra color and I'm trying to merge it into the existing blue colour. I and I'll wait for this color to dry because once it is dry it changes a bit because this is watercolor. If it was oil, it wouldn't have changed its darkness or value. But since it is watercolor, it changes its value and that's why I want to wait till it dries up and then decide if I need to add anything. I think I have or I can add some vertical element here, which is again going to be a tree. Or it could be an electric pole. But I'll prefer to keep it a natural element and I don't want it also to be as dark as this. But I'll use caution and try to add something here which is which adds some interest in the midground. I want this tree to slightly echo this tree, but I don't also want it to be the lone tree there. Is something here, which may not be as big as this tree, but then Let me look at the painting from a distance and add last few br strokes before I call the painting as done. Let me try adding a spot of white in this area just to suggest that this area or this puddle of water also extends here or there is another puddle on the other side of this tree. I think that's enough of a suggestion. And I think I'm happy with the painting overall, and I'll just see if I need to add some indication of a cloud here behind this tree. Otherwise, it looks as if the cloud is gathering around the tree, which I don't want to happen. Yeah. Now let me remove the tape and see the end result. Hopefully, this tape now will not peel a layer of the paper. So far so good. Now, let's see which one is on top. This should go up next. And the final edge and that's it. I hope you like this demo and also like the output. And I'm attaching the reference photograph which I used for making this painting with this video, with this painting project so that you can download it and make your own version of the painting because that is where you will learn the techniques and the more you practice, the better your paintings will be. So keep practicing and see you in the next video. Thank you. And 11. Long Shadows Step 1 Composition: Welcome to this painting project. As you know, we use the M three Method of painting for simplifying the painting process, which involves three steps. We use three colors and just three or less brushes. The three steps involved in the painting process are composition, block in, and details. So I have this photograph which I clicked a few weeks back when I was out on a weekend trip, and I'm going to do this first step in which I compose a painting based on this photograph. What I find interesting about this photograph is the long shadows which these trees are casting and the pathway. And the mountain in the background. But the path is almost central to the photograph, so I'm going to move it towards the left side. This is going to be my proportion for the painting, and I'm going to have the path come in like this. And I'm going to stop it before the halfway mark. This is the center of the painting, so I'm going to stop it before that, and this is the line which will be this line. There'll be trees here, big ones, and I'm going to have one tree which is slightly farther away. I might have these trees. Some of them might be random, some of them might be in a line. There'll be This will be mostly dark area. And there will be a mountain here, and some trees or bushes towards the horizon and towards the bottom of the mountain. And these trees will be casting their long shadows across this path and this open field here. I'm going to have these lines not perfectly horizontal, but I'm going to have these shadows slightly slanting or slightly at an angle just to avoid them matching with the border of the painting. So roughly this is what I have in mind, and this is enough for me to get started with the painting. I might have a white cloud here, one or two, just one or two of them. But the main focus will be this area, which is the path and the shadows. So that completes my composition step and let's quickly go to the next step of block in before block in, I'll be painting or I'll be drawing this composed shapes on the paper. See you in the next video. 12. Long Shadows Step 2 Block In: Come to this part of the painting project. This is the step number two, which is blocking and we have this composition from the previous step. I'll be drawing this on this paper. This is 140 GSM watercolor paper. I have three colors and white. This white color is what makes these watercolors turn into gouache or gouache like, if you will. I'm using just two brushes, one broad one, which is size 12 and a round brush, which is thin brush just for some details towards the end. I'll be using this blue color. This is ultramarine blue. This is chrome yellow and this is burnt sienna, and this is titanium white, or Chinese white to be precise. I'm thinning this color and I'm going to draw the big shapes here. This is the horizon. This will be the road or slightly broaden the road and the big trees will be somewhere here. I won't draw the exact shapes of these trees. And there'll be one tree separate, slightly different color. Here, I might change the size of this tree as I go into the third step or second step, and the mountain will be something like this. And the shadows will be like this, something like this. I don't want to draw the shadows in detail right now. As in Gouache, we always start from the lightest part or the farthest point, farthest area of the painting, which is the sky. I'm going to mix ultramarine blue. And start painting the sky from top. I want to have some sky holes here, so I'm just laying in this color here. I might overlap it later on, but I want to have that color there right now. As I come towards the horizon, I'm going to add some white to it. Okay I'm roughly laying in the sky. The sky in this painting is not going to be very detailed. I might have some cloud things or clouds, faint ones, not very opaque ones and towards the horizon, the sky is anyway lighter. I'm going to brush in more white into it. I might have to adjust this area later on, but let's see if I can drop in few, this looks better. I'm coming in with some white and ultramarine blue, but this time it's darker blue and I'm going to brush it in. This is just to make the sky a bit deeper, deep colour and just so that these clouds become slightly outlined. Now I'm going to the mountain. I want the mountain to be slightly greenish, not as yellows or sorry, I want the mountain to be slightly more greenish and not completely blue because I want that mountain not too far away. Let me test this color. This is a bit confusing color. Let me apply it more. I want some brown also in it. Let's first keep it more bluish. I might overlap some part of this mountain later on, but I just want to fill it in right now with some color. As you know, with gouache, we can add color over one top of the other. I'm not worried too much about this color being very correct. As the sunlight is coming in from this side, I want to add some lighter touches towards this side, but I don't want it to be too green. So let's see how this looks. This gives some character to the mountain. I'll leave it at this. Then I'll come to the foreground and I want the foreground to be very light so that these shadows become prominent or become obvious. I want a bright color. I might even apply it very thinly to keep it light I'm applying the same color on this side also. I might cover it up with some other color later on. And the road needs to be having some other color, so I'll keep it This color. I'm not making it super obvious right now, but I might add lighter touches later. Now in the blocking stage, what remains to be painted are these trees. I'll need a dark color. I'm using blue and brown. Or ultramarine blue and burnt sienna. I'm not adding intentionally any white to it, though there is some white in the already mixed color. Now it's time to paint the trees. I want to paint them very randomly. Without any I don't want them to be manicured and I'm painting them just like this. I need it to be more brown. And these trees will have their trunks here. And I don't want these trunks to be equally spaced. So I'll start with the first one. Here goes the second one. One more. One more. This tree is just next to us. So its trunk is going even beyond our vision or beyond the border of this painting. And now I want to paint the shadows and the shadows will be a darker version of these two colors. So here it'll be darker yellow, which will be a brown like this, greenish brown. On this path, it will be slightly more reddish because the path is reddish in color. And as I had drawn in the composition, I want these shadows to be slightly inclined and not parallel to the road or parallel to the border, this line. I'm going to paint the first shadow like this. And I'm keeping the touch very light. So it's the brush is barely touching the paper. So it leaves some areas unpainted and that's what I want. The shadow starts from the base of each tree. Okay And as I had mentioned earlier, I want another tree which is slightly different looking and I want it to be more greenish because it is far away, it's not it's receiving more light from this side. I'll be painting light on this side, but then for now, let me paint this tree with more light on it. He and that also casts a shadow. But that shadow will be thinner as the tree is far away from us, and that's why I'm using a smaller brush to paint that in This is the trunk of the tree. Maybe it's visible at some places and now I'm going to paint the shadow of that tree. So it'll be something like this. That's enough. Now, what remains is in the blocking at least is some shrubs towards the base of the mountain and they'll be more bluish towards the base of the mountain and as we come forward, it'll be much more greener or darker green. Let's see how this mixture looks like if I use it directly. It doesn't create it's of the same value and almost the same color. I'll need more blue. Let's see how this looks. Yes. This looks nice. I'm happy with this color. So these are few bushes towards our trees and the base of the mountain. I'm using the corner of the brush to paint these I want to avoid the monotony of shapes. I might even paint tree which crosses the mountains line. And towards the base of the tree, I'm going to make it slightly darker. We are almost done with the second stage, which is the block in. So this is the block in stage, and I'll see you in the next step where we refine these shapes and complete the painting. See you there. 13. Long Shadows Step 3 Details: Welcome back. Now I'll be observing each shape and we'll see what adjustment it needs to finish the painting. As the light is coming in from this side, there'll be some light areas on these trees and I want to show them first. I'll be refining that area first. I'm taking this yellow and there's already some white in it on the palette. I'm going to test this color. How this looks for the highlights on the trees and looks good. I'm going to carve out some areas of light on these trees. This tree also will have lighter areas on this side. I don't want this light area to be so blunt in the sense I want the colors to be merged. I'm using a dry brush. Now again, using the highlight color. And this tree will have the lit side on this edge of the painting. And I might come in with darker color to make the shapes more clearer. This color already had some white. That's why it's not getting so dark. I'm going to wipe my brush and start mixing that color again. I want a dark color which I'm going to mix with blue and burnt sienna. I'll use this to throw in some leaf structures or some branches like this against the lit area of the other tree. And while I paint this, I'm squinting my eyes so that I can see or get the effect of seeing this painting from a distance. If you can't walk away from the painting or watch it from a distance, you can also squint your eyes and try to see how it looks makes the same or gives you the same effect. I need some lighter green here. I'm keeping this color very thick because I want it to be applied opaque. It's too bright, but let me use it at some places. It's too bright. I'll have to slightly bring it down, and this seems okay. So this is where the light is hitting these trees. And the darker areas are the areas where the light is not hitting the trees directly. A trying to adjust this shape, and I'm almost done with the trees. I want some texture here. So I'm just brushing in this color. And this tree trunk needed some correction. In some areas, the tree trunk is seen just some suggestion, I don't want to overdo this. And this side of the tree trunk will be darker. I'm thinning the color now and I'm going to adjust the shadows wherever necessary. I don't think a lot of changes are required in the shadows. But I might throw in this color some in between wherever there is the shadow is also never uniform, or you need to paint it slightly translucent or with varying degrees of darkness. So that's what I'm doing. Let me see this painting from a distance. This is too organized. I might add a few darks here and there. I might I think I need to increase the height of this tree because it's so near to us, it will be taller than the or it will look taller than this tree. So I'll make sure that it looks like that. So it'll go out of the picture frame. And it will have its own areas of light. On this side. Yeah. So I just wanted to show that this tree is at least of the same height as the next tree. And before I don't think any changes are required here, I might add some texture here. Before that, let me add some highlight to the mountain here. A few dark accents here and there. Towards the base of these trees. And let's see if I can add some texture on this side. Anyway, I want this corner to be slightly darker. So I want this color just for the texture, and I'm going to use it as a dry brush. So this should be okay. Yeah, I think I shouldn't overdo it. That's enough. And let me add a few highlights on the road with burnt sienna and white. Let's see how this looks. Yeah. So this kind of defines the edge of the road. But I'll leave it at that. I'll not make the road super obvious. And just as a final touch, I might add some white, pure white. I use this brush because I don't want that white to be adulterated. On this side of the clouds, I'm just rubbing it in applying very thickly. Some white clouds floating around. That's it. I think we are near the end of this painting. So that's it. Now let me remove the tape and show you the final painting. So here is the final painting. I hope you enjoyed watching how this painting was made or is made, and you will try to make your version or try to paint your version of this painting and learn from it. So that's it, and I hope you enjoyed and see you next time. Thank you.