Gouache Polaroids: Paint Winter Snowscapes

1. Welcome to Winter Snowscape Polaroids!: Winter has this special kind of magic, don't you think? It's peaceful, cozy, and perfect for inspiration. And in this class, we're going to capture that inspiration and that magic and small polroid style paintings that are as nostalgic as they are beautiful. And I have designed an easy to follow class to help you create a darling finished project, even if you've never worked with quash before. I am Peggy Dean, and I am an artist, author, and educator. My favorite thing in the whole world is to bring you resources that are easy to implement. And in this class, you are going to get a couple of things. I'm going to guide you through everything step by step, including how to layer colors, how to add details, and use brushes in ways that feel natural and fun. And by the end of this course, you will have a collection of mini winter scape artworks framed in the timeless charm of polroids and you'll also walk away with gouache painting skills that you can carry into your next projects. So whether it's experimenting with new color palettes, creating atmosphere in your paintings or mastering that cozy nostalgic detail, these are techniques that will weave into your go to tools for any future artwork because it's about learning in a way that feels stress free with results that you will love. So let's dive in and create something beautiful together. 2. Supplies: Supplies we will be using. So we need watercolor paper. You can use mixed media paper, but if you tend to be heavy with water use, I would say it will be in your best interest for something heavier. Either way, we'll work. This is a nine by 12 piece of paper. You can use any size as long as you remember that you're dividing into threes because that's what we're gonna do together. And then we can cut our paper from there. So we're going to go over that, but just make sure you have at least an eight by ten, um piece of paper so that you can work with cute little polaroids. We're also going to be using a main large brush. So this is a wash brush. Anything that creates like a wash over a larger area, and then a small round brush. This is a number four. Even finer is great, too. You'll get a little more coverage with four or six, but I'm going to stick with a four. You'll need a ruler. You'll need some tape. This is washy tape. You can use painter's tape. Anything that's not going to ruin your paper, but still creates a nice crisp line as a guide. You'll need guash. The colors I'm using a blue. I'm going to end up mixing this blue quite a bit with white. So it doesn't have to be any particular shade of blue. Of course, you can mix colors if you want to, but I wanted to limit these colors in order to basically make it easier for everybody else. You'll also need a black or a dark color. So I'm going to grab Prussian blue here. I'll also be mixing my blue with the darker tones, and I'll also be using this straight out of the tube. So if you want to use black, you can do that. You can also use really deep color, like that won't neutralize the blue tune. Well, neutralizing would be fine, actually, as long as it's dark and creates contrast. And then I'll also want a grounding color. So this is burnt sienna. You could use a brown. You can even use a red or an orange because when you mix colors, you can create something that's more neutral. And lastly, I would say a red or a pink for one of the scenes, and I'm going to be using coral red. It's really pretty out of the tube, but chances are you probably I mean, you may or may not have this, but you could go with a regular red as well and mix it with white. But I'm obsessed with these colors right out of the tube. This is acrylic guash, so it's acrylic based guash. You can use regular guash. You can also use acrylic paint. The reason why I like acrylic guash is because a lot of acrylic has that sheen to it when it's finished. It doesn't have that matte finish when you're done, and this one does. So I would go, if you have acrylic based squash, it is so fun to use. So I would do that. And then let's see what else? A palette, a mixing pallet. I use the stay wet palette. I'll link all this stuff, too, if you like if you end up liking what I am using so that you have quick access. But you can also make something like this an airtight container. So this is palette paper, and you can get this. Like if you use any sort of acrylic or oil, look for that kind of palette paper. But underneath this, it's real messy because I paint like splattered everywhere. But this is just a moist, like, very thin sponge, and it holds the moisture in the paint so that it extends the life of the paint. So rather than putting something like acrylic on it mixing palette and then having it dry in, you know, 20 minutes, this will last a couple of weeks for your paint, so it extends the life, which is really great. And then, lastly, your jar of water, two jars of water are ideal. That way you have, like, your warm and cool tone, or you can use, like, a dirty and then a sort of dirty, but we're rinsing the rest of it off. So however you like to use your water jars, but that's all you need. So let us start. Let's get our frames put in place. 3. Set Up Your Polaroid Frames: Alright, let's get our frames palace. Now, I forgot to mention optional is a pencil. It will be more helpful to use one, so I would grab one of those. And this is just to get our frames situated. Now, you can go according to legitimate polroid sizes or you can take your paper and divide it in threes. If you're using an eight by ten or something smaller, I would actually work this way because you can get one, two, three, four polroids out of that. I just like to work left to right. It's just easier for me, and then I can use this as a scrap for anything else. But what I'll do first is I actually start to frame right away. So if I think about the outer edge of a polaroid, I want you know about this much space. So I know to tape off right away in that space. So when you take your washi tape, you don't want to lay it down over the edge of the paper thinking like, Okay, well, I'm going to get it to the edge and call it good. And the reason why is because then that's keeping this much of a gap. And we actually only want to keep about this much. So in this instance, you could mark it off with pencil, but what I'm going to do is just kind of eyeball that strip and make sure that it is approximately where I need it. I don't usually get too precious with these as long as it's seemingly straight. And so I'll just tape this down to my surface. Now, if you're using stickier tape, I would be careful with how much you press it to the paper. The main part that matters is that the seam that's connecting to the paper, like, the very edge, that that is nice and firm. The rest of it doesn't really as long as it has a nice grip, but the seam is what matters. And the reason why is because as we paint, we're going to be going over, I mean, I guess not air quotes, but we're going over that line and we want that to be a nice crisp edge. Okay, so from here, I actually start with the middle, and I go about three inch inches. So if I want a square, and I know I'm going 3 ", by the way, if I divide 12 by three, it's getting four. So as long as it's a number that's higher than three when I'm dividing the length of my page, that's good because I'm going to need that breathing room because the interior is the square is going to be 3 ". So if I want it to be a square, then I'm going to want to measure from the edge here down to the bottom, so I know that that is where my square is going to be at the base. So I'll measure I'll just do a little mark on each of the three inch spaces. And then after that, I can measure from the actual inside. If you care about measurements and being really specific, you can always go in and find the middle point. So this is six. So the middle point would be approximately here, which means that 3 ", I mean, if you want to get real specific, it'd be 1.5. Right here. And then I've got my zero and three. But honestly, that does not matter because we're gonna cut this anyway. But if you want to make sure you have enough room and you know you always mess up your measurements, I say that because I'm one of those people. This is going to be helpful. So before we measure the rest of it, I will go ahead and lay down this washy here, so I'm going to go just underneath the mark I made because that will leave that three inch space inside, which is what we want. So again, just making sure that that's nice and firm at the edge. And then here and here, we want to add some tape, as well. If you don't know, if you have an issue, making sure it's even, you can also mark it down here. I feel like 3 " I can eyeball enough to where I'm not going to be upset if it's not perfectly straight because it's going to look pretty straight. And I'll just lay this down right here. Now, this is going to leave just about the amount of space on either side when after we're done with these blocks, if you cut it right in the middle to keep about the same amount of edge, you can This is a little skinnier than what this will make. So I'll end up trimming that slightly, but just as an FYI. Now, the other side here, I want to make sure on this side on this side that we're leaving those marks on the inside. So the 3 " is what we're leaving with space. So what I usually do, I don't even Well, sometimes I mark it, but sometimes I'll also just hold the ruler. So I have, let's say, one, two, three. Okay, so it looks like I went over, which I don't even know. Oh, no, I didn't. Here we go. So I have the beginning right here, and then I have the 3 ". So it's approximately 3 ". That'll work. And then it doesn't matter what comes down underneath because we're just going to be working inside of these squares. Now, this tape that's in the middle does have to be secure on both sides because we're working inside of these. So same thing here now. I'll go ahead and measure. About 3 " to about here. And then let's just line this up, seven, eight, nine, ten, about 3 " right here. So I will go on the other side of the mark I made so that I can make sure that 3 " on the inside. And the reason why I care so much about measurements is because it ensures that they're all consistent. All the polroids that are done will all be the same size, and that's just cute to have that collection. Okay, so that's framing it. And then it allows you to make sure you have room underneath so that when you cut your polarids out, you still have that little um space that you can write, a little note like a polaroid, and then you'll have this scrap piece of paper to do whatever you want with. So framing, done. Let us move into adding our washes. 4. Paint Gouache Background Washes: When we set up our washes now, this is the same for watercolor or guash. We are going to mix the color and then just make sure we have a nice smooth surface coverage. And this is actually, believe it or not, easier to do with guash because we're not worried about getting such specific water control. So I am going to take a blue and white and put that on my palette and mix them together, and I want to get a pretty light blue. I am using an acrylic white because I I ran out of white guash, so I'm gonna have to have a little sheen and be okay with it. But that is okay. For now. One of the things I will recommend doing, if you have a big brush like this, I don't love mixing color with these big brushes just because it soaks up so much of the paint. So if you have a palette knife, I know that it's, like, not a big, big deal, but that'll be helpful or just grab a smaller brush for now when you mix. And I always add water, so I just get my brush wet, and then I usually start from the side. So I don't go right in and goop it all up. I'll pull some of this out, and I'll mix next to it, 'cause I'll probably end up using this more. I mean, I know I will end up needing to use more of this color, but I'm going to that is how I'm going to mix. And so, see that creates a pretty light blue. That's what I'm looking for. And then I will grab my larger brush, get that wet because the water actually helps both acrylic and guash spread really well. So it looks like I'm going to have to mix a lot more of this, actually. So I'm going to use this brush after all. But overall, that's what I would say as a tip. But I was just noticing I didn't have quite enough on my brush. And we're going to want this to be a pretty creamy consistency. So it's like melted butter, essentially. So it's not too watery, it's not chunky, and we're just going to cover the entire area of one of these blocks. And it doesn't have to be any specific way. If you have any areas that aren't solid or they look like they have streaks, that's actually I would leave that because it's going to be kind of part of the sky, and it looks really pretty. But if you don't have that, that's fine, too. But just don't try to you don't need to make it like perfect coverage is what I'm getting at here. Alright, so once that is down, we're gonna let that dry. If you want to, before it dries, you can grab some white, and you can create a few streaks with that, and it's going to create some of the streaks of, like, what I was talking about to add some depth. It's really subtle, but it does make a difference. You can also tap it in. Okay, so I'm going to let that dry, and I'll move on to the next one here, and I think that it'll be fun to do these in three different tones. So let's go ahead and go darker for this next one. And we will do a real deep blue. So I will go ahead and grab Prussian blue. You could grab black to mix with your other blue. I might actually end up pulling in some of the burnt sienna, so it's not super, super I don't want it to be so vibrant. Well, it might work out well. No, see, I want mine to be a little more muted. It will just a little bit, just to kind of neutralize it, and make it a little bit more of that, like, deep, deep color. So I'll go ahead and do. Let's do about three fourths of the way down. So we'll just cover this block. So when I get these edges, I'm not necessarily going into them. I'm going out from them, and that's going to ensure I'm not accidentally lifting the tape up. Or you can go side to side, but I wouldn't go into them, especially if your tape isn't, like, wildly sticky. It's going to save you. Okay, when that deep, deep color is in, what I want to do is bring in a little bit of a lighter tone. So I will just go right into this blue that I had, pick it up and put it over here, and then just to make sure I know what the color is and then come through and just do a few swipes in the sky. And these don't have to look like anything in particular. So don't think it has to be this streak to the left. It looks like I accidentally got white in there, so I will. There we go. Just anything to create some interest in the sky. And I wouldn't do too many of those, so I'll smooth out some of the ones I just made. There we go. And then that looks about good. Okay, so for the next one, let's do something with a little bit of a different hue. So that's where I'll bring in my coral. I'm going to really rinse my brush, making sure that is completely clean of the blue. So sometimes I'll squeeze on the side, kind of tap it so that excess blue comes off. And that's where your next water jar comes in handy, just as, like, a second dip. And I want this to be pretty light, as well. So I'll grab some of the white to mix in with this coral. And again, if you have red or pink or anything like that that you want to use. The idea is just to have a fun, different hue. Kind of like, you know, right after dusk. So I'll grab mostly white mix this up. Okay, so that's about what I'm looking for. Just something really soft. And I'll take this one about two thirds of the way down. So about here. And it doesn't have to be perfect at all. Like your horizon line where the sky meets the ground can be sloppy and messy because we're going to be going over that. Okay. Once all of this dries or when it's closer to dry, that's when we can start adding the additional colors. So we'll put the basin and start carving that out. So when we think about scenes like this, especially with little plaides with paintings, I think it's really fun to think about it where the sky or the ground takes up most of the space. So in this case, we haven't done this one yet, but in this case, it'll be the sky is really taking up space. Same thing. Sky's really taking up space. I think that that'll be a fun series, but it's also fun to think about cropping. So if we went really, really close, where we have, like, tree branches, and that's all that you're seeing, you know, something like that is really fun. So think about framing and how you might want to do that. But for now, we'll go ahead and put in some simple maybe a fourth or a third of the way ground. And you can do this with a light version of what we're using. Now, one of the things that I notice a lot is when it's time to paint snow, we think that we need to go for pure white and pure white only. But if you look at snow, it's got so many hues in it, like, from pinks to purples to blues, all sorts of things. So and then when we think about reflections on top of that, you know, for using the sky and then that's reflected, there's that to think about. So don't think you have to get this bright bright white. In this case, I want to grab some of this blue but have mostly white because in this one, we have this nice day, scene. So from here, I'm just going to create just an imperfect line and then smooth that out. I do have some pink still on my brush. So I'll go ahead and cover that once I have this base in place. Okay. Now, I do like some streaks. I'm actually I think I'm going to leave the pink because I kind of like it. Typically, what I'll do once this layer dries is add in a little bit of, like, a grayish tone. So you can do that by adding a little bit of, like, if you were to mix the burnt sienna with the blue, and then with a lot of white, you can get that gray. Like, this is pretty gray, so I'll probably add bright white to it if I can get this pink off my brush. So we'll add depth to that. But while that is that layer is drying, you can clean up the Horizon line. I'm going to do it kind of with imperfect line because that way, it looks more like this is snow, so you could use the white of your paper to your advantage. And then I'll switch to my small brush. And I'm going to use almost white. I'll bring a little bit. I'm going to bring this over here, and I'll get a little bit of this pink just to kind of make it neutralized so it's not super, super blue. It's kind of gray. And then I'll add a smidge more white, so it's even lighter. And this is going to be really, really subtle. And you don't have to put a lot of thought into it. We are just going to make some texture, and I'm not really thinking about what these lines look like, and I'm not putting a ton in. It's just enough to add some depth. Like, I'll do it along the edges and bring that in. And then not all the edges. You don't have to. But it's like, at the very base, and it's going to kind of fade up. And then come through. And that's going to be our snow texture, and it's that simple. So essentially, this is going to be the same idea, but we're just waiting for this to dry and we'll use white on top of it. And this is the other way you can do that. And if you add that to the very top of some of these just underneath that white line or, excuse me, the separation, it will end up being even more defined, even though it's a really subtle addition. Okay. And then let your backgrounds dry and we'll start adding the next step. T 5. Paint the Foundations of Your Scenes: All right. I'm going to start in the middle here because I want to show you these silhouettes and how they come to life. It's very fun. You can do this with either your flat brush and the tip of it, or you can do it with a round brush either way. But we're going to add in basically just texture. You can take I'm going to mix some of the burnt sienna with the Prussian blue to make pretty much it's going to be pretty neutral where it looks black. I'm not putting it all over. I'm just getting it to the tip of the brush, which means I'll have to dip into it more, but it's going to give me more control to not be loaded up with paint. Then I'm just going to set this down. If you're using more of a round brush, then you can do real fine lines. Then what we're going to do is we want more paint than water on the brush at this point. I usually just dab this out over on my palette. I'll get enough paint on here, but I'll get most of the moisture off and then you'll see that your brush is starting to separate. It's less water, more paint. Then I'll just go in and just spin this and tap it through to add some texture. I'm not really worried so much about placement because this is just in the background. I'm doing this mostly at the tops. Of the lines that I made, but you can definitely fill them more. I'm not going to bring them up super high because, again, I want the sky to be the focus, and I'm not going to do a ton of coverage. It's just enough to add that subtle detail. We'll bring a few up just so it's staggered more. But again, it's so subtle that you don't really notice too much. We'll let that part dry. While we're letting that dry, we can start to look at this ground and we're going to cover this area. So I'm going to bring in some lighter blue on both of these sides. So I'll rinse my brush a little bit. Grab the blue color, and I want it to be a little lighter, so I'll put a little white into this and just bring that toward the middle, and it's fine if it goes over the lines we made. We're just going to In fact, we want it to. So I'll smooth that line out at the top. And then we will have some of that at the bottom. But what we're going to do here now is bring in a lighter tone. You know, I didn't mention, we're going to need a yellow. I forgot about that. So a yellow or an orange. If you have red, you can mix it with yellow and get a little bit of an orange hue. This is just deep yellow. So I just need a little bit of that. And I want to get some yellow over this blue. I don't really want it to mix because it's going to get green. So I'm going to wait for it to dry most of the way. You don't have to worry about the middle part. We're going to be painting over this area anyway. So I'll let that dry a little bit more, and then we'll come back to that. So I'll go over to this one that we started with, and this one is going to be pretty simple. I think you'll be pleasantly surprised at how simple this is. So what we want to do is just create the teensy, tiniest, cutest little cabin. It's going to be kind of fully submerged in the snow in the sense that we have a big, big scene. And so I'll grab a darker color just to kind of give the illusion. You can make this any color, but if you go pretty neutral dark with it, then it will pull the interest into the full scene. Rather than, like, stand I mean, it's up to you, however you want to do it, but we'll do a very, very thin line for the roof. So really thin, really thin. And if you want to make this an Aframe, you definitely could, but we're just focusing on these basic shapes. Now, we want to keep some white space because it's going to look like it's covered in snow. I'll go ahead and extend the roof just a little bit. But for the most part, I'll put a little bit of see how I'm just adding a little texture, but overall, it's just allowing the roof to be covered. So I'm not really doing much. It's just assumed. And then underneath that, we can add the base shape, and I want it to be real thin because again, I want this to be fully submerged in snow. I'm just going to do this little box here. I also have my paint is still wet, so I'm working with that too, but that's okay. Then I'll do the top of the door and then I'm going to leave some leave some of the white space in between as well. And then I'll just have a little sliver on the side. So that's going to be this little cabin. I'm going to wait for it to dry more and I can go over that again. But the part that's really fun is to grab that gray tone. Whoops grab that gray tone that we had or mix a new gray tone because you made a mess out of yours. And then I'll grab some of this and then grab a little bit of this pink to create more of that neutral. And I'm going to go just on the edge on the bottom, maybe a little darker. And and create a base shading so that you can see it is actually submerged. Again, this is still wet, so it's not quite doing what I want it to, so I'm going to wait a minute and come back to it when it's drier. While that's happening, we'll move over to this guy. For this one, let's add some trees. And if we want to add trees in the distance during the day, we're going to make them lighter than what the foreground will show. For this one, I'll go ahead and take that burnt sienna and I'll mix it with white. And that's going to give me this nice smooth, kind of like a light almost like a pastel terracotta. If we're gonna call it a name, it's really pretty, though. And then for these trees, we want to make sure our brush isn't loaded up with water, we have a nice creamy consistency so that we have our nice fine tip on the brush. And when we have that, we can start to add background trees. So I'm going to see how this color looks. Okay. That's basically what I'm after. So it's real light, and I think even lighter would be good, too. But here's where you can stagger some lines that are real fine, and oftentimes I will kind of float my brush until I make contact, and that way, my lines can remain thin and it just gives me more control. And then we can just for funzies, let's add some white so we're even lighter, we can tuck some even lighter tones in the back back they're going to be really subtle. You almost don't see them, but it adds to the depth. It's kind of like when you use transparent watercolor, like if you lay your leaves in that way, it creates that similar impact. So I think it's really pretty. And it's just kind of that shaded area. So with the lighter area, you can go ahead and just kind of do some mark making around the lines that you made because we're going to end up covering them. So this is just adding that depth in. And then we will go in with the midtone and do the same thing. This time, I want to create with the tips of our brush, just back and forth, very tips. It is so light, this pressure because we don't want big blobs. We just want some back and forth teensy tiny little details. It's okay if some areas are more covered. I mean, it just makes it seem like the areas denser, which is pretty, but basically just a big not like a blob over here is what I'm getting at. So once that is in and we're going to let it dry some more, we will end up adding some more trees in the foreground. I'll make a couple of these a little bit taller and then a little bit wider. Okay, let's let that part dry. Checking over here. The reason why this is taking longer to dry is because I have a lot of the white acrylic on here. We can come here to the middle one and I will grab this dark tone, and I'm just going to add a little more depth to the trees that are on the sides, little marks, real subtle, not as big as the marks that I already made and you may or may not even see what I'm doing because it's so subtle. But for me, I don't know why. I just like to. I like to add one more layer of contrast. Okay. Now that that is done, we will take that yellow tone that we added and maybe add some burnt sienna to it. I'll bring that color over here and then grab a little bit of this yellow. And so I have this real deep tone. Now, we're going to add this in a very, very subtle way. It's just going to spread at the bottom and then maybe out just a little bit. I have more water on my brush, I can tell than the consistency I'm looking for. So that's why it's a little transparent. I can go in and get a little more paint. And layer. Now, this area here that I just added that to, I know it seems weird, but we're going to do something. Since it's the night, we're adding a cabin and it's going to glow out onto the base here. As we get further away from the center, we're going to get darker and darker and even more neutral. I'll just grab some of that deeper tone and bring it over or the dark dark blue, and I'll just spread this out on the edges and I'll do that even again a little darker and spread that out even further. We're just allowing it to fade away, essentially. It's going to look cool. We want to wait for now these layers to dry and then we will go onto our next step. 6. Paint an A-Frame Cabin & Snowy Trees: Okay, let's head over to this guy here, and we are going to grab the brown color we have. If you don't have a brown color again, you know, you can mix that color. So I'm using this burnt sienna, and I'm going to use this straight out of the tube because I want this midtone. And the value is going to break away from the dark color, but it's not going to get too. So I don't want too much contrast because I still want to use that dark scene that I have. So that's why I'm not going to go crazy light. And I want to do an A frame. So I'll go ahead and just come up into this A shape. And then I can fill that, and I'll come down a little bit because I want to cover that background here. And then fill in that area. And now we'll add a roof to it, but rather than doing something darker, we're going to go a lot lighter. We're not going to do white because that would be that bright white, and at night snow is not bright white. And so I'll go ahead and grab this white and mix it with blue. And I'm going for a mid tone value again, so not something that is super light, not quite like this, but right in the middle. And I'm just going to line the top roof area. With a real with a thinner line on each side. And that gives it that illusion that it's got the snow in the nighttime. We're also going to add a little bit of that color to out the ground in a few areas. So that sets that scene a little better. Let that dry a little bit and come back to it. Let's go over to this side. And for this one, we can go into our foreground for trees. So let's use a neutral color. You can bring green in if you wanted to, but I really like to keep things more analogous on my color palette, meaning colors that are next to each other on the color wheel, especially when I'm doing hues like this. I'm making sure that I still have that nice fine point. And I'll go ahead and paint a line upward, real thin. But it's going to be a lot taller than the rest of these trees. So maybe about two thirds of the way up, and I'll do another one right next to that. It's a little shorter, and it's a little higher up than the one on the left and then a little lower. So it's kind of creating that depth and then I will come in with the tip of my brush and down and just create those same lines that we did. But I'm kind of tapping them in as I go, so they create more like marks in texture rather than straight lines or blobs. I love referring to things as blobs. You'll notice your paint as it starts to lift, you start to press harder, and that's going to soften things up quite a bit. So make sure that you have a consistency on your brush that you like. You can use more of a dry brush, but this is just going to give you more control over what these actually end up looking like. I like to mix the soft with the more saturated because it gives it it gives it more depth, even being, you know, a flat color. Even just the marks we make can do that. So this is a lot more like I don't have a lot of paint on my brush now, so I can just tap that through toward the edges and see how it just creates a little more texture. But I wait for that part until I have my base shapes in and that way, I have just like added fun. It's all added at that point. Now I'll do one more of these maybe right here and have that come up even higher because it's technically closer to us if it's down further. So I'll grab more paint and just start to. I want to make sure my tip is nice and fine. That's going to be the consistency of paint to water and then I'll just start to add. With light marks, it looks like I need a little more. These light marks just back and forth softly because we can always add more, but we can't take any away. Both sides, and then we can start to fill in any areas that we want to add more to. Sometimes I'll even skip around just doing dotting and like light strokes here and there, just to add some fill. Like, right here, we're pretty even. So if I just tap through a few of these areas, then it starts to fill those without making it so that the whole thing is not too intense, because the white space is important when we do these trees to create that texture. So we'll let this part dry and then we'll add snow to these trees. So while we're waiting for that, we can move over here. And for this one, again, it's so, so simple. So I just want to better define this cabin. So I'm going to mix these two colors together, the blue the deep Prussian blue, and then this fern sienna. So I have that nice deep color. And then I'm going to come in, and I'm actually moving quite close on my brush because I want to make sure that I can define this better. So it's almost like drawing at this point versus painting. And I'm just going around the edges. I'm not really paying attention to the the fill or anything because I actually like the way that it's coming across. So see how it just crisp I just that crisp edge cleaned it up and made it more digestible. But it's like subtle. It's kind of an afterthought. It's in the background, which is kind of fun. So that's about it with that one. The last thing that I want to do with it is grab some of this white, bring it over here because I'm going to use a lot of water and only a little bit of white because we want this to be basically dripping off the brush, 'cause we're going to come over and hold it gently and then just tap about 6 " away. It's going to create a little bit of a splatter that looks like snow. If you want to protect your other sides and not get snow on those, you can always put something over it, but see how it just makes this It just makes for this really pretty light dusting. And then what you can do that's really fun if you want to create some more depth here is go in with the tip of your brush, get some more defined round circles coming down just a few places. This one, we want to come back to the interior windows on. So we're going to grab the yellow. And I'm just grabbing outside of the center of it, so dragging it to the edge, making sure I have the consistency that I want. And then I can add in the windows. Now, don't worry about the details of the windows. We can go back over it with the fine lines. So for now, we'll go ahead and just do a smaller block inside, and you could do these any shape that you want. Because that's all we need to care about. We don't need to care about making sure we're using negative space. We can go over it again with that darker color. You'll see it really come to life when we do that part. And then I'll do a little door this particular yellow is more transparent than some of the other gouache pigments, so you kind of have to layer it on. Another way to make this pop would be to use an orange color and then do the yellow on top. Or you can do the orange color or the yellow like we're doing, and then go in and mix some white with yellow. Once this part dries and just add a little mark of it, Again, don't worry about making crisp lines right now. We just want to get the color down. I'll do two windows on the sides of the doors, too, so just do something here. I'll do it floor length. That's fun. Floor to ceiling windows. So yeah, don't worry about those lines. We're going to clean up the outer lines with the darker color. But once that starts to dry, if you were to take some of your white and bring it over to that lighter tone to that yellow, See how those two values are different. So if I was to just drop a little bit of that inside, it just adds a little more depth. It just makes it look like it's glowing a little bit more. You could even do that just at the base. I'm going to actually move that around a little more with some water. See how it just kind of adds a little more dimension. So let's go and add some snow to these trees, and you can do this with white. You can also go slightly tinted. So if I pull the white from the pink, it'll just have that slight tint in it, which can be pretty. And then for here, I'm just going to go toward the top of some of these branches and just tap in some white. It's not as, you know, involved as you might think. It's really just tapping that in here and there. And covering the tops. I mean, you can cover some areas more. But as long as you have the peekaboo areas as long as you have the peekaboo branches so that you know that we're looking at trees, then you can just slap on the snow. But I would do the same thing where you're really looking to make sure that you have separation. You still have white space. You're really using the depth to your advantage, so you're not painting directly over the branches, you're going right above them. And, you know, overlap is great because we want to have the snow covering, but we also want to still show that there are branches indeed underneath and go to the edges because having branches sticking out from all the snow areas is just kind of weird. Also, be sure to cover up the center in certain areas. So it doesn't look like it's just coming off of the sides. Then you can come in and do the same thing. I would just rinse your brush real quick so you don't have such intent. Like if you use a little more water ratio, if you have some of that in the background. See, this is too, too light. So I'm going to rinse my brush all the way and then just dab the paint off and I'll just lift some of that up. You can also use the paper towel, but you don't want it to be super opaque. You just want to have, like, a main hue, like a mist, if you will, in the background. So I'll grab water, just a teensy bit of the white and tap that in. And then I can bring some of that up into the sky. It's just real subtle. And then kind of swirl that. And then once that is placed, you can go back in and just define some lines just within. I use the tip of my brush and pull the very tip of my brush, and I'll pull in some texture just kind of throughout the white. To add some contrast back in, but real subtle. So it's like you can go a little more enthusiastically when you lay the white down, but then we're going to come in and add a few defining lines after the fact. And then if you want, you can always go back in with that deeper gray tone and just define like, I'm using some of the pinkish, just to add a little bit more interest to the ground, but not too much because you want you're just adding a smidge of depth. So it's kind of like layering contrast. Okay, now is going to come the fun part where this one really starts to come to life. We're going to make that glow really stand out. 7. Add Glow & Bokeh to Your Snow Forest: Alright, we're going to make this stand out now. The first part that we're going to do is actually another tree, which is going to be in the foreground more. So we're gonna grab the deepest color we have. If you have black, great. If you want to mix a tone, I'm going to do the Prussian blue with the burnt sienna, mix that to get it nice and deep. And then we're going to pull this up in front of it. I'll go on this side. And it's going to be thicker, the bases because I'll bring some branches off just a few that are outstretched. And then we'll take a dryer brush. So our wash brush, I'm going to make sure it's nice and dry. So I'm going to get all that excess water off of it, kind of squeeze that out, and then I'll grab that same color and create the same kind of texture that we did in the beginning. But I want to make sure that we are nice and dry so that we have this opening with the bristles. And I'll very lightly tap through here. So I'm not applying a lot of pressure. I'm going to fill up that area. So it's a lot closer. Now, to bring this to life more because right now, we're looking very Blairwich project. We're going to let that dry, and then I'll show you how to make this glow come even more to life. But for now, we will go ahead and clean up those windows while we're waiting for the tree. We'll grab the color, the same color that we used for the cabin. So in my case, I have this burnt sienna. I'm going to make sure I have that nice creamy consistency, fine tip that I can use. And first, I will actually clean up the windows by using real fine lines just around them around their shape to make them nice and crisp. So see how already that cleans them up, and I'll do the same thing to the top to clean that up. And then from there, I am going to just add some window boards, panes. No, not panes. Lines through I'll add some lines in the centers of the windows just to add some interest. So I could come just directly in the center. I'm going with the very tip of my brush to see I'm hovering, hovering and making sure that it's nice and thin. And then I could add two more of those across. So the smaller these are, the more defined it looks. And then on the top one, I think I'll just keep open. Op of color kind of coming from. I'm not going to do it to all of them, but it does add a little more emphasis on the light coming from the inside. And then it also makes it so that the blue colour on the roof looks more like it is like that nighttime snow. But that being said, we can also take that bright white and line. I know we thought we were doing a fine line before, but now we're really going to do a fine line because we're going to just line next to that line in a few places, not all of them. I'm not really picking any particular places. I just want to have a little bit of contrast in the roof snow. Not throughout, but just enough to where it has that pop. And then I'll mix a little bit of the yellow and white together again and just pull that into the snow right in front of it one more time. So like, right here, just a little bit. And then with that same color, like, pretty yellow, but pretty, pretty light. With the very tip of my brush, I am going to line the right side of the tree, which is on the side of the cabin glow. When I line this, it's going to be really thin. And then I'll line a few of the branches that are just closest to it barely, right? So we're going to do that also with some of the texture that we created. See how it was so subtle that it creates such a huge impact. So it's so much fun to add these glowing elements. And I'll just put a little bit on the underneath of the left side, but mostly we're going to focus on the right. Okay? So we'll take that same color. You can use your wash brush, and you're gonna dry it a lot. Basically, squeeze that water out. I'm coming into the white and tapping into the white more. And then very lightly I want to see, make sure it's the right consistency first. Okay, so see very, very lightly. I'm going to want more yellow. I'm tapping this in to the branches just on the right and underneath. And that is going to create that glow. Barely. That was it. Maybe just a teensy bit here just because we know that light travels. And that's it. I know it seems like you're gonna want to do more, but you don't want to. You want it to be so subtle. And then if you want to make the cabin pop more just underneath the overhang, you can add your deepest tones. I got to grab a little more of this dark blue. And then with the very tip of your brush, come in and just line in between your snow line and the cabin itself. You can also do this next to the windows. See how that just adds a little depth. You can do this right under the window and on the sides if you wanted to. I'm not doing it the whole way up. I'm just adding a smeg then I'll do it to the bottom part, and then you can do the same thing that you did over here where you rinse the brush, but you have more of a just right around the base, you have this shadow. You don't want to do that too much though because you want the glow. And then you have this really quaint cabin in the woods in the night a snowy night. Now, this is where I want to play with the depth more for the snow. So we're going to do the same thing where we take more water on our brush, grab some of that white. Looks like I have still some dark colors on my brush, so I'm going to make sure that that is indeed cleaned off and grab some of this white cover and tap, maybe a little more water. So you have that depth even just doing that because you have the smaller areas and then the larger areas. Now, if you have mostly a dry brush in this case, So it's barely anything. And then if you just kind of smudge it out in the circle, I'm getting all the paint off. So it's just a dry brush. It makes it look like it's closer to us, like a lens blur, like a depth boca. And it just creates some more interest. So I'll do a few, like, a couple of those, maybe three. Just blur it out. Here we go. So let's go ahead and do our final touches on this one and just add some snow to it. If you want to, you definitely don't have to. You can keep it where we're not having a snowy day right now. If you want more control, again, you can always go in and tap these in and use different pressure so that you have some that are smaller and some that are larger. Okay. So let's go ahead and reveal our polaroids and get them cut 'cause this is the funneest part. 8. Cut Into Polaroid Mini Paintings: Alright, this is the part that is the most fun. You want to make sure that everything is fully dry because as you lift the tape up, if the paper is still wet, it warps. Honestly, when you're doing this with polaroids, it's not Or like the polroid size, these mini pictures. It's not that big of a deal because they don't warp as much since they're so small, but just it's a good rule of thumb, generally speaking. So I'm going to pull the tape away, and when I pull this off, I don't ever pull up. I always pull against the paper as closely as possible. So I typically take the tape and pull flat and kind of at a slight angle. And that is to prevent our paper from ripping. But this part is so satisfying because you get these nice clean edges, and you get to start to see how this is coming to life. And it's even cuter when you get it all cut down. So let's just carefully remove these. So you can see on this edge, I did come into the tape a little bit. That's okay. But kind of that's one of the reasons why I really like to focus for a minute on getting the tape nice and secured. The other thing when you're removing this is to make sure that you do it nice and slow because even if the tape is not wildly sticky, it's still really easy to tear your paper if you're not going slowly. And I also make sure that my grip is closer to the paper. I have more control over it that way. So anytime it's a long piece, I don't just continue continue continue. I'll come back in here, grab from the base, grab from the base. And continue doing that. So when we cut this out, you can use scissors or you can use a cutting surface with an exacto knife, however you want to do this. This is pretty simple to cut because it's not a huge space. So you can use a ruler, if you want to mark these. What I want to do is mark the same amount of space. I usually just eyeball this. You can mark it or you can just cut it. I typically just go in and cut it. But if you wanted to mark it, I'm going to come slightly to the left because I know the pencil will be inset, so about here. And then I think down here is about the space that I want for the bottom cut. About here. So I'll go ahead and draw that line that line I do want to have nice and even. But the rest of it, I usually eyeball. So today, I usually use a cutting board, cutting board. I usually use, you know, what are they called self healing cutting mats, cutting mat. But I will go ahead and go with scissors today because my cutting mat is being utilized in the other room for another project. I don't need to say any of that. So I'm just slow and careful to be along that edge. And if it's not perfect, it's okay we're about to cut these down even more, and then you're not going to have to worry about consistent long lines that are perfect. And then I'll just go about the same distance that I did at the top for all of these. So trimming this down a little bit, not too much. You could cut these in half, or cut them away from each other to do this part. But, oh, my gosh, like how cute already I'm obsessed. It's like that moment of having that adorable little mini painting that's in the form of a polroid that's, like, so worth all of it. Because even the most simple like this one, I went simple on it on purpose because I know it's going to be impactful because this type, I'm going to go skinnier right here. This type of project really does demand simplicity. I wanted to give you some more interesting ones as well, because why not? But I also wanted you guys to be able to play with doing something really, really simple. And see the impact that it makes. Each of these tells its own story in a really unique way. I really can't wait to see your pieces. And I encourage you to continue because this is so addicting and you end up creating some of the most fun little playful collections of paintings. 9. 500 More Polaroids!: Congratulations. You did it. You created your own little collection of winter snowsapes each one framed in the nostalgic charm of polroids. I hope that you're feeling proud of what you have accomplished. But most importantly, I hope that you are excited about the new skills that you have gained and how you can carry them in future projects. And I hope that you make a ton of these because painting is all about experimenting and having fun and finding what works for you. So you've learned techniques about creating depth and playing with color and adding little details. Your work truly stand out. So don't stop here. Keep creating, keep experimenting and let your new skills inspire your next pieces. And if you ever need a little extra inspiration or guidance, you know where to find me. Thank you so much for joining me in this B size class. I cannot wait to see what you create next.