Transcripts
1. Welcome: It's a sudden joy of
painting on location. To absorb yourself in the moment and
express what you see. However, most of us postpone plein air painting
when you're on holiday on a long weekend trip. Hi, I'm Candida, an artist, entrepreneur, and digital
marketer from India. I've been painting with watercolors for all
four years now, and I absolutely
love painting in the outdoors and painting
anything that catches my eye. I noticed I carry my paints only when I go for a holiday, or for a weekend getaway. I thought to myself, why not spend 5-10
minutes sketches, carry my paints everywhere and make plein air part
of my everyday life. This class, I shall
share how you can make outdoor painting a part
of your everyday life. To capture a scene on an object in an
impressionist style, not to worry about
a perfect peace, but just enjoy what you do. I should walk you through
some prompts to get started, some basic supplies to carry, how to simplify
complicated elements, and how to paint in a
limited time frame. Once I started carrying my sketchbook and paints
around my suitcase, it changed my perspective. When you paint in a place, you give a part of yourself to that place and a part of that place always
stays with you. This class, we'll
review a plan on how to integrate outdoor painting
into your everyday life. I walk you through how to find compositions in your usual day, how to simplify elements, what basic supplies to carry, and how to paint in a
limited time frame. You just need to be somebody
who enjoys the outdoors, and I'll lead you to this. After this class, you'll be
motivated and confident to carry your paints everywhere
and paint every day.
2. Your Project: [MUSIC] This class is about
observing and expressing everyday
life in real time. It's about bringing the joy of Plein Air painting into
your everyday life. Go through your normal day, but with a small twist of sketching anything
that catches your eye. For example, it could be
your morning cup of coffee, or a tree you found fascinating
in your neighborhood, or even the roof
of a cafe nearby, or just as simple as an insect that you saw
on your window today. Your class project is to share a few sketches that
you did on location. I'll be painting three prompts so you can paint along with me. It'll be a great warm-up before you venture
into the wild. I'll be using watercolor medium, but please feel free to use
any medium of your choice. I would love to see
what you've painted, so please do post it in
the project section. Don't worry about your piece
being polished or perfect, the entire idea of everyday Plein Air painting
is to create quick, rough, impressionist
style of paintings.
3. On the Go Supplies: [MUSIC] I'll share some minimum
and effective supplies that you can carry in your woman's purse
on your backpack, that will always remain. Whenever you feel
inspired during the day, you can just take those supplies
out and start sketching. A few basic supplies to
carry are a sketchbook, paints, brushes, and
a water container. Create a handy kit for
yourself that's easy to carry. The first thing you'll
need is a sketchbook. I recommend using an
A6 size or a smaller. You could also go
in for an A5 size. Idea is to keep it small so you can complete
the sketch in time. I like this kit
because I can carry it like this and it
gives good support. Create something that
works best for you. The next thing is, you'll need a fine liner. I use 0.5 and 0.2. This is really useful
when you don't have enough time to complete
the watercolor wash, you can use a fine liner. I just use three brushes. The idea here is to minimize the number
of brushes you take, so don't take more
than two or three. See what works for you. I use a size 16. This helps me with
larger washes, which is usually the first wash, a size 10 for smaller areas, and a size 6 to give definition and define certain
sections of my painting. Next, you need a paint palette. See that you carry
minimum number of paints. I carry these nine paints. I'll be giving the
details also in the resource section to find the colors that
work best for you. Now get back in and
start painting.
4. Finding Everyday Elements: In this lesson, I'll
be throwing some ideas at you to get your
creative juices flowing on how to train your
mind to observe and find compositions
in your everyday life. The next time you're walking, notice the smaller things in your surroundings like
I noticed this spot. I found it intriguing
and sketched it. I was walking into my car and
noticed this leaf fallen. I liked the colors and
decided to paint it. Many times you are
walking by and you notice a certain part of an
architecture interesting. I love this colorful roof
on this little shop, so I painted it. The other day I was taking my
daughter for a walk and saw these interesting lamp posts on the pillars and in a
quick five minutes, I sketched it and
then she demanded ice cream so here we are with the ice cream cone and
a quick little sketch. Start noticing and
observing things around you and do quick
little sketches of them. See you in the next class.
5. Coffee Shop Prompt 1: Whether you live in
a city or a town, the one place we love to hang
out in are coffee shops. The next time you go
to a coffee shop, carry your supplies
along and paint those beautiful art lattes
that we see on our coffees. [MUSIC] In today's prompt,
I'll be painting my latte. Do take out your supplies, and as a good
warm-up, paint along. [NOISE] Spend 30 minutes of
your painting time sketching. That is your foundation. Whenever you're outside, you need to simplify the sketch. How you do it is see all the larger shapes that
you can see in your object. Over here, I can see
circles and ovals. My entire drawing,
I'm going to mark out all the large circles and
ovals that I can see. Breaking down object
or a landscape, the best way to do it is to find all the larger
shapes that you can see. Similarly, the biscuits
are two smaller circles. In your free time, you can
also just keep practicing circles and ovals so that when you're out there you
get really comfortable, and you're able to complete a nice circle or an oval
in one or two minutes. Pro tip: in any coffee
mug or any mug, the handle is the crucial part. If you draw the handle right, the entire look of your
coffee mug will stand out. Now I'm going to use a very
loose wet-on-wet style. For details on this technique, you can look at my
previous classes. The reason in using
this style is because coffee is a fluid, so it's free flowing. What I've done is I've taken clear water and put it
on the coffee section. Now I'm going to put a yellow
ocher and burnt sienna, a mix of them, just
loosely on that section, so it looks like a
free flowing fluid. Depending on what colors yours, which will most probably be
ocher and a burnt sienna, because coffee is
usually that color, use those colors that you see. Now, I'm adding little more
depth with burnt sienna. Everywhere I see
a darker segment, I'm going to use a burnt sienna. Now I'm getting into
doing the first layer of the latte art that I can see. Whatever is your latte
art, you can do that. Mine is a really simple circles and these kind of
cuts in-between. If you have a heart,
go ahead and do a heart or whatever the
shape is on your latte. You always want to do these sketches in not
more than three layers. The first layer is just
getting the ground set. The second layer
is adding a depth, and the third layer
will be adding details. Now you can see that my cup and saucer are white in color. White is very tricky
to do in watercolors, because you need to see the reflection that
the white is holding. What I do is on the
edges of the white, in order to create that shape
of the cup and the saucer, I'll use a purple color or a blue color to
create that depth. A pro tip: usually your shadows and
your reflections will be colors of purples, yellow of course, and blues. Here I'm doing the biscuit, very similarly to how
I did the coffee. Now, you can see how
the entire shape of the saucer is coming out by just creating
the shadow of that. Over here, I'm not assuming, but the light is coming
from the left-hand side, so all my shadows are
on the right-hand side. Be very particular on where
your light is coming from, and put all the shadows on the
correct side of the light. Here I'm adding in
a few more details. Just enjoy the process, see where you can add depth
to where I add shadows, and continue like that. Creating a depth of the biscuits using burnt sienna
and paynes gray. I'm just doing some touch up. Wherever I see more shadows, I'm using deeper
colors to add that. What you need to do is keep observing the object in front of you or the
landscape in front of you, and find all the [NOISE]
places that you can create the finer
details under that. [NOISE] Now I'm going to
take a step back and look at all the finer details
that I can add. Here, what I do is
I'm using paynes gray and burnt sienna to
create a really deep, a darker brown of the
design that I can see. Wherever I can see
deeper shades, I'm just going to do
touch-ups over there. The whole game is of
observing, eye treating, observing, doing, and enjoying the process while
you're doing it. I hope you've been
painting along, or you're brewing your
own cup of coffee, so that you can keep that
object in front of you, and do it as a
warm-up before you go out to a coffee shop
and paint in real time. We're almost done. If your coffee has got cold, reheat your coffee, and
enjoy the coffee mug, and enjoy the painting
you just did. [MUSIC]
6. Neighbourhood Prompt 2: The next time you take a walk
around your neighborhood, start observing the little
things that fascinate you. It could be a lamp pole, it could be the leaves,
it could be the tree. In this prompt, I was walking around my
neighborhood in Calcutta, and noticed the
beautiful windows that are extremely
unique to the city, so I decided to sit down
and paint these windows. Do paint along, it'll be a nice warm-up
exercise for you as well. My approach to start drawing is to look at the larger
simplified shapes. In this case, they are
squares and rectangles. Similar to how in
the coffee prompt we were drawing
circles and ovals and finding all the
bigger circles and ovals, here, we will be finding all
the squares and rectangles. You could choose any window
which is in your house or close by or paint along
the window that I'm painting, it'll be a great
warm-up for you. Start putting in the little details that you
see in the window as well. It could be the style
of the grill or the direction in which a certain part of the window or certain detail
of the window is. The more details you add
in your drawing phase, it'll be easier
when you are using your fine liner or when you are painting using your colors. I'm drawing the grills and
other smaller details. Now, I'm drawing
a branch because I want to do an abstract look, which is a loose watercolor
look around the window. You will see how I
do that once I come to the wash or the
watercolor part. Now, I'm going to
mix burnt sienna and red to create that brick-ish, rustic color that I'm
seeing in front of me, and I'm going to put the
entire first layer with this. Observe the colors
that are there, I always encourage
my students to mix colors as much and create
beautiful shades of their own, so see the colors
that are there, see the little hints
of other colors that are there within
the colors you see. For example, it may
not be so obvious that there's a burnt
sienna in what I'm seeing, but putting only a red
would make it too reddish. These are things
that as you paint, you will understand
which colors to mix. But if you're a
beginner, try experiment and have fun mixing your colors and creating a new
shade of your own. Now, the inside part, because of the
shadow I cannot see, I'm going to use a purple color and give the entire
first wash with that. In watercolors, I
don't use black, so what I do is I
use purple instead or I mix Payne's gray with brown and red to create
a really deep color. Now that my entire
first wash is over, like my first layer is over, my second layer is adding depth, so everywhere that I
want to add depth, I'm going to create
smaller lines; I'm using my smaller
brush to create that depth that I see
wherever I see it. The beauty about
Plein-air painting is it really improves your
observation skills, it's all about observing
the things in front of you, around you, and making your own
interpretation of version of it. This continues
wherever you see that there's some level of depth
or detail to be added, add it in every
place you see it. Now, I'm mixing purple and Payne's gray to create
a really deep purple, and I'm using that color
to create the grills or the bar that I
see on the window. Add little details
wherever you see it. Now, coming back with
an abstract part that I was talking about, what I'm doing here is
I'm taking yellow ocher, and just very loosely
putting it around to give the impression
of trees at the back. Because I'm not going to
do the entire building, this is what I'm doing to give that beautiful artistic
look to my painting. Very loosely just
putting yellow ocher all around the window. Now, I'm taking a finer brush and I'm going to put
in a few branches and a few leaves to give that free-flowing beautiful look that will complete
this painting. What I want to
encourage you to do is experiment with things, if you're not going to do
the entire wall at the back, the window shouldn't look
like it's hanging in midair, so add something abstract, add whatever you feel like at the back to add your own
level of creativity to it. Don't be restricted by
only what you're seeing, but also add in some of
your imagination into it. That's how it'll make it
personal and unique to you. Now, I'm using a fountain pen, you can also use a
fine liner to add in a little details
wherever I see it, this creates a beautiful
level of depth, and whatever my fine liner brush couldn't do, this pen will do. Keep a pen in handy,
and wherever you feel those little places
that you'd like to add the pen in, go
ahead and add it. That's it, I'm going
to sign this artwork. That's about it. Enjoy the process. Join me in the next prompt before you go out into the wild and start sketching
on your own.
7. Taxi Prompt 3: All of us either
self-drive or use public transport on
our everyday commute. Quite often a vehicle
catches are fancy. In this prompt, I'll be
painting the [inaudible], what we call in Hindi, or the black and
yellow ambassador, that iconic to the
City of Kolkata, also called the City of Joy. I parked my car, took out my supplies,
and started sketching. A heads up, vehicles are
a bit tricky to draw, so do practice them a
couple of times at home in your own comfort before you
go and do it in real-time. Over and over here, I've used larger shapes like rectangles and semi-ovals to
draw this taxi. If you find it difficult
to do a moving vehicle, mine was parked, the taxi was parked, luckily, so it was easy for
me to sit there and draw. But if your vehicle is moving, take a photograph and start with doing it
with a photograph, and then eventually
you'll get really comfortable doing it as you
see them moving as well. [MUSIC] You'll need some stability when you're drawing this, so put in your bag or some hard board to make
it easier for you. [MUSIC] Now moving on
to the first layer, what I'm going to do is, I'm going to give an entire
wash of yellow ocher, and that will be my first layer. Whatever is your dominant color, make that your first. [MUSIC] Moving on
to the windshield, I'll be using purple
because from where I sit, it's completely dark
section of the painting. [MUSIC] Giving a
little more depth and reflection to
the windshield now. [MUSIC] In watercolors, it's believed that nothing
is actually black, so how I'm going to approach the wheels is I'm going to
use a mix of Payne's gray, red and burnt sienna, which will give me a shade
very close to black. But it's not pitch black, but has shades within them. This is the first layer. Wherever you see all
the basic colors, go ahead and add them based on the vehicle
that you are painting. It'd be fun if you
paint this taxi alone, and it will give
you a structure and a good warm-up for the rest of the paintings
that you will be doing. [MUSIC] Now, I'm adding a second layer, which is basically
defining a lot of structures and adding
depth in my painting. Once your first layer is done, go ahead and see which are the sections
which you can make deeper to give more
depth to your painting. [MUSIC] You could be sitting and waiting for
your bus to come on the bus station or you
could be sitting in the metro station or
waiting for your tube. Take your supplies
whenever you are out and try painting the bus
that you're waiting for, or a metro or a tube. It will just make things
so exciting when you see your expression of the bus that you catch every day or the
metro that you catch every day. We're almost done. Here's a pro tip on
how to add movement. Just take pigment, no
water in your brush, and with swift movement,
move your brush. What this does is
it helps create that illusion that the
vehicle is moving. It's really fun to do, so you can practice it a little. No water on your brush, just pigment, and just
do a swift moment. Now I'll just take my fountain pen or you can
use a fine liner as well, and add some details as
in where I can see them. This helps to just pop
out certain sections and adds definition
to your painting. [MUSIC] You could also
do a lot more work with the fine liner, but depends on the look that
you want from your painting. [MUSIC] You can do the whole
thing with a fine liner and then just add
a watercolor wash, and then the opposite way where I've done
it entirely with watercolors and defined
it with a fine liner. But whatever, try
both styles and see what you like and what is
your style eventually. [MUSIC] [inaudible] fun and challenging, so do try it out. Whatever you're
comfortable with, maybe sit in the parking lot of your building and paint
something that fascinates you. I am almost done. I'm going to sign this painting and just feel happy
with the outcome. A beautiful impressionist
style, [inaudible]. [MUSIC]
8. Final Thoughts: Thank you for
watching this class. I hope you're excited and motivated to
carry your supplies every day and make cleaner painting a part of
your everyday life. If you have any questions, feel free to reach out to me
on the discussions panel. I would love if you could
leave me a feedback, it helps me to reach
out to more students. Go out there and get sketchy.
Khadija Karachiwala, Watercolour Artist
