Gouache Painting for Beginners: Winter Landscape

1. Intro: Thank you for joining in and for this class, I have a nice fun Winter gouache painting. This is very easy for beginners. I only used three different colors to create this really easy painting. In this class you will learn how to layer the gouache, how to do some spattering and different techniques. And we're going to create some different layering with the birch trees and the bushes. And we're also going to learn how to glaze with gouache as well. So let's jump right in and get started. 2. Supplies & Getting Started : And first, we're going to start off with my sizing. There is five by seven. It's a little over, I think it was five by eight, if anyone is curious. And it is 140 pound watercolor paper that I'm using and it's cold pressed. And I believe the brand was the Fabriano. Whatever watercolor paper you have will be fine. And there is my Turner gouache. I'm going to use the sky blue mixed with some white. And you're going to paint the entire background first. When you're done with your background, you are going to allow it to dry for roughly ten to 15 min. This gouache dries pretty fast. And then you can come back for the, um, we're gonna start with the layering and all the trees. I'm going to use the white. And then I'm going to create like a loose sketch with my size eight paintbrush there. It has a nice point on it. And I'm just going to do a simple layout here with some placement for your horizon line and the land there and a small river and a few trees. And starting off here, I'm just going to use the point of my brush and just make a shape here for that small river river stream, whatever you'd like to call it here, just right in the middle. And as you go further out, is gonna get smaller and smaller. Then there's some lines here. I'm going to create just a four or some bushes are going to be. And then on the edge here are going to create some of the trees. And these are going to be lot more opaque because the trees are birch trees, so they are going to be white. So upfront we have the thicker trees. And then I'm going to wipe off a little bit of the paint and we're going to create some smaller skinnier trees that will be set off into the background. They're a little bit further back. 3. Painting Trees & Background pt1: After you have thickened up your main trees there, now we're going to add some of the branches and you can add as many as you would like. I start off with just a few and then take a look around and then you can see where it looks a little bit too empty. Or you can reach them out towards each other and cross them. That always makes things look nice and full as well. And down towards the bottom, I'm going to start with a little bit of glazing. We're going to add layers for the snow and ice. So you can take some of your water and then wipe your brush in there so it is a little bit thinner than normal. We don't want it super thick. And then you can start to fade out, enlightened up your pressure. And then we are going to leave a darker blue shadow underneath some of the trees. Later on we're gonna be going in with some Prussian blue for the shadow areas. Next up, we're going to use that Prussian blue that I mentioned. And we're going to start to fill in the bushes and along the river on the edges. And then you're going to use a little bit of water to help faded out in the center. So it creates that like IC glaze effect. I'm also going to deepen the shadows underneath the trees. The same way. 4. Painting Details and Spattering pt2: And then we're going to move on up top and we're going to deepen some of the shadow areas underneath the branches. As well as we're going to do some more details with the trees. Which is very easy for the birch. It's almost like a crisscross motion. And then just a couple of little dots for some of the speckles on the trees and a few lines. So very easy to create. Good. You can see here as the painting is starting to come along, that when, when you add the shadow areas, it really helps the trees to stand out. And it just looks a lot better. And in the center and the center where the water is, we're going to add some white. Just again for a little bit of that IEC look in the water. Just some highlights back-and-forth, back-and-forth. For our last layer here, I'm gonna go in and I'm going to load up my brush here a lot thicker because this is going to be for the snow. So you can do tapping motions because you want to see the texture for the snow. So you can have fun and play around with this. And you can put as much snow as you like. Just remember to not cover up your shadow areas. The final step here is to add some falling snow, some snow in the background. And this is known as spattering. You can use an old toothbrush, but I had my big brush just laying right here, so I decided to use that. And you just want to use a little bit of water and your paint. And then you're going to tilt it to the side and flip it down. This can be a little bit messy so you want to prepare your desk so that if you're going to splash anything that everything will be covered. And you can feel free to put as much as you'd like. I'll show a close-up here in a minute. And we're coming up to the end here. I wanted to thank you so much for joining in and I hope you enjoyed this fun and easy watch tutorial. You can be sure to check out my other classes. I have lots of other watercolor and other classes that are easy for beginners. And I'll see you next time.