Experience Watercolours , Winter Wonderland

1. Introduction Winter Wonderland: Hi, I'm Melinda Wild. Welcome to another session of experience Watercolors. Today we're gonna paint a winter Wonderland snow scene with long, beautiful shadows were all bundled up to get us in the mood. So let's head to the studio. 2. Draw and Mask: first thing we need to do is lay in our horizon line. There you go. Make it kind of ramble a bit. Don't make it too straight. Decide where we're gonna put a tree but there and then think about fence posts. So I'm just gonna put a few posts in here. They get thinner and closer together as they get further into the distance. Maybe have one going right over the hill there. And then you can suggest wires if you want. Not necessary, because we'll put them in later anyway. As's faras, your tree shaped goes. I've done it many times. So for me, I know exactly where to put the mask. But I just want to show you a little trick of where to place your mask. If you just do this and then kind of, you know, like a Charlie Brown tree and then begin painting are drawing first will paint them later with masking fluid drawing shapes. What we're thinking of is snow heavy laden Nantou branches just heavy, heavy snow and it covers so much of the branches. So you want to draw shapes like this for your tree? Okay. Heavy chunks of snow different shapes, different angles make them interesting. And then later, when we go to paint, our tree will first paint in the greenery and it will poke out from underneath the tree like this. You see, So this will create Are tree with snow on it. So what you need to do is decide where your tree is and then draw in those shapes for the masking fluid. Here we go. I end up doing it anyway because I think it's an easier way if I just do it in front of you , and then you can see what's going on. Here we go when the shapes can come right down to the edge here because those trees the snows quite deep. So we're not going to see the trunk at the bottom of the tree. There we go. I think that's all we need for drawing. And now it's time to move to masking fluid. So time for some masking fluid. And I'm just I know we've talked about this before, but I want to reiterate the fact that masking fluid will ruin your brushes, So the first thing you want to do is put some soap on your brush. I'm just gonna soap it right up into the feral of my brush. And then when I go to dip into the masking fluid, I'm only gonna dip halfway up the bristles. And this helps preserve my brush. And masking fluid is very simple. We just painted on and again just to repeat what it does is it resists the paint so that when we finish our painting, we can erase the masking fluid off, and we will have white patches. Wherever we place the masking fluid. She'll be awesome because we're gonna have a big chunks of snow on this tree. So here we go all the way down. These don't have to be super precise shapes impacts. Probably better if they're not. But do you leave some gaps between them cause we need places for the foliage to poco? I'm not even really following my proper drawing here. That's OK. All right. Where else are we gonna want some snow that we don't wanna have to paint around? I think we're gonna want a little dollop on top of our fence posts. That one's rate within the tree that one's within the tree to this guy here let's put it a little bit of snow on him. And then we might also decide to put a little bit of snow on the wires. Sometimes where I live in BC, it gets the snow gets very sticky and it sticks to just everything, and you find it a little blobs of it everywhere. I know if you're from the prairies, not so much does this happen. But I guess I'm painting a West Coast snow scene. There we go, a little bit of snow on the wires. And then we also might suggest just a few little grasses the base of our tree with the masking fluid. Maybe a couple of the base of some of these fence posts. Here we go. And I think that's it from asking food, too. We should be good. Here we go. Okay. Time to drive the masking fluid and go to paint 3. Sky Wash and Lift Peaks: let's put in our sky wash. So the first thing will be to moisten our paper all the way down to the horizon. Just go right over that masking fluid, cause that's what it's there for. Here we go. Today. I feel like perhaps a little bit of Carmine in my sky. Let's throw a little bit of that and then I'm gonna pick up my turquoise and again just could have been here. I feel like I want to feel in the whole area because we're gonna put in some snow capped peaks and that will be the white in our skies. We don't need to leave any weight running through our sky this time. Here we go. Just to be safe, I'm gonna wait the edges down here. Make sure you don't end up with me runny bits coming back into my painting. Okay, This is gonna be kind of fun. We're gonna take a paper towel, fold it into a nice little pyramid shape. Although we're not creating pyramids, we want random, snowcapped peaks. And I'm just gonna very lightly, not too hard. It will bruise my paper. You see how that lifts bath, the pigment and we're gonna make a whole bunch of them make two or three with the same shape and then re fold it or turn it over. So you get a clean patch. You want your shapes to be random heights, random distances apart and different angles. Because if you just go bleep, you'll end up with the pyramids and we're not after that. We want wonderful coastal range here, okay? And you can decide you can go all the way across your page part way across your page. Here we go. And you want to make sure you put them up into this guy, not right down along the horizon, because we're gonna put some other hills and things in here as well. If your papers really wet when you do this, it will run back into the area that you've just lifted out. That's OK. Just let it sit for a minute and then just re tap it. You can change it a little bit. You do this while the paper is wet. However, if you wait too long, it won't work. If you stroke your sky on too many times, you'll be really pushing the pigment into the paper. and lift Bacca's easily, so that's something to consider. Try to make your sky washes. Few strokes is possible. And the other thing is, do not use a staining color. Now this is just the first step to make these peaks. It's not the end result. We just want to lift out some of the sky color. So we have somewhere to go. All right, I'm gonna dry this and then we'll detail them. 4. Detail Mountain Peaks, Distant Frosty Trees: Let's put some detail on those mountain peaks, OK? You can use a smaller brush if you want, but I'm still going to stick with my one inch flat. I'm gonna mix just the tiniest amount of pigment and I want to show you this instead of doing it outside the camera. You see how thin that is very, very thin pigment. And the other thing I wanted to be is very dry on my brush. So I'm blotting my brush over to the side here on my rig. It's a scum billy technique, which means you wanted to hit certain areas on your page and not other areas. So we just want to hold the brush quite parallel to the paper and then what we call stumbling along on the shadow side of each peak, and this will make the peaks pop right out can be a little bit more pregnant than that. So rather than using the brush like this and drawing lines, we just want to slide it along the surface of the paper. It's very dry, and it's just gonna create a little bit of shading on the shadow side of our hills, really have to keep light direction in mind. I'm assuming my light is coming this way. So I want the right hand side of my peaks to be light and the left hand side of my peaks to have some dark shadow on them. Well, not super dark. Just a little bit. Okay, here we go. And you can see just very softly Don't want solid water to fill the whole area. Want have some highlights within the area that I'm painting. Okay, here we go. You look so similar. 123 sound is gonna change that up a bit. Here we go. Make that a big peak right in there. Get right over this side. Maybe just do a little stumbling down in here to suggest other shadows and things that might be going on back there in the hills. All right, now we're ready for some background hills. And while those background hills your damp, we're gonna do kind of a fun thing. So the first thing will be to decide on the color of the background heels. I'm going to stick with my turquoise mix, a little puddle of it, clean out my brush just with clear water. I'm gonna run a line of Clearwater right along the horizon edge there and I'm gonna pick up my pigment turquoise And then with the top of my brush on to draw in the bottom into that water that I just laid down I'm gonna lay down a shape of hills It could be whatever shape you want Just Mander all the way along one side to the other And then while this is damp I'm gonna take my turquoise and some burnt sienna in a mix up A nice, rich, dark green And I'm gonna make it very thirsty on my brush again blotting my brush. I'm gonna drop that in. Well, that's not dark enough. Go more sienna. More turquoise, maybe. Take a little bit of Prussian blue in there and very thirsty on the brush. There we go. So when really it in it sits there and doesn't run too far. That's the whole idea of having your brush thirsty. A lot of pigment on the brush, not much moisture. Here we go. I'm gonna go right up behind these guys. Maybe right up there. And then we can just do this to suggest treetops. But it is a snow scene, and we want those treetops toe look a little bit frosty. So here's a really fun technique you can use once you get that pigment laid down, take a skinny little brush and just wet it. But not soupy, wet, just a little bit wet. And then as the shine leaves your page, I'm just looking at that. It's not quite ready. I'm just going to give it a tiny little puff on the blood. Rare. Theo okay, should do it. And then when the shine is just leaving, if you paint clear water into these areas, you can create a suggestion of frosty branches. Because the Clearwater will separate. The pigment takes a moment to happen. It's kind of like magic. See how that's separating the pigment and that can drop in sort of tree ish shapes. Really, even if you just did a few strokes straight up and then took a little bit of Clearwater and blogged side to side on each of those strokes and you're gonna get a frosty branch E look that's in the distance, I just want those trees to look a little bit like maybe they've got some snow on them too. But they're not close up like the one we're painting in the foreground, so they don't have to have the kind of detail. Here we go. See how that just pushes the pigment out of the way. When you do that, that can create some nice, frosty, distant trees. Kind of a fun thing to do now, in the event that is just not working for you. I'll give you a little cheat, too. You can take a little bit of tissue paper once you've laid while it's actually toilet paper . Once you've laid the water on there and if it just wasn't lifting enough, just lightly touch it like this. And that will make it come out even more. Okay, there we go. So we've got our distant frosty trees Well done. 5. Foregound Undulations: you'll be happy to know this next step is super easy is gonna clean out my brush, which it wasn't clean. There you can see there some blue in that and moisten the whole foreground. Here we go. If your background happens to fuzz a bit into your foreground, do not worry. That is just fine. Good its way back there. Okay, then I'm gonna take a tiny bit of turquoise again on my brush and just gonna lay in the undulations of the snow cause yes, snow is white, but there's a lot of rolling nous in the snow, the topography of the snow rules. So you're gonna have little chunks of shadow here and there. And that's what we're gonna put in here. Not really shadows but shading. I also like to what? Do what I call cozying in the corners of my paintings. So this edge here, it kind of makes it rear up at you and makes it seem, or in the foreground, when you do that So a little bit there, a little bit of undulations here and there. And if you have any fence posts while you will have a fence post, there just strategically placed some of the shading over top of that because we've laid mask there. When we take the mask off, we want it to be well, it'll be white, and we don't want to have white on white. If I If I have masking fluid and I don't put any dark behind it, then there's no point of even masking because it's just white on the white paper. That being said, you also want to lay some of the shading color around your base of your tree, which is quite believable because the trees off the snow often dips in around where the trees are. Okay, there we go. E think that will do. Maybe just a little bit deeper under a tree. Here we go. All right, let's dry that and then we'll get to doing some more details. 6. Tree Details and Fence Posts: time to put a little greenery on our tree. Gonna mix up some burnt sienna and a bit of my turquoise again to make a nice, rich, dark green might add a tad of oppression. Blue, too. It's like, really values down nice and deep. Does the greenery against the snowy scenes often looks very black, almost Blackie green. Okay, I think that work. Then we can just paint or greenery poking out from underneath the snow that we've laid on our trees. You don't want to paint every little branch, every little leaf in pine cone. But just meandering along and creating a bit of greenery may be sticking out here and there , going to make that a little bit blue or just cause I like the blue or look. So I just added a little bit more turquoise to it. But keep it quite dark. One of the mistakes students often make us. They get a bit too late with this, and then they're painting locks drama. So let's get it nice and dark, especially as we start coming into the four of into the mountains back here. We want it to be good and dark. So what stands out against them. - When you get to the bottom, you don't have to have the greenery sticking out all the way around just here and there. Because remember, there's a lot of snow down there, so you might just see the green ray poking out here. All right, then we want a detail or fence posts. So I'm gonna use straight burnt Sienna on my brush to start and I'm a paint a fence post. Let's start with this guy. So I'm coming underneath the snow that's on there, and I'm just gonna paint, go straight, print CNN on him. Then, while that's damp, I'm gonna take a little bit of ultra Marine blue. And on the shadow side, I'm gonna lay that ultra Marine blue just right down there. Shadow side. This gives my fence post a little bit of three D definition. Instead of just looking like a flat plane. It's kind of good. Some angle to it now. All right, so let's try the other one. There's another fence supposed to read about their watch the bottoms of your posts. You want them to be interesting angles because again they're depth dipped down into the snow and I'm gonna take a little bit of ultra Marine and just shadow on that side on Let's carry on here. There is another fence post in there somewhere having a bit of trouble seeing it. Let's do this guy. And then we've got this little guy way back here over the edge and this little guy back here over the edge. I think our fence post is in here somewhere. We'll stick him in there and hope for the best. Okay, And again, a little tiny bit of ultra Marine just down the shadow side. They're so far away now. It's not that important. If your post get kind of, I call them dead looking because they're just there to solid. So sometimes we'll just take a bit of moisture on my brush, go over the light side of the post on just lift off a little bit. Not kind of can make them look a little bit more alive. There we go in the same hair. Let's just what a little moisture on there lauded off gives it a little more life. What's gonna make this guy bit longer now? Well, it doesn't really matter. He's into the grass is there we go. Okay. And as Wolf Vince, post wires again. I just used pure burnt sienna because maybe they're a bit rusty, and you want it go along those warriors that you massed. In fact, masking rate on top Painting right on top of your masking fluid is a good idea, because that way you'll have the wires hitting and missing Were you delayed the snow and see them. And then you got when we take the mask off. No, I should probably have glasses on for this. 7. Lost and Found Edges: so I want to show you something kind of cool. It's called Lost and found edges. So if our light is coming from the right and sometimes the snow has little divots in it and David, we'll just let see. I'll just show you. Sometimes it's Noah's little, you know, holes in it. And if the set light was coming this way, then the right hand side of that David is going to be in shadow, and the left hand side of the divide is going to be in just disappear into nothingness. So here we go. So the idea is to find an edge and then lose the edge by cleaning your brush, making it thirsty and just softening it off. Let's try another one. I'll show you what we're gonna do with them later to. It's kind of fun. We're gonna makesem grasses coming out of these. You can put some of these lost and found edges around your fans post because sometimes fencepost would be into a little David gonna come in from the opposite side to soften off that edge with a clean, thirsty brush so that I could just poke it a little and that will soften right to nothingness. Let's try another one about something right about here. Maybe two or three little holes. Here we go. Right hand side, coming in from the other side of just softening that. Angela, you must make your brush clean and a little bit thirsty, so it picks up a little bit of pigment instead of just pulling the pigment all the way for across your page. There we go. Uh, I think I'm gonna put a little one. Be right up in here. Sometimes we have a little cornice or something before a tree. Here we go. And soft. Not a bad idea to do these before you do your fence posts and your tree greenery. But you know, it's OK. We can do it Disorder, too. I see you've got some grass, is there? Maybe I'll make one right there. Grasses can be poking out of it. No. Okay. I'm going to dry those and then we'll do some minor details. 8. Detail Snow: So let's take her mask off. Now that this is good and dry, I'm just gonna use my mask, include remover. And as I said before, you can do this with an eraser. But please don't use your fingertips. Puts too much oil on your page, and then it will not accept the paint. Very well. Go a mask. Here. Fence posts. See that mass stands out against the dark background just lightly around your fingers over your page. You can see you can feel if there's any masking fluid left, you can make sure your fingers are greasy of anything like that. So now we're left with snow that looks a little bit flat, so we're gonna fix that. So let's deal with that snow with it Looks rather flat. Take a little bit of turquoise, which is the color we used in our sky and for molding or snow. And we're going to again think of light direction lights coming this way. So I'm gonna put some shadows or shading on the underneath side of this snow. It's a bit dark shading on the underside of my snow and then doing the same thing I did with the lost and found edges. Just softening it along the top here a little bit. Okay, Lets try another chunk. And maybe with the late coming this way, we'll have a little bit of shading on this side as well. And then along the underneath, cleaning my brush, making it thirsty and just softening this edge a little bit. See, that starts to make it look. Three d, not just like a big, flat weight blob. There you go. Cleaning my brush, making it thirsty and softening off the edge. Okay, We'll just keep moving down our tree all the way along the base sometimes will be other little spots where you might choose to put a bit of that shading. It's really important to get your brush good and clean when you go to do the softening. Otherwise, you're just pulled that paint into the white area and then it will be no point to have massed. Okay, let's go clean. First to soften again when I soften. I'm coming in from the clean side softening rather than taking the pigment, and tried to soften it by doing this cause you just pull it right across and that would not do So here we go. A little more Clean my brush. Making it Thurston softening from the clean into the dirty. No, - there now are. Snow is beginning to look Molden plump round. So let's also do the same thing on our fence posts again thinking light direction coming here. So this is gonna remain light on this side and underside have a little bit of depth to brush, making it thirsty and just softening when we get into the really tiny little bits of snow on the distant post. So my camera glitch doubt on me just in the last five seconds of that segment. So what I'm gonna do is just repaint over top of what I did so I can show you and you get a little sneak peek of our finished painting this way too. So I was right in here softening this edge, and I was saying, If you're going into the distance, you don't need to worry too much about softening edges. You can just paint those little bits of shading on them because they're so far away. You don't need to worry about softening the edges. The other thing is, you want to paint. Just a little bit of shading on the underside of your snow that's on your wires. So along here along, under here and then maybe a few thinning out of the grass is that you laid in there. Some of them might be a bit too thick and or minor, so I'm just gonna thin them out with a bit of blue. A little bit of shading along there, too. Here we go. OK, now we're ready for some final details. 9. Grasses, Long Shadows and Finish: where we got some holes there. Let's just put some grass is coming out of fools. And maybe if you in here to thin down the other the corns. I don't want your paint to thick on your brush, or else you'll get a large a large shape. But if you just keep it thin on your brush and not too much, then you can get a nice little relax shape. Okay, let's try some here, coming out of this hole. Here we go. See, now you see what those holes airboat. Stick a few here. Here we go. Maybe just a couple back here, too, and then we're ready for long shadows. So let's make some long shadows. Um, we'll start by putting them on our grasses. Now remember, the snow is undulating, so we don't have to make the shadows perfectly straight. They don't have to be exactly the same shape is what's happening there because the direction of light does crazy things. So I'm just going to start at the base of this guy and put a shadow there, and because there's one here, well, we might have another shadow there and maybe a couple little ones there. And these guys who knows that could be coming from anywhere, going anywhere there we are keeping them really random, if you can, makes it for more interesting here, maybe some. Here. The shadows can be longer than the item. Casting them because of the sun is low in the sky. That's what you'll get. And don't forget our fence posts have to cast a shadow. So scary is it is. Well, let's just do it. Here we go. Just hold your breath and go. And here's the really scary proposition. We need to have a big shadow cast from this guy. I'm gonna go back into my one inch brush and maybe these fence posts are even gonna be in shadow because this guy's casting a big shadow. Or maybe not. I think it actually try and make this one around this guy just for interests sake. So the shadow goes right up to the base of this tree, right up to the base. Let's just make it meander along here. There we go. Scary but doable. I think that's for a picture. So I hope you enjoyed making this Winter Wonderland snow scene, and I hope to see you again soon