How to paint fire with watercolor

1. Introduction: Hi guys, my name is Kate, and as I've been painting with watercolors for six or even seven years. If you would like to learn more about my creativity and about my lifestyle, you can subscribe to my Instagram channel. Here I show my daily life and also I write this a full boss about watercolor painting. I will be really good if you subscribe. And today, I would like to teach your painting with a color tool. This lesson wouldn't be super interesting for people who has already had some experience in watercolor painting. But if you're just a beginner, don't worry, this lesson we'll be interesting for you to just don't judge yourself too strict during this lesson, because it can be really hard for you some time. In this lesson, you will learn how to paint really difficult and unpredictable state of nature. We will learn how to paint fire. In this lesson, you will learn how to prepare pencil drawing or watercolor painting. How to paint using wet on wet technique, how to paint smoke and fire. And of course, you will learn how to paint lightning using color contrast. So let's get started. 2. Step 1: pencil drawing: So let's start with the pencil drawing. I will paint the horizontal lines that will divide color. Sports, for example, first line, this is line between orange foreground and dark background. One more line. This is the border between dark ground and light lake. Then one more line. This is the border between lake and forest. And the last line, this is the line of forest. And also you can depict this line between dark sky and light part of the sky. We have to depict the fire. I don't want to depict it in detail. So you can paint just triangles. And then they use eraser to make my pencil drawing less saturated. 3. Step 2: wet on wet: Now we will move on to the stage of painting with watercolor. And the first layer I would like to paint in wet on wet technique. I really like this technique because it led me make very smooth color transition. At first of course, we need to wet the whole paper with clean water. It's really important to start painting with light colors such as yellow, orange. Because further we will use dark blue colors and clean water in the glass will be destroyed to be this dark blue color. And at first, I will paint the orange line on the sky. If you look at the reference, you would see slightly orange shade in the sky. And then I start painting the fire. And I take really saturated orange. Also, I use synthetic brush because it keeps a lot of color. I will tilt my paper just in order to let color flow. Then I will change color to the red. And the more shades of for fire, if you could see on the reference, the more natural painting you will get in the end, I tilt my paper once again just to let the paint flow thanks to the wet surface of the paper, my colors can easily spread all over the paper and it helped me depict such hard and unpredictable state of nature as fire, because fire doesn't have clear boundaries. So it's super important to make its border smooth and flexible. And now we can move on to the dark blue paints as we finished. For now with this yellow and orange colors, I take ultramarine and a little bit in digger to get this deep blue color. And I start painting the sky from the top. And I try to leave the most saturated blue color on the top of my paper and then I tilt my clipboard once again does to lead paint mix super smoothly between each other. And now we can move on to the darkest part in our painting. This is the forest. If you look at the reference, you will notice that it's almost black. I don't like to use black color because it's not really picture sac. And it's better to use dark blue here. Because dark blue can contrast with orange or yellow fire. But I just paint the line and you can see that I didn't paint over the fire. Now it's nice time to pay and the smoke, and I use the mixture of blue and bur to paint it. And then I use round strokes to depict this small. And thanks to the wet surface of the paper, this smoke spreads all over the sheet, pretty smooth and nice. And of course, I often help from myself using fingers. Sometimes it can better direct paint, then brush, and now, once again, use orange color because on the lake I see this slide line of orange. And then I again mix brown in D, eager to get these super dark color, but right now I need warm dark color. So this was the reason why I took exactly brown. So I'm mixing brown and indigo and I paint over the whole area behind the fire. My paper is already dry, so I wet it once again using my super wide brush and then I use Marissa Brown to depict the ground too near the fire. And the foreground, I paint with the burnt sienna and a little bit brown. And of course, you can tilt your clipboard several times just to help paint spread all over the paper. Probably your sheet is almost dry right now as mine. So it's better to stop here and dry everything with a hairdryer. And our first layer is ready and it looks really, really great. I hope you are satisfied with your result to 4. Step 3: fire: So we will move on to the stage of painting fire in more details. And at first, you need to change how the water in your glass, because it's very important to use exactly clean water. On the next step, we will wet with water or the place with fire once again. And this is the reason why you should use paper with cotton. Because if you use cellulose paper, you will not be able to wet the area of wire once again without damaging the previous layers. And then I start to add haze, orange color. I'm on the border of this fire. And of course, I tried to use several teams of orange because it makes our painting more picture sack. You once again, you can tilt your clipboard to let the paint spread and mix with each other. I will use this dark color, almost black, just to paint over small white pieces of paper that was lifted between the ground and fire. Painting these borders more accurate, also lead us to focus viewers attention exactly on fire. And on this step you can fix a little bit this borders of fire so you can paint over the areas that you don't like. And these borders started looking too sharp. I wet this area once again and I let color spread, tilting my clipboard in different directions. And in this way I can make the border of wire smoother once again. Then I direct this water and colors using my fingers in the direction that I want. Also, I would like to paint small sparkles, fire. And for this, I splash orange color using Bristol brush. And to keep the center of our fire wide, I will use napkin. And if the watercolor is still wet, you can easily remove some Carla from the paper surveys, the sublime than the African to the unnecessary space. I would like to add a little more sparks. I really use a red and yellow color right now. I am adding a really small sparks that you can see only if you'll look at this painting super close. Using these bristle brush, I can add some more saturated orange color in the areas I would like. And also don't forget that you can remove some paint using wet clean brush. When the brush is clean, it easily collects all the wet paint from the papers or phrase. 5. Step 4: foreground: So it's a nice time to paint small details. And I will start with painting the tree that is located on the right. And I again mix darker brown color and indigo to get almost black color. And using synthetic small brush and brush strokes, I paint the tree. It's important to look at the reference right now and to try depicting the movement of a tree, it's important to keep all this whitespace between branches. I just rest my hand I, during this process, as you can notice, I hold my brush far from the base. It helps me to create this kinetic strokes to while I paint this tree, the area with fire is almost dry right now, I will use a dark brown and a little bit Marissa Brown to pay and firewood in the bottom part of the fire. Right now, I would like to pay and small grass on the foreground. And for these, it's super convenient to use one brush because it can make a lot of strokes at once. And I tried to keep the space around fire empty because I would like to focus the viewer's attention exactly on this fire. And if we make darker bottom corners of our picture than the contrast between saturated yellow and dark brown will be more noticeable. And to depict that fire illuminates these grass on the foreground, I will use totally orange color and this fun brush to add some saturated orange grasses to the foreground. That's all. Thank you for watching my lesson. I really appreciate that to trust me as a teacher, don't forget to upload your work in student project section, It's really important for me to see your progress and open to any feedback. It's also very interesting for me to know how this lesson was for you. Was it challenging or it was super simple? M, you understood everything. Just sharing your comment, share your feedback. I will be happy to read it. Don't forget to subscribe to my Skillshare channel to be pathologist who knows about your watercolor lessons. So I hope you enjoyed this time with me. And thank you for your trust. Thank you for your time. And I hope to see you soon. Bye.