Five-Minute Watercolor Sketches: Paint Fun Projects Fast

1. Five-Minute Watercolor Sketches: Paint Fun Projects Fast: Do you think anything meaningful can actually happen in 5 minutes and the time it takes to wait on your coffee order or empty the dishwasher, can you really have a truly transformational experience? You see that's the thing about creativity and making art. There is no minimum amount of time required before it counts. Even if you only have 5 minutes, you can make magic. Hi there. My name is Colby Bloom, and I am a watercolor artist, author, and online educator. I am also a mom and a business owner, Which means that even though my entire career is focused on helping other people make art, there is not always tons of time or energy left over for my own creative practice. Making art just for me, that's when I started using sketchbooks. Instead of the blank page being a stage filled with expectation, a sketchbook became my safe haven where I could really and truly explore all of my imperfections. Even if all you have are some random paints in old sketchbook and 5 minutes squished in between meetings, you can create truly meaningful creative experiences for yourself. Don't worry. Before we even start the studies, I'll help you break down any painting into simple, doable steps by identifying easy shapes and textures to help you anchor your scenes. And then using color values to add depth and detail. Sketching with watercolor in particular can be really tricky, but we'll talk about that too. By practicing water control and paint consistency, and preserving dry space on your paper to allow you lots of room to play, you will be able to turn even complex subjects into a fun, doable, five minute sketch. Now I want you to remember, creativity is a tool. It's supposed to help you elevate your life. To bring you more joy, and more happiness and more discoveries. And that's exactly what this class is for. It's not about disciplining you into being, you know, qualified for these creative experiences. It's about showing up, letting go of that all or nothing mindset, and allowing even 5 minutes of your time to make a meaningful difference in your day. So what do you say? Let's get started. 2. Projects: Hello my friend. Before we dive in, let's take a look at the projects we're going to paint throughout this class. Now remember, the main idea behind these projects is simplifying our process so that we can make quick and fun and exciting paintings even if you only have 5 minutes. Now, there are a lot of ways that you can break this down as a painter, but we're going to focus on two main areas. The first is mark making, or finding simple shapes within the pieces that you're trying to paint. So that it's really easy to get what you're looking at on paper. As we are paying attention to the shapes that we find and the simple marks that we can make, we're going to create texture and movement specifically. There are two main projects that focus on shapes specifically. The first is creating texture and contrast with mark making in this really cool crumbling castle sketch. The second is creating movement and contrast with bold colors as we are painting a quick sketch of a chicken. In addition to focusing on shape, we're also going to focus on color value, or the lights and darks in a sketch. By breaking down projects into color value, you can really easily know what you need to paint and where you need to paint it. Two projects that focus on color value. The first is an ink and watercolor sketch, where we're going to do an ink sketch first and then put water color on top of it. It's a pair of scissors. And we're going to use color value specifically, dark values layered on top of light values to create depth and dimension. Then the last color value project will be this red rock desert scene. It's definitely on the loose side on the abstract side, but the idea is taking a complex scene and breaking it down into color values so that you can really quickly, at the very least, get a basic sense of the shadow and the detail that you want to create in the scene. Then finally, one more bonus project that combines all of the things that we've been talking about into a really quick and easy sketch. By the time you wrap up this class, you will not only have significant practice with mark making and identifying shapes and using color value to simplify paintings, that you can sketch in just 5 minutes. But you'll also have a bunch of new things that you can sketch in under 5 minutes. And remember, these projects are in real time, so that means you can paint along with me or you can watch and then paint yourself after whichever one works for you. Are you ready to dive in? Let's get started. 3. Mindset Check: Hello my friend. Before we get started, we're going to do a quick mindset check. And I want to do this specifically because the purpose of this course is not really to teach you how to paint, you know, breathtaking masterpieces in 5 minutes or less. Because, you know, while I'm sure there are some artists out there who can do such a thing, I am not one of them. The point of this course is to teach your body to remind yourself that creativity does not have to be all or nothing. It's not only failure or masterpiece, there's so much more in between. And also, reaching for your creativity doesn't only have to fulfill the purpose of proving to yourself that you have some kind of worth or value, right? If you go into painting, if you go into any kind of creative activity, knowing that your worth, your inherent value as an artist is already set, It is already at infinity. There is literally nothing that could diminish the value that your creative energy brings to the Earth. You are going to have a much safer, a much more peaceful and hopefully a much more curious and thrilling adventure with your creativity. And that's exactly what I want for you through this course, is I don't want you to go into these five minute projects thinking great, now I'm going to learn how to, you know, like get great at watercolor fast, whatever. This isn't that kind of scheme. This is about practicing courage. This is about practicing letting go of all or nothing. Because even if at the end of the day all you have are scribbles in your sketchbook, that's still so valuable. It's still a gift that you are giving to your body, that you are giving to your creativity. And you absolutely can start and finish something, even if that something is messy. That's where the practicing courage comes in, right? If we're going to do quick five minute sketches, we're going to be uncomfortable. It's going to challenge your perfectionism, and a lot of people don't love that. And that's okay. It's okay to paint something and be uncomfortable. And also know that the gift you are giving to yourself is so valuable and that your only reason for painting doesn't have to be to prove you're worth as an artist, like I was saying. So with this mindset check, I want to just make sure that the intentions that we're setting for this course are going to help lift up your creativity, lift up your spirits. And orient toward process, right? Orient toward exercise and progress, not toward a very specific product, toward achieving some kind of perfection, or, you know, painting quick five minute masterpieces. The point is we're going to stretch our tolerance for discomfort. We're going to show our body that we absolutely can get a lot of value from painting, even if it's only for 5 minutes. We're going to practice courage in starting something, even if we're not sure we can finish it, even if we're not sure that we're going to be good at it. Right? And we're going to give ourselves the gift of painting just because painting is really fun. So I hope that this quick little mindset chat was beneficial for you and helps you to maybe, you know, set some realistic and doable, and gentle and self compassionate expectations before you go into this course. And I will see you again soon. 4. Supplies: A quick note on supplies before we jump into exactly what I'm using. You don't have to use exactly what I'm using in order to get a ton of value out of this course. In fact, I would encourage you not to go and buy a whole bunch of new supplies in order to complete the projects. Because the point of this course is to show your body, to show up for your creativity, no matter what that looks like. Even if you only have 5 minutes, even if you only have $105 watercolor set from the craft store, right? It doesn't really matter what you're using when you're painting these projects. What matters is that you are painting, right? What matters is that you are showing up for these 5 minutes. So, you know, with that quick note, you don't have to use what I'm using. But I do want to show you what I'm using just in case it's helpful. Okay. So let's take a look at the supplies I would recommend. And again, keep in mind these are not the exact supplies you have to use. And throughout the videos, I am, you know, a bit of a watercolor maximalist. And so like this is my paint palette where I have lots of different paint colors that I like randomly reach for. And I don't even remember what some of those paint colors are. So it's not so much that I'm saying, please use exactly what I'm using as it is. Okay. These supplies are going to give you a really solid foundation, a really solid base for any painting course, but particularly the one that we're doing. So let's start off with paint. If you have a good set of primary colors, red, yellow, and blue, that's going to be very helpful for you. These three are Daniel Smith brand, so Quinacridone Rose is kind of like magenta, lemon yellow, and then cerulean blue. These are really good paint colors. They are not necessarily, you know, your only option for primaries. Anytime you have a solid red, yellow, or blue, you can mix lots of different colors. And then I like to add a neutral. This is pains gray which is like a really, really deep blue. It's actually blue pigment mixed with a little bit of black pigment. And when I use pines gray at its darkest, like its darkest value, it almost looks black. So having a neutral to mix with any color will help just widen the options for you there as well. This is Windsor Newton brand. This is Daniel Smith brand. Again. These are artist grade paints which I highly recommend, but you can use whatever you have on hand and that will work just great paint brushes. I recommend getting round paint brushes in size two, pi six and size 12. And all of these are Princeton brand. This is Princeton heritage with the red handle. Both of these are Princeton heritage. This is Princeton Neptune with the like reddish brown wood handle. And the differences between these two series, they're the same brand but slightly different kinds. Is the Princeton Neptune is synthetic squirrel, which just means it's a lot floppier, holds a lot more water. And the Princeton heritage is in synthetic sable. So it's slightly more rigid. It's still pretty flexible, but just slightly more rigid. I like 6.2 my smaller detail brushes to be a little more rigid so that I can have more control over them. And then the size 12, which is like a wash brush, I prefer to have it be the synthetic squirrel, so it's a little floppier, holds a little more water and gives me a little more movement. But you really can't go wrong when it comes to paint brushes. It doesn't even matter if you have this brand, just the size two, the size six, and the size 12 in the round shape. That's going to be really helpful. Then. I like to have a mixing palette. Any kind of mixing palette. This is a ceramic palette. Ceramic palettes are by far superior to plastic palettes. But you don't need to buy a handmade ceramic or even like a palette. Exactly. You can also use a dinner plate, and that would work just as well. Then for paper, these are the two sketchbooks that I'm using. These are both handmade sketch books. The brand is in the supplies guide, but the most important thing with the paper that you're using is that you're using watercolor paper. Because watercolor paper is specifically made to make watercolor easier, right? So both of these paper have like professional grade watercolor paper in them. This has arches brand. This has a handmade watercolor paper. But you don't need to use professional grade paper if you don't want to. You can also use student grade paper. Really, the most important thing is that your paper is 140 pounds or 300 GSM. That's the weight. So you want your paper to be fairly heavy. You also want it to be cold press. Cold press means that there's a little bit of texture here and the texture just makes it so that the paint will actually, like, sink into the paper as opposed to just lay on top of it. I will say that if you are going to invest in any professional grade art supply, start with paper. Because if you start with really good paper, it's going to change the way that the techniques work, even if you're using student grade paints or student grade brushes, start with paper. And after that, there is one project where I use ink to do an ink sketch. You don't have to do an ink sketch for that project, but if you want to use what I'm using, this is a pigma micron pen. It is waterproof, so it says archival ink. That means it's waterproof the way that we're doing it. We're going to do a sketch and then paint watercolor on top of it. You need a waterproof pen if you want to do it the way that I'm doing it. And then aside from that, make sure you have a towel. I just have like a terry cloth washcloth towel that I use. A paper towel will also work, but, you know, I just have this and it's all stained and beautiful from all the paintings that I do. And then I don't have as much waste that I'm throwing away. And then make sure you have two cups of clean water. I like to use heavy like ceramic cups, but a mason jar or a mug would also work using a heavier one. Just make sure that it doesn't really tip over. So there are so many other different kinds of watercolor supplies we could talk about, but for this course particularly, these main things will help you make the most of what we're going to be learning about. And so why don't we get our supplies and jump right in. 5. Simplifying Shapes: Let's talk about shapes specifically. How to take like maybe a complicated reference photo or an idea, some kind of subject that you want to paint. And break it down in a way so that it's simple enough to translate into a five minute sketch. Breaking any subject down into shapes or marks is one of the best ways to do that. Basically what I'm saying is, instead of viewing the world in terms of objects or subjects that exist, try orienting your brain to view the world in terms of recognizable shapes. For example, I could hold up this watercolor palette and say to myself, oh, look, it's a watercolor palette. But as soon as I try to start painting a watercolor palette, my brain kind of goes, does not compute. I don't know how to paint that. And so in order to overcome that overwhelm, right, overcome that freeze that comes from, I don't know how the heck to paint that. You break it down into shapes, right? Instead of what I'm looking at this in order to paint it. Instead of thinking to myself, that's a watercolor palette. I'm going to think to myself, what shapes do I identify that will help me to paint this really fast, Or at least in a doable kind of way, right? Okay, not a watercolor palette. Instead, I have a big long rectangle with rounded corners and that has a lot of other rectangles inside. And when I break shapes down that way, not everything is as simple as you just rectangles inside of rectangles. But complex subjects and complex scenes are actually more simple than you might imagine if you can learn to focus on what you can see and let go of the things that don't really matter in terms of the building blocks for the scene. A really simple process of doing this is first identify the biggest, most recognizable shapes that you can find that will help you to anchor the scene. After you find the biggest shapes, then you can find the smaller shapes that will help to add detail and help to add movement and character to anything that you're trying to paint really quickly. For the purposes of staying really simple, let's break shapes down into two different categories, geometric and organic. Geometric shapes are the shapes you've learned about since you are just a very tiny human. They are recognizable shapes like triangles, circles, rectangles, squares. Any kind of shape that you would use in geometry, that's like a standardized shape. That's a geometric shape. Organic shapes are, for lack of a better term, more like blobs, like when you're looking at a scene or you're looking at a subject or a part of a subject, and you can identify that, that subject forms a specific shape ish, but you don't really know what to call it. It's not any standardized geometric shape. We're going to call it organic. And then for the purpose of watercolor, we're going to lump in texture with shape because, yeah, maybe it's not exactly a very specific shape, but when you're trying to paint something and you're trying to simplify things really well, particularly when you're trying to use mark making to do that right texture is an effect you can really easily make with specific marks. And when we're looking at shapes and specifically trying to break down a complex subject into something you can paint in 5 minutes, we're going to use mark making, identifying shapes to look for organic shapes, geometric shapes and textures. Remember, we're using watercolor for these sketches. Specifically, watercolor is a wet medium. That means dry paper is a hot commodity in your sketch. So you don't want to immediately fill up your entire sketching surface with water right away. You want to identify shapes in part so that you can take up as little of the paper as possible while still giving yourself an anchor to build out the scene. Since we're trying to do these sketches in 5 minutes, you're not going to have a lot of time for multiple layers. Two layers like at most is probably what you're going to have. And so that makes dry space even more important to preserve as much as possible. None of this is going to be accurate. We're not shooting for perfection here. We're not shooting for accuracy. We're building courage, right? We're practicing showing up, even if it's only for 5 minutes, even if it is so, so messy, and that's okay. And in fact, you might even find that when you are just willing to let go with your mark making. Let go with identifying shapes and make those imperfect shapes that you like, that kind of painting better. We're not trying to paint a real life thing, we're trying to create a painting, right? And so let yourself lean into the imperfection because it might make your studies even more special. So to recap, we're going to use identifying shapes to simplify and break down subjects and scenes into recognizable, doable building blocks. The shapes we're going to look for specifically geometric shapes, organic shapes and textures, all of which we can try to create with mark making. This is going to take a lot of courage. We're not shooting for perfection, using loose, simple, gestural strokes in order to get simple shapes and enliven our study with movement is really what we're aiming for. Oh, and don't forget to preserve the dry space as much as possible so you have lots of room for detail if that's what you want. All right, that about sums up the lesson on shapes and mark making. Hope this was helpful and I will see you in the next lesson. 6. Contrasting Values: Something you may not know about painting is the unsung heroes of virtually every work of art are contrasting color values. A color value is the lightness or darkness of any specific hue. And when you have contrasting values, meaning you have lights, you have darks, and you have midtones, Those contrasts are what allow your eye to identify shape, to identify depth, and that really bring most paintings alive. Color value is also going to be one of our most important tools for painting. Quick five minute studies similar to identifying shapes and mark making, like we discussed in the previous lesson video, identifying color values is less about allowing yourself to see all of the different shades and hues of color that you see in a painting. And more about simplifying the painting into lightest lights, darkest darks, and easily identifiable midtones. As a general rule, there are going to be more midtones than anything else. And then you use high lights and dark lights. Low lights, right? So like the lightest lights and the darkest darks. To add dimension, to add detail, to kind of shape everything, and snap it all into place with watercolor. Specifically, the way that you change or alter a color's value is not by adding black or adding white, like you might do with other mediums. With watercolor, the way you change a color's value, meaning like how dark it gets or how light it gets, is by adding more water to make it lighter. Or adding more paint, more pigment to make it thicker and darker. Paying attention to the consistency of your paint is going to be really important here. The thicker and more viscous your paint is, the darker the value is going to be. The more liquidity and water coloring, the more movement it has, the lighter value. It's going to be. One really helpful resource you can use as you're trying to gauge consistency is what's called the T to butter scale. Basically it's comparing your water color, the consistency of your water color to tea or butter, and any kind of liquid in between. So tea is going to be really watery, right? Because it's basically water. And when your watercolor is that really watery, Tea like consistency, it's probably going to be the lightest it's going to be versus if your watercolor is more like butter where it's like thick, maybe it's like melted butter or slightly melted butter where it's thicker, it's very viscous, right? And maybe it has a little bit of movement, but not really. That's going to be the kind of consistency you want for your darkest darks. Now, watercolor is different from opaque mediums in that instead of slapping on highlights, last with some kind of white paint. You have to think ahead of time and really preserve the white dry space of your paper. If you want to have the brightest brights only using watercolor, Generally, we paint from light to dark, back to front. Now, with quick sketches like this, you can't always paint in that exact order, right? Because we're not necessarily drying lots of layers in between. We're trying to get a lot of these paintings done in one or two layers and just let whatever it is dry as it's going to dry. Generally, I would say still start with your lightest paints and then gradually grow darker. But just keep in mind that you may have to skip around a little bit. Water control is going to be very important here as we've discussed at length already, right? Water and water control is how you determine the tea to butter scale. The more water you add, the, the lighter it's going to be. The more pigment you add and less water you add, the darker it's going to be. I'm mentioning this again because as you paint with layers, especially if maybe you have a really wet layer at first, in order to add your darkest darks, you need to have darker paint so that the paint not only shows up dark, but also so that it doesn't get lost in the already wet paper. Using really thick butter like consistency of dark colors is a great way to add depth and shadows to any painting. You just have to make sure that there's not too much water on your space or else the paint might disappear. Generally, as you're using watercolor and color value specifically to maybe organize your layers a little bit. Before you get started on each of these five minute studies, I would identify where the mid tones are, right? The midtones are going to be maybe right in the middle of the t to butter scale where it's not necessarily super, super watery. But definitely not as dark as the thick butter like consistency of the paint. You're looking for your mid tones. And then you're also specifically paying attention to any kind highlighted really bright white areas that you might need to leave dry on purpose so that you have the lights showing up. Right? So you look for your mid tones, you look for the lightest lights, and then you kind of start painting and building it out that way. And then because the darkest darks are, you know, I would always add the darkest darks very last. Because you can always make a painting darker if you need to with water color. But it's very difficult to remove the darkness, remove the dark color value once you've already added it. So the darkest darks are something that I would say for very last and generally as a general rule, again, not hard and fast, but as a general rule, you don't need as much like really dark shadow as you think you do, but you do need some. Working with color value is going to be scary, especially when you do get to the darkest darks because you're not going to want to ruin your painting. And that's where I have to come in and say, this takes courage. And the whole point of this course is for us to practice courage, right? The whole point of these five minute studies is not to prove to yourself that you are a great artist who knows how to do this. The point is to practice all of this, to give yourself a nice contained, safe, virtually risk free play space. So that even if you do mess up one of your paintings by adding too much dark or by making it too wet at first, or it turns a little bit muddy, it's just paper, It's all going to be fine. But by focusing on color values, it will give you something a little more structured to kind of, you know, organize your layers and help you know where to put your paint and what kind of consistency you needed at to recap. Color value is the lightness or darkness of a color. With water color, you alter the lightness or darkness of that very specific color by either adding water to make it lighter or adding more paint to make it darker. We're going to start by identifying the dry spaces first that we need to leave dry for highlights. And we're also going to identify any of the mid range tones, right where it's not the whitest white or the darkest dark, but it's just somewhere in the middle. And paint, play around in that space first. And then we're going to add the darkest darks last. And especially if we're working with wet layers and adding, trying to add dark darks on top of an already wet layer, the consistency of the paint is going to matter a lot. We want nice thick, viscous consistency for dark, dark, so that they don't immediately dissipate in the wet layers. All right, that about sums up color value specifically for this course. I hope that it was really helpful and I will see you again soon. 7. Mark-Making Warm Up: Hello my friend. This is a quick warm up to practice mark making. Specifically we're going to practice pulling out mainly organic, but sometimes geometric or textured shapes from objects that are on my desk. It's pretty simple. Basically, I'm going to take an object, I'm going to look at what shapes that I can find, and I'm going to try to make that shape as best I can with really loose, simple, gestural strokes of my paintbrush. Remember, there is no right or wrong here. This is a warm up to show you how much inspiration you can take from really simple objects and how much of the world you really can build in a simple, doable way by pulling out shapes that you recognize. With our 5 minutes, we're going to spend them taking inspiration from objects that we see and making marks inspired by what we're looking at. And I'm just going to grab things off of my desk to make those marks. So just to remind our mark making is basically just making random all sorts of different kinds of marks and gestures with your paint and with your paint brush. Right? So the first thing I'm going to use for inspiration, this paint palette that I have that has lots of dried paint on it from a previous project. So I'm going to look at this paint palette and I'm going to try to mimic all of the different shapes that I can see. So shapes that maybe are made with some of the paint that I can see. So I'm going to try to mimic some of the texture, some of the paint that I can see, u, and the shapes that I can see within that palette, right? So I'm trying to mimic the texture that I get from dried, gritty paint or maybe from, you know, strokes that I've seen that are dried on the palette. And there's no wrong or right way to do this. This is a lot of practice in paying attention to detail and noticing things, right. Just noticing all the different marks, all the different shapes that I can see in the world. And a dried palette with watercolor is actually a really great way, a really fun way to notice because watercolor dries and different pigments especially dry in really unique ways. So most of, up to this point, most of the marks that I have been making were water color paint that was dried on the palette. Those two lines I just painted were inspired by that little line in the palette to hold your paint brush those two parallel lines, trying to capture the texture of the clay. That's kind of like skipping there, and I had a lot of fun finding lots of different shapes and trying to mimic those shapes from that paint palette. So now I'm going to switch, I'm going to do the exact same thing, but I'm going to try to mimic some of the shapes or some of the textures that I can see or that I get inspired to paint by looking at this paint brush. So maybe I'm trying to capture the shape of the little metal that's combining the handle with the brush, right? Or I'm trying to capture a really loose gestural idea of what the handle, what the handle looks like. Or maybe I want to capture the texture of the actual bristles. Right, that's kind of what I'm doing right there. If I kind of flick my paintbrush upward, is that going to capture the texture of the bristles? Or maybe instead of trying to flick it, I want to actually like try to capture the shape a little bit more of the bristles without much of the texture, right? So there are lots of different ways, lots of different shapes that I can find with that. Here is another little palette. This is like a ceramic pan full of pains gray. So I'm looking for shapes and I found a little circle that's in the middle of the palette. Right where I've presumably gotten a lot of paint and it's kind of gone down to the end. I can use the shape of the pan to try lots of different marks and lots of different shapes there. I can try to, you know, mimic the little dots that are dried, the dried paint that's all the way along the pan. One way that I like to explore mark making is to make one shape like that half circle, and try it in lots of different ways. Like try to make that one shape in lots of different ways. That's a fun way to explore with mark making too. So I have this wiggle palette that's also really fun. That's like a little pan, that's like a squiggle. And so using that squiggly shape, it can be a fun way to experiment with mark making. Also lifting up my brush so that I can get some spaces between the paint. Splotches can be a fun way to capture texture. Here's a seashell that I keep on my desk from when I visited the ocean. And trying to capture the various marks like on the seashell, the various shapes on the seashell that I can see. Like these are the little dark marks that are around the edge of the seashell. I can try to capture the shape or the ridges of the seashell. And this isn't about me painting the seashell itself, right? This is about me finding a shape, finding a color, finding a pattern, isolating it, and trying to turn it into a mark that I can explore with my paint brush. It's super messy, it's super loose. It's not supposed to look like anything. It's just supposed to evoke curiosity. It's just supposed to help me practice noticing the world around me so that I can see these shapes and learn to identify them elsewhere too. This can really help to hone your painterly eye, right? So this is a mint that I had on my desk trying to capture like that spiral of red that's going across from the mint. Or the pattern between the red and the white. That can be a really fun thing to paint the shape of the mint, just that like rounded shape. And my 5 minutes are up. So I hope you had a lot of fun watching me find inspiration from different objects. And I hope that you can have fun with this project too. 8. Project: Crumbling Castle: Hello my friend. We're going to paint for our first project, A crumbling Castle. Specifically, we're going to focus on mark making and pulling out shapes from a really busy subject. Architecture in general is really difficult to paint, especially in under 5 minutes. But if we can practice identifying recognizable shapes like, you know, rounded rectangles or easy to replicate textures like dry brush texture, then it's going to be a lot more simple than you might think. Remember, don't get too bogged down by perfection. Don't get too bogged down by the layers. Just try focusing on contrasting shapes, right? Making the shapes different when you're working on a different part of the castle and you're going to be good to go. One final reminder. You're allowed to make this fun. It's supposed to be fun. So let's dive right into it. Hello, hello. In this project we are going to use marks. So we're just trying to use basic marks to follow this reference photo and try to paint a really, really loose sketch of this castle. We're going to pay very special attention to all of the different textures that we can see, while also being really self compassionate and forgiving of ourselves. Knowing that the idea of doing this project is not to paint a castle, it's to explore mark making, right? And that's another reason why it's sometimes a good idea to use a timer, just so I can stop and know that I'm trying to go fast. I'm trying to do quick marks to just get this sketch down, not to make this castle look perfect by any means. So I'm just going to start from top to bottom. I decided to start my timer over because because I started it before, I actually was like ready to paint. So I'm going to start from top to bottom. Where if I was doing this as like an actual painting like that took me a long time. I would probably do the layers a bit differently, but because this is just a mark making study, right? I'm just trying to see all the different marks that I can make. And the mark that I see for the roof is just kind of like a broad kind of sea curve, right? Like a little dome with a line on top for whatever the line on top of that is. And now I'm mixing different colors. I used kind of like a cool gray for the top of the top of the roof. And now I'm getting different kinds of browns and grays to paint the rest of the castle. And so on the side of that castle that is sunny, I did like a light brown. Probably could have added more yellow to it, but I'm not trying to color match here. Right. I'm just trying to get marks down. This is a mark making project. So, and because it's a mark making project, one way to get this sketch down is to notice very specific shapes and the contrasting shapes. So I've noticed that the texture of the brick in shadow, I can see individual bricks versus the texture of the brick in the sunlight. I really can't. It just looks like a line. And so I've tried to reflect that as I'm painting the marks here. Especially on like that turret part right where you can see I painted almost like individual bricks but then just a line for the part in the sun. So I'm going down and I painted the little roof, Tried to get the individual bricks and the directions that they were going, but it's okay if the colors all blend together. And then I'm trying to get the bricks on the side of this wall too. I've not, if I use really light watery paint, then I get a lot of that dry brush texture, which that dry brush texture kind of, you know, implies the crumbliness of this castle. And so I definitely want that, I want to use dry space to my advantage as I'm making these marks here. And I had to pause for a second to answer the phone or something, But continuing onward, I want to use dry space to my advantage, so that I can see all the individual marks that I'm making. I don't want to just like hurry and cover up the whole space with, you know, huge swatches of paint. I'm trying to do tiny little marks to show and to imply all the texture and the individual bricks that make up the side of this building. And then I did do one long stroke just for like that wall. And then to try to get the shadows, I can see that there are tiny little shadows in between all of the bricks, right? And so I got some darker paint. And again, I'm not trying to make this look realistic, I'm just trying to capture shapes. I'm just trying to capture marks and to explore different marks. And so doing lots of thin little lines in between some of these bricks, some of the bricks a line, you know, underneath the roof. This is the shadow. If I were trying to make this look more realistic, my shadowy color would probably be a lot lighter and I might even like a lot thinner. But I'm not going for realism here, I'm going for mark making, I'm going for exploring. And so I'm just trying to, you know, look at the picture and allow it to be messy. Allow what I paint to look really messy and really even embrace that. And take a moment to see, hm, what do I like about what I'm painting here? What unexpected delights am I finding by focusing just on mark making? So now I'm going to try out different marks for foliage, for the greens that are in front of the castle. Obviously not perfect because I'm trying to paint like on top of the castle, so we might see some of the bricks underneath the leaves, which is fine, but I'm trying these like, you know, swoopy leaves for the leaves on the left, maybe the trees on the right that are kind of like on top of it almost looks like they're like in the castle. I'm doing more of these, It's like a different shape, right where I'm doing tiny, thin little circles almost right where I'm like circling my paintbrush to see if that different texture evokes different, like those different marks may imply a different kind of texture. I'm going to add some like yellow green onto my leaves over here. But again, not trying to get it perfect. And sometimes if you very intentionally make a sketch not perfect like you kind of mess it up in a way that gives you free rein to just try whatever you want and to try moving your paint brush in a, moving your paint brush in a fun way as opposed to, you know, demanding perfection. It's okay if what you're looking for is not, you know, making this scene look exactly like it's supposed to. It's okay if your goal is instead, how can I have the most fun? And that's what this mark making unit is really for. That's what this practice is really for. Not only so that you can learn to view the world and see all the shapes, all the varied shapes that you can find. But also to tell yourself, I'm allowed to make this fun instead of perfect. And that is a totally valid way to have a creative practice. So hope you enjoy this one and I will see you again soon. 9. Project: Plucky Chicken: Hello my friend. In this project we are going to paint a plucky, colorful chicken using gestural strokes and simple mark making only. So obviously, this is a project where we're going to focus a lot on pulling out shapes. But I also want us to focus a lot on movement in this project. Keep the dry space between different sections so that you can maintain the movement with the simple one stroke, you know, organic shapes that you're trying to create. And just lean into what your body wants naturally to make, right? It doesn't have to be perfect. It doesn't have to perfectly mimic the reference photo that we're looking at. The idea is to make it plucky, right? The idea is to make it whimsical and using fun bright colors, even if they're not really realistic so much, that can be a fun way to kind of take you out of this. Has to be perfect and pull you into this is all for fun. So I highly encourage that if that's what you want. The whole point of these projects is to really let yourself be loose, to let yourself be messy, and to let the time constraints that you have help push you to actually finish. Because it's okay if what you paint is really messy. It's okay if what you paint only looks somewhat like what you're trying to paint, right? The whole idea is we're putting brush to paper. We're practicing discomfort so that we can teach our bodies. Hey, it's okay to try something and have it be messy. It's okay to try something and have it really blocky and disjointed, and to have the colors be off, and all of that is okay. We're also practicing recognizing marks, and, you know, taking 5 minutes to do something, that's really fun. So I'm going to start kind of from top to bottom. We'll see I'm going to start just making some, you know, quick, loopy marks for I don't even know what the top part of the hen, the red part is called, but like the little hair and then like the beard. Right. I wish that I knew what animal parts were called, but I don't. I'm starting with a red color with marks at the top and then that big kind of circly thing, beard thing at the bottom. And then I'm doing a little triangle for a beak. After I did the beak, I kind of thought, well maybe I'll like fill out the head a little bit. Make the proportions a little bit you better. Not necessary, but just adding another layer of the little top part of the chicken. And as I'm doing this, remember that it's okay to not use the right colors. It's okay to not be sure exactly what you're painting. But one tip for using mark making to paint subjects like animals or any subject really is to find marks you can see. So like from the top of the head down to the tail, I see a little swoopy S curve, right? So that's what I painted just one swoopy S curve from the bottom of the beak. Like down through the belly I saw a more rounded C curve. And then to fill in the spaces in between the back and the belly, I'm just doing more like wavy stripes. Wavy strokes to imply the texture of feathers because I know I'm not going to get it be at, I'm not going to make it realistic. That's just not going to happen, especially in 5 minutes. So I'm just trying to use texture and mark making to imply that there are feathers here. And I'm also having a lot of fun varying the colors that I'm using. I used like a red brown for those first big initial strokes, and now I'm using turquoise and violets. And I can't even tell you the very specific colors that I'm using. Because the point is not what colors I'm going for. The point is that I'm trying all sorts of different colors to just kind of see what looks fun together. Especially when we're trying to use mark making to paint a subject like this that has a lot of detail. Remember that dry space. Utilizing dry space, it's really important to preserve the dry space because wherever there is dry parts on your paper, that's where you can actually place detail. Right? As opposed to if you just get the whole paper wet, all of your paint is just going to go all over the place, right? So I'm kind of being careful, but also using, you know, really kind of just quick intuitive strokes, basic marks to try to mimic what I'm seeing. So in painting that tail, I gave myself a direction by painting that like turquoise swoop off of the back part of the chicken, right? And then I painted the feathers underneath it. So one kind of concept or strategy that you can use to help you sketch, like this is like we talked about finding big recognizable shapes that can help you form whatever it is. Like give you a basic outline or basic structure. And then paying attention to the direction, to the movement and the direction of the details. Even if you're using the same mark but in different directions, that can help provide some detail and texture that you might want to add. And then adding small details Last, I painted the eye very last in like a gold ochre color or last for the top of the head. Anyway, in just the last few seconds that I have here, I'm going to paint the feet and then the feathers connecting the feet to the body. I'm being super, just blocky with the feet, right? Just a few lines the way that I see them, not really paying attention if they're in proportion and then connecting the feet to the body. And my 5 minutes are up. There you go. So that's a real time painting of using mark making to paint this chicken. I hope you had fun and I will see you in the next one. 10. Project: Office Scissors: Hello my friend. In this project we're going to paint da da, a pair of office scissors. Now, I know this might seem like a boring project to paint, but hear me out. It's actually a really great project to practice color value specifically with water color. So for this one, we are actually going to start with a sketch, but it's going to be really loose, really simple identifiable shapes. And you can use ink like I'm using or you don't have to. You can absolutely use pencil if that's what you have on hand. Whatever works is fine. But we're going to start with the sketch and then we're going to break it down into color values, right? We're going to leave the whites that we need to create highlights for the most part. We're also going to paint mid values for a lot of the scissors. And then to create depth and dimension, we're going to add those dark color values on top of an already wet layer. The idea with drawing something with ink before painting it with water color is kind of like giving yourself an outline and also giving yourself permission for it to be really like sketchy. Meaning it's okay if the sketch is really messy. So especially when you're drawing really loose quick sketches, you want to look immediately for shapes that you recognize and shapes that you know you can draw. So for me, I'm just identifying the shapes that I can draw, which right off the bat are the two shapes of the holes of the handle. Right. So I'm drawing the shapes of the holes of the handle and then just kind of outlining one of the handles and then I'm going to outline the other handle. And as you are sketching, as you're trying to kind of like piece an object together, you don't have to. The prompt for this video is sketch something from your desk. So I just grabbed some scissors, right? You can sketch anything you want u, but especially when you're trying to sketch something that maybe you wouldn't normally paint. You want to let go of the idea that you need to get all of the details right and just identify basic loose shapes and let the shapes be okay, even if you get the proportions wrong, it's going to be fine. Once I have the basic outline of the scissors, then I'm going to start adding some line work to give myself like an outline basically for where I want the detailing to go. So especially with the scissors, mostly the detail is going to come in where I add shading or I leave behind white space for highlights, right? So I'm just kind of adding some lines around some of the handle areas where I think I might want to add some shade U. And also sometimes when you add detail line work with ink, it's not even so much like looking at the object as it is. Letting your pen just make random details, Have it skip on the page a little bit. Do some light little strokes. And even if it doesn't exactly mirror whatever object it is you're trying to sketch, odds are it's still going to look, you know, fairly cool because you're adding some kind of little sketchy detail to it. So once we have the sketch down, then I'm going to start to paint. And as I'm painting, I started with this is carmine, which is like a deep red color. I'm starting with like a mid tone color. And wherever I see some white space, I'm going to try to leave behind, like, leave that white space dry. So I know that there are some highlights on the handle. In some places, I'm not going to capture all of the highlights. I know that I'm not. And that's going to be okay. Or some of the highlights are going to be in different places and that's going to be okay. I'm just going to try my best to leave behind some highlights because I know that the shadows and the highlights are really what make objects like this come alive. So the idea of starting with more like a mid tone paint, like I'm doing right now, is I'm starting in the middle using white space for my highlights. And then I can use water to kind of just like a paintbrush full of water to soften some of the edges. And then I can always add dark paint after. So remember with water color, we start with lighter paint and then we add darker paint after to add the shadows. So that's what I'm doing for the handle. The handle for the scissors is like this, deep red. I'm not going to add as many highlights on this side of the handle, but I am kind of leaving behind just a little bit of white space to separate that one handle from the other handle. Because especially, you know, with water color when you're trying to separate objects or add dimension, dry space. And shadows are really going to be your biggest asset. So that little line of dry space between the two handles that just shows they're layered on top of each other. That is a detail that just helps to add some depth. So then I mixed a little bit of gray. So like I added, you know, just a bunch of colors all mixed together with a little more blue in it. So it's like a cool gray and it's very, very light, lots of water in it. For the metal part of the scissors. Now I'm going and adding in some dimensions, so I got some darker gray to outline that right edge of the scissors. And then I got a darker value car mine. So, and then I added a tiny, tiny, tiny bit of blue to it to make it almost like a violet or like a burgundy color. And I'm using that kind of burgundy color as the shadow. So I added a shadow like on the left hand edge of that left handle and then on the inside of where, like the finger hold where it's going to go, right. So wherever on the object, wherever I see shadow, that's where I'm just going to try to add some of this dark color. And again, adding shadow is one of those things where it's okay if you don't get it right. It's okay if it, if it doesn't exactly look like what the object does. You're just painting what you see. Wherever you see a shadow, just kind of paint in a little bit of that shadow and then it will add some depth to it. And then, like with so many sketches like this to kind of add to the artsy flare to it, I like to splatter on some paint because I think that splattering makes it look, is fun, first of all, to do. And it makes it very clear that like this is a messy sketch. The whole point is to have a be fun and artsy. So I hope you enjoyed this little five minute project. And I will see you in the next one. 11. Project: Red Mountain: Okay, I have to warn you, this one might give you the most frustration, if only because we are focusing on color values and we are also doing it on a mostly wet surface. So we're painting a red rock mountain, you know, in a desert. And we're going to focus on the mid values. We're going to focus on easily identifiable shapes. And then we're going to add the shadows. But in order to paint this so it looks realistic, 5 minutes is really not enough time. And so what we're going to do is still paint and under in the 5 minutes that we have. And we are also going to give ourselves, cut ourselves some slack, give ourselves a break and just rely on the darkest darks that we add throughout. Like keep adding dark things. If we feel like it's, you know, just kind of a big, muddy mess, we're going to use the dark values to snap it into place and help our eyes imply what's going on. Instead of forcing our hands to create something that looks perfect. And at the end of the day, if you're still like, nope, hate this one, that's fine. Because we're practicing courage. We're practicing doing really hard things. And I know that you can do this. So let's do it. All right, let's paint this desert scene. So I'm going to start my timer and the first thing that I'm going to do is kind of, I'm going to start with like the lighter areas, the lighter colors. To give myself a little bit of a structure for the mountain and for the sand underneath the mountain. I'm not going to paint the sky quite yet. I'm probably going to paint that after I've painted most of the mountain. So off to the side on my palette there, I was just mixing some colors. I took some scarlet lake and I added lots of yellow to it to make this like a yellow orange. And then added lots of water, So it's like really, really watery. I probably could have added even more yellow to it looking back, But again, this is just a quick five minute study, right? So I'm doing the edge of the mountain, like the top ridge of the mountain, just loose, imperfectly trying to get that like jagged peak and then I am doing some of the sand underneath it and trying to use really loose, watery strokes so I can capture some texture but still leave the color a little bit more all over. At some point, the color, as you're doing studies like this, you might lay down the color and think to yourself, oh, not exactly the color that I want, especially for landscapes. It's okay if you kind of think and change your mind because that maybe means that some of the painting dries. But dried paint lines actually add a lot of character and texture to quick studies like this. So don't be afraid of dried paint lines, don't be afraid of a little extra texture. Just kind of let your mind wander. Ask yourself, hmm, do I like this color or would I rather something different? So now that I've painted kind of like the bottom sand and the top ridge, I'm going to start painting in the shadow. And this shadow is kind of like a violet shadowy color. So like either, you know, taking indigo or paints gray and adding just a little bit of a red to it, or any kind of cool, cool gray shadowy color. It doesn't really matter what your color is again, but I am trying to find shapes in the shadow. I don't just want to paint like a huge swatch of shadow, especially on the edges of the shadow where I can see it on the mountain. I'm trying to find shapes and mimic those shapes imperfectly. I do not want to get stuck on how my shapes measure up, right on how if they look exactly like they do in the photo, because they're just, they're not going to. But I do want to try to capture some shapes that the shadows make in that rock, on the face of that Rocky Mountain. Right? I used that kind of cool violet shadowy color. And while it was still wet, I took some scarlet lake and dipped it like directly on top of it, so I can still see some of that shadowy color, but I also see some red peeking through. Then I decided because especially because we're using a timer, right, I have to decide what to do with the time that I'm allotted. And so I did the shadow, and now I decided to add some texture. I'm doing like a grid, basically, like horizontal lines and then maybe vertical lines crossed on top of that to try to capture some of this rocky texture. It is not going to be perfect. And that's like, my whole idea is not to be perfect. It's just to have fun and explore the different ways I can move my paintbrush that might capture some of the character of this scene. Right? So I tried to capture, imply some texture along the top ridge of that mountain. I tried to capture some texture in the sand with just some long, loose curves starting from the mountain going down. And then I knew I wanted to get the sky in while I still had a chance. So I started with really, really watery. This is tallow turquoise. I started with really, really watery, but still kind of vibrant paint right at the top. And then I'm using water, a really watery brush, to bring it all the way down and just like lightly outline the rock. So another way you could do this is you could get the sky wet, not the mountain, just the sky. And you could start with the wet sky and then add the turquoise. But if you have enough water on your brush and you have, you know, nice paper, like, you can start with dry brush as long as your brush is really watery. And then just use water to bring the rest of the paint down. Then you can go back in with more darker paint and darken up the top so that you really have that contrast from light to dark. Because one thing, when you're doing skies, especially like really dramatic color contrast like this, like the contrast of the orange against the blue sky is really cool and a really dramatic part of the scene, right? And one way to increase that drama is to have there be a gradient. So by starting with a wet sky that's a little bit lighter and then adding dark paint on top and just kind of like letting it naturally blend down so the sky is lighter along the edge of the mountain than darker at the top. It kind of just, you know, boosts the contrast between the colors and makes a really cool effect. So my time is technically up, but, you know, I was having fun adding a little bit of stuff here and there. So I decided to go back in. At this point, after I did the sky, my mountain face was mostly dry, so I was able to go back and add just another layer of shadow with the kind of that cool violet. Just with a few strokes here and there. It didn't even really matter what they were. They were just kind of random marks. But I think adding some darker value there, you know, was really fun. So thanks for painting this desert mountain with me and I will see you next time. 12. Project: Poppies: For a final project, I wanted to do a fun, really simple project that relied both on using values and using really simple gestural mark making strokes to make something that will hopefully bring a smile to your face. So we're painting some really quick poppies just coming out of a sketch book, and I think that you're going to love this one. For this final project, we're going to paint these really simple poppies, setting a timer for 5 minutes. The idea here, remember, is not to make these perfect, but to use this photo as inspiration for a really fun, playful five minute sketch. I'm going to start with basic shapes. I'm using a size ten brush with, loaded up with some bright red paint. And I'm just going to look at the shapes that I see and try to mimic them as much as possible. Now, with flowers, especially when you're painting florals, especially when you're sketching florals, remember, dry space is a huge commodity because it's what really allows you to give organic shapes, like these petals definition, right? By allowing dry space to provide details that helps to give these blobs essentially some kind of form. So when you're trying to intentionally incorporate dry space into painting flowers based on organic shapes that you're looking at from a reference photo. One thing that can be helpful is knowing that you don't have to put the dry space exactly where it is supposed to go on the page, you can just know to yourself, okay self, I'm going to look around, see if I can identify some specific shapes of these flowers. And then also note to myself, I need some kind of dry space somewhere in order to give shape and form to these flowers. And it doesn't have to necessarily correlate exactly with what you're looking at. It can correlate loosely, or you can just kind of put dry space. Just practice putting dry space where you think it's supposed, where you think it might go or where it might look good. Either way, the idea is to get painted paper, right? So as we're painting these flowers, another thing to keep in mind, along with the dry space, is to identify shapes that you can see, right? And that means instead of looking at these flowers, these poppies as that's a poppy, try breaking it down into multiple shapes. So like the poppy that I just painted right, I did that little bottom curvy part first and then I kind of filled in the shapes around it. So if you can find kind of an anchor shape, right? A shape that is pretty easy to identify and pretty easy to paint. And then kind of fill in the gaps, like fill in the shapes around it, leave the dry space around that anchor shape. It's a lot easier to approach with stuff like this. Now, are these poppies arranged in exactly the same way that they are on the page? No, absolutely not. Like they're a little bit looser, right? They're kind of in the same space, but not really. Some of those flowers are overlapping, but I decided not to have them overlapping in mine. And that's a really important thing to remember with sketching, is that none of this has to be exact, none of this has to be. Okay. I'm going to prove to myself that I know how to paint this. I'm going to prove to myself, it's not about proving anything, it's about painting, right? It's about giving yourself these 5 minutes to quite imperfectly put shapes on a piece of paper. So we've, we've used mark making, right? We've used shapes and dry space to kind of add movement and add some detail. And now one benefit of painting that first layer of the poppies, like painting all of the poppies all at once, as opposed to painting one poppy at a time, right? Is that it gives this wet paint that we use to paint the poppies a little bit of time to dry. So parts of the poppies at this point are going to be wet and parts of them are going to be somewhat dry. So that gives us room to add more pigmented, darker value shapes on top of this first layer of the poppy to add even more kind of depth and detail. Right, This is where we're moving on from using shapes and mark making to incorporating more value to add depth to these flowers. So I'm going to take some highly pigmented of that same color that I'm using, this highly pigmented red color. And I'm just going to kind of outline some of the petals, look to see where it's dark on the flowers. It's not exact. I'm not even really like paying much attention exactly to where all the petals are. I'm just knowing, okay, I'm going to use some of these outlines to add depth and value to these flowers. And even if they're not exactly where they're supposed to go, it's going to make a difference. Then I'm going to splatter some paint because it's one of my favorite ways to finish off a sketch and we're done. Thanks so much for painting this simple project with me, and I hope that you had so much fun. 13. What's Next?: Hello my friend. You've finished now. What's next? What do you do with all these sketches? All these five minute studies? Now that you're done, there are a few different directions you can go. First and foremost, you've taught your body, hey, we can do something in 5 minutes even if we don't finish it. Even if we go a little bit over, even if it's not exactly the way that we wanted, spending 5 minutes painting are never 5 minutes that we're wasted. So awesome. Because the more that you teach your body that, the more your body's gonna believe it and the more time you are going to make for painting. Because when you find 5 minutes to be as valuable as entire afternoons, you're going to find there's actually a lot more opportunity for creativity than you previously thought. One thing I really love to do with these five minute studies is to give myself a moment for maybe emotional regulation. If I'm having a high anxiety day or a high depression day or something really stressful is going on in my life. I know that I can take 5 minutes and paint something. And it's not going to solve all of my problems, but it is going to help ground my body in something beautiful. And that matters a lot. So what you've learned throughout this course can absolutely help you, even if you improving your creativity skills and your watercolor skills isn't your main focus. That said, if you are interested in taking these five minute sketches into more of a complex or challenging creative project, these are a great place to start. Because as you're sketching and maybe as you reflect on the sketches that you've done, you can ask yourself, what did I really enjoy? Was there any kind of technique or any kind of subject that I found myself really drawn to? That just like created magic in my mind. You can be, you know, very in tune if you can be really in tune with your curiosity and with the things that really let you up. Five minute sketches like this are an easy, doable, accessible way to kind of test the waters, so to speak, so that you don't sink a lot of energy that you might not have into a project that you don't actually like. So my advice to you after you've finished this class is to look over your sketches and say, is this something I would want to pursue? Maybe spend a little bit more time on. Maybe is this a style that I enjoy, but I would like to turn it into a different subject? Is this particular painting one that I want to try? Again, any of those questions are going to be excellent starting places for your next creative adventure. Take it from me. When you have an hour or more to paint and you really want to paint something, it's so helpful not to have to start from scratch. Pulling out your sketchbook and recognizing, oh, I had fun doing this one, I wonder if I'd have even more fun, you know, building on it or expanding it. It's such a helpful thing so that you don't have to start from zero every time. And that about wraps it up for this class. Thank you so much for joining me. I always have such a fun time making these resources for you on skill share. And if you want to share any of your projects for feedback or just for some moral support, please post them in the project gallery. I would absolutely love to see, especially I would love to see what you've done and hear some of your reflections on them. So thinking about what you've loved, thinking about what you've learned, thinking about what you might want to take into the future. Share that and I would love to be in this creative journey with you. I would really also so appreciate it if you left a review. Reviews are the absolute best way to get my classes seen by other people and to help other people who want to learn water color just as much as me and just as much as you take advantage of this amazing place that Skillshare has created. If you want to learn more from me, I have lots of other classes on Skillshare. Make sure to go check out my profile and my classroom to see all of the other options that you have. And once again, I'm just so grateful that you're here. So grateful that you spent this time with me and I will see you again soon.