Gouache Landscapes: 7 Days of Sketchbook Practice to Develop Your Style

1. Introduction: Painting landscapes is for me, one of the most relaxing activities to ever exist. I am instantly transported to beautiful places, away from the busy city and working all day in front of a computer. I just let myself playful, painting organic shapes, testing colors, adding textures, marks, and not focusing on mistakes because the best landscapes are the ones that are expressive, colorful, full of depth and certainly imperfect. Hello. My name is Claude de Melchor and I am an architect and artist, originally from a beautiful island in Spain called Teneri. I currently combine my architecture career with my art practice and teach classes on sculpture, as well as workshops, collaborating with other clients like the Swiss stationary brand, Karen dash because I currently reside in Switzerland. Where I really enjoy looking at the breathtaking nature that surrounds me. But in order to get to the point where landscapes became second nature and truly enjoyable to me, I had to do some digging and get to know myself, what I like, and how I prefer to depict the world. And I invite you to do the same with this class. Throughout seven days, you will develop your own personal painting style by creating a unique landscape using wash. I will guide you through a week of sketchbook practice in which we will really, I mean, really, really, really, get to know ourselves. You will learn how to analyze, reinterpret, reference pictures, sketch organic and stylized shapes. Find a color palette and textures using mark making techniques and how to bring it finally all together into a beautiful and expressive composition. This class is for everyone that has previous artistic experience or actually none at all. I want you all to have fun, so I will give you all the tools you need to just focus on painting and not on the technicalities connected to it. The end of this class, you will have a sketchbook filled with references to your favorite colors, to your favorite shapes, textures, and compositions that you can always look back to whenever you feel a little bit stuck or uninspired. By setting aside just 30 minutes every day, you will notice improvement. Creating landscapes will eventually become second nature in a way of unwinding after a busy day. I'm very excited to embark on this journey with you, so let's get started. Let's get painting and testing and creating. See you in class, guys. It's a week, so be ready. 2. Project Overview: Welcome to our seven day Skillshare class on creating a unique, colorful and personal landscape. And by doing so, finding your artistic voice and creating a little bit of space for enjoyment and definitely relaxation. So by the end of this course, you will have developed your own unique, personal style by exploring your artistic preferences through daily prompts. Each day we will focus on one core topic. I have chosen this topic specifically to help you concentrate on one aspect of the creation process at a time, to give you space and time to explore your personal preferences in peace at your own pace and with no stress. We'll start with a bit of a theoretical introduction, but don't worry, it's not boring. We will be analyzing the style of other artists and how landscape look in their different styles. This will definitely help you realize what your own preferences are. Kind of colors you like, what styles, what types of composition you naturally gravitate towards. We will then actually proceed to start our own journey, learning about our sketching abilities, creating compelling color composition, investigating the shapes found in nature, creating and recreating them. Using some color blocking and some thumbnailink to finally put it all together into our own little masterpiece, also having a very full sketchbook. So you're welcome to actually extend the week project and work it into your schedule as you see fit. You can even repeat some lessons two or three days in a row if you feel like you need a little bit more time to practice. So I actually would recommend you to set aside around half an hour to an hour for each lessons. I sometimes may take more or less time depending on how inquisitive you get, but it should never feel like a burden. This is a fun exploration that will help us develop our own artistic language, and it should always remain fun. That is the most important thing. In order to follow this class, you just need to be curious and ready to dig deeper into your art practice. And definitely be ready to have fun and do lots of testing. We will do color tests. We will do shape tests. We will do mark making tests and composition test. So I really hope you like to test things out because this class is definitely meant to be taken by test happy people, if you know what I mean? I have also prepared a Pintresbard for you with references, and I encourage you to do the same. So collecting all of these references in one place is very good, especially for those days when you feel a little bit uninspired, let's say it that way. Even some fans have printed out said references because I like to look at them analogically, and through then when I'm painting, I just can look at all of them as a sort of collage altogether. You can also actually just work with your own pictures and your own references, and that is definitely highly encouraged. As you will be depicting a place that you already have memories attached with. As a final project, what I will be looking for is a beautiful painting of a landscape that is inspired or that has inspired you in some way. Maybe you have already made some great memories there. Maybe it is a place that you want to visit in the future, or you simply think that the landscape looks dope, beautiful, relaxing, amazing. You want to be there. I would also love to see the work that you do on your sketchbook, especially the shape, color, composition, test test, test, test test. So you're welcome to also share a link to your own Pinter sport so that we all can get inspired. Also posting your progress along the way will help you in many ways, especially because I will be able to give you feedback and help you keeping track of your process. Maybe everyone joins and, like, cheers for each other during this week. While looking at your projects, I will definitely be on the lookout for expressive, loose, unique paintings, nothing correct. Very nice strokes, how you use the colors, how you highlight something in your landscape, how you uniquely interpret the nature around it, how you reinterpret the nature. And I'm definitely not looking for realistic landscape. So I want you to feel free to create something quite unique, expressionistic and not feel like you have to depict everything like it really is. In general, I just want to see your personality and your style shined through your art. Cannot wait to witness your journey, to find in your unique artistic voice because I want you to feel as free and as relaxed as I do when painting landscapes. So now let's get started. Firstly, I will show you what materials we will be using, and I will quickly guide you through some basic uh painting techniques so that you're not completely lost in the beginning. They're very easy, so don't worry. Let's get started. Hope you're as ready as I am. 3. Materials: So let's start our exploration week or journey by getting some of the admin work out of the way. So first of all, as for materials, we will need sketchbooks. I have three different ones here, some of them are full, some are not. I would recommend you 240-300 grams. But the sketchbooks I'm currently using all have around 100 grams thick paper, and it is totally fine. The paper should, however, be suitable for mixed media or watercolor. Anything actually works, something a little bit more durable. So these sketchbooks that I have here, the square ones are by a German brand I bought them in Munich where I was living before, and I actually really enjoy the square format because then it's actually very easy to translate whatever you do here into social media, like Instagram, which might seem like a silly thing to think about when choosing a sketchbook, but it actually saves you quite a lot of time when trying to post on social media. And I am quite lazy with this. So in the end, you will have less editing to do because it's already layout in a square. But if you have any other size or layout laying around, then you're welcome to use it. We are going to try to fill them up as much as we can with all our testing and painting and trying again and experimenting, so just bring them on. So we will actually, apart from sketching, need some sketching tools, a pencil, HB or H or B or softer better. An eraser, a sharpener, maybe a black pen, some transparent paper for sketching or a light box or a window is also good. And then also for making some textures and marks, we will need some various other artistic materials. Like, for example, pens, wash itself can also be used. I have here some oil pastels, very messy, the oil pastels, some pencils and some neocolors which are wax pastel. I recommend you to use just whatever you always wanted to try out, whatever seems like fun for you. So gouaches actually acts a little bit like watercolor, but there is two different types. There's the acrylic quash and the normal standard quash, which is actually the only one I have right now. You can actually use it on wood. It's a material that is kind of like in between watercolor and acrylic. And the normal guash acts a little bit more like watercolor, meaning you can reactivate it with water. It never really dries up. You can even, like, pick the color up from the paper after you've painted. However, it is not so easy to layer with because the colors tend to mix together, and then you cannot do gradients or layers so much. You have to be very careful. So if you're doing lots of layering on top of each other, lots of gradients, then I recommend the acrylic wash, which I don't have any here right now, so we're going to have to work with what we have. About brands, if you're thinking about brands, there is a big difference between the more or less expensive. I've used them all. The ones that are a little bit more expensive tend to be easier to work with, actually. However, let's be real. When I was beginning to work with gouache, I just bought six euro pack of 12 tiny tubes from Talents, I think they were, and I used them for months, and they work just fine. So I wouldn't focus too much on this for now. Just take the gouach that you have, or even if you have acrylic paint, we can also work with that. So as for brushes, I recommend you not to buy too many because with a few, you're good to go. We have here five different shapes, as you can see. One of them is a big round brush 16. I like it because it takes a lot of color and absorbs a lot of water. This one is a square one. I like it sometimes to make clouds with it or some specific shapes that are not as easy or easy to achieve with a round brush. The number eight, that's my favorite brush size. It's very versatile. You can do anything and everything with it. Actually, it's it is the best brush to ever exist. So this angular brush, I haven't used it much, but I thought, why not experiment with it today? So we will try it out together. And this one, which has a very, very long tip, I actually really love. It's a very fun brush to do, like, thick thick, long long lines with. So just take a few as you can see I have a lot of them, but I end up always using the number eight. So don't go out buying any new brushes because you really don't need them. We also will need water to mix everything together. And some palettes for mixing, I didn't clean mine because as I told you before, wash acts like watercolor and you can reactivate it with water, the normal wash, not the acrylic wash. Remember that. However, I did bring a clean palette for you in order for us to mix colors from zero. Isn't it nice of me? I also brought some kitchen towel you always needed around. So let's get now that we've reviewed all the materials that we need into some wash sketching techniques. 4. Gouache Techniques: Now let's quickly review some basic techniques of painting with gloss. This will help you get head start with painting and teach you also what wash can actually do, what it is capable of. So some gouache paints tend to be, as I said before, less opaque than others, and it is good to have actually a very big tube of white on hand because the more white you add, the more opaque the paint gets interesting, right? However, the color will lose a little bit of intensity. So you will have to balance between the amount of color that you mix in the amount of white that you're using. Tricky situation, but you will figure it out. We will figure it out. So let's dive in into some basic wash painting techniques. Let's get our little what's it called palette. Here with us and put some paint on. Why not this ultramarine paint? So the first technique we're going to review is the wet on wet. So we are going to start painting a surface with water, and this will create some soft edges. It will allow the colors to blend together a little bit easier. Oh, it seems like I had some paint already on my brush, but this will just help us demonstrate what we're doing. We wet it, and then we add a little bit of the paint. And you can see wet on wet. Oh, how it defuminates, how it mixes together. Beautiful. Now you just let it stand like this for a bit. We can try again. Next to this, we wet the paper. Then with the wet brush, we apply a little bit of color just a little bit and you see how it starts diffuminating. So I love a wet on wet technique, but it takes a lot of patients, which I normally don't have. The next technique we will actually be trying out is called layering. For layering, thankfully, I have already a little bit of tests here because guash is actually a great color for layering, creating gradients, and also blending depending on what type of guash you use. So we will start with this light wash and we will let it dry completely. That's why I did it before. And then we will add another layer. This will add dimension to the painting. But be mindful of what type of quash you're using and how they will mix together because acrylic paint will not mix, but normal paint will mix. So we layer it together, and as you can see, because I'm using the normal type of squash, they start actually blending together. See, this paint was here years ago, but you can still blend it together. Another technique we can try is dry brushing. So for this, we're using a dry brush with very, very, very little paint, and this will create a little bit of texture effect. It's great for creating things like foliage, hair, other organic shapes. Let's try it out. Amazing. Isn't it good? The less paint you apply, the better. The technique that I wanted to show you is a little bit of the opposite of dry brushing. It's more of a thick brushing. Take a bit of paint and you just, like, layer it on it, and you can see how it still has some texture of the paint on the sides. I really like it. It's also using a dry brush, and it creates like, kind of like three D. So when painting, keep always actually in mind that I'm doing it like this to start on the opposite corner of your dominant hand. So for me, I'm a right handed person. So I will start on the left upper corner, and this way, I will never get in my way of painting. Also, remember that you don't need to buy all the colors and 1 million tubes of paint. You can mix colors together. Go get the ones that you specifically like, but don't feel like you have to go and buy. All of the colors that exist in the universe. I have a little bit of a tip for you when mixing colors together, actually. So as you can see now, this was a very, very opaque color, not this blue. Like, you didn't really need to mix it with anything. But let's use one that we have already mixed around here. Let's take a clean brush. So for example, this very light green. We're mixing, mixing, mixing, mixing. And as you can see, it's a little bit transparent. No, we want to make it more opaque. As I told you before, you can add white. Oops, I just lost a piece of the lid. We add a little bit of white if it wants to come out. And while adding this, it will automatically I put a little bit too much. It's okay. But as you can see, it will automatically be more opaque. You can see it here, maybe. What we or what I like on quash is to have it always when mixing in a more creamy texture. Like if it was one of the sunscreens thick sunscreens that you put on your face. I don't like it too watery because as I said before, it takes ages to dry. You can see this one, this is already dried out. The ones that we really applied thick. Is like let's call it the pasting technique. The ones that we put a lot of water, the wet on wet, not dry at all. So you have to wait ages for them. So you can keep experimenting a little bit warm with squash, but these are some basic techniques. Mixing, dry brushing, wet on wet, the layering and this very thick painting technique. Get yourself maybe a fluffy companion like my cat Casimo who is actually sleeping there on the corner, maybe a warm cup of tea, and let's start our landscape exploration. So in the next lesson, we will be choosing the landscape. We will be basing our whole painting on. Not a big deal, I tell you. So let's get choosing. 5. Choosing Your Landscape: I'm excited to share my tips and tricks on how to make this process a little bit more fun and effective than just mindlessly scrolling through Instagram for hours on end. We are mostly going to look at real life references because they are, in my opinion, the easiest to interpret. As you can sway away from it as much as you want, and they will not inform your painting style at all. So you're free to create whatever you want without having any preconceived notion of any style or color or kind of shape to it. First and foremost, when selecting a reference image for our expressionistic landscape, you want to actually consider the mood and emotion that you want to convey or that you're trying to show. Ask yourself, what kind of feeling do I want this painting to evoke? Do I want it to be serene and peaceful or dramatic and intense? Wow, scary. The reference image should reflect the mood in some way that you want to convey. Maybe it's because you are already thinking of a place that you have visited before and you have already those emotions attached to it, or just because this certain reference image has already kind of mood in it that you want to really bring out. For example, for me, I went to Ticino in Switzerland and I spent some lovely summer days there with my partner, and it just brings me joy to think about this sense of tranquility I had there. So I just painted it very bright and with flowers. Another factor to consider when choosing would be the composition of the image. I like to look for images that have a strong focal point and a clear sense of depth, meaning the background and the foreground are differentiated because it's a little bit more engaging visually, also a little bit more interesting to work with. So we're looking for images with defined elements like rocks, trees, the ocean, the sky, maybe some architecture, jungles with 1,000 plants and flower might be a little bit trickier and overwhelming to start with. So I would stay away from them. Also when looking for reference images, you also want to consider what colors are already present in the scene. I like to look for images with a wide range of colors or maybe also some interesting color combinations. This will kind of give you a little bit more options when it comes to choosing a color palette for your own painting. But of course, you can just reinterpret it anyway you want. One great place or resource to find reference images is Pintres. They have a wide range of photograph and landscape images that you can get inspired by. I have actually made my own Pinterest board, and it is linked in the project Info for you to take a look. I would love to see your own Pinterest board as well to find new things. You can also find inspiration on Instagram. I have them also safe there, and it is a little bit more messy, I feel like than the Pinterespards. You can also just go on a hike or a walk on nature and use your own images as references, or you can do it out of imagination, actually. Reference image that I personally chose is this valley with some water, flowers, and mountains. It is here in Switzerland, I think, and I like it because it's actually a pretty standard one. So I want to test and challenge myself to see how unique I can make it look like by the end of our whole week. Actually, the only thing that is important to remember when choosing is that the landscape reference is just a starting point. You don't need to replicate the image exactly or even replicate it at all. Instead, just use it as a jumping off point in order to create your own unique reinterpretation. So, finally, don't be afraid to experiment and take risks because expressionistic paintings are all about letting go of control and allowing your emotions to guide you your brush strokes and guide you through the process. Little cheesy, but it is so I just really want your painting to speak about you, about your creativity, about how you see the world, so that you really feel relaxed and in tune when you're painting it. Please post it in the gallery down below because I would love to be able to compare your reference and your final piece. That would be super interesting. The next time we see each other, will actually be the one of our seven day challenge. And we will start with a bit of a theoretical lesson, but not a boring one. Don't worry. We will be analyzing the style of other artists, and we will be looking at various landscapes. Is going to be fun, entertaining, and you're going to learn a lot. If I dare to say, it might be the most important lesson of the whole seven day challenge. So get ready to it. Let's do it. 6. Day 1: Landscape & Style Analysis: Welcome to day one of your challenge. Analyzing an art style can be a challenging, but very rewarding task. We will gain a little bit more insight on the work of other artists, but actually also on ourselves. Well, analyzing, we should actually always ask ourselves if we like this thing that we're looking at and why? Does it make sense to us or does this painting make us maybe feel a little bit uncomfortable, maybe excited, maybe happy? So by breaking down the elements of a landscape and kind of examining how they are rendered by a specific artist, we can gain a little bit of insight into their unique approach to the genre of landscape painting. How fancy of me. I will provide you with some examples of paintings by contemporary and maybe not so contemporary artists. And we can actually go through them together and look at them. However, I highly encourage you to find some artists and paintings that you personally enjoy and analyze them all by yourself, writing down some notes for each one of the paintings and each one of the artists. So at the end of the analysis, I will actually give you a little bit of a questionnaire. Very easy one. Don't worry to fill out in which you will write some keywords about each painting that you looked at. And after that, we will proceed to make a big list of all these words, and my idea is that the words that come out the most will kind of symbolize your interest, what caught your attention the most, what kind of interests you the most. And hopefully this will actually help you visualize what is important for you in a painting. So you can apply what you have learned about yourself to your own creations to help you create very personal work. Like, kind of finding your style. Let's go through this very easy step by step guide to analyzing the style of a landscape painter. I will also give it to you in sort of a booklet format so that you can look at it if it's too quick for you. So before you start at all, observe the painting. Take a moment to observe it as a whole. Look at the composition from far away, the color scheme, and the brushwork. Try to identify the main subject and take note of how the artist has chosen to depict it. Consider the moon of the painting. Is there a happy? Is there a sad painting? How is it conveyed? Is it conveyed through the use of light and shadow of color? Is the painting, in your opinion, realistic or fantastical? What catches your attention the most? Is it subject matter? Is it how the composition is laid out? Is it the colors he's used? Is it the brush work? Is it the mood? Is it the use of light? This will help you get a first impression on the painting and take it all in. So let's observe it and look at what types of landscape this artist has already painted. Like, what is in his body of work? What kind of details do they normally include? What have they included in this painting? For example, do they tend to paint rural or urban landscapes? Do they include natural elements such as trees, mountains or water, or do they focus mostly on man made structures, such as buildings, maybe bridges, try to answer the following. Which elements have caught your attention the most? Is it maybe the vegetation, the sky, the ocean, the architecture? Is it the people? Is it the flowers, is the animals or anything else that has really caught your attention from the get go, try to pinpoint it. In the second step, we will try to analyze the characteristics of the painting. So once we have a general understanding of the painting of the subject matter of what we like, of how it works of the artist itself, we start paying more attention to the individual elements. So for example, we start paying attention to the brushwork. How has this painting been painted? And what kind of texture has the artist used? Is it loose or tight? Is it thin or thick? Is it precise or control painting style? Do they use thick or thin layers? How is this texture created? Is it creating more interested? Is it creating more depths? Do you even like it? Then we take a look at the color. We can observe the colors that the artist has used. Are they more bright colors? Are they muted? Are they warm or cool? Is there a dominant color at all, or is there a color scheme that he's using? Is there any specific color that you personally really enjoy in this painting? After we start looking at the composition, we analyze the arrangement of the elements in this painting. Is maybe the subject placed in the center or maybe off to one side? Are they arranged in a balanced way or in an asymmetrical way? Is there many leading lines or vanishing points in the horizon? How is the lightning? Have you seen a concrete light source? Is it come from one direction or is it diffused? Lots of things to look at. I know. But in the third step, actually, we're going to compare and contrast. Now that we have analyzed and look at the different elements of this painting and taking it all in, it is time to take it and contrast it to another artist. So we're going to look for similarities. We're going to look for differences, differences in the brushwork. Differences in the color scheme, differences in the composition and the lightning. And this will help you identify the unique qualities of each artist's style. And you will see a pattern of what you start liking more and less. So as an exercise, I want for you to analyze a painting. I would like for you to fill out this little questionnaire that I have prepared for you. You can find it in the class resources, put it in your sketchbook, in your journal, maybe making an app. This will actually help you just recognize what is important for you. This will give you a big, big insight into what you like as an artist. Hard to recognize what we like until we have seen it in other places. Until then, we are really, like, clueless. But when we see it, we know what we like. So once you fill out the questionnaire, compare your answer and compare your answers of many different paintings and make a list of the most common answers. Do you think they might accurately depict what you actually like, or is it totally wrong? I also actually used to do it like this. So I would just take my sketchbook and print out lots of, like, little images. And from there, I would just say, What these all images have in common. Make kind of like a collage. So you can either do it this way that I have here, like doing a collage with all of them, grouping the images together. You're more of a visual person. Or you can write down the questions as a questionnaire, like I have prepared for you. So let's go and analyze some of the artists together and see what we can identify. Let's start analyzing together some of the artists that I have selected. You should definitely also do it with some artists that you select on your own. For me, example number one is, I think, Peter Doy. I hope I'm saying his name correct. His work is actually known for his dream like atmospheric paintings and landscapes with figures. Also, his use of color is pretty particular. He normally uses a palette that plays a lot with warm and cool tones like oranges, pinks, and icy blues. He often uses also thin layers of paint and superposs them. He creates a sort of depth and luminosity. As for composition, he often places us the viewers in some sort of unusual perspective, maybe looking up at a tree or down into a body of work or mid of the action. His work, I think has been pretty influenced by artists such as Eduard Monk or Paul Gugan. Here we see all of these tropical colors and very bright expressionistic things and paint that overlaps and different textures. Actually, I really like it from the get go, let's see what catches my attention, the first thing. It is the subject matter. Is it the composition, the color or the brushstroke. I think it is, first of all, the color. Here I would say it's color. So we write down color, for sure. So the element that I like the most was, I think the landscape. So let's say this point is like the landscape itself. As for the strokes, do I like them? Yes, I like them. Yes. And I think they're very expressive and loose. And I will write them expressive and loose. As for the color, I love the colors, very, very high intensity colors, so saturated. And definitely I like the contrast between the orange and the black and this green here. Let's see, also, as for the composition, do I enjoy the composition? Yes, I enjoy the composition. I like that it's asymmetric. I like, however, that it has, like, difference between the foreground and background. Yeah, I like that it has different parts, you know? It's very nice. I would like having it hanging in my house, even though it seems to be children playing, I'm not entirely sure. So the use of light and shadow, love the use of light and shadow. Seems like the sun is reflecting on something. Seems like a bright day, but there has been also pretty dark color used for the sky. So it could be actually nighttime. I like the contrast, contrasting lights. This is our example number one, Peter Doy. Our second example would be David Hockney. He has started doing some landscapes lately, and he's a well known painter and actually also printmaker, who has done in his lifetime a wide range of landscapes, and lately he's been also doing them digitally. He's known for his bold use of color and often emphasizing the graphic qualities of the landscape. He also many times plays with perspective, flattening the landscape out and compressing the space. So making it look like things are on top of each other. This creates a sense of vibrancy and energy. He has been greatly influenced by other artists such as Mattis and probably also Pablo Picasso, especially for his use of colors and shapes, depending on the era of Picasso, of course. You can see very vibrant colors. There is a sense of perspective, but there is not really because everything is flat. It is divided in two through this road. It still has some asymmetry to it and it's definitely very organic. From the get go, I have to say the use of color makes me a bit uncomfortable. I don't know why, but I think it's too many. I would have kept it to less colors. So let's see what caught our attention the most. I think it's the composition. In this one, I really like the composition. I think it's very important for me, and I think it's the same thing as with Peter Toy. It's also kind of the composition. As to what element I like the most, the vegetation, sky ocean or the architecture, I like the vegetation. And why I like it, I think it's because of the use of mark making in it. So let's also write mark making. So then we see the strokes and the mark making come here. Do I like it? Yes, yes. I think they're very graphic. Graphic and contrasting. What do we think about the colors? Too many. Too many. And the orange, I really like. Again, I like the orange and the blue. The contrast with the blue. Oh, we're running out of space here. We go here. Do I enjoy the composition? Yes. Yes, I like the asymmetry, but also the division in the middle. And how organic it is. As for number six, the use of light and shadow, there's none here, I would say. There is some darker places for the road, but there's not much play of dark and shadow, rather more saturation and not saturation. So I do like the high contrast. So for our next artist, we're actually going to talk about Monet, which is one of my favorite artists. Claude Monet is characterized by more soft and delicate brushstrokes that kind of blend together to create dreamy and more impressionistic atmosphere and effects. One of his most famous landscape paintings, the water lilies, which is one of my favorite feature soft pastel colors that kind of blend together and create a very peaceful and serene scene. This is why I like him so much because he just brings me joy, especially if you go to the Must de angerie in Paris, there's these big paintings of the water lilies amazing. So I have chosen one of his garden. You can also find references to his garden, also in my Pintresbard that I prepared for you. Beautiful with the bridge. So what caught my attention the colors, the colors and brush strokes, actually. And then what else do we have? What is the element that we like the most? The vegetation, definitely the vegetation. Love vegetation. This one's an easy. Strokes? Do I like them? Yes. They are very thick, thick strokes, and they're very expressive and not detailed at all. As for the fourth, the color that pop the most is the purple and green, and I love all the hues monochromatic no, a little bit. As for five, let's say I enjoy the composition, love the composition. It's very centered. It's very symmetrical. But still organic. As for the use of light and shadow, it's pretty decent, but there is some little gradient, but it doesn't really strike me as something more plain, let's say. Olinol I would say that this landscape uses more of the brush strokes rather than just light itself to create depth. It's more about the saturation of colors and there is, of course, some shadows for the trees. But nol, it is pretty homogeneously lit, I would say. I love it. In general, I love it. For our next artist, actually, we're going to be looking at Georgia O'Keefe. God I hope I'm saying all of these names correctly because some of them struggle with pronunciation, actually. Georgia O'Keefe, her style is characterized by more bold and dramatic compositions you can see here that often tend to focus on one single element in the landscape. Or multiple of the same. One of her most famous ones is actually the black Mesa landscape in New Mexico, and it features a very stark black mesa rising up against very bright blue sky. What I like about her painting style is definitely all of the colors that she uses and her strong sense of composition and how ambiguous they kind of are. Also, like all of this blending and the gradients, amazing. Love it. So let's see. Wh caught my attention the most is definitely colors. And composition, like, really. No doubt. The second is, what is the element that I like the most it's I think the mountains in this sense. I love the mountains and the reflection. The reflection on the lake, pretty good. Really like it. So the strokes, they are not really visible. They're more of like a gradient, there's not that much mark making, but I do enjoy the gradient. This is something that I would do in my own painting, probably not. So let's say as brush stroke, it's a non existing. For me, even though it's like this nice gradient, but it's not something that I really gravitate towards. But let's just write it. Maybe we try it out. So as for colors, which one popped up the most the purple. Definitely love the purple and love these jewel colors and the contrast between them. The composition, I love the composition. I love, love, love, the strong division. The asymmetry. And I love this very visual line. As for the use of light and shadow, there's almost none use. So but it doesn't bother me. It's okay. Let's just write. Okay. So the next artist that we have is Emil Not, and we have this landscape. So he's known for his very expressive brushstrokes. They tend to convey a self of movement and emotion. One of one of his most famous paintings is Moreland, which actually features very bold and sweeping brushstrokes that evoked like this kind of rugged and untamed landscape. The use of color is very noticeable. As you can see here, everything is not really defined, but it is intense. It's very intense, even though the brushurs are kind of bold and expressionistic. But the use of color is just so imperative. I really like it. What I like about this the most from the get go is the color. Definitely, I can tell you it's the use of color. Like the greens, the oranges, the blues, like how it goes from dark to very bright. It's very good. So also what element caught my attention is the mountains, actually, mountains and the architecture. This very, like, tiny house there. It's very cute here. Strokes, I love bold, the bold, very undefined. Color popped up the most against the orange, but in this case, I think the orange and this blue. I really love this blue, very delicate. Let's write delicate blue next to it. The composition, I love when it has a lot of sky and very small island and also very asymmetrical with these diagonals. And lastly, the use of light and shadow. It is striking to me, I like that the house has a shadow. So some elements that have light and shadow play in a very small place. This is what I like about this painting, I think, in itself, it's very, like, bright and kind of aggressive, but then it has some sort of calmness to it, especially when you look at, like, some of the pieces by themselves, like separately. So our next artist is going to be Julie Mertu. Her landscapes are pretty abstract and also layered, and they incorporate multiple perspectives and elements in one, and it kind of creates a sense of chaos but also movement. So her compositions often feature pretty bold colors and somewhat geometric shapes. Which she uses to create a sense of energy and probably also tension and chaos. So it's not your typical landscape painter, but why not define it as a landscape? In the end, you can define whatever you want as a landscape. So for me, the first thing is the shapes and the composition that I see. What is it? Like how full the whole The brushwork, also, the chaos. Let's say the chaos is the first thing I see. As to what element catches my attention, is this like bandarins? They are the ones that catch my attention. They kind of create some sort of perspective. So let's say also the perspective. Strokes, what do you like about them? They're not very varied the strokes themselves. They are kind of all the same shape, but I like the juxtaposition of them. So as the color, again, the orange loving the orange, the orange and this blue here, the orange and the blue, and also this light gray. I love the composition. I like that the composition has movement. That's what I like about the composition, composition, the movement and the asymmetry. And there's no use of light and shadow, in my opinion. They're darker and kind of lighter places. And here you can see these like white strokes. Actually, I like the directionality. Of the strokes. Also here, Directt if that's even a word. As for light and shadow doesn't catch my eye. And now we're going to do a top words that we've used. So let's now analyze just all the words that we've been finding mostly. So we started saying color, composition, color and composition, color and brush stroke, color and chaos. So let's say color and composition are my most used for question one. Second would be the elements I like to move, the landscape, the vegetation, and the landscape, the vegetation, the mountains, and the reflection, the mountains, and the bondarins. Let's say vegetation plus mountains. Are my top searched terms. As for the brush strokes, what I like the most is the expressiveness and how loose they are, how thick and expressive they are, non existing because they're more gradient, bold and undefined, a position of brush strokes, overlapping directionality. Let's say I like when they are expressive and graphic, bold, expressive and bold. But actually, I use many more words for them. As for the colors, I mean, the color always depends on the pictures you're looking at, but I guess at this time of day, I'm pretty fixated on the orange. But saturated, contrasty, orange contrast, purple and green, monochromatic, monochromatic, purple, jewel tones, orange and blue, orange and blue. Let's say we like colors. Yes, we love colors. So orange and blue and purple. And saturated. I also like contrasting and monochromatic as well. The composition, asymmetric movement, asymmetric directionality. Let's say asymmetric, organic and movement. For the last question, use of light and shadow. I like the contrast. I like the high contrast. Plain, it's okay. It's okay. So I like contrast. So from the four pictures that we looked at, I think it's not that many, so we should do a bit more. I tend to fixate on the color and the composition of a piece. I like vegetation and mountains. No wonder. That's why we're doing a landscape painting today. I like expressive and bold lines. Very true. As colors, seems like I like all the colors, but mostly the orange, the blues, the purple, saturated and bold colors with a lot of contrast but also monochromatic color palettes. So I like all the colors, technically. As for compositions, I like them more asymmetric, but with some touches of organic stuff and lots of movement. And I definitely like contrast. So in light and in color. As you can see before, um, when I started to analyze my style, I actually printed out some paintings, and I put them in groups in a kind of collage, and then I tried to define them. This is also another way to do it. You can kind of just, like, arrange them by the things that you like. So now, all of the ones that I actually really liked, I would put in the group that makes the most sense. For example, all of these ones go under both colors and contrast price or price, kind of architectural shapes and the repetition and negative space, and some texture and pattern. For all of these ones. Then we have this page here where you can see that there's also bold contrasting, but also monochromatic colors. I did this five years ago. Nothing has changed. Wow. Also, repetition, the overlapping of shapes, apparently, and how it's layouted with negative space as well. I also has to do with the composition, bold and white outlines, bold brush strokes, interesting, movement, interesting as well, and how the composition is sometimes centered. Or not center, so asymmetry. And then I collected more and more inspiration pictures, and apparently, I wrote a lot of things. So this is like kind of self reflection, self reflecting on what is what you like, what is what you don't like, and categorizing it. Also putting them together with things that are similar and that you like. I think this has helped me before a lot in order to recognize patterns and colors and textures and shapes that I've really liked. So I would recommend you to do kind of the same. Here, you can see I did after all this analysis, the same thing that we're doing now as a result, and then I did kind of a scheme of what am I? What is it that you like? Claudia. I'm an architect. I like design, I like fashion, I like furniture. I like animals. I like traveling. I like the sunshine, the beach and the sky, and I like positives yoga, empowerment and mindfulness. So in the end, I also did a mind map of me personally to also learn about the topics that I wanted to paint. Today, you don't need to do this because we're going to be doing landscapes. You don't need to get so deep within yourself. But as you can see, there's a lot of work into finding your style. And I looked at a lot, a lot, a lot of paintings. The ones were more like kind of illustrations. Today, we've been looking at more landscape painting, but any type of looking at references will inform what you like. They will help you identify your own style. So look at the paintings, analyze them with the questionnaire I have given you, of course, add more points or subtract some that don't make sense for you and make it your own. So now go on, do it yourself. Analyze at least ten of these artists, artists that you like or you don't like, even more if you can do more, even better, keep them in your journal or in an app or maybe make a pintersb of this, but write it down. Fill out the questionnaire. It's very important. So that's your exercise for today. See you tomorrow where we will be doing some sketching. This is where it starts to get interesting. We're going to be using our hands, finally. It's not all theory. Don't worry. We're done with it. Now we get on to do the real work. 7. Day 2: Sketch & Stylize Shapes: Hello, everyone, and welcome today too. You have made it very far already. We only have five plus today days of work. I mean, you will manage. You will manage. In today's class, we're actually going to be focusing on learning how to sketch, how to have a more loose hand. So we're going to be sketching loose and stylish shapes, and we're going to learn how to reinterpret elements in order to develop them into our own personal and artistic style, I guess. So to start, we will actually be covering some basic sketching techniques and exercises that will actually help us to loosen up our hand a little bit and gain more confidence in our mark making and basically just sketching. So first of all, grab your sketchbook. I have this one here. Open up on one empty page. And let's get you see, I've been doing a lot of sketching, also. Let's get to it. Grab a pen. I'm going to grab a thick pen, but you can also just do a pencil and what or let's write here at one, and let's call it Cs line drawing. So this technique basically involves drawing an object or a subject without lifting your pen or pencil from the paper. This exercise, I think, helps you to train your hand to eye coordination and encourage you to also trust your instincts when it comes to drawing because whatever lays on the paper is what you have to draw. So I'm going to start looking a little bit at the sketch. At the reference image I have of the landscape. As I told you, this beautiful landscape with a nice background and foreground. I'm actually going to start just loose continuously loose sketching a flower. Let's start with this flower, for example. I'm not going to lift my pen. Oh, it's gone. That's it. I have to do it from imagination. You know, I need to learn how to make the screen last longer. But basically, this is the flower, how I have it in my mind, and now we need the stem. And maybe it has a leaf as well. And, you know, by varying the way you pressure and don't put pressure on the pen, you can also kind of create thicker or thinner lines. So she looks a bit lopsided. Let's try her again, and let's do her quicker. I'm putting lots of pressure, and I'm doing it very quick and very loose. This one's a little weird. Doesn't matter. Connects with this one. All right. So I'm going to do some rocks because why not? They're easy to do. I look at the subject, I look at my hand and I continue doing rocks, and I glue one rock next to the next rock, next to the next, next to the other rock, and we continue doing rocks. In the end they don't look like rocks, but they're very fun. As you can see, also, I don't know if you have noticed, but how I'm holding my pen is very specific. Because if I was holding it like I would normally do, I actually know that I don't hold it very correctly, but I should hold it like this, but I hold it like this. And if I was holding it like this, I would be controlling my hand way too much. So I would be literally just doing like this and see how it's not the same. It's not as loose. But when I'm doing this one continuous line drawing, I'm actually holding it, like if I was Valdemar saying I'm giving myself space. That's why in some other classes of mine, we have actually extended the pen so that you have a little bit more looseness over it. But now today we're going in it, you're holding it at the back and you're doing a one continuous drawing. Look, there's other flowers that actually look a little bit like they have more petals, we're going to try those. And don't be afraid to, like, make them big. Like it's nice to have big drawings as well. I'm doing this one here. Look. And also, quick, do them quick. Oh, I think here, I lifted my pen, but it was unintentional. You can go back and even make it darker if you want the stem to be darker. And now we continue with some grass, and we do another one. Painting flowers is very good for this loose sketch line because they're actually very organic. Now, we do a tiny one? And a lots of flowers. We love it. But if you think, of course, flowers are kind of easy to do with one line. Why don't we do something else? Let's try just to paint something that I have here. For example, the squash bottle in length in one hand with one hand, of course, with one hand. With one line. We're trying to paint it with one line. So we do the cap, just like this, and maybe even we make it darker already. And if we want to do the label, we also do the label. Para. And also, we seeing my cat who's, like, laying down there in his hammock. So we can also do a one line cat. My one line cat wears glasses and has a mustache. He looks like he's on the beach. Basically, I would like for you to just keep trying it out with flowers, maybe even with trees. Do them very quickly. Just do like 50 of them like super quick, super, super, super quick. Does it look like the plant? No, we try again. We don't worry about. There's no mistakes. Happy accidents. That's probably copyrighted. And this is kind of training our eye to hand coordination, but also the way that we draw things. It kind of helps us get a little bit more free of how we always have tried to draw things and see how things could also look if they were a little bit more free. So what we can also try to do is instead of continuous line drawing, also continuous line drawing but actually something called blind conter drawing. This kind of involves drawing an object while looking only at the subject or at the object and not at your paper. Kind of scary, no. But this techniques helps you actually develop your observatorial skills and teaches you to focus a little bit more on the shapes and forms of your object or subject rather than trying to really create the perfect image of it. So blind contour drawing. And let's see what should we blind contour draw? Should we try with this plant here? Well, it's a little bit nasty the pot, but it's okay. So I'm not going to look at the paper. And this doesn't mean that you need to do it with one line, but if you want to do it with one line, you technically could. But I'm not doing it with one line just because I don't feel. This is very fun. Where are we placing the leaves? We don't know. I'm not cheating as where I peaked a little bit. It's okay. It's okay. I'm not mad at myself. And now the pot. You know what? She's interesting. She's interesting. I do I do like it. You know what I'm going to try to do? Just these mountains and the trees, I'm going to try to do them blindly. Gonna do it here because why not? Oh, I peeked again. Oops. If you can see noise in the background, do you know what this is? The cat. Casimio are you are you he's playing with the whole setup. He's getting into a bag. So now onto the trees? Narrow tree here. Maybe we do the water. And some hatching. Hopefully, this is the mountains. Would this be a cloudier class if the Casimio the cat wouldn't come in? Out. This is the Cassie cat for those who don't know him. You go to stay here? Hmm? Okay. Now that he's here, if he would move for a little bit, we can try to blind paint him. For from here, I just actually see This was literally just a squiggle line. Let's try and paint him again. And this has to be quick because he's going away. Oh, Cassie, you moved your head. Now it's never going to look the same. See, he has two heads. That's why. He's a little bit skinny around here. Something else that we can try is something called a gesture drawing technique, which involves basically just drawing very quickly, which is what I did now I've been doing, and this actually helps you improve the speed and accuracy of your sketching. It's called gesture drawing. So it's basically a combination of everything we've done just in quick. And does it sound exhausting, it might be exhausting because this already looks pretty exhausting. Let me I'm going to try again. But this time, combined with the gesture drawing, so very quick. It's not getting better, is it? Drawing a cat without looking at the paper? Oh, now he's scooching down. He's scooching down. Did I do a tail? I mean, they're kind of fun, you know? They're very abstract. I would recommend you to do them. Why not? Let's try painting a few flowers very quick, gesture drawing. One with more petals. Itally 3 seconds. No. Let's do one, a little bit more complex one. I'm seeing like a plant right there that has a lot of leaves. Let's do that one. I'm looking at it because gesture drawing doesn't mean that you cannot look at it, right? Beautiful. Now, let's try to paint our whole landscape, but very quick. Let's do it here. One, two, three. We can try again in a little bit bigger. I think this is actually going to help us to see what's important in the landscape already. So this is an exercise I would definitely recommend you to do. Like, just 2 seconds, you know, no more. That's it. Nice. So you see with all of these exercises, we've actually cut in a little bit of a more loose hand, as you can see here, it's less strokes. Are they beautiful? Maybe not entirely beautiful, but we are getting warmed up. So I would like for you to do a few of these exercises as many as you feel like you need, and as long as they're fun. And then we continue with the next thing, which is going to be start to simplify the things that we actually see in our landscape. We've already started with the gesture drawing, but now we're going to go a little bit more in depth, actually. So now let's explore how to actually incorporate basic shapes and lines into a little bit more stylized and expressive sketches. We will start by breaking down the objects in their primary geometry, and then we will actually experiment with different stylization techniques, such as, for example, when you exaggerate things out of proportion, that will make them a little bit out of context and funnier, or we can also try distorting the shapes, making something that's triangular, a little bit more organic. And we'll also try to play a little bit with negative space because that's always kind of look. And this is cool, I mean, this we will always try to do while looking at our own landscape. We will be actually using the reference image as inspiration, but won't rely too heavily on how the elements look. Instead, we will re interpret these elements from the reference image, and then we will incorporate them into our own personal artistic style. So let's start with this flower here and we're going to, first of all, try to make it into its primary shape, which would be like a circle and some ovals, right? Kind of looks like a sun, but this is basically its primary shape. Now we can test out how to put it out of proportion. For example, we can start with having a very big center and tiny little petals. This makes for a little bit more of a comical flower, maybe. We can also try to distort it a little bit, so the center is not completely round. Maybe it has, like, a pear shaped pear shape, and then it still has some petals around. Does it look like a flower, maybe not. But why not? In our imaginary world, I could. If we work with negative space, we can say that we paint around the flower. So in this case, what we're seeing is the night sky maybe with a cloud, and the flower itself is left out white. As you can see now, from what someone would draw, which would basically be almost, like, really concentrating on creating a very, like, distinct image, they would be trying to make it look as real as possible. So they would be maybe, like, painting something that looks like this. But, you know, I'm not saying that it's not okay, but it's just of this one thing that is already there, you can create so many different variations. So taking this flower and just using these three stylization techniques, which is the aceration of the proportion, the distortion, and the use of negative space, you can already create so much more variety in what you're drawing compared if you're just trying to depict exactly what is there. So let's try it again with the same flower, even. We just take this round shape or the basic shape of it, and we make it very tiny, but we make the petals very big. And we use also the sketching techniques that we learned before to just make a little bit of a juxtaposition. Now let's distort the petals this time. So we make a little bit of a fluffy center and we distort the petals to make it more of a droopy flower, maybe even. You can try that again with pose very tiny center with very long droopy petals. So look at these other flowers here. If we were trying to make it look as it is, we would just be doing like this. No, like it's like a kind of trumpet. So, this our trumpet. Now let's try to make it maybe the trumpet itself is very tiny, but the stem is very thin as well. But the leaves are huge. That's kind of cute. Now, let's see. If we distort the leaves a little bit, we do the tiny little petal like this. And we distort the leaves. And they kind of look like wings now. Let's try the opposite. Let's do this very big flower. Now, let's just say we do only leaves all around leaves, but they kind of shape the trumpet. So we're actually only painting leaves. I'm trying to use negative space in this one. Negative space is hard to do when you're just sketching, actually. Et's try, for example. In the background, there's these trees. So actually, this one looks very long. So we can just play with that. And then we have a very, very, very, very long tree. But maybe the tree is just very not so spiky. Instead of spiky, it's maybe more bulbous. He looks very 70s this tree, or maybe he's really just a triangle. Maybe he's more organic. He's just like it's kind of the casting of this one. Or maybe he has a very big vase, like base, and then he just goes and it's very flat. He has a big foot like this. He's cute. Maybe he's also mostly round but has tip. Okay, this one looks like an apple. An apple tree, also kind of cute. Or maybe they're really just like this, like, very organic shaped. Or like someone has eaten out of them, like, taking a bite. The apple tree took a bite of the other tree. As for the mountains, instead of making them really realistic, we can just say that the mountains are semicircles. Why not? And they can be semicircles in any shape or form or combined semicircles or just, like, very steep semicircles or heart shape or bush shape, semicircles. They can also be just like waves. So in this sense, we're stylizing even rocks, you know? Like this rock actually is like, kind of geometric like this, and then it has like a shadow around. Nah our rock looks like a bunny. Why not? Bunny rock. And actually, I would even think about this rock formation as something that goes together. So using our sketching techniques, we should just put it all together. And this is our big rock formation. Then we can, of course, add some mild details if we want in later stages. But I would really like, look at them as if they were one. You can even not have to do all the time organic shapes. You can also do more geometric shapes. But sometimes looking at things in another way will help you reinterpret them. Just think about all the variations that you want to do or you could do. Instead of painting the rocks, of course, you can just paint around, like what is around and painting the grass, and then here comes, kind of the rock formation. And then I just paint the grass around it. And this is like the water, maybe. If we would put all the landscape elements together, maybe, like, all of these different elements, it would be something like maybe this is like a big bowl and all of this island with the trees, the trees are just like this. Now we're playing a lot with semicircles. We're doing this part, let's say. And then we do something like this. Then we see stones, they're just little circles, or maybe they are together on the coast. This, and then in the back, we have other mountain. And more stones here in the front. And actually, you see, you have already, kind of reinterpreted this just by altering the shape that you see in the reality. And it doesn't mean that you're lazy for not wanting to do reality. It's just that you are reinterpreting in a way that looks good for you or that is fun for you. For me, doing the shapes is very funny. I love it. My wrist is just like, da da, da, da, da. So actually, I feel very good just by painting flowers like this and making them loose and very, like, abstract but still recognizable. That is a very big challenge, actually. And now I actually have a little bit of homework for you. Don't be Mad. It's fun homework. It's basically doing what we already did together here, but by yourself. So I would like to actually challenge you to draw at least 20 to 50 of these small sketches. 60 is a lot, I know, but you can do it. And they should be like random objects that you find around your house or some objects that you see in your landscape. And you can do 20 or 50 different objects, or you can do the same object various times from different angles, from different perspectives. This will actually help you push your skills and develop a little bit of new sketching techniques loose in your hand. And please challenge yourself to just spend maximum two to 5 seconds on each sketch. So the idea is actually to quickly apprehend the main shape of the object and simplify it and reinterpret it. As you can see, we did a lot of sketches just in a very, very, very quick time. So don't spend a long time observing the object, like, try to quickly grasp it and just paint whatever comes. Don't forget to post whatever sketches you do you don't have to post all of them, but the one you like the most. I've done the sketching part and see you tomorrow for another fun class on actually colors, then we will start defining our color palette for the landscape. And that's very exciting. So see you tomorrow for lesson number two. 8. Day 3: Test Colors & Define Palette: Hello, you guys and welcome to day three of our seven day challenge. Today we have something fun ahead of us. Yay, we will start testing out color combinations and defining our very own color palette, which means we're defining the colors of our painting. It's very important. This step is very important. First, I will give you a quick rundown of color theory. So you have the basics on you for when it's time to choose your color palette. Color theory is the study of color and it's interaction with light, as well as it's emotional and maybe also psychological impact on us. As humans. In art, color theory is normally used to create a sense of balance, harmony, and cohesion. In any painting, basically, there are several color schemes that can be used to create color harmony and some of them, but definitely not all because I don't have time to explain all to you are, for example, complimentary colors. Those are colors that are opposite each other on the color wheel, such, for example, as blue and orange or red and green. They tend to create a vibrant contrast and can be used to create bold and energetic color palette. For example, if the dominant color in your landscape image or your reference image is green, you should consider maybe using red or orange as an accent color. This will make your painting a little bit more vibrant and more interesting. Another color palette would be analogous colors, and those are colors that are adjacent to each other on the color wheel, such as, for example, red and orange or also yellow. They create a sense of unity and can be used to create harmonious and soothing color palettes. For example, if your color dominant color in the reference picture is blue, consider maybe using shades of blue or purple to create somewhat of a cohesive color palette and maybe more sin color palette. Other color palette could be monochromatic colors, and those are actually shades and tints of one single color. So you have blue, for example, and all the different shades of blue would create a monochromatic palette. They tend to create a more sophisticated and subtle color palette. So when choosing actually a color palette for a landscape painting, it's actually important to consider the colors that are already present in the reference image and how they can be used to create a pleasing composition. Of course, if you choose to work with the colors that are already in your landscape. You can also just be a total rebel and forget about them and just kind of like wing it. We can also do a combination of the two of them. First, we analyze the colors in our landscape, and then we go rogue. What colors do you normally gravitate towards? Are they nowhere to be found in your landscape, but you would still like to add them. So you should you should definitely. No problem. Then just just really add them anyway. This is your painting, so you should actually use the colors that you like. And you can actually also just choose to ignore all the rules that I just mentioned and just go with your gap filling, mix and match the rules, up the colors that you like. Ignore the colors of the reference image, make the sky pink. That is my favorite part. If the color palette looks good to you, then you actually nailed it. You don't need to start pinpointing what is right or what's wrong. If you like it, then it's probably good. So if you're actually super confused and not feeling any of the colors that are present in your painting, you don't know how you start your color combinations or what you can do. You can actually just draw inspiration from other artists work. Like what kind of colors do they use? What colors are found in your home? Is it always green maybe? Then maybe you should use green or you can try the dictionary of color combinations, which is this tiny swifty little book. Japanese book that shows you a lot of very pretty color combinations, and this could be a starting point if you're feeling a little bit loss. So now let's all experiment and let's start experimenting a little bit with the variations of colors. And let's try to find the perfect balance, the perfect, palette, adjust a little bit the hue, the saturation, and let's try to create a very unique and personalized palette that really reflects our style and what we like. I trust that we will be able to do so. So let's take our sketchbook and let's commence with all what we've learned today, let's try testing. In order to test colors, I would recommend you to have already some ready to go colors with you. I mean, not that you have to mix all the time, then the colors with guash. So for example, I have a ton of these neo colors here that I'm actually going to use to test the color palette, and how I'm going to start is just by simply putting colors together. We can just start by seeing which ones are the main ones and then the accent ones and then go from there at variation. So first, let's choose some greens. Greens are kind of difficult to use. I used to have a teacher that said that no green from the pop was ever good that you should always mix it yourself, but we are a little bit too lazy for this. So let's just see which greens we have here, and probably we will find one that we sort of like. So let's see. We have all of these one. Some of them are more yellow than others. I think I would really like the olive one. So let's start putting one. Green could be the olive. We need a little bit of a darker one. So darker olive maybe. We already have two shades. Let's start with this two and then add as we see here, we're going to do a color palette vary based on the picture. So we do maybe the yellow of the flowers and the pink. Which pink could it be? It's more like a purple, actually. So maybe this? No, it should be more. If you don't have the exact purple, then it's going to have to do with what you have. So we're going to add this purple and maybe magenta, actually. Then we see some gray for the rocks and maybe some very demure blues for the lake. This could be one color palette. I have to say I'm not feeling it so much. This gray and the blues. You know, they say what the landscape is saying, but do they speak my language? They don't. They don't. Let's try maybe with some other greens. Actually, this one I really love, I already know that we're using it. I don't care what you all say. This one we're using. But maybe we go with a little bit more of contrast green. I think two shades of green are good because we have a lot of green. Of course, when we're starting to paint, we can deviate from these two shades and create a lot more variety. But for setting the color palette now, it's good to have a little bit more of a tight like palette. You don't want to do 20 at a time. So with this, actually, I think a purple would look good. But what if we do some red instead? Like this? This is vermilion red. Canada does need a yellow. And a little bit of blue. Never bad. Midnight blue. Why not? Then maybe another shade of blue or another shade of green. We try another shade of green. Okay. Let's use it. Okay, let's reorganize them because actually I made a mess now by not organizing them. I'm going to just repeat the same color palette okay? But reorganized with greens on one side and everything that is not green on the other side. Okay, we have three greens, very green. And see now I know the purple doesn't work. The purple sadly doesn't work. The combinations are endless. You could be sitting here for ages, I tell you. You know what? The magenta looked extremely good. I shouldn't have done the red. So we know this is like, you know, like the lottery. You start getting some numbers right, and then you change, and then it's like or like like a. So we're gonna make it very green, apparently. Let's change this blue 'cause I'm not feeling it. And then magenta. Ooh, but this is a different magenta, but I like it. I like it, actually. Oh, let's do first the yellow. Maybe the gray does have a place here. You're doing a little bit of analogous colors and a little bit more contrasting colors, but I'm still not really feeling it. Let's try again. Can you see how they are shifting all to one side actually? So these ones, I actually really like all of them. And this, what is this ochre? Maybe it is an ochre. Is it, though? Maybe it's not. I always love a little bit of pink. So Oh, so maybe it's actually analogous, analogous that are contrasting. This could be something. Let's try it again. Think these ones we're going to keep have the feeling that. Yeah, we will keep them. And the magenta, you always have to keep the magenta. I don't know, but so let's try with the pink. And then maybe what is it? Does it all look the same? Yeah, let's try something completely different. Let's start with just blues. So we do dark blue. This other blue, Why not? Then we do the yellow, the magenta also stays, and the pink also stays. They're very contrast the colors. We're not going to use greens. Okay, let's analyze them a bit because we've used we've done a lot already. So we did this as a base. It's okay. We don't need to look at it anymore. So this is the original one. Actually, it's pretty nice. I would change this color and maybe this one. Maybe without this one is even good or without this one. These two clash a little bit. Feel like we can rework this a little bit and maybe change also this yellow. Not feeling this one at all. Oh, this yellow for me is not doing it. No. This one is nice. This one is also kind of fun, but I prefer the upper one. Without green is a nogo. So we say, I say, I've decided that I like this one here. And this one, but we changed a bit the color. So let's try this one again. We said we didn't like that yellow, so we use the other yellow that we prefer the gold and yellow. We still keep the purple. And instead of this, we use the magenta. Is this one, I think. Okay, I'm sorry this is boring, but this is how it is. You have to try. You have to try and you have to sing. If you don't see, you don't know. So, let's see. This one sounds pretty solid to me, Mm hmm. And this one it's a little bit more funky. We're going with this one. I really like this one. So this is our chosen color palette. Of course, it's not all the colors that we're going to use, but I will base my painting around these colors and then build from it. And now we need to organize all of this. We This is a big job, actually. And I like it. I like it. It has already some many greens, so we know that my painting will include a lot of green, which in the end, the inspiration picture has a lot of green, but not exactly this type of green. And it also doesn't have purple. So I think I'm not going to use any purple, and I will just stick to more warm versus cold tones. So it's more like an analogous colors against each other. These ones do contrast and these ones work together. I think it's going to be fine. I think it's going to look very good. So actually, now I have an exercise for you, you know, the daily homework. I would like for you to try out at least ten different color palettes with different color variations. And then as we did here together, choose your favorite one. You can try crazy combinations like we did, but keep in mind the color should represent you and what you like. So don't hesitate to deviate from the original picture and just add the colors that you actually like. Like, see, for me, the pink one was a win. So Have fun and see you guys tomorrow where we will start breaking down the element in your landscape and learning a little bit more how to reinterpret them in your own unique style. So we're starting to build our landscape slowly but surely. Let's get going. Have fun with the colors. And don't spend too much time just feel them. 9. Day 4: Topography & Mark Marking: Hello, you guys, and welcome to day four of our seven day journey or challenge into landscape painting. I hope you're doing right. We are actually midway through the week, and today we are applying all our gain knowledge to a simple matter, which is actually just rocks. Well, in the background itself, you know, like mountains and trees and water. So we will be working with the topography of our landscape, meaning basically the background of the whole painting, and I want you to think of it as not just, like, a plain color with nothing else, but more of an intricate weave of elements intertwined together. The background will set the scene, the tone, the mood, and it's actually the main scenario where all the action or well, where the landscape happens. So in landscape painting, the background is actually the most important part. So we will be deep diving into this. And for me, painting the background is actually the most relaxing part of the whole painting process. I like to reinterpret shapes, put them back together like a collage, basically. And this is exactly what we will be doing today. We have a few steps to follow. They're pretty simple and we've actually already done them before. The first step would actually be to look at the landscape, observe the landscape, look at your reference picture and see what shaves and what textures, what elements you can find, and which of those you want to incorporate into your own artwork. Make then little quick sketches of those elements, try to make them quick and simple. Just focus on the rocks, on the mountains, on the water bodies. Are there volcanoes, trees? Basically, everything that you can find in the background. For me, it would be this mountain range, all of these little rocks, the body of water that you can see here, maybe even those trees. And as you can see, there's different elements. So there's something in the background, which is the mountain range. Then a little bit more in the foreground is this kind of island. So we will be working with this. After you have identified them, you have to simplify the elements, breaking them down into their shapes, the most simple shapes and lines. And actually, this will help you identify the structure of the landscape and make it a little bit easier for you to reinterpret in your own style. So we're not going to copy, like, every little nook and cranny that we find along the mountain reef or every single tree. We're going to be a little bit more loose with it. We're going to just paint with simple shapes. And, of course, we're going to try to make it a little bit like a collage. So we're going to see these different elements, and we're going to try to put them together. After we have actually sketched all of these elements, we're going to start applying some of the sketching techniques that we learned before. So we're going to start experimenting with stylization. We will try the different stylization techniques, such as exaggerating the proportions as we found before, also distorting the shapes, and we will add a little bit of texture. This will help you to develop your own unique interpretation of the landscape elements. Let's get to it. I will show you how we do it on mine, and then you can follow along with yours. So actually here we are starting our little catalog of elements. So while doing this experiment, you will find that you have your own you start to see your own distinct language pop through. So I would recommend you for the sketching phase to use a pencil, but you will not be able to see it if I do it with a pencil, so I'm going to be using a very thick marker. So let's start, for example, with this part right here, this background line. So I see mountains in different shapes. So I'm going to start reinterpreting just this reef back here. So I like mountains that are rounded. So we're going to just do semicircle. And then this one is also kind of round. There's this part here. Then we might do another bubble. And just like this, we have a cloudy landscape. You can see there's maybe one that breaks through. This ones are more in the background. This ones are more in the foreground. Maybe even add another one to the foreground like this. We could also try now doing them a little bit more geometric. So we're just trying to do some geometric triangle shapes, not so organic. Interesting, interesting. We can also try a mixture of the two, and at some point, I will stop looking at the reference and I just look at my own reference, so I'm reinterpreting myself kind of. And at this point, I'm not even looking anymore at my reference image. This is fun. They're kind of fun. After looking at mountains, we can also start looking at this part here with the island and the lake. And then there's also these little islands, patches of land around the lake, of course. Let's try it again. Let's start with the rocks this time. Maybe even though rocks around here, they're very abstract rocks, as you can see. Let's put the horizon in. Not entirely sure. I like the rocks like this, so we will continue trying. This, you have to think then in combination with our mountains. I'm not entirely sure I like the wrong pebbles. They look a little bit like rabbit poops. We try again. So this island, I think let's just simplify it a little bit more like this. And then maybe all of these parts we do also a little bit more rounded. Like So this is the earth and this is the lake. And now as for the rocks, Maybe it's a combination like this. Maybe it's a little bit more like this, but with less scalloping. So let's do it again. Yeah, this looks fun. This looks fun. We also have in our background some trees. Before when we were sketching, we already kind of reinterpreted them. I think I liked I like our very long trees. They're pine trees. So I think we can make a differentiation between very long trees and maybe more sort, but stumpy trees. And we can maybe also throw in some just very hot dog shaped trees or some roundish ones, or even maybe some that are a combination of a hot dog and a round one, even though these are not really there, but I think a little bit of mixtures will look like fun. Yeah. We can also try to do some rocks. I like the rock simple, like semicircles. But if you want to add a little bit more of like this could even be a tree. You know, it could be rock, tree, could be both of the things. So for me, it's all about rounded shapes, I think. I like when you reinterpret the landscape in a very simple little comical way. So all of these also rocks around here. They could be done a little bit like this, like, round like two semicircles kind of together. Or you could also go like, all geometric. Could also make a mixture of that, or you could look at it together. This is the same practice as we did with sketching. I'm just looking at the picture and trying to define some shapes for the rocks. And I think this would be the perfect point to introduce you to some hatching or texture making techniques, mark making techniques because this will make your landscape painting a little bit more realistic. First, we could try hatching, which is creating sort of a series of parallel lines that can add shading or texture. Especially, I would like it here where this is in the back, so we can just add some hatching, some lines like this. And we already create a little bit of depth here. Then if we do cross hatching, which is basically to put some hatches in the other direction as the ones in the back, we create an even darker surface. Here, it's more in the back than here you can see. You can also just try the hatching not diagonally, but completely horizontally. We can also try something called stippling, which is creating a pattern of dots to shade to add shade or texture, you basically just, very quickly. For this, you can use any tool. As I said before, I would prefer to be sketching with a pencil because then we can start adding color. But I'm sketching now with the pen so that you can see it better. You can also try using irregular strokes to add kind of texture. I don't exactly have name for this. Let's just call it irregular stroke shading. Or it can even be directional like this. You could also try maybe blending, like diffusing things to add shades. So especially well done with the pastels. Blending. Or we could also try speckling. This is a little bit messy. So you just put a little bit of paint, and normally you would tape everything off that you don't want to have speckles on it. Yes. Or we could do, as I said before, some very thick layers of paint. It's called impasto, and this really, like, creates like a rough surface with lots and lots and lots and lots of texture. This can be done with paints that are a little bit thicker, maybe the oil pastels or with the quash. Definitely not with a pencil or a pen. You can see it creates very thick. Some of these techniques you will not be able to actually use with some materials, of course, like this in pasto will not work with a pencil. And I would recommend you to repeat this process multiple times, looking at the reference image and creating a little bit catalog of the elements in your landscape, trying it over and over again, seeing what works for you, what you like. And this can actually be done by sketching or already painting with color the individual elements. Let's try out to do a whole kind of background setup. Let's do it on this side. Where are the colors? Where are the colors? See, it's good to have them all together. Yes, we had chosen this one green, magenta, a little bit of pink, and some yellow. So magenta over here. Maybe some of this ochre Sienna I mean over there. And the greens, it's stuck. So we're actually going to mix our own green because the green I had is a little stack. So this is a good moment also to show you how to make some of the colors. It depends on the base that you have. It will be more towards blue or more towards yellow. So we wanted actually some sort of like olivi green. Right now, it's very mucus like. If you add a bit of the contrasting color, you can create a more interesting blend. See now it becomes a little bit more of that olive green that we were looking for. So let's say we have this green, and then we're going to take a bit of white. We take a bit of this and we mix it. Then we have this green here. Very good. With a little bit of white. We created a new green. And now we had this blue here that actually already dried up, but we tried to reactivate it with the water, and it's going to be like a more darker aqua green Very good. So now with these three green shapes, we're going to start shade. I mean, we're going to start maybe creating our backdrop. Going to do a very light one for the mountains, probably. Let's just paint some mountains. It's also good if you sketch directly with the paint because you're not swing control, going to first just paint a base, then we can add some more details. I like when we were doing this kind of mountain range like this. And we can also say that in the front, there is, like, one that is very low. One where it was more angular. I'm going to do one test here and one test down here just to see. And again, some angular. You can actually never do completely like geometric because you're using a round brush or that you should use a more flat brush. Actually, this is also fun. Let's see when we add a little bit of texture, how it looks like. Here we're going to try just tracing it very lightly. Let's make like this so that the lake is kind of roundish, and our land can just, like, hug it. Basically, this is actually a pretty good option with rounded mountains, a little bit more of a pointy island and some in general, more rounded shapes. Now, for this one, let's write a little bit more detailed and maybe more triangular shapes. So I'm actually just winging it. But like you see, this is more has a little bit more I don't know, detail. Yeah. As you can see, we have used all our stylization techniques. We have basically distorted the shapes. We have played with the proportion, what is bigger, what is smaller. Yeah. And you can see it already just by doing that, changes the landscape quite a bit and makes it a little bit more unique. So now that they're kind of dry, I think, we can start with maybe some little bit of mark making just to try it out how it definitely changes the landscape. You will see. We had a little bit of this blue so. I just want to make it a little bit darker. So we have a little bit of contrast with the hatching. By this point, you could be using any colors you like we're just testing up, you're not doing the final painting. So for this, I want to do some irregular hatching. As you can see, my stroke gets a little bit fatter and then thinner. This is very good because it gives it a little bit of liveliness. Change the pressure that you put in the brush. That's very important. I'm not a big fan of the splattering because it's very difficult to control. And the dots, they take too long and I have no patience. The dry brushing also looks very fun. And remember, 'cause I have a very big problem with this, actually. You don't have to fill everything up with mark making. It's going to look crazy if we do it on everything. This is borderline too much, actually. Now, we can try to, like, do some rocks with this. And I'm doing them very regular. This actually looks funny. It's also a sort of hatch, a rock hatch. Here we can try maybe with some other material to make, like, very thick rocks all along the coast, like we were trying to do before. But in the end, maybe it's this color that I chose. It looks just like the water, actually. So here we see two variations of mountains and landscape. This is a little bit messy. I have to say I should have waited until it was dry, definitely. And I do think that I like when the rocks are separate a little bit more than when they're together. It's not my thing, you know? We could also then test also the trees, how they look like, but we can try that out in our next segment, actually. Hands are so dirty. So after you're done with this, you should actually keep repeating this process multiple times and slowly but surely build a catalog of elements and things that you like. Create a reference collection of the landscape elements that inspire you. This can be done either by just sketching them that like we did here or by painting the individual elements or by painting them together. You can always, like, pinpoint the elements out of the landscape. You can see here we started doing different things. And, the best thing would be to practice and practice and practice some more. The more you practice to reinterpret the landscape and the elements in your own style and in a way that feels comfortable for you, the more natural it will become. So keep experimenting with different techniques and styles, and yeah, you will start finding what works for you, what you really like, and what makes you different to others. For me, apparently, it's very round shapes. So while reinterpreting your elements, start actually using the colors that you chose for your color palette. If you want. You can also start experimenting with some textures and some hatching, and definitely don't be afraid to test anything and use anything that you feel like you should be using. So I actually want to propose a little exercise for you today. It's a little bit of homework, but nothing hard, just fun. So I would like for you to fill at least four pages of your sketchbook with different iterations of the background elements in maybe different colors with different shapes, and painting them in different styles, using also different sketching techniques and mark making techniques that you have learned today. You can also apply texture with different materials, and when you're done, creating a cohesive painting, you can start choosing your favorite elements. You can overlap them, put them together, put them next to each other, put them around each other, experiment with how they work together, and painting itself doesn't have to really make sense. Maybe some elements might be even turned around or upside down. They don't work, but at least you're trying to see how they work together. Like, for us, we started making a real background, and then adding some elements, we left the lake white. Why not? We can also work with a little bit of negative space, and you should keep doing this with all the elements. So for tomorrow, we will start painting some vegetation. The steps will technically be the same as today. But we will be focusing a little bit more on the elements in the foreground, like the plants, maybe also even the trees, a little bit more, you know, of the vegetation. I know we already sketched some trees now, but we will then start painting them and adding texture to them and we will continue filling up our catalog of elements together. So see you tomorrow for day five. 10. Day 5: Vegetation & Reinterpretation: Hey, you guys day five, and today we will be focusing on vegetation and everything that is in the foreground, basically, which for me is mostly flowers. So we will basically follow the same steps that we did yesterday, which if you remember correctly, hope you remember, and you wrote them down where to start observing the landscape observing the elements. Basically, in this case, the elements in the foreground, identify them and sketch them by breaking them down into their simple shapes. In this case, we will be doing flowers, so it's the petals and the leaves. So the elements could belong actually to the following categories. In this case, flowers, leafy plants, trees. They could be pointed trees, round trees, trees made out of more than one crown. Could there also be square trees, maybe star shaped trees, potted plants, animals, maybe insects, fruits, will use our different stylization techniques that we have learned before, like exaggerating, distorting the proportions, and playing with a negative space. We will then also apply the mark making techniques that we learned in the class before to the elements that we have drawn to make them a little bit more interesting and have texture to them. This time we will, however, mostly just focus on the shape of the leaves and the texture of the bark, the growth pattern of the plant itself. And in case of animals, maybe their fur, their shape, their head, their tail. I don't have any animals, thankfully, because they're a little bit hard. We will try to reinterpret the shapes and make them unique using different iterations for each plant, and we will see what ends up working best. For us, what we like the best. So by the end of this class, you will have created a little catalog of elements and different types of vegetation that you can always refer back to when you're struggling a little bit, and you can always start completing when you see new elements that you want to paint. So let's get started filling up those sketchbooks. For me, I'm going to start with the flowers. This time, I'm going to go directly like last time with paint, going to go with color. I'm not going to do any sketching this time. Just I'm going to make it very free hand. So I'm going to focus, we always focus on this little yellow, and I'm going to start painting different types of this flower. So we start with a little bowl for the center. Then we make it a semicircle. Then why don't we make it very small? Then we maybe make it like little bubbles. Just like that. What else could we try? What if it's triangular, los we square. Let's just make it an empty circle. Maybe it's just made out of very different. Now we're playing a little bit with the negative space, or maybe it's spiral. Let's see what comes out of this. Now let's play with the leaves a little bit. Of course, there's million combinations because you can combine all of the leaves that you paint with all of the types of flowers. And as you can see, because I'm painting without sketching, this is all could all go very wrong, but I'm just going with the She looks pretty. I like the separation between the inside, between the inside of the flower and the petals. Now, this one, we're going to try to do more like if it was together. Looks like a fried egg, actually. And this one, I feel like it has to have very exaggerated leaves. Center is so tiny, she deserves some exaggeration, just to make it a little bit more contrasting. Only four? Only four. This one will have very tiny petals. And look, if you want to make like this teardrop shape with a round brush, you just put the tip, and then you press down on the brush, and it already almost automatically creates the shape C. You have it almost there. Have to perfect it a little bit. The tip, and then this looks like a cloud that is crying, but it's okay. This one, I'm just going to do little lines. Square center. I mean, we had to try it, but I doubt it's the best decision. So now we have tried some different shapes. Now let's do a little bit of mark making. For that, we can already, like, maybe use another type of material. So let's use maybe let's take a few of these colors. Let's try them out. Let's maybe use this red for now. Just to test things out. Let's see. They have to be really dry in order to be able to use this. So maybe this one might be dry enough. I'm going to do for the petals, a little bit of hatching. And remember, not everything has to have marks because sometimes it looks crazy, so we're not going to do any marks on the tiny little middle of the flower. That's always my problem. I always keep doing, doing, doing, doing and then I'm like, I ruined it. This doesn't even look like a flower. Well, some of them dry. We can also try some dry brushing. For that, we need a dry brush, definitely. Oh. Oh, took too much color. Who wants to get some dry brushing? I think you should. Doesn't look half bad. Maybe these little petals get a little bit of dry hen. Here, maybe we do a little bit of line like this. So we have used some different techniques to make the flower itself. Now I think I'm going to choose maybe this one and this one. They are the ones that I like the most. Maybe these top 31, see? The best ideas come at the beginning. And now we can try doing some stems for them. Let's do it here. Let's make, like, a little collection of some of them. You can even look a little bit at our reference picture to see some other flowers and how the petals of other flowers look like. Nice. So now let's get to the stems. Afterwards, we can actually add some of them mark making. So let's choice a color. They all look very pretty. Very fun, very fun. But we can start, like, adding some details. This one looked good with the dry brushing. Oops. Ah, it's dry brushing. Don't put water cloudie. Nice. You can actually just also use Guash for the details here. And if we want to add something else around here, we can. So let's do the last mark making. And that's it. You have to be careful with mark making, 'cause sometimes you go overboard and there's no turning back. Maybe here, we can do some texture to the stems and maybe to the leaves even a little bit. You can do it with all the elements of the landscape. For example, here are these flowers that we've done together. I have also tried already some trees. You can see different shades with different colors, also with some different mark making techniques. Other flowers, these are more like little bells and different iterations. And then also more flowers. You can see here it's a little messy. But actually, for you, the exercise I want you to do now is also to fill at least four pages of your sketchbook with different iterations of vegetation and also trying out different mark making techniques. Maybe also even try different color combinations, different shapes, and you will see that soon enough, you will have a sketchbook filled to the brim with tests like this, this page glued together. We then one day when you're not feeling so inspired, you can just look back into it and just take inspiration from there. So now that we're actually approaching the end of our filling up our catalog. We are ready to take one of the last steps tomorrow and we will work on the composition. We will start creating little thumbnails and start trying to put our final piece together. But for now, just concentrate on filling up your sketchbook with beautiful flowers, vegetation, animals, and see you tomorrow for a little bit more thumbnailing. 11. Day 6: Thumbnailing the Composition: Welcome to Day six, you guys. We are almost there. This is the day where we're going to start putting together all the elements of our painting into a compelling composition. So firstly, let's talk about what composition means, actually. Composition is the arrangement of elements in a work of art. It's about creating a balanced harmony and interest that will attract and hold the years attention. So to start with it, we will be using little thumbnails. In these thumbnails, we will start testing out the composition. They are like kind of small sketches that allow you to quickly explore and experiment with different compositions. And they are a great way to work out the general layout and the placement of the elements without having to paint the whole painting and having already sketch it on a big piece of paper. So when you're creating a thumbnail, it's important to consider the rule of thirds. In the rule of thirds, is a guideline that suggests that dividing your composition in thirds, so three parts, both vertically and horizontally, and placing your focal point in one of the intersections will actually make the placement of the most important elements more balanced and a better composition. So ask yourself, what do you want to focus on? Is it a tree, is it a flower and place it in the intersecting points basically like this. This is a good guideline for when you're trying to think of general placement, also for deciding where the sky ends and where the land begins. Another important technique that you could consider is the use of leading lines. What are leading lines you might ask yourself. They are something that draws the viewer's eye into this composition. So they could come from anything, like, for example, from the road from the shape of a tree, from a river, for example, this could be a road. You can actually use them to guide the viewer's eye through the painting, into, for example, the horizon, and to create a sense of depth and movement. In this small scene, we see that through this road, you are focusing exactly on the horizon and you're creating a sense of depth and movement through them. Another thing we're looking at is also the contrast and color. So by playing with light and dark values as well as warm and cool tones, you can create a little bit of a sense of depth and atmosphere in your painting. Use colors when creating your thumbnail, as well. This will help you out a little bit with where to place them. First, we will start just sketching them, and afterwards, when we have the composition a little bit down, we will start adding the colors. It will be very important, you will see. Finally, you need to be aware of the importance of simplification. Often, less is more, especially when it comes to creating a successful composition. So by simplifying and reducing the elements that you're using in your painting, you can create a more powerful and a little bit more focused composition. You don't have to fill it out with lots of things because if you want to create chaos, well, whatever, you can also create chaos. But when you are filling it out with things, it's a little bit more complicated to just focus on the important parts of the composition. So let's start placing the background elements and the foreground elements using these little thumbnails and using the composition rules that I just taught you, we will test different things out, and in the end, we will look at what do we like? What do we gravitate towards? We will squint your eyes, look at the composition, and from our GAT thing, what feels right? What could be improved? Let's start trying that out. We will start by basing it on our reference image, but we can deviate from it. It's no problem at all. Let's place it right here, and I am actually going to work also in a vertical way so my little thumbnails are going to look kind of like this. I'm going to quickly just sketch them. They are not the right proportions, but they are just very quick thumb nails. You just more or less need to represent the size of the paper that you're going to be using. I'm going to just start trying to divide it in three sections. And this time around, I normally prefer to leave a lot of sky, but as you can see here, there's not that much sky. So the sky we're going to place here in the upper third. Only there, and it will be a little bit invaded by the mountains actually. Let's start trying to figure out what zones we have. We have the mountain zone, the little lake plus stones and stones and vegetation. I like that this is triangular because it already is implicitly a leading line. So let's try to do a triangular shape here. This will be our flowers. Here on this upper part, we will put our mountains. The lake will also do sort of like we will do this here, and the lake will also follow this triangular shape. So we have here this the lake follows it, and then here we will have our stones along this line as well. Of course, you can deviate a little bit. So we have stone here, and this is pretty important part, we will place our trees around here. So we have important trees, an important stone, triangular line. This is where all of the vegetation is going to be. And maybe around here, we can also place some bigger flowers. So this is one very inspired by this. Now we can try something totally different. We can try just to make the mountains here, and here we do this a little bit more elongated. Then the flowers will all be in this down third here, and this bottom third, and the lake will just come in like this. And we can do stones around. Also interesting. Now I need to I want to try to exaggerate these leading lines more, even. So we're going to do this part a little bit more slanted. And the mountains are also going to be a little bit in an angle, and the lake will just be in the negative space. So we're actually going towards here. So let's do here are the flowers, and here are the rocks. And maybe this is also like this. And here we can just play some flowers. This looks a little bit chaotic, I have to say, pretty chaotic. So now let's just say horizon with the mountains. Then we have horizontal island, horizontal island, and pretty diagonal flowers. And then pretty diagonal, as well, rocks. And this is flowers. And the rest is basically the trees, water. I think I preferred it when it went up a little bit more the triangle. I do like to keep this pretty clean. Maybe we can just do like this, you know. Then we do our triangular shape. With the flowers, and here are the rocks. Here's also rocks, and here are the trees. Let's just try something crazy. Let's just switch the mountains to down here, and here we maybe do some clouds and we squeeze everything. So here are the flowers, and the lake will come here. And these are the stones. Let's look at them. What do we prefer? So, this one is actually also pretty nice. I like how diagonal this is. So these two I really like is that the flowers go very high up into the landscape, and it really creates, like, sort of a division between the two parts. And this one I actually also really like that there's a lot of sky. It's pretty nice. We could do this. We could actually then let's try another one. We could say that the mountains finish at the skyline. So we have a little bit more sky. Not as powerful as this one or this one. I'm having a hard time deciding between these two or actually the three. But I think we're going to go with this one so that we have a little bit more space to paint the flowers because that's what we have been training for, actually. So let's just draw some of these thumbnails and start testing out the colors. You can see they're all different sizes. It's a little bit weird, but it's okay. So let's quickly just sketch it. If you can see while we were sketching, we have actually simplified the shapes a lot and also the elements that are in our painting. I'm just replicating the things as best as I can. They're not all the same all the time, but it's okay. We keep perfecting it each time that we paint it. The rocks and the flowers. Maybe we do here the trees. So let's see. Let's start with the mountains. I'm going to do them first in a dark green, as well as maybe the rocks. Then in this scenario, I'm going to make the mountains pink because why not? In this scenario, I'm going to make them light pink. I mean, before I did the magenta, actually. Here I'm going to make the sky pink. Actually we have no color for the sky, but we will have to find that color later. Maybe the sky's yellow, as well as some of the flowers. Why not? And here we can try to make the lake actually pink. It's also a little bit of color testing. So this is going to be the more conservative one, let's say. Some greens around here. So this one has a lot of green. And the darks and light values are actually pretty dispersed. So we have some dark in the background and some light here in the middle. And we leave a little bit of white for the, in this case, we can paint all of these colors, and we bring a little bit more light to the foreground. Maybe this one has a very dark sky. Maybe this one also has a pink lag. No, let's leave it also white. I think there's something nice about leaving it white. From here, the sky is magenta and it's all pinks in the background. It's all pinks and yellows, maybe some light or some dark green. They kind of work together. Maybe the lag is like a crazy color ochre Might end up using blue. We don't know. We will see. Wait, this is not looking very good. As you can see I'm doing them very quick. Maybe we do need a blue for the leg, 'cause everyone always keeps them saying, but it doesn't look like a leg. What can we do? Sometimes these things happen. Let's keep this one dark in the background. As you can see, I'm actually randomly trying out some colors. There's not much plan to what I'm doing. Right now, I just tested out a little bit. What color could the leg be? I'm testing one with a little bit more limited color pad, would see. So we could keep doing this actually all day. So these are just some tests, and I have to say, I do like when the lake is blank because it gives the painting a little bit of room to breathe. It is kind of in the middle of things that are pretty filled with color. So I think I prefer it when it's like this. And I have to say, from my cat feeling when I look at them, I do like this, too. I don't know if it's because of the of the lake. But no, I think it's also because of the colors. Either this or this. I think I would like this one, but maybe with the green also up here. We can try it out. Let's see. It was a very quick sketch. Very quick. So let's see. We have this dark sky, the pink mountains. Green this green here as well. By the way, this is just a very simple color testing. When we're actually applying them, we can add a lot more nuances and variations of the colors, of course. Actually, yes, I think I think this is the winner. So we're going to be basing our color palette onto this little thumbnail here. Very good. So it's going to be a combination of kind of the two with a diagonal going up there, maybe a little bit less lake. I'll try to squeeze the lake a little bit. And as for the colors, we're going with dark on the top and a little bit more light on the bottom and using the negative space of the lake. Very good. So today's exercise for you is basically this. Start by sketching around, I guess, 12 different thumbnails. Don't use color yet that we did here, analyze the composition and choose the six that you like the most. Then redraw those six and add colors from the color palette that we have chosen in the beginning. Then look at how the placement of the color changes the scene, squint your eyes a little bit when you're looking at it, and choose the one that basically you like the most. This will be a reference for our big painting so that we know how we vaguely will put the colors on there. So tomorrow is the big day. We will start painting. We will start our big painting. I hope you had fun during this process. Now it's time to put all our knowledge together and create a beautiful, beautiful painting that you can hang in your room. Maybe. 12. Day 7: Putting It All Together : Hello, you guys. Today is the day. It's the last day. Welcome to Day seven. This is the day when we see all our hard work come to life. We'll put together our knowledge and create our little masterpiece. You. So happy. So we will start by lightly free hand sketching our chosen thumbnail with the composition that we chose on a piece of paper. Preferably a little bit bigger than an A four. It can be any format that you like, and it should be a little bit thicker paper, 240 to 300 grams. It bit thicker than your sketchbook, at least. Your sketch will, of course, not be identical to your thumbnail or to your reference picture, but it doesn't matter because it's supposed to be a fring and dtressing process, so it doesn't have to be perfect, and you should not strive for perfection, but for uniqueness and fun. No, it sounds cheesy. But it's true, you have to keep it in mind. Don't try to copy. So first, we will lay down the colors for the background. It will be like kind of opaque colors with gouache. We will then work on the foreground colors. And remember, not everything has to be painted. It is good and it's nice to leave some blank spaces, sometimes to let the painting a little Breathe. That's why I think I'm not going to paint the lake, for example. We will see how that looks like. We will start then by doing some mark making onto the background and also on the foreground, but we will try not to overdo it because less is more. And if you're unsure about how the marks will look like, you can refer back to your catalog or make some additional testing and see how that works for you. Don't paint anything that you are not sure about, refer to the catalog or go back to a little bit more testing. We will also try to make the elements in the background fun and simple. And when we're done, we will look at the painting from far away. We will squint our eyes. Do we see there's something missing? Are we feeling like it's not correct? Should we just start over? More tests? Probably not. There's always a way to salvage a painting. So let's start first by lightly sketching our scene. I'm referring to my thumbnail here. As you can see, I have taped it. So where I'm going to be painting is inside the taped borders. Normally, I would just, like, free handed, but today I felt like I wanted crisp lines around it. But you can also just do an organic border. That also sometimes looks good. And my rule of thirds, I'm just also like eyeballing it. There's no need to be precise in this. And let's start by doing the mountains. I'm going to look at our catalog. How did we do the mountains? Gonna do a big round one. And we're going to do maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe. These ones are the same size, maybe one like this, but then one smaller. And we can add more layers, actually. So this is for the mountains in the background, they kind of look like trees, but it's okay. Then we will do this, the island in the foreground, and now we will try very good, and now we can do the rocks. And we will do some trees. They're in the background, so they shouldn't actually have a lot, a lot of detail. And I'm just really lightly sketching it. Maybe you will not see it so well, but it's good to somehow know the placement a little bit. We have a little bit of a reflection actually in the water as well. You can try to replicate that. And along the coast, there's also, like, the stones, and you'll see how that looks and some rocks along here as well. And then we have flowers. So we can look at the ones that we had tried to reference them. The smaller ones, we can actually also just do in a cluster. Very good. We do a lot of different flowers, whatever we imagine. And of course, there's also little flowers all around here that we can do that with mark making afterwards. So I think this is basically the sketch of our painting, and we are ready to start. Let's have the colors as a reference here. You can see we have done a lot of testing, testing. I'm going to use the clean palette for you so that you see everything nice and clean. So I also have here, by the way, a little bit of paper to test out things. I had previously sketched on it. We had tried the techniques on there, but it's okay. So we're going to start trying to mix a dark green. We put a little bit of blue and some yellow. Let's see how it looks like. This is for the background and some of the stones, some water. It's pretty good, but it's too blue. It's a delicate balance to find the correct one. And then remember that when you're like, mixing it, you should mix enough so that you don't have to, like, remix it all again. But you know what? Let's go for it. I think. Let's go for it. We're painting the background. Crazy. Don't feel nervous. You can always just start again. This is actually just for relaxation, remember. It doesn't have to look extremely beautiful. You just have to have fun while doing it. Remember what I said to start from the opposite corner of your dominant hand and then continue so that you don't get in your way when painting. Okay, now that we have the background is going to be a dark day in our painting. We can also do some of the stones. I'm not going to do all of them to some. Maybe even some here along the coast. Very good. Very good. So now let's try to mix a little bit of a lighter green. You can actually just come with this color and add some white. Can add a blot of white here. Wow. That was a very big blob of white, definitely. Let see what color we get. This is a very tedious process. If you don't have that many colors to start mix mix, mix mix mixing because you have to test out a lot of things. Okay, this is a cute color. We can try to work with it. So let's try painting a little bit. Actually, you know what I'm going to do. I'm going to change the brush because this one is very thick, and we're going to do a little bit more detail now. So let's change the brush to a thinner one. The number eight, which I said is my favorite one, the reversatile. We're careful around the trees, but not to focus because we can paint over. But of course, the more delicate we are with the painting of the outlines, the better. Very pretty color. Now, we might also use it for some parts here. But actually, this, yeah, let's do it. If you go over the lines, actually really doesn't matter that much because when we're putting the flowers on top, we will just make very opaque paint to cover up any of this overlapping. I know I paint very fast. It's training. You don't have to paint this fast from the beginning. You take it with patience. So now we kind of have achieved this dynamic line, triangular dynamic line. I think it's very good. So we will leave it like this and do another green for a little bit of the other part. So let's make a little bit more of a vibrant green. And this is where we deviate a little bit of what we had painted before. It's okay to just try new things out and see what actually works. Continue with the background, but with another color. We can even add more different colors to all of this intricate landscape that we have here just to add a little bit more variety because the grass is never one tone. So what we're doing is sort of a grass collage, I guess. So now we're looking for a bit of a darker shade. Hopefully different than this stones. That actually doesn't matter because we needed more stones. So maybe it's even good that it's this shade. And as you see, we're not really now differentiating so much what is stone and what is landscape. We're kind of weaving it together. And maybe this part here now looks a bit plain. So we might want to add a little bit of brighter green once again, maybe even with a little bit more yellowish in it. For doing this, we will just actually go in, select a place where we want to start and paint over the paint that already is there. And if it mixes, then it's okay. Then it will just add a little bit of layering effect. I'm just adding some stripes of this new color around. See if it was, like, kind of pieces of yellow flowers. We can make these patches bigger or smaller depending on what we like. We'll do the same also around here actually, there's also hills around here. And this is where you just let yourself go and start mixing things and trying other things out and seeing what comes out of it. That's the most fun part of the whole process. You can even paint on top of things that are wet and then they will mix. Okay, but we should also think about not overdoing it, but it's so hard when you're having fun. Aah. Okay, I think right now it looks pretty intricate already. I'm going to add some last stones that I missed around here. Also, like maybe on the lake water, like this. Maybe even a stronger color. Defining them better. Um, very good. I think we are done with the background. Oh, we're missing, actually, the mountains. Let's see. Very magenta. Extremely magenta. I don't know exactly what color I'm trying to achieve, but I will know when I see it. Not this one, definitely. This is good for some of them, so we can add it to maybe something. Actually, it's a very good color. And we're improvising. It's okay. You have to be able to adapt. So now we have this. Actually, I wanted it a little bit more pink, but it's actually a very good color, I have to say. I can try more with the magenta. It looks very good with the green. Better than I expected. Is this even a different color? Yeah, it's a little bit of a different color. That's not careful with the hen. It's not very opaque. To make it more opaque, we could use some white. You can even leave some of them out since white, actually. Let's try to do a darker one. Trying to do some darker ones, darker mountains, just to add some depth. You know, maybe look silly, you know. If you just really do a darker, darker one. Okay. Beautiful mountains. Beautiful. I would even, you know, incorporated add some of this purple to our existing landscape. Because I think it's going to be very nice. Nice. Maybe some of the magenta also that we can probably just start by doing with the flowers. This one is magenta. Because actually, we're done with the background. Maybe the trees we need to do, but apart from that, we are kind of done. Do another one here. O. We can actually also try to make some light pink. For some of the flowers. Even maybe for some of the trees, why not? Beautiful pink flowers. Maybe we even paint some patches. Let's try also to make a light purple. And at this point, I would just stop looking at our reference at all. Just to cover some of the white spots that we left, I'm just doing like the sort of flower patches. Afterwards, when we're doing a little bit more of the mark making, we will start with making them a little bit more textured. Little break to see how it looks like. It's pretty cute. It's very psychedelic. Let's use some yellow. I want to create a warmer yellow, so I'm adding a little bit of red to it. Now we can paint some of the flowers. Making a lot of little flowers just to represent the little blown flowers, smaller flowers, all types of little flowers, flower flower flowers. Maybe even some trees are yellow in the back. And finally, we're going to try doing some of the stems. Was this flower here in the foreground. Let's take some of the color that we already have. Stems and leaves, actually, we're. With the stems, we are referring a little bit to what we learned in our sketching classes. Just mixing different types of cream to make different stems. So they all look a little bit different. We add some dittle leaves to get a bit more delicate. Some of them were missing the center, the you can see I'm already starting to do a little bit of detailing, but it would be a good idea to let it dry before. Let the base dry. Yes, we should definitely let it dry. Go to look at it from the distance for a second. Oh, it's looking so pretty. Yes, we're going to let it dry for a second. So a little break to let it dry, and then we will start with the mark making. Now that it's semi dry, we can start doing some light mark making. For that, we can use other materials or we can just use quash as well. So I'm going to do some mark making for the background, like, where the mountains are. With this very long brush, I'm going to do some lines. I'm using different pressure. Also here, we will do some of these lines. It's okay if they're not perfect. Mountains are not perfect and maybe even in the front here. Just like that. Then for the trees, can do a little bit of dry brushing on them, especially in the pinky ones. Also maybe some details on some of these ones. In which ones, I don't know, like here, for example, nine. Maybe even on some of the stones. I'm just doing random lines on them. And for some patches of grass, we can do little points or little lines, especially where there's high grass, maybe it's here. Maybe here there was also grass. Just doing some random lines around just to make it a little bit more interesting to add some different textures to the field. And then we can also add some lines to the plants themselves. Just to define them a little bit more, but not all of them have to have, remember? We don't want to go overboard. I'm really trying not to. But it's very difficult. Not to signify that there's little, like, plants, we can also just do little dots all around. Maybe they go even around here or around here. And there's little flowers to Maybe here, we have some horizontal lines just like that on some of the mountains. Other ones really plain and others have just some random lines. Then we can do the same for the trees. Maybe not with that color because you can barely see it. Cute. Then we do the little trunks. Now, maybe with this kind of yellow, we do for this one, there's also some marks, three, three, three marks. And we give them a trunk, as well. I'm just adding now some brndom marks. We can try to add some other little colors, little textures with maybe some crayons. This is good to add some texture around. You can see maybe around here or around here, maybe even in between spaces. For example, here, we can do a little bit of light shading around the stones. And with the mountains, I can also try to do some light shading for the ones that are actually behind. And even maybe some of them have snow try to give a little bit of dimension to some of the stones. The good thing about this crayon is that it shows what's underneath pretty nicely. Let's see that we're not doing too much. Actually, I would love to do a little bit of reflection on the water. So we can maybe even do a very, very light wash of this green, like, very light. Maybe I'm doing something bad here. Maybe not. We're doing, like, the wet on wet technique right now, sort of. Actually looks kind of cute. Are you gonna leave it like this before it gets worse. And apart from this, we can do maybe some yellow. Just to make more texture around, we do some yellow patches or even on the stones, we can do also some texture. I know it's getting a little chaotic, but it is a landscape, so it should be a little bit chaotic, at least. Maybe I want in the correct color. So actually, I don't want to add more because I noticed that I'm no getting in the flow, and I think we better stop here. So actually, I think we're done. I think we're done. Let's look at it from the distance, Squinter out, ice. It's pretty cute. It's pretty cute. We will take away just the masking tape, reveal it, and we will be done. Congratulations. You made the seven day challenge. I hope you're very proud of yourself. You deserve a big big, big big pat on the back, and a very big. Congratulations, then. Congratu, Congratu. Congratulations. You did seven days of challenge. You filled a whole sketchbook and you made a beautiful painting of a landscape. And now you are the master of landscapes. So congrats. And let's get to wrap this up, and I'll give you some tips on how you can continue your practice so that you're really even better than Picasso. Or or so. Hope you're proud of yourself, and hoo, you made the whole week, a whole week of working for this beautiful piece. I think it was worth it. 13. What now?: Congratulations, you guys. You've made it to the end. I hope you're very proud of your painting. You have signed it, like the true artists that you are. You have removed the masking tape from around, and you're very proud of all your achievement. You have officially made it to the end, and now you might ask yourself, what now? How does my journey continue? So I want to give you some inspiration going forward. Like, for example, you could, well, try some other prompts, for example, get inspired by other artists, start looking at what they do, studying their work. Study the work of artists whose style you actually admire closely, and then try to maybe incorporate some of the elements of their techniques and styles into your own work, into your own painting style. Try to put your own spin on their techniques to make them a little bit more your own, incorporate random elements you find in these paintings to your own paintings and to your own catalog of elements. And why don't you also try just painting cats for a while, or just focus on painting only flowers. Maybe some scenes from inside your house. You can also try like topics like this instead of going for the landscape. You can also try playing with determinate color palettes to create unique atmospheres and mood for your landscapes. You can also try just experimenting with complimentary or on the analogous color scheme. You can also just try using completely monochromatic colors for a more dramatic effect. And of course, you have to keep updating your catalog of colors with these unique combinations that you try. If you find a color that you really love, you should just put it down on your catalog of colors for when you're lacking inspiration. And you should definitely get comfort zone and try painting landscapes in maybe different weather conditions at different times of the day when it's sunny, when it's dark, maybe even from unusual perspectives, looking from above, from below. This will help you develop a diverse range of skills and styles that you can always refer back to when you're feeling like, Oh, you want to paint something, but you don't really know what, but you have already tried it, so it will be easy for you. And finally, just try to paint to relax. Landscapes are very relaxing, at least for me, I hope from now on also for you and you just should try painting for the sake of it. So I want to encourage you to keep an inspiration board on Pintres or on Instagram or whatever you want to keep it and keep updating it with references. Keep updating your reference journal, keep updating your sketchbook, keep updating your catalog of elements. You can also try and look at my sketchbook or other people's sketchbooks on YouTube. They post them a lot maybe you see something that you like and that you want to apply to your own sketchbook. So just keep trying, keep testing. In the end, developing a style is all about seeing and trying out. So I hope to see a lot more from you in the future. I'm very excited to witness your artistic voice come to life, and let's conclude this challenge in the next chapter. See you at the conclusion. And again, congratulations. 14. Conclusion: Congratulations again. You have completed the seven days sketchbook, journey, challenge, something like that, and you have managed to create your own unique, beautiful, amazing landscape. I really hope that you are very, very, very, very proud of yourself because I truly am proud of what I've created here. I hope you also enjoyed the process as well. Mine is certainly very colorful. It has a lot of texture. I just had a very great and relaxing time painting. It definitely speaks my very own unique artistic language. Help yours does, too. Or at least it shows the beginning of a very unique style. Let's do a little recap. In this class, we began firstly by analyzing landscapes and work of art by other artists in order to learn a little bit more about ourselves, about what we like, and how we like to apply it into our painting. We also learned about sketching techniques. We learned how to create loose and stylized shapes and how to reinterpret some of the element from a reference image into our own unique language and how to develop them in a way that we like, basically, distorting them and making them a little bit more unrealistic. From there, we started exploring color theory, and we did a little bit of color analysis, learning how to choose the perfect color palette that reflects ourselves, our style, and how we observe and interpret the reference picture. And the elements found in this life. We also delved into mark making and texture techniques and how to apply them to vegetation and to the background landscape like the rocks and the mountains in a way that we created a little bit more dynamic and interesting compositions. We discussed the importance of composition and the use of thumbnail sketches in order to help you to create appealing and well balanced compositions. Finally, we brought it all together, all our knowledge, all our expertise to create a very beautiful and unique piece of art. Hall. Beautiful, very proud. Now it's time to put all of these skills together and create your very own landscape. I hope you've been following along, and now you're ready to wrap it up. So don't be afraid to experiment with different techniques, with different materials, different approaches, and remember to have fun because the most important is not the end result. It is the process. So I wish you lots of fun while creating your landscape. Don't forget to post your progress in the project gallery so that you can share it with your colleagues, with me. Also remember to share your workflow. Your fellow students would love to see it, and I will for sure, give you feedback and encourage you to keep practicing and develop your skills. You'll be amazed. Practicing how far you can go in your journey as an artist and how much you can develop your own personal style, how much you start to enjoy painting whatever it is that you're painting. So keep practicing, keep inventing and keep using your sketchbook as the place to host all of your creative ideas. It will be a very useful tool in the future, especially when you want to paint just to relax. And you can actually just self reference your own sketchbook when reinterpreting landscapes. The steps you have learned here today during this week, you can apply them to anything and everything. And actually, the more you practice, the fuller of ideas, your sketchbook will the easier it will be for you to start developing your own style and just to start painting, actually. I really hope your next painting session is very relaxing and it helps you to be transporting to another place very, very far away. I would love to see your creation, so please do not forget to post them on the project gallery. You can post all of your weekly prompts and maybe also your test and your reference picture. Definitely, we will all love to see it. You can follow me on Instagram at Underscore Cloud De Mertor and also find my work on my website, www.cloudemtor.com. Looking forward to seeing your very full sketchbooks and how you start developing your own unique artistic voice while also having a relaxing and enjoyable time painting what I love the most landscape. So see you in my next class and have lots of fun.