Fun and Easy Technique to Paint Watercolors: Reflections in Water

1. Introduction: Fun and Easy Technique to Paint Watercolor Landscapes: Reflections in Water: Hello, my name is Dan wort and I have been a watercolor and oil painter for more than 25 years. I love painting landscapes, and I almost always start my paintings outdoors. Either I go outside and take photos and sketches, or sometimes I complete an entire painting outside. I'm so excited to be painting with you again today. If you've had a chance to watch my tree Painting video, that's awesome. We're gonna paint some trees again today and our water reflections. If you haven't, that's no problem. I'm lucky through all the techniques you're going to need to make this painting of trees and reflection and water. This class is designed for everyone. Explain the type of paper, palette, brushes, paints, and other materials that I use. I will show you how I use reference photos. My thoughts on composition. Y, i always start with a value sketch and some fun and easy tips and techniques to paint reflections in water. So let's get Painting. 2. Materials: Okay, so the brushes we are going to use for this project, they recommend you have a map brush. I have two different size mop brushes here. A mapper shall be great for doing this and sky and water that we need. I also recommend you have some round brushes of a couple of different sizes. These are two round brushes about the same size, different brands. Any kind of brand will work as long as it comes to a nice, fine point. And I recommend you getting that in a few different sizes. These are all ground brushes of varying sizes. It's nice to have some larger ones and some smaller ones. Again, any brand will be fine as long as it keeps that nice point. It's also nice to have some rigor brushes to do trunks and things like that. These are two very different size rigor brushes. Rigour gives the name for the ability to paint the lung, rigging lines and sailboats, but they're great for trees as well. And then I have some other brushes we may or may not use those today. A squared off brush and an angle brush. Both of these are nice for architectural renderings, which we won't really do today, but sometimes I can use these for trunks. And here's a smaller version of that same square top tip. Those are fun to have as well. And the final brush I like to keep on is a script breast. And this is good for signing your painting when you've finished. And of course keep them all in some sort of container systems to them easily and access them quickly. So the paper I'd like you to use for this project is a ten by 14 sheet of paper. It can get to in a block like this. Or you can get a larger sheet of paper and rip it down as I've done here, and taped a piece to core phone board with a, some Artist's tape. So that works out just fine. And paper comes in a variety of textures and weights. This pad right here is cold press and a 140 pound. That's the minimum weight and texture I usually paint with. What I have here on the board is a 300 pound, which is a thicker piece of paper. And that is rough, which has more of a grain to it than even the cold press. I would stay away from hot press and anything less than 140 pounds for this project, it just won't pick up the texture of the paint as nicely as we want. Okay? And these are the paints that we need for this project today, I happen to like Winsor Newton paints, but any paint brand you like is fine. The colors I've chosen are French, ultramarine, and two or blue. A good substitute for Antwerp is Prussian blue. Cobalt blue, ones are yellow, and other substitute for Windsor, yellow was cadmium yellow, raw sienna, burnt umber, brown matter. If you don't have brown matter, burnt sienna will be fine. And Rose matter and a substitute for rows matter could be Alizarin crimson. I also keep a tube of whitewash That'll be nice for adding highlights at the end if we need to. And the palate I use is a John Pike palette. It has a lid. It's lovely, but any pilot will work for this project. Okay, some other materials that you'll need for this project, or a pencil and an eraser, sketch book, a sponge, some paper towels, a container, and some water. A small spray bottle with water and something fun to keep it around as a Mr. Clean Magic Eraser that helps lift color out. If we need to do that. 3. Reference/Composition: So choosing a reference image. So I have a couple of images here that both show trees reflecting in water. So I've made two different little boxes with which to play around with the composition. And I've made sure that these and these images of chosen are in the same proportion as my final image, which is a ten by 14. These are both printed out by five by seven. So these are roughly 2.5 by 3.5. And I did actually take a ruler not to make perfect straight lines to give myself a reference. So I know that I'm going to be drawing and sketching in the same size. So I'm just gonna start with this one because I am sort of drawn to this and feeling like it that might be the winner here. But again, I want to make sure this composition here looks like it's almost in the middle. And I like to avoid having the horizon line in the middle. So I'm going to, when I've drawn here, going to raise it just a touch. And these are very loose sketches with which to work on our composition. And then we'll use these for our values studies. So I'm just gonna do a general shape here. Now that I've raised the horizon, what's going to happen is I'm going to have more water than sky, which is OK, this is my choice. I'm using this as my reference and not trying to make a copy and using it as my reference. I'm just getting a rough shape for the trees here. And I'm going to stop the trees about two-thirds of the way it over. And the there's a little bit of land that comes out from the trees. This is the horizon back here that has some sort of shape on the horizon. Let's add that. And the land comes out here, breaking that horizon line a little bit. Okay, that's my general shape. And I want to do the shape of the reflection a little bit too so I can keep that in mind as I'm painting and certainly with my value sketch. So I've allowed extra room And down here for water so I can take advantage of having more space for the water. Okay? And then what I really like about this image is these reflections and still that come across this really great image for painting water reflections. So I wanna draw on those little v's of reflection as well. Okay, so that's what I'm gonna do right now for that sketch. Now for this one, let's do this one too. I haven't out you might as well. This composition is not quite a striking to me for some reason. But I'm gonna do it anyway and see it might work out once we do the value study. It might work out to be more interesting. And this has the horizon line a little bit lower than Center, which is fine. I think we'll keep that because we do have some tall trees here. So here I'm going to keep the horizon line a little bit lower, which only let me less reflection. But we need to see some of these great trees. And again, I'm just sort of lightly sketching in the general line of these trees. This one that pops up a bit and a little one pops up here. Beckoning to detailed with this, I do want to account for some of this land. And that does come right to the middle of that piece of land. Maybe that's what we'll do. Maybe I'll move this over just a touch. There we go. So we're almost, almost going to be cropping some of that. Ok. And then OK. And again, sort of loosely, loosely sketched in where the reflection will be. And we'll add all these details later. But this is just to give us a sense, okay, very, very simple compositions. But both of them are fine. I don't have the horizon line or any main focal point right in the middle. And either of these, and here it will probably be somewhere around here or the reflection down here. And also on this one with the composition, the horizon line a little bit lower and you'll probably be a contrast here. That will be our focal point. But we'll be able to work that out when our inner value studies, which we'll get to right now. 4. Value Studies: So for my value study, I'm going to keep it really simple. I'm just going to use a pretty small round brush. That's, these are very small paintings. You don't need a big brush. And I've just made a little puddle here of some cobalt blue. I'd like to do it in cobalts. It's a nice medium blue and I can make it darker or lighter as a need. And make sure you have your reference images handy, even though you've already done your compositions, you want to have your reference images here. That's going to help you decide on your, on your value. Reason I keep my sponge here is to help save some paper towels. I can dab it pretty thin mix then will be lights in the situation, and that's gonna be the sky. So remember we raise the horizon here, so we're going to have a pretty light sky. And my lightest light here is probably going to be the land that's right underneath the trees, so the sky is not going to be dark at all. It's a light sky. And remember sky does dark and towards the top and as later when it hits the horizon. Ok, to remind me of my lightest light, I'm just gonna leave that bit of land white for now. And then the water itself is going to be similar in value to the sky. A little bit darker. Water is just always a touch darker than the sky. Okay, now these are those nice little bits that went right across and keeping them all in pretty light tone, slightly darker than the sky. And the water as it gets close to ours, probably appear to be a little bit darker. Well, now remember this is not the reflection part of the water. This is just the blue part of the water or it is the reflection, I should say, is just the reflection of the sky and that the reflection of the trees. Okay? Again, this is just a value study. I'm not being super particular about the drawing. I just want to keep and mind the values that I'm creating. Okay, so we really only have about two values here, which is the sky and the water. And just add a touch mark color here to the prompt of the water because that will just be a little bit darker than the sky. Okay? Now, this is a pretty quick one, but for the trees, I'm going to make a pretty thick mix, thicker of this cobalt because I do, when I squint at this image, you don't have to squint a lot, just a little. It's obviously quite darker and within the trees there's a variety of darkness. I see the dark is a bit sort of right here. So I'll put the paint right there and then we'll go up that. Now. It depends how detailed you want to get. I want to get painting and I very complicated drawing, so I don't need to get too detailed into the, the value. But what I've done here is just to make it lighter at the top, just added a wet brush to paint that was already there. And that makes it a touch lighter at the top of the trees and darker at the bottom. And this is that piece of land that will end up being the lightest part, breaks the horizon a little below the horizon year. Okay, now let's do the reflection and the reflection of the trees and leaving space for that land. Reflection in the water will be a little bit lighter. Things that are in real life and reflection look a little bit lighter. And things that are. Light in real life and the reflection a little bit darker, so everything is just muted to touch when it hits the water. Okay. So now you can tell that those reflection images of the sky or the Still Water is a pretty light. That's just not how I want them to be. So I'm going to have to add a little more color to those. I want to wait for it to dry a minute though. So really while that that part done there is dry, I can go back in with a very thick, almost pure color and added where I see a bit of these shadow. So there are shadows here under the trees, in particular, few bits that I, that I really recognize and that is reflected in a little bit in the water as well. Okay. I just wanna make sure that I don't get confused when I'm painting and make this really light. Those streaks across we're not going to be that want them more in line with the color over here. Okay? That gives me a general feeling. This, this back here, this, this distant land does have a little bit of code. Little bit. Not as much as the trees in the front. In fact, that might have been too much. So let me just take a damp brush, lift out some of that color. Nobody's going to see these but me, but it is really helpful to have this as you're going along. Okay. Let's move on to the other one. And if any, make any changes to that reference, I will. Okay, this one is quite a darker image. The sky even itself is darker. So I'm ignoring the clouds for right now because the way I paint the sky, I just let the clouds happen naturally. So I'm not going to worry. This is a painting about clouds and I would be really much more concerned about it. But right now I just want to get the value differential between the trees, the sky, and the water. Okay, so that's our sky here. Again, maybe touched too dark and that sky let some of that pain out. And I'm not staying within my rectangle here. That's fine. Again, this is just bored me. Ok, so there's my sky and the reflection of that sky and water will be similar. So let's get some of that same value down here. 2p swoop some of that color and added down here. Okay? And the rest of this I've left for the trees. And again, within the trees they do have a variety of values. So the strongest darks over here, I'm going to leave that strip of land where the sun is shining as my lightest White. And I'll just, while I'm doing this, drag this deep dark color down into the reflection. Thicker paint will give you a darker value. And watercolor, there's some dark over here. I like knowing right now some of those light tree trunks that popped out, because those will just be details we add later. Right now I just want to have the main values as if you're just squinting at it. They have a dark dark appear. You need to reflect that in the water. But I do want to just clarify that this is not going to be a pure white, so I'm just gonna take my brush which has not been fully cleaned off, so it has a little color still to it. And just you can still tell us the latest light, but it's not going to be a pure wait. Okay, that's all I'm gonna do for the value studies. 5. Getting Started/Drawing: Okay, so this is my final piece of paper and we've argued dot r value sketch. So now it's time to decide, I think for the purpose of this class and what we wanna do, we're gonna go with this image here, which was the trees reflecting in the water. They both were, this one just has a little more interests with the water and the trees. This was a primarily tree reflection, which is beautiful as well. But then we're gonna do this one today. So now that I have that, I'm going to keep that next to me. And just taking a regular number two pencil and the pencil will do, I'm going to lately sketch this onto my final page. We're not going to do a very detailed drawing. This is just so we're getting to placement of where we want things to go. Because again, in watercolour, it's hard if you make a mistake to go back and change something. I've raised my horizon line and I look at this image, the original image arrays that horizon line a little bit. So let's just do lightly draw that on here. If you want to use a ruler, that's fine. I just I don't do that, but you can if you want to worry about getting that straight. Okay, so there's a horizon line and above the horizon where those trees, and I'm just going to loosely sketched shape for the trees though I think I'm so concerned about here with the trees is the height and don't want it to go off the page. I want some sky above it. And also how far across the page I want to go. So when we planned out our composition was about two-thirds of the way across to this last little bit of trees will come down to here. Not gonna draw any clouds. I'm not going to draw a specific trees, just getting the shapes. So that's it for our drawing. 6. Painting Step 1: Sky, First Wash: Okay, so I have my drawing on the board. I actually have my board at an angle. I just took a little tab of office supplies to prop it up. Anything you can do to get a little bit propped up at an angle, you can paint vertically if you want, but this is easier for me to show you what I'm doing. And I'd taken my brush and made a little puddle of cobalt blue here to start. Just a neutral middle blue. This is a car I'd like to start with for my skies. The other thing I want to have handy is a paper towel or a tissue. And I'm gonna use that to sort of carve out or clouds as we go. So let's just jump right on in. What I'm gonna do first, just see, you know, is paint in the sky going around the trees. I'm actually going to bring that same reflection of the same color down into the water. Again, avoiding where the trees are just to sort of get a base color going. So if you have a nice thick brush with a lot of paint on it, let's get going. We're gonna get that bead going right across the top. And the bead is where all of the paint, especially this is really helpful, comes down on an angle and you can see there's a bit of a bead of paint developing there. So now is it that I'm coming around the trees, I am going to make way for the trees. I'm going to let a paint on there. That's okay. I need to data that actually, yeah, I do little bit too much paint, just getting a very loose shape and the trees here coming around. Be able to carve that out a little bit better. When I add the tree's n because the trees are going to be darker than the sky. So that's always really nice and I don't like these. These are those big bits that are going to drip down. Sometimes that's fine, but okay. Just continuing are grabbing the bottom bead and dragging along as we go and then you get a nice even wash there. Okay. Now while it's still wet, I'm just going to take the edge of a paper towel and just carve out a little bit where I want some trees. So if I do it now, then it won't look like a hard line. I don't really want it to look like a hard line. Just getting some bits out. Little lifting here and there to be some plots, cloud shapes. Okay. Alright, let's continue. I'm gonna take the same before it dries could take the same, avoiding this white part of land. Remember the land is going to be the lightest late. Based on that value study we did. Still just using the same batch of cobalt I started at the beginning. If you need to go back in, you can mix a little more. We want the shape to be defined if the reflection. But again, that reflection of the tree is just like the trees itself. We're going to be darker than the sky, darker than the reflection. So can always paint over and watercolor if it's darker, campaign over something and make it lighter though. So this is a pretty thin wash of cobalt. Let's not forget this side here. Is not a thick but a pain and isn't everything in watercolor, you know, tries lighter. So picking up that bead Again. I'm not going to worry about the reflection of the clouds and the water right now. Okay? Alright, that's it. I mean, look how quickly that happened. Actually, you know what I do want to do though, because I wanna make sure I leave those districts of reflection across. So I do want to go ahead and do that now because some strikes here. I think that'll be interesting. And I'm not going to worry about what's gonna happen here. I'm gonna get some blossoms there. That's okay because I am going to add some deeper color into the water as we go. Ok, let's let that dry and we'll come back and get started on the tree stuff. 7. Painting Step 2: Trees, First Wash: Okay. So the sky and water have dried a little bit. You can see I do have some blossoms here. That's okay. We're going to go over that again. This is going to be that distant lands, so we won't notice it. And here we can add some deeper ripples in the water to darken the color. So when you're doing the reflection, usually everything in the reflection is a little bit less intense, so the sky will be a little bit darker and the reflection and the dark trees would be a little bit lighter than they are in real life in the reflection. That's just something that happens in the water. So for the trees, these are the image I have is trees in fall and early fall, I guess so I'm going to start with a little raw Sienna. I don't usually paint with green. Sometimes I do add a little leaf green or something like that. But to me these trees have a very yellow undertone. So all I'm gonna do to start is start with some of this raw sienna getting the shape here. And now those of you who know who painted with me before. And then my video, you can do that same technique here. You can spray a little bit onto the page and then just let, let that sort of drift into the trees. Now, it's not as necessary here because we don't, we're not as concerned with each trees beautiful shape. And I don't love these shapes at the sky has created for the trees either. But going to get the value darker so we can change that a little bit. And I'm just taking this raw sienna all the way down. Sort of dragging in a little bit lately with this side of the brush. I don't want this to dry because I'm going to add the blues amount of paint mixed directly onto the page. But again, if you've looked at fall trees before or really any trees though, they change color from the top down, which makes sense, that's where it's exposed most chelate, little spray there. You can see where I've sprayed here. It does just give it a bit of a different effect, not quite some solid. Just dragging the color down lately, I wanna get this unifying color all throughout. I am gonna do a light wash on the sandy beach of this raw sienna. And to do that right now, real thin light color again, it does dry lighter, and once we add in all the other darks, it's going to be much later when I had you watercolor is very layered, working just slowly from light to dark. There's that Sandy Beach. Now before the rest of this drives, in fact, I'm going to give it all light. Trees and little bit of a spray there. I don't want them to be dry because I want to take this blue and this is just what I really love it. And in fact, because I put the color down, it almost works in the same way that a clear spray works when painting with. Like we did with the cherry trees. If you watched my other video. And now I'm adding a little bit of French ultramarine. And here too, just to deepen the color a little as I go, I'm just dotting it here and there. It's making a really, really lovely green. I may not want to quite so green everywhere again, this, these are trees in the fall. So right now what I'm doing is using my reference, just sort of forming individual trees. Maybe this one down here is a little more yellow and there are going to be some deeper shadows. And for my shadow color, I'm taking a little bit of brown matter, oops, mixed with some cobalt, making that, that's really dark and be too dark for the stage. But let's see what happens. Yeah, it's a little too dark. Okay. I'm not ready for that yet. I'll leave that to them. Pile death will come back to it. Let's stick with the Android blue and Ross Yianna for now. And just dabbing here and they're letting it spread while it's still wet. Make some interesting tree shapes. We don't want to be treated be green, so let's leave a red one right in here. So let's have some green coming over this way. Now my palate when I want don't want to do is have it bleed down onto the beach? Yes. I want to make sure that I protect that area still. Let I can do that. And I banned away. Let's use a rose matter. So you have write that, read lips. I don't wanna be a bright, bright red. This is still early fall. Go make a little mix of rows matter, that's great. Rose matter and raw sienna would a lovely warm color live a bit more red, they're pink. Okay. That's gonna be my pink tree. Oh, yep. Hurt though. And because it's a little darker than the sky, that value I can get a different shape than I've left here. Woo, lovely, lovely. That come down. And people have a few more little bits of red over here. Balance that color, add a little bit. Yeah, that will help even out the shape over here to so as long as you're putting dark overlay, you can change the shape. But you cannot come back with lighter. You can data and wipe out. But it's easier if you think that through ahead of time. Let's go back and fill in here, the bottom of this tree is moving from red into the darker color. Now I think we're ready for that dark mix. I made the shadows and the leaves come down. And underneath all these trees, just this is again a mix of cobalt and brown matter. It's actually mixing into the Antwerp Bluemix. I haven't my palate, that's fine. And these are gonna be the shadows underneath. I wasn't paying attention. And let me write down. It's okay. It's still wet enough that I can reclaim that land there and add some burnt umber. And let's mix that with some interrupt flew. Here we go. It's not more warm, fall color and not quite so purpley. And I'll work better for these shadows. Okay, I'm just going to sort of outlining some shapes of trees using this darker colored to kind of tighten up some shapes of these trees here. Again, this is not to detail that are seeing this from a distance and trying to paint, even when I paint in my studio, I try to replicate the feeling of painting outdoors, where it just wanna capture the feeling of something. I'm not looking to do an exact replication of it. Okay? Now, I really want to get into some of these shadows that are coming here on this beach. It's already started here. Thinks that it's dry enough that it won't bleed too much. Perfect. Again, I just have my mix of burnt number. I ended up mixing it with cobalt, put a burnt umber and interrupt blue Prussian blue cobalt. Could some of these nice shadows that I'm getting. And when the shadow everywhere I'm noticing, I'm my image that some of the trees come down and they're not in shadow. A little bit still wet enough that it's not going to be a super defined shape, which is good. I don't want that. Okay? And there is a deep shadow here coming from a tree that sort of screen. But I do think that dark shadows important include, let's see, there's something shadows coming down onto the pH a little more. And I'm just using from that ending I'm gonna color, I'm just using a wet brush to drag some of that color down. 8. Painting Step 3: Tree Reflections, First Wash: Let's start with, start with some blue. And remember I'm leaving the lightest light to be the beach. So we're just gonna take my, I'm using, I forgot to mention earlier amusing or round brush. Now I've switched away from my mixing in the brand matter here. I've switched, switched away from my map brush and I'm just getting deeper color this reflection, I'm just dragging the color between the inter blow pedal, the brand matter pedal. Driving back and forth to get these colors. You want to switch back to your map pressure this time you can, I'm gonna go and for them, CNN again. 0, okay, a little muddy. Actually, what would be fun right now is to do some spring just like we do with the trees, to spray the tree reflection. I get the same idea. Just make sure you control. You don't want that spray to get down into the water. If you keep it up in the the area that you left for their reflection and you'll really get some nice blending. This is just the Android blue again, going back and forth. And I painted right over that. That's okay. I can lift it up like I did earlier with the beach. And remember to leave it up for here though, Mr. Clay magic eraser, This will be perfect for this region. It makes a funny sound, but it definitely works. Okay. I'd like to get the whites taking care of. It's always confusing to me to see whites because it really throws off your values so much to have that bright light. So I like very much to sort of fill in the white part as soon as I can. And that's why when I paint in our coasts, very much an iterative process and go back and forth and add more layers. Now we have the reflection of those trees in the water. We haven't added any of the ripples yet, but don't worry, we will. What do you want to do before gets too far along is paint that background land. So I'm gonna make a petal of coupon and had to mix that with a little bit of French Ultra to deepen it. And then I'm just going to take some of this luck and my palate. Good or good Mac, that's the leftover from painting the Trees, which is going to tamp it down and give it a little bit of a grain s. We don't want this land back here to be really prominent. But it's going to do two purposes right now which is covered up clipping that bleed that we had before the gloss and said Give us into steps for us to to dark. Okay, let's let everything dry and then we'll take a look and see what we're gonna do next. 9. Painting Step 4: Deeper Values, Trees: Okay, so this is all dry. You have some big blossoms here in the water, but that's fine because we're gonna go over the water again to get a deeper, darker color and that will just won't even, you won't even notice it. So let's go in now we have a nice base, the skies lovely. I don't think we're going to need to touch that very much, but we do need to solidify and dark and some of these trees and get a little bit more realistic look to them. So this time I'm going to start with my large rigor. I think this might be kind of fun to do to trees. So I'm going to start with a mix of French ultramarine. Just getting some nice petals here on the palette. And the things over a bit. Some of this raw sienna, olive green, I'm getting there. And just going to go over a bit using the side of the brush really, I'm just adding a darker tone across the whole thing. So this is sort of a, a muddy, muddy color like I excited and olive green colour. But I'm just using the side of this large rigor has a lot of paint on it. You could use a round brush here or even a mop really. And I'm just dragging it down, allowing it to skip and hop around with some of the texture of the paper. I also want to change some of these leaf shapes. Ok, now I'm gonna add some of that Antwerp blue and some raw sienna. That's a nice warm or green. And just trying to change the shape appear a little bit. The shape, I laughed when I did the sky wasn't it was just a little too hard of a shape, I think. And again, just dragging this down now this is when you can go back in with your spray bottle and let it just bleed through another thing to do. And we did this in the cherry blossom video. If you watch that, it's just cleaning brush off and just have it had water on it. And then when you drag the brush that has just the clean water in it, then that's where the paint will will go. And again, it's up here on an angle. So the paint will naturally go down. And I have to fiddle with this shape up here at the top of it. And I'm adding just the plain water on top, so it is going to send that out. But I wanna make sure we get that shape right. And remembering that with trees, the shadowy bits will be mostly at the bottom. And then this really lovely dark shadow that comes from all these trees before we hit some of the beach. So I can drag it down into here right now to do that as well. That what I'm doing is just trying to get a more unified shape on these trees. And just interesting Scott line here, skyline where the trees meet the sky and darken the whole thing up. But because we're watercolor and when layering this, those cause I put on earlier are still been a pop through right there. That's such a lovely little bit with the with the it looks like little tree leaves there that summer that fall color in number using brown matter here. It's pretty strong, so I'm just going to drag it through the mics. We already have to tone it down and I think that will be fun to have underneath as well that brand matter. We're really deepen that shadow that we have going. And I want to get some of that in here too. Even though I loved that part there, I want to have it be more of the fall leaf color. Going back in here with some of these. I left earlier. Trees in the fall, especially this early fall that we're in right now, have a variety of colors. Some have changed in some habit. So this is a good representation of that. So I'm going back and forth. You're capturing that the drips is they come down to, there's some lovely blending happening in there, but I just wanted to touch darker. So I'm going to make a real thin then wash to go through this. I want it a little darker, but I do like some of that color that's happening there. Okay. It's really good. This shadow down. Just taking a brush has hardly any paint on it at all. Because I wanna get this shadow shape down. And they're just coming down to a beach and so that it's not going to be a completely solid line. I think what happens if take that's what happens here. Again, my palate now is just a mix of everything I was using. And it's actually giving me a really nice shadow color by doing that. That was the Antwerp Ross Yana, brown matter and the French-Algerian a little bit of everything. What was left to my palette is giving me this here. Try this color to bring these tree shadows down to the beach a little bit. Ok, I think I'll leave that. One thing I wanna do first, this is looking very distinctive. I'm just going to with the damp brush the lattice a little more distance. So we're not going to see as much clearly defined because if it were closer, okay. 10. Painting Step 5: Deeper Values, Tree Reflection: I want to bring some of these darker colors down here into the water. Because it is the reflection. And the water that darker, dark colors are going to be a little lighter and the light colors are going to be a little bit darker, so it's all just a little bit more muted. So right now I just have a pile of brown butter and a pile of and two or blue. And I'm just going to alternate between those two to give me. And this will be a more solidified shape to the shadow won't be quite as differentiated as the trees themselves. Just plopping in these, going back and forth here with these two colors. And just using again the side of this large rigor to drag the color down, you can use a round brush for this perfectly fine to do that as well. And I think these two colors alternating, we're gonna give that effect of the fall trees when we try to keep them a little bit did not get too muddy with them. Now, I want to be a bit true to life. So where there's file tree is reflecting, I want to add of course a little more of the fall color here. And this is a pretty light wash. I'm not going to dark or too thick. But if when we finish a find that this is still too light, we'll go back over it again. It's getting colder here in New England, so things are not drawing as quickly in my watercolor paintings. You see I'm going over some of the separation that I had left out before, but that's fine. I can pull that out before it dries if I feel like I want to, but I just want to get these darker reflections in. Because watercolor dries lighter, it's really nice if you're, we want to compare two values against each other to paint them similar in time until you really get a feel for what it looks like when it's wet versus what it looks like when it's dry. If you paint them both when they're wet and you can tell obviously this one is darker than that when they're wet and that will be the same one of their dry. If you have one that's painted and then dries, it's drying lighter so it's going to throw off. You might have a tendency to paint it to Dark is what I'm saying because you're thinking you're comparing something to another. I think I need some of those raw sienna mixed in with the antral. Okay, remember Russia? Think that raw sienna Antwerp color needs to pop down here into the reflection a little more. I didn't use that quite a bit up top. So so you wanna make sure that your reflection makes sense with your thing is reflecting, of course. Okay, this is looking like that. We need to add a little bit. I don't want it just to be over on this end. So I'm going to add a little bit over here to see what I'm dragging across these lighter areas. I just want to, by doing that, giving a starting to give the effect that it's water. And see these tree, this one is high, okay? These have to be a bit higher as well. And those are that enter blue, raw Sienna mix. So we'll use that here. It's still wet enough that when I EC, when I just dab it back in there, just spreading naturally. Okay, so now I want to get back and some of those reflection, so I'm taking that cleaning out my brush, getting it just damp, not fully wet. And then you can just drag it and it will lift up. Gets some of those lines. You need to do it twice and wiping it in-between. Actually even some of these taking that same damn brush and just dragging it over the web part to show some of those that ripple, those ripples that happened in the water. This is not a completely still day. It's a little too little to distinctive so forth so far in the distance there. Okay. Remember you're going to see the things that cause you to more distinctly than you would think in the distance. So I'm alternating here by just using this clean damp brush, dragging it across to get that ripple effect, which is alternating, lifting out from the color and then dragging color back into the water. So this is a really good stage to do it. And I'm just keep pressing it off and dabbing it so it's not soaking wet. You don't wanna create blossoms here. I just wanted to use this in a controlled way and see where else can we do it? Again, I'm not falling my image anymore at this point. I'm just going and what I want to happen in the painting. Dragging straight across long ways, all the way across and then just in little ways to starting to drive some strange or lose the ability to do some of that. But I think we need to get some of those lines down here. So what I'm gonna do is just take a bit of mush. Everything left on the palate is Get some big, thicker lines across here. Turn to have a street. And when you do. 11. Painting Step 6: Deeper Values, Water: So just like I was saying, with the reflection will be a little more muted than the, than the image itself. The water which is reflecting the sky will do the same thing. Sky as it goes up away from the horizon darkens. So we're seeing here, or if the reflection of the sky than we do with the actual sky. So this part of the water is going to reflect a darker sky than we see up here. These will be, this is reflecting the same and then this bottom sections reflecting a darker sky. And because it's closer to us to, the contrast is going to be greater. So I'm going to darken up this front part of the water and radiated back. And so I'm going to clean off my brush when I clean up my palette. You could even use a smaller, much smaller amount that we use in the beginning that that can work for this two. Okay? So I'm going to get some cobalt and a really nice bit of color here. Cobalts puddle and some of that. And two or blue. It's getting a little bit of both of those I'm going to try to mix together, but for now I just want to have a clear distinction of the two. Pretty good size pedal, a pretty good amount of this, and load up my brush. So something really cool that happens if you're painting on rough paper, is that you can get some of the texture, the brush will catch on some of the texture of the paper and it gives a very cool effect of Sparkle underwater. This is one of the ways of watercolor paper is really magical. If you're using cold press, it can happen as well, but it really happens best on death. So let's see and hope that we get that. Okay, I'm just starting at the bottom here and I'm going to actually turn the page over. And just having the cobalt I'm going up and the way that that happens, there we go, we're starting to get some. Now the trick is to getting it where you want it to be. Because as your brush gets a little more dry, that's where you get it most. Mostly. I'm going to go ahead and turn this around right now. And I'm gonna alternate Now, get into some of that. Interrupt blue. So one way you can control it is if you want the reflection to be in the middle, you can go halfway across one way and then hopefully it's still too way, too wet and you wanna get more. Just dry your brush alphabet. Let's keep going. Here we go. Some nice sparkle in the water. It just has such a nice effect. And I'm going right over what we had before. The reflection, because I want this whole thing to be darker. Okay. Can't be totally dry. We need some paint on this brush. I have to make some more little bit of the cobalt and the Antwerp blue together. And while we're doing this, we're gonna be covering up these blossoms that we had on the first go round. You still might see them come through. But what's going to happen is they're going to have looking like looking like they're they're on purpose like their water in the water, something reflecting in the water. And just going straight over that reflection. And you can see we're getting more of these sparkle water sparkle, the paper texture showing through. As the brush gets more dry. Ok, you don't want to get the same color all the way up. So I'm really going to rinse the brush act now and just take the color that's there. Also as you go into the distance, you won't see the sparkle as much because again, that's something you'll notice. When it's closer to you, you see more of those details and you do when it's farther away. Ok. Let's turn it back on and see how that worked. I worked pretty well and Haven go darker in the front of this water. But I like to do from time to time as white, but these badges, because it really gives you a sense and using this nice white tape, what it will look like framed within that nice Matt around it. Clean it up a little bit. Well, I really like how that worked with a reflection once we painted, that's water over here again, that really made that look like a reflection, setting it back a bit. So I'm going to let this dry. We may add a darker tone onto the very foreground here I think I'm thinking about doing that. And I want to touch up areas at the beach here and then just take a final look at it before we do finishing touches. 12. Painting Step 7: Finishing Touches: Okay, I still want to make this foreground darker. So now I'm gonna go, just really go for a French ultramarine mixed with some of my Antwerp blue. And let's just do it. Just go straight across bold and brave. And we can even get some more of these little sparkles with this stark right on top. I'm not gonna do it all the way up just in this foreground area and are being rough with it. I'm not going gently to make a nice wash. Kinda going like I said, bold and brave with it. Because these lines that happened for me not being so careful with my wash already look like they're part of the ripple and the water. Okay. I think that's enough. I think we can finally put that to rest. And now I just wanna do some touch ups with the BCCI area. And I'm going to use a smaller round brush for that. Let's see. It's just it's just too pale right now. I like that freight color underneath, but we need to add, we're going to go with a little bit, some burnt umber. Don't want it to be dark. But I think that this dragged across on top of that lighter color, you know what, I'm just going to mix some burnt umber with some raw sienna. And I think this will work a very light, light mix and not too much paint on the brush. We're gonna sort of do similar to we did with the water on this beach with some of that texture. And I want some of that light to show through. So I'm taking the side of the brush and just dragging it lively across. Picking up some of the texture of the paper. Do that back here as well. And on the top here. Just want that to be a little bit more purposeful looking. I might even make some of that with our blue. There we go. That's what I need. Just a little bit more purposeful up here and some of these areas that have popped up when I was painting them reflection. Just going to take it a little mix of this burnt umber and some, some of the blue left on my palette. To make some of these little bits look intentional, not like they were mistakes. Okay, I feel pretty good about that. It was going to lift up some bits and I think I love. So again, taking a small round brush, you can even use your script brush here, that's the one we use for signing your brush. You can use your small rigor. That is also a good one. And what we're gonna do a paper towel I hand in hand or Mr. Magic, Mr. Clean Magic Eraser, going to pull out some vertical lines here. And let's just do a few here. I'm going to show you. They're going to either be tree trunks or I don't know, some light posts or something. I'm just taking a damp brush and running it in a straight line over this area of paint and you can see it's just lifting it right out. I can take my Magic Eraser and dab. It. Can take a paper towel and dab it. And it just gives me a vertical line which like I said, can be a tree track. It can be a part of a building, is lifting out, doesn't work. And you can also add some white glass ends. I think we'll do a mix of that. So I don't just want one. Let's, let's capitalize on a little bit of light here too. And just very lightly. And eat a little more water. You don't want it too wet because it'll lead you will be able to control it. But it has to be wet enough that it can lift up some of that. And if you've got a damp and then take a paper towel and just glad if it will lift that where you had that water and that's balance it out a little bit, maybe do some of that over here. We've got this beautiful effect that came when we split the spray bottle. So I love that spray bottle technique for trees. Feel like here is c or it can be a good balance. We have to, there makes something around here. It's calling out later vertical. If you do this and you find you've done it in the wrong spot or you don't like it, you can paint over it. Maybe another little one over here. Yet I'm not really looking at the image anymore. I'm just trying to make a painting that looks balance to me. Let's do an odd number. Let's do five. Let's make a little tree trunk pumping up through here. Oh yeah, that's gotta kind of divides us trees. They're a little bit. We added some lights in there, so we need to do that same thing. And the reflection. And wonderful thing about watercolors is that it drives so quickly. You can have a finished painting in a pretty short time. Remembering if all that preparatory did though that the values study and thinking about composition ahead of time. Let's just actually want to show you how you could do this with a little bit at some highlights here and there was a really tiny brush. I just go right from the tube. This is, gosh, I just got a damp brush debit in here just a little bit. And we can add some highlights in here too. So let's say, for example, this didn't quite turn out as light as I wanted it to. And her flexion didn't show up as much either. Okay. Gosh, we're water-based, meaning it won't be quite as bright white when it tries. And let's see, we can go over this again with the clash. Well, you don't have to do both of these. I'm just using the brush is to show you the different techniques. You can get a lift out to get some of those highlights or you can use the class was going to look into light to me, so I'm just going to debit Water gaps and lift it up. Okay, now that of course, the most important thing we have our script brush out, make sure it's really clean. You don't want that gloss on anymore. And you need to sign your name. I'm going to take a nice thick mix of some French ultramarine. And the bottom right corner, you have to leave a little bit of room for the map, but Egypt, so don't sign up right up against the tape. And however you want to assign it. There you go. 13. Final Thoughts: Fun and Easy Technique to Paint Watercolor Landscapes: Reflections in Water: I hope you enjoyed that and I hope you learn something. We started with two different reference photos and then using our sketchbook, we worked out the composition, making some adjustments, and then add value studies for both. I'll post both images so you can choose which painting you wanna do. After we chose which painting to do, we started by drawing our image on our final piece of paper, working from light to dark, adding wash. After wash. And finally adding all those beautiful FUN details. I hope you learn something new. Some final tips and techniques to paint reflections in water. We worked out that reflections are always more muted than the image in real life, and that you can create the sparkle of water through the watercolor paper. We learned lifting out and how to correct some mistakes if they pop up. And we added some final details, you've been whitewash. I would love to see your paintings. Please share them with me. And if you'd like, I can give you some comments or feedback. If you're interested in learning more about me and my artwork, you can follow me on Instagram and amp P word, and look forward to painting with you again sometime soon. Thank you.