How to Paint What You See: Lake Landscapes using Watercolours

1. Welcome to the Class: Hi there. Welcome to my seventh Skillshare class. My name is Payal [phonetic], I'm a self-taught artist, an art educator, and an entrepreneur based in Bahrain. You can find me on Instagram at thesimplyaesthetic. Over the past two years, I've taught students online and offline to explore their hidden talent and fall in love with art. I feel art is a very crucial part of our life and indulging ourself in a little bit of creativity can be such a stress buster. Since the pandemic began, I have been driven towards painting landscapes. Every time that I would scroll through Pinterest or Unsplash and look at these beautiful landscape images, or go on a stroll outside and click pictures of things that I saw around me. I was filled with enthusiasm to paint them. It was almost like I was trying to live a life through these images. But it was not always that easy because I didn't know where to start, how to analyze an image, what techniques to apply, but over the years since I practiced a lot, I understood how an image can be easily broken down into different parts. When you practice each of these parts you get a better understanding. In this class, I want to share my love for painting landscapes with you. The medium of choice for this class is going to be watercolors and we are going to be painting a beautiful lake landscape. The format of this class is going to be slightly different from the ones that you've done before because I want to focus more on the steps that you need to know to understand a composition of a painting and then use all our knowledge to make a class project. I want to focus on the lake part of the class because I feel that lakes, even though they are a difficult subject to paint, it's always so much fun to paint when you understand the right type of techniques that you need to apply. I love browsing through the lake images and every time I see a sunset or sunrise by the lake I cannot stop myself from painting it. In this class, I'm going to share exactly each and every step that you need to know and by the end of the class, you will be able to paint your own lake landscape. I have designed this class in a way that even if you are a beginner, you can join in and explore the beauty of watercolors. We'll start off by knowing about the right type of supplies that we need. Instead of telling you just the art supplies that I use, I will tell you the exact things that I look for when I'm picking them out. After that, we'll focus on learning the watercolor techniques. I'm sure a lot of you are familiar with these watercolor techniques but in this lesson, I will be telling you exactly how to pick them out when you're looking at your reference picture. It's going to be very helpful to understand how to break down your reference pictures. In the next lesson, we'll be talking about skies. We will be painting six different types of skies together. I will also be uploading a few other reference pictures in the resources part of this class. You can download it from there and then give them a try too. Each of these reference pictures are selected in a way that you're applying the same techniques, the same composition, the same style so that you understand the lakes a little bit better. If you're someone who wants to explore the beauty of nature by painting them then join me in this class and let's go on a wonderful journey with watercolors together. 2. Art Materials You Need: [MUSIC]. I'm so excited that you decided to be a part of this class. Now let us talk about the different materials that you need. Remember, you don't have to use the same brands as the ones that I'm using. You can opt for any different brands that you generally use or like. In this lesson the main focus is going to be on talking about the little things that I look for when I select my papers and paints and brushes. Now, I will also talk about the art supplies such as the water jars, the mixing palettes, and all those little things that would come in handy when you're painting with watercolors. So, let's dive in. Alright. Let us talk about our art supplies that we need. The three things that are very important that you need to know about when it comes to painting with watercolors is your paper, paints, and brushes. These three things are very important and it's very important to know exactly what we look for when we want to select the right type of art supplies. The first thing that I'm going to talk about is the paper. When I'm painting with watercolors, I look for a few things in my paper. I'm using my Canson Heritage Watercolor paper here, but I'll tell you how to select the right type of paper. The first thing that you'll need to look for is the paper to be 300 GSM. That is because 300 GSM paper is heavier, it won't pucker, and at the same time it'll help you when you're adding a lot of water on the paper. It's very important for a paper to not pucker when we're doing our wet on wet technique. The next thing is the paper should be a 100 percent cotton. Your 100 percent cotton paper stays evenly wet for a longer period of time and it dries really nice and even, and that's very important. The next thing is cold press paper. That's a personal preference, you can go for a rough green paper as well. I like to have medium texture on my paper and that is why I go for cold press paper for watercolors. I'm going to be just splitting this A4 size paper into half, and I'll be making it A5, and I'll be just using that size for my class projects. The next thing, our paint. You can use pan paints, you can use Stu paint, that's totally on you. I'm going to be using paints on the brand White Knights. I've created this custom palette on the right side, which is soft bands. I've just taken these tubes, put them in bands. This band is very handy for me to travel with and that is why I went ahead and did that. But you can go ahead and choose any paints. Just make sure that you slowly start investing in good quality paints like the White knight ones, which I think are not very expensive, and they are very good. You can slowly start investing in good quality paints that will completely change your watercolor game because you'll enjoy the process of painting with watercolors if you have good supplies with you. The next thing that I want to talk about are the brushes. I'm going to be using these brushes from the brand Silver. I absolutely love these brushes for painting with watercolors. I'm also keeping a flat brush, which is a two inch flat brush to apply water evenly on the surface when we're painting landscapes. My preference towards this brush is a lot because it comes to really fine tip, which I will show you later in the class, where I talk about the brushes and brush control and things like that. These brushes are my favorite and you need to pick brushes that will come to a fine tip after you have applied paint because that's very important and it really helps in getting thinner strokes with a big brush so that you don't have to keep changing your brushes. The next thing I want to talk about is the water. I always keep two jars of water with me. One to use it for rinsing my pigments and the other one is going to be giving my brush the final rinse and the load up clean water to mix different colors so that my colors don't get muddy in the process. You can keep two jars of water or keep one jar of water and keep changing it frequently so that your colors don't get muddy. We're done with four types of art supplies [LAUGHTER] for now. The next thing that I'm using is a mixing palette. I basically use ceramic plate, which is a nice flat plate for mixing my colors because it does not form these bubbles as you can see on my plastic palette or a metal palette. It forms these bubbles, and on a ceramic mixing palette it doesn't do that. You can use any ceramic plate and use that as a mixing palette, especially when you're at home, so it does not matter. The next thing that you need with you is to keep a tissue or a cloth so that you can wipe your brush to get rid of any extra water, to get rid of any extra paint that really helps like that, to have a shorter rag with you. The next thing you need are your basic stuff that is your pencil, eraser, scale, things like that that you would need for sketching out your elements. You're not doing a lot of sketching, but just a few little basic sketching. Next we need a masking tape. I'm using this one inch masking tape. This one works perfectly fine for the cold press paper and I really like it. It's the one that you will find in all stores. Next you need a board with you to stick your paper on. You can do that on your table as well, but I like to have a board so that I can move it around in case I want my paints to spread or if you have a lot of water, I can just get rid of it by moving it around and spread it evenly on the paper. I like having something that's movable. We are done with the art suppliers. Let us know a little bit about our class project in the next lesson. 3. Your Project: [MUSIC] Now that we have our supplies figured out, I want to take a minute and talk about our class project. We are going to be painting one class project in this class, which is of this beautiful lake landscape. We're going to be painting that from a reference picture. The idea about this class is to understand the composition of our reference picture, how to analyze, where to apply different techniques. How to pick out a color palette from the reference pictures and all that jazz. I will walk you through each and every step. After this, I will break down the techniques for you. How to paint different skies, how to paint foreground elements, how to know about the reflections. Using a combination of all of those little bits, we'll paint our final class project, which is this one. I'm also going to be uploading a bunch of other projects in the resources part which you can download and give it a try. They will also have the same type of concept and the same types of steps involved. I actually want to open this little door for you where you can paint these little lake landscapes that are not too difficult to paint. It's also beginner friendly, but also if you are an intermediate you can add more details, too. It will also help you build up your watercolor practice, build up your watercolor game, and that is going to be the main idea for this class. Let us dive right into the watercolor techniques in the next lesson. 4. Understanding Watercolour Techniques in Detail: Let us talk about the different watercolor techniques. I'm sure a lot of you are familiar with the term wet-on-wet and wet-on-dry. These two techniques are one of the most important techniques and almost as the base when it comes to painting with watercolors. But there's so much more to these techniques than just knowing them as two different and separate techniques. Like when you look at a reference picture, how do you identify where to use the wet-on-wet technique? Where to use the wet-on-dry technique. In this lesson, I'm going to talk to you guys about the wet-on-wet technique and the wet-on-dry the technique in a little bit of detail which will show you the application for these techniques. Another thing that I want to focus on in this lesson is learning how to control your water. It is very important that you know how much water is too much water when it comes to painting with watercolors. Let's dive in. Let us talk about two of the main watercolor techniques that I'm sure a lot of you have heard of, like I mentioned before. We have the wet-on-dry and the wet-on-wet technique. The first technique that I'm going to talk to you guys about is the wet-on-dry method. Now as the name suggests, there is something that will have a wet consistency and something that will have that dry consistency. The first word is wet and that resembles your paint. Since we're using watercolors, we add water to it and that is why the paint is wet. The second word dry is for your paper. You're not priming your paper with any amount of water. That is why it's dry. When it's dry and when you apply paint on a dry paper, that method is called the wet-on-dry method. Now, why is the wet-on-dry method useful, where is it useful, how do you use it where? I'll tell you all the details. wet-on-dry method is useful when you want to add details to your paintings. Now let's say the details are in the foreground or there are crisp edges, details are crisp and clear and you want to show that in your painting. That's when you use the wet-on-dry method. As you see whenever I'm applying any stroke on my paper, on a dry paper, in fact, the edges are crisp and clear. The paint is not blending into the background, it's not moving around, it's only in the areas where I am applying paint to. When you follow a method where you want your paints to be more controlled, you don't want them moving around, you don't want them to just spread out of control and that's when you use your wet-on-dry method. It's the best method to use in adding details to the foreground. You're making mountains or leaves or adding any details, that's when you use the wet-on-dry method. As you can see, wherever I move my brush, the paint just stays there in whatever shape I apply, it stays in that shape and that is the wet-on-dry method for you. Now, let us talk about the next method. By now you have the hang of it. Wet is your paint, and the next wet that is mentioned in the technique is for your paper. Here we are going to prime our paper with water and make it wet. That is why the wet paint goes on a wet paper and that is why it's called the wet-on-wet technique. Using my size eight brush, I'm just going to go ahead apply a layer of water on my paper. As you can see, I've evenly spreading it in the left and right direction. Now when you see, I've loaded my brush and I'm applying these little strokes on the paper so the paint is spreading. Your watercolor is going to flow where the water is. Since you've applied water on your paper, your paint is going to spread with the water. That is why it's called the wet-on-wet technique. Now, the wet-on-wet technique is very useful when you're painting backgrounds, you want luminous background, you want it to be chloe, you want it to be soft. You want it to be spread out and a little bit blurry in the background, that's when you use the wet-on-wet technique. Now of course, there's a lot of different ways in which you can apply wet-on-wet techniques in your paintings, like for painting the sky. When you're painting elements that are way in the background and you can still see them but not so clearly, that's when you apply the wet-on-wet method. You can also use the same thing for making a sky. You can use a wet-on-dry technique. But you see the clear difference. In here when I applied the paint, it's spread out. It's more lighter in color. But when I apply it on a dry paper and move it around, the color just stays there. That is the only main difference here. We have the liberty to move the paint around. We have the liberty to blend our colors together. We have time to just move our colors around whereas in wet-on-wet, wet-on-dry, it dries faster so you don't have enough time. On wet-on-wet since your paper is wet, you have the time to move your colors around. That is your wet-on-wet method. There are a lot of ways in which you can apply this that we will discuss in this class in the future lesson. This gives you a basic idea of both these techniques. Now, let us talk about my favorite topic that I'd like to talk about in watercolors, that is your water control. It is fairly important that you know how much water is too much water when it comes to painting with watercolors. A lot of times in the past I've made this mistake of not knowing when my water content on the paper is too much or the water content in my pigments is too much. That is why I would end up with really like my subject would just blow it out. It wouldn't retain the shape that I always wanted to go for. That was the problem that I was facing in the past. Once I discovered the magic of water control, the whole watercolor game just changes for you. I'm just going to make one little rectangle with a clear, clear, clear layer of water. It's evenly spread out in this left and right motion. You want to make sure that you always go left and right and don't lift your brush off in the middle. When you do that, you make sure that you have an even layer of water. You must have seen when I loaded my brush with water, I added it in through the pigment mix. There is a lot of water on my mix. It's not thick, it's nice and light. When that happens, when your pigments have more water, your paper already has water. When that happens, your paints are not controlled, they will just spread around. Now this technique can be used to its benefit. No doubt. You can use these techniques to have subjects in the background that are more blurry, more spread out. But if you're going to go for something that's more controlled, this will not work. I just wanted to show you a quick comparison between the same subject and the difference between that would be the amount of water that I'm adding. In the first one I've added more water to my mix, to my paint mix. The next thing that I'm going to do is again, apply a rectangle of clear water. I move in this left and right motion and make sure that I have evenly spread my water across the little shape that I'm making or on the paper basically. Make sure that you have evenly spread the water. The best way to do it is just go left and right in the same direction and lift off any excess water that's on your paper. Now, I clean my brush completely and I'm going to take my indigo color. You can use any color right here, you can use any color. I'm taking my indigo color and as you can see, it's a lot thicker. There's more paint than water on my brush. It's nice and thick, and you'll see a complete difference when I apply it on my paper. I'm just going to slightly wet my paint, add a bit of water to make it slightly thinner because it was too thick. After making it slightly thinner, I'm going to go ahead and make the same mountain as I did in the previous section. Here, you see a huge difference. My paint is retaining the shape that I want it to have. Sure it is blending with the background, but it is still retaining the shape a lot more as compared to the previous one. That is exactly the difference that happens when you add less water in your paint mix. The magical thing will come when I put in the branches, I promise. When I'm lifting off my paint and I make the same branches as I did in the previous one here, the brushstrokes are more controlled, they are more informed. I'll show you exactly what I mean by that. It does blend because the paper is wet, it does mix, spread around slightly, get lighter, but it retains the shape a lot more as compared to the previous one. Let's say you have a subject that's not way too in the background, but it's still not in the focus of the observer. That's when you use this controlled wet-on-wet technique, where you are adding the paint on the wet paper, but it's more controlled as compared to the previous one. You can use a combination of both these techniques to your benefit. I'm not saying the first one is wrong. It's not wrong. You can use it in subjects that are more in the background, they are more blurry, they are not visible. When you have subjects that somewhere in the middle ground let's say, you use this more controlled technique. This gives you a clearer idea of where your subjects lie. The more it's in the foreground, it's more controlled and if it's in the background, it's more loose and flowy and it goes with the water. The next fun little technique that I want to talk to you guys about is the dry brush technique. Now you can use this technique to add details in the water. Like I said, it's a dry brush technique. It's wet-on-dry. This technique is wet-on-dry. I'm just lifting off my paint, that bring out any extra water content and paint. When I brush it across my paper, it leaves the subtle texture on the paper because of the texture of the paper. When I rub my brush across it, the more parts of the texture on the paper takes out the shape and the more depression but in the paper does not take the paint and that is why you get this rough texture. You can use this texture to apply layers in your water and give your water some depth of the lakes, some depth without having to add a lot of details. It just simply adds a little uneven texture to your water and to the ground you can use this texture anywhere that you want actually. But this is a fun little technique that I wanted to include in as well that you can use in your artworks. We're pretty much done with the basics of watercolor. I hope you enjoyed learning these little techniques. You can use these techniques in a lot of different ways and a lot of different places. As you can see in the wet-on-wet technique though, first puddle that we did, it dried out to be like a stormy cloud. It looks like a stormy cloud. That's the best part about wet-on-wet technique. It's so much fun. Once you learn how to control your water, it's just magic how well you can do with the wet-on-wet technique. These are the four techniques. You have the wet-on-dry, you have the wet-on-wet. You have the water control, that's very important to note, so do give it a practice. Don't skip this lesson. Give it a try. Try and look at reference pictures and see where you can apply them. But that's pretty much it with our techniques. In the next lesson, I'm going to show you how you can use your wet-on-wet and wet-on-dry technique to paint six different types of sky. Let's go. 5. Paint 6 Types of Skies: Awesome. Now that you've learned a basic watercolor techniques, it's time for us to learn one of the major application for the wet on wet technique, that is skies. Skies in their own are a very vast subject. But in this lesson I've tried to brush over six different types of skies. These skies are very similar to the ones that I use in my paintings as well and they're very easy to follow too. Let's dive in. I have divided my paper in six different blocks, these are six squares that I will be painting in. You can do this in individual papers, small polarized size papers, whatever you want to go for. I've just divided my A4 paper into six different blocks and I'm going to show you the six different types of skies in each one of them. The first one that I want to show you is a nice graded wash. This goes for a very clear sky where there are no clouds, it's just clean sky. For that I'm just going to first go ahead and make a mix of water and an ultramarine blue color. Over here we're doing the wet on dry method. But eventually this turns out to be a wet on wet method because I lay the layer of water and then I dip my brush in clean water. I'm just going to move the paint downwards in this left and right motion. Each time I come down you will see the intensity of the color goes down. Now I'll clean my brush and using just clean water I'm going to move the pigment downwards again, keeping my left and right motion in back. Don't go all over the place. It has to be left and right motion to get that perfect gradient effect. That is the effect that you're going for from the lightest color at the bottom or the lightest tonal value of the color at the bottom and then slowly transitioning to the darker parts of the sky. This one like I said goes for the really clear sky where you just want to show the color in the sky. There are no clouds. We're not adding any drama into the sky. It's nice, cute, plain little sky. The next one that I want to show you is very similar to the previous one. Just in this one we'll be adding a little bit of spice to our sky. Using my size eight brush I'm just going to apply a clean layer of water. As you can see, I've just gone all over the place but eventually I go in this left and right motion to make sure that it's nice and even and make sure that the water is evenly spread. Even if you go all over the place eventually just make sure that your paper is evenly wet. Now I'm going to load my brush with some blue. Here you will see the difference in the wet on wet on dry method. The first one was wet on dry and we brought the colors down using water. Here I've already primed the surface. I'm just going in this left and right motion. As you can see it was so much easier to just move my paint around in the sky with embedding minimal effort I was able to just create that grid in effect. You can choose whatever is more easy for you, the wet on dry or the wet on wet. I personally prefer to do wet on wet most of the times because it's easier and it does not take a lot of time. If you think that when you're bringing the color down and if you think that it's still dark, then you just clean your brush and load your brush with just clean water to move the pigments once that's done, you'll get a clear graded wash. That is exactly what we want. Now to add a bit of drama to the sky I'm just going to go ahead and load my brush with some more paint this time than water. I'm just going to create these little strokes coming from the left and right side. Now this sky is mostly done where you have a single color in the sky and you just have darker version of clouds in the sky. This just ****** up your clouds a little bit. Let's say that it's nice blue sky but you see a little bit of darkness in the sky with the blue itself not adding any more colors. Just for the blue you add a bit of spice in drama into your sky. This is going to be the second type of sky that I paint. This was all done in the wet on wet technique. Since every time you want to add clouds in the sky, you want to make sure that they're using the wet on wet technique because your paper stays wet for a longer period of time. At the same time it gives you time to add the clouds work on your mixes and you don't have to rush the whole process. Now let us move on to the third one, which is adding clouds to the sky. This in fact is one of my favorite methods in which I add clouds because it's so easy and it gives a very nice finish to the clouds. It's beautiful. I have thought this type of clouds before in my previous classes but I just wanted to show you exactly how it is done in this class. I'm just going to go ahead and create like a borsch off the blue color which is the ultramarine blue. Using the wet on wet technique I have easily just applied a layer of this blue all over the square section. Now the trickier to get your soft look at the clouds is to use a tissue paper. Make sure that you're using a tissue paper which is quite thin. This is your normal facial tissue paper, not the kitchen towels. These ones are a lot softer. You can roll it up into this bowl shape and just stop on the section. Since your paper is wet it will go ahead and lift off the paint from the paper. You'd get these beautiful clouds which was so easy to create and it's just so soft. There are no harsh edges, nothing of that sort. It's just nice pure, simple clouds with just lifting off your paints from the paper. Now this is again to be done when your paper is still wet and the paint is still wet. You have to be a little bit quick with that before your paper dries. That is if you'll have these beautiful clouds. Now there's another way in which I add clouds. I'm just going to show you this one is more of a wet on dry approach to the clouds. In this section you're just going to load your brush with blue paint. I'm going to go around in this zigzag motion and leaving these little spaces where you want your clouds to be. Wherever I want my clouds to be I'm just going to go ahead and leave that area empty. Then I'm going to clean my brush. I'll just clean, get rid of all the blue on my brush and then give my brush a final rinse in the other tab, load it up with some clean water, dab off the excess water. But make sure that you have a bit of water and it's clean. Then I'm just going to reactivate the paint which was in this section and just soften out the edges a little bit. Now when you do that you get this soft look for the clouds. If you think that your blue is again overpowering, you can lift it up with your tissue paper that does not matter. But here you're just softening the edges by adding a bit of water to it. This is another way in which you add clouds and details to your clouds in the sky. Again my favorite is the lifting of technique. It's so much easier to do. I think it's just for a fact that I like working with wet on wet whereas I like working with wet on dry for the background layers and things like that. But go ahead and try this out as well. This might be your favorite, you'd like working with this, that's personal preferences. Let's just go ahead, give it a try and see if you'd like it. You can add darker colors around the clouds just to make it not look so flat and lift off the extra paints if you feel like the blue is overpowering and you're not able to see the whites in the clouds. To lift off your paint from the paper all you need to do is make sure your brush is dry and then lift off the paint, wipe it on the tissue again and go ahead and do that. You're just like soaking in the wet paint and just drying it off on your tissue paper. When you move and lift your ink with your brush, you add more character and drama to your sky. As you can see the clouds in the fourth technique, which is the one that we just did, is a lot more softer as compared to the third one, which was done by lifting off the paint using the tissues. We can use the third one for more structured clouds, and the fourth one for a more softer look. Now, the forth sky that I'm going to talk to you guys about is more about mixing different colors in the sky. Most of the times in sunsets we use colors like yellow, but we also use blue. When we use these two colors together, a lot of the times a lot of my students end up mixing green, and that is not one of the favorable colors to have in the sky. In this section, I'm going to teach you how to avoid getting green in your sky and how to get that beautiful sky look. Again, we're using the wet-on-wet technique. Go ahead, apply a layer of water evenly spread it out, and then load your brush with some yellow. Go in this left and right motion and apply the yellow. Make sure that you're always starting off with the lighter tonal values of your color, and then you slowly add up your colors once you have all your paints in place. I went ahead added the yellow, then I've added orange above it. From the top, I'm going to mix and bring down a little bit of indigo. So when I brought the indigo here, I want to stop right there. I don't want to bring it further down, otherwise, it'll make a muddy color. Here you're going to clean your brush, give it a final rinse, dab off the excess paint, and then just slowly try bringing your color down and fitting it in all those white spaces that you've had left with the yellow, orange. Wherever you have the white space, you're just filling in indigo color. When you do that, you see you're not mixing the colors, you're just placing the colors. That is exactly what you want to do. Now once I have the idea of where my colors are going to go, I can go ahead and increase the vibrancy, which means add more contrasting colors and add more pigments in the mix and make it nice and vibrant. Go ahead, add the yellow at the bottom, then clean your brush. Take your orange shade and add the orange color. In this left and right motion add in mixture of yellow and orange together. In that little section where we put the orange before, go ahead and use the left and right stroke and add it in there as well. Now, once you're happy with where the orange has been laid out, you can completely clean your brush and take your indigo shade, bring it down, stop right there. Clean your brush, lightens off all the indigo off, and then give it a final rinse in your other jar of water, dab off any excess paint that you might have. Then move it it down, slowly decreasing the consistency of your paint. Slowly decrease it and fit it in on the little white spaces that you've had left. This is it. This is how you add different colors in your sky, and this is how you try to avoid the blend of muddy colors in the sky. You have to be a little bit careful, that's the only thing. This is it. When you move your colors around, this is what the sky is going to look. Instead of laying it all flat, I went in this diagonal motion for my indigo as well, so that it does not look like the indigo is just straight up flat in that left and right motion and my yellow and orange is just nicely dancing. I just moved it around. Eventually, they'll all spread out and dry even because of the wet-on-wet technique. But you get the hang of it. We're going to move ahead to the final type of sky that I want to show you guys today. This one is very similar to the first one. No, not the first one, the one before this. It's very similar to that. The only difference here is that we're going to add clouds in the sky and give it more definition. Do the same process. Repeat the same step as you did in previous one. First, we wet our entire area, prep the canvas or prep the paper. Go ahead, add yellow, then add orange, and then bring the indigo down. Now here I'm creating a mix of ultramarine blue and the indigo shade together, just to get a nice Prussian blue color. Then clean your brush, dab off the excess. Just using a light wash and Lauder brush, move the colors downwards very lightly without mixing any greens and sky carefully, and you're done. Now that your colors are in place, you can go ahead and add your vibrant tones of the same color. Again, more pigment this time, darker yellow, more vibrant orange move it in the left and right motion. Be careful wherever the blue is already there, you don't want to make any green. Then go ahead and take your blue, bring it from the top. Stop midway, clean your brush. This time, again, I'm moving diagonally just to give it that character. Like I said, diagonal character that we've done with the yellow and orange and that is why I wanted to go ahead and do that with the blue as well. Here you can see, I'm done with how the sky looks. Here, we're going to add clouds. For the clouds, I am going to use a brown color for wherever my warmer colors are. The yellow and with oranges, I'm going to be using brown color for that. For the one above that will add more muted grayish color. I'm just going to go ahead load my brush with some burnt sienna. Using this burnt sienna color, I'm going to make sure that the consistency of my paint is thick. Remember, water controlled. It should be thick so that it does not spread like crazy. Your cloud should retain its shade. They should look like clouds rather than spreading all over the place, and that is why the thickness of the paint matters. Make sure that it's not very loose and does not have a lot of water. Then here, I'm just tapping in from left and right motion. Don't worry you are not really doing anything extraordinary, you're just tapping in the paint from left and right and releasing, lifting off your brush and you'll get these clouds. Now the water is going to do most of its job here, it's going to spread the paint and give it a nice blend. All you have to do and focus on is putting and tapping in your paint. Now for the gray color, I'm just mixing yellow with the indigo color with a tiny bit of brown. I have my indigo, I mean, the blue color that I had indigo and ultramarine blue. I'm mixing that with a bit of brown and yellow and I get this muted gray color. That's the color I want to use for the clouds that are in the blue section. Using this gray color, I'm going to go ahead and add the clouds again in that left and right motion, zigzag motion, and just move it around. Slightly blend some of the clouds with the brown ones as well. When you do this, again, make sure that the consistency is a lot thicker as compared to your paint consistency for the background layer. When you do this, the water is going to do its job. It's going to blend the colors out for you, it will spread in the sky and you'll have these beautiful clouds. I think this is one of the most easiest way in which you can work and create your cloud effects. Again, this is one of my favorite ways in which I do what I do. I do and apply this method and almost all my watercolor paintings, and this is how I do it. That's worked out perfectly fine for me. It's all about how you control the water. Like I said, and it's very similar to the second step. In the second step, all we did was work with one single color and in the sixth one, we worked with a lot of different colors. That is the only difference. The ways in which you add the clouds remains the same from left and right and you're just releasing when you reach the middle, and that is how it is done and that is how you add the clouds. As you can see in the bottom left, my cloud has not turned out well. Let me tell you why that happen. That happen because wherever I apply the clouds in the left corner, the paper there was dry, it was slightly dry. Because of that it almost became a wet on dry method and because of that, it just had these harsh edges which we didn't want. I'm just trying to fix that by slightly wetting the edges and blending it in with the yellow, so that it doesn't look as awkward as it did before by just standing there like it means nothing. That is it. We're done with the six different types of skies. As you can see, we practiced almost six important ones. The gradient sky, there we added some darker colors with a single color, we lifted off some paints to create clouds, we did the wet on dry method. We created two different blends in the sky, one without clouds and one with clouds, and all six of them are very beautiful. You can use any of these that you want in your paintings. Let us understand our foreground elements in the next lesson. 6. Foreground Element: Branches & Leaves: Awesome. Now that we've covered our skies, it's time for us to paint the things that we see in the foreground. For this lesson I've decided the foreground element to be the trees and branches. I often get questions as to how I make my trees and my leaves, and the branches look so realistic. In this lesson, I want to share my little secret with you. Let's begin. The first thing that I want to show you are some of the examples of my foreground elements. Here are some of the paintings that I've done in the past. You can see I end up making these trees and branches and leaves of different kinds and I just try and experiment. I sometimes make these wildflowers, so they're mostly just re-creation of what I see in the reference picture. Whatever the structure of the foreground element is in my reference pictures. These are just some of the examples. The category of my foreground element just goes on and on. You can find more about it on my Instagram. But in these paintings, one thing that remains common or important is the brush control. It is very important to know your brushes. It's important to know the capabilities of your brushes and what they're capable of. I use the silver black velvet brushes in size eight, four and two. I'm just going to show you some of the brush control techniques that I like to follow before I go ahead and make any paintings, and this will help you understand your brushes a lot better. It's important to know your brushes. It's important to, like I said, know their capabilities. You want to select a brush that comes to a really fine tip. That's one of the most important things to look for in a brush. If it does not come to a fine tip, you won't be able to get thin strokes with a normal size brush, like a size four brush. You wouldn't be able to get a thin stroke. That's completely okay. It's not wrong. It's okay. But the only difference would come that you'll have to switch between your brushes. I'm going to show you two different round brushes. The black one is going to come to a really fine tip, and the brown one is not that pointed at the tip. It's a lot more round at the end just as you can see, while the black one comes to a really fine tip. I'm just going to show you how both these work when you're trying to work with brush control, again. If you're not able to get a fine tip, you can switch your brush, you can change your brush and use a size zero brush instead. The idea here is to just practice how to control your brush. One thing to keep in mind is how you hold your brush. Hold your brush right at the [inaudible] that'll give you a good grip on the brush and make sure that you are resting your arm on the paper as well. As you can see, when I apply more pressure on the brush, I get really thick lines and as I decrease the pressure on my brush, I get a medium stroke and as I decrease it further, I get a really light stroke. I absolutely love trying out different brushes and seeing what they're capable of. Now, the first one that we tried with a size four brush, and now we're going to try a same size four brush, but this time it's not a fine tip. As you can see, the more pressure I apply I get a thick line, as I decrease the pressure, I'm still getting a line that is thick. Of course, it's thinner than the maximum pressure that I apply on the brush, but it's not as thin as the one that we did with before. This is what happens when you select a brush. Now, the black one comes to a fine tip, and that helped us to get really thin strokes. Generally, I just use the same size four brush to get my thicker branches, thinner branches, leaves and all that, so that I don't have to keep switching between the brush. But if you have a brush that does not give you thin lines don't worry, you can just use a size zero brush. Pick up a size zero brush and you're good to go. Go ahead, try out different brushes, see which brush in your set will give you the perfect stroke where you get thicker lines and thinner lines. Let us try one more brush. This black velvet brush I've taken, load it up with some sepia color on the brush and this is the maximum pressure that I apply. If I apply maximum pressure on my brush, I get a really thick line. Now as you can see, since my paint was more dry, I was getting this dry brush technique, but add a bit of water to make it nice and loose so that you get good lines. That's the thickest line and as I decrease the pressure, as I keep decreasing the pressure, the lines get a lot thinner. I'm able to get these really thin strokes with a size eight brush itself. Go ahead, work on the pressure that you apply on your brush because it'll really help you to get good leaves and branches. Once you figure out how to work with different pressures, you'll be able to transition from a thicker pressure to a thinner pressure. Now let us learn our branches and the trees and the elements that we're here to learn. Now, when I start painting a branch, I start from either of the sides. You can start from any side. It's starts off to be thick and then it becomes thinner, and then you have these mini-branches coming out from it and they're all thinner. Again, pay attention that when a branch is going upwards, then the sub branches will go upwards. If a branch is going downwards, sub-branches will go downwards. They will of course be at an angle, but they will still face the direction in which they're supposed to go. Over here, I start off with a thick stroke and then I slowly decrease the pressure that I'm applying on my brush. When that happens, I create this transition between the thick stroke to the thin stroke, and it looks like a branch that gets thinner and has these smaller branches coming out, so it's really important. Again, like I said, the branches will only move in the same direction as the main branch goes, it will not go in the opposite side or it's more preferable to have it in the same direction in my opinion, and I like working it like that. As you can see, they will be at an angle, but they're all going facing downwards, so work on the pressure that you're applying. You start off with the thick pressure or more pressure and then you slightly decrease the pressure. Here, I'm going to show you one, which is going upwards. I start with thick pressure, then slowly decrease the pressure and get these little branches out in different sides. As you can see, they're all going to be a lot thinner as compared to the main branch from which they are coming out. You can test this out a couple of times. Now, the next thing that I want to talk about is adding leaves. There are a lot of different types of leaves that you can add on your branch. I've quickly just gone ahead and made a branch, and the first type of leaf I'm going to show you is this dot that I like to do. It's like stippling leaves. Just creating a cluster of dots of different sizes together, and they will together form the illusion of leaves. You are not applying so much pressure, I'm just making dots of different sizes. Some of them I'm applying are just let's say slightly touching my paper with, and some of them I'm just applying a little bit of pressure. That is it. You're just going to go ahead and do that and you get this beautiful clustered leaves together. Let us try another one. I'm quickly going to just make a main branch and a few sub-branches, and in this type of leaf, I'm actually making these lines. Instead of making dots, I'm making these lines, and I'm trying to make them in a way that, let's say, it's one stem and it has leaves around it. That's the basic idea. As you can see, the branches that I made first, I'm just going to add in these lines instead of dots as the leaves. This becomes another type of leaf that you can add on your branches. I think this one is so pretty. I recently discovered how to make this. I've been going insane over these types of leaves because they're so much easier and they're just making lines. It looks so nice, it adds so much detailed to your tree or your branch with very minimal efforts, which is just great. Now, let us try another one. Quickly just sketch a branch out, you can make it in any direction, and over here, what I'm trying to show you is the size of the dots that you make. If you want to show a closer view of the leaves, your dots are going to be bigger. If the tree is a lot more at the distance, you'll have to slightly decrease the size of the dots that you make so you make them even smaller. I'm using my size 4 brush, you can use a size 0 brush as well if you don't get thin lines with a size 4 brush. Remember, it is important to focus more on the type of dots that you're getting with a brush rather than the size of the brush. It's not important to have a size 0 brush itself or something like that. It's important to have a brush that will give you the dots that you need. Now, let me show you another example where the leaves are a lot more closer to the observer. Here, I'm making even bigger dots. It's almost like spreading the dots. This one shows a more fuller tree, especially in the silhouette form. It shows a more fuller tree, more denser and denser tree, and you're just going to go ahead and fill in these dots like that. Then drag your brush and then make some dots around them, and this gives us an illusion that we are very close to the tree and the tree is nice and green and full. Now, you can go ahead and add an extra branches and make these branches in between them so that it does not look so detached from the tree, just to give it a nice overall complete look. Now, the next type of tree that I want to talk to you guys about is a more like tree that you use or show during the winter season or when there are not a lot of leaves on your tree. You have these extremely twig-like branches, they are not very thick, they're not very big. They're very twig-like structure. When you make these light sub-branches of that, you're just adding a couple of dots around the tree to give it the look or the illusion of leaves, so just a couple. You're not going to add it everywhere, you're just going to add a few of it on the branches. Now, this you can see is a shrub. It's not a tree exactly, it's a shrub. It's just a structure, it's not yet bloomed. It's not green, it's not intense. Just a few little dots, then I'll give you the illusion. I'm sure you are able to learn a lot of different types of strokes that you can play around with. The next one that I want to show you is a leaf. It's very similar to the one in the middle, where we added lines, those lines strokes. But here, we're going to be using my brush with not a very sharp point. I want to use a brush with not a very sharp point because it will give me the strokes with very rounded edges. As you can see, whatever stokes I'm getting, they are more round at the edge. They are not sharp and pointed. If you want to go for a tree that has leaves that are very circular, you can use a brush that will help you achieve that look. There's no perfect brush here, every brush can be used in their own beautiful unique way. Here, I use the round brush to get more rounded leaves, and that's pretty much it. These are the ways in which I create my different tree elements of the foreground. You can obviously go ahead play around a little bit more with your brushes, try out different leaves, try out different structures, practice the branches, practice the brush control. It's not like this step is not crucial. This step is crucial because it really helps you understand your brushes. Once you understand your art supplies, your materials, I feel like you know exactly what to do with them and how to do a painting with them. We are done with it. I hope you enjoyed this lesson, and let us go ahead and paint the reflections on water in the next lesson. 7. Reflection on Moving Body of Water: [MUSIC] We've covered skies, we've covered elements of the foreground, and for this class, we need to know how to paint reflections. We're painting a lake landscape after all for our class project. In this lesson, I want to talk to you guys about two different types of reflections. First one is reflection on a moving body of water and the second one is reflection on a still body of water. Both of these reflections have two different types of techniques and steps involved. In this lesson, I'm going to brush over each and every steps that you need to know. After the end of this lesson, you will be easily able to identify these two different types of reflections in your different structures. Let's go. The first type of reflection that we are going to paint is reflection on a moving body of water, which means, let's say, you have a lake or a river in which the water has some movements, which means it has some ripples and that is exactly what we are going to learn how to paint today with very easy steps. The first thing that you need to do is divide your paper into two halves. The one at the top is going to be the sky portion and the one below that is going to be whatever is reflected on the water, so basically, your water section. Using my flat brush, I'm just going to apply a clear layer of water on the entire area. It does not matter that it is the area above the horizon line or below the horizon line, you're just going to apply water on the entire surface of your painting area. Make sure that you have evenly applied the water. Make sure you don't have any puddles of water in different places, you want it to be evenly spread. Now using my cadmium yellow color, I'm going to go ahead and apply the yellow color in this left and right motion. It's very similar to the fifth type of sky that we painted. That's exactly what we're going to do. Now after the yellow, you're going to go ahead and add the orange from the left and the right side. I'm using the shade called golden peak. At the top, I have a mix of indigo and ultramarine blue. You can use your Persian blue color as well. Whatever you have with you, just use that and blend it. When you bring it down make sure that you're making the total value of the blue very light so that it does not form any green. We've learned all of the steps, we're just applying that step into an actual painting now. Again, now that I have my colors in place, I can go ahead and add the vibrant tones of the same color. First I have the yellow, then I have the orange. I'll bring in the orange from the left and right side. I want the center portion to be more yellow and the sides to be orange, and that's the idea and the look that I'm going for. Then I have the blue at the top blending in with the orange without creating any green in the sky. Make sure that's the only thing that you have to be careful about. Other than that, just go ahead and play around with your colors. It's not a problem. Now, once you are done with the sky you have to make the reflection of the sky on your water area. Now in case you're living in a very warm place, if the temperatures are high your paper is going to dry, but don't worry. You can just evenly apply water at the water area or the bottom media as well. Then whatever steps you did for the sky, you're just going to repeat it just in the inverted form. You have the yellow, then you have the orange, then you have the blue. Whatever you did in the sky, you're just going to make that to reflect on the water. Whatever the sky color is, the water looks exactly like that. It reflects the colors of the sky and that's exactly what we're doing. We add blue. Now blue is going to be the bottom, [inaudible]. It's going to be inverted. You get my idea. The yellow will be touching the yellow and orange will be touching the orange part in the sky. It's just going to be inverted. You are going to paint the sky in the same way that you did. You're going to paint the water actually in the same way that you painted the sky and try and get the colors in place. It's okay if it does not look perfect. It's fine. We just want the colors of the sky to be seen on the water, mainly. That's where the focus is going to be. Now in this type of reflection, I am just going to focus on my background layer and a blurred out middle layer. My middle layer is going to be blurred out, it's not going to be really sharp. Now I'm just going to add the middle layer. The background layer was for the water and the sky and the middle layer is going to be for the mountains and the ripples that I see in the sky. I'm just mixing my burnt umber color over here. Using a thicker consistency of the burnt umber, I'm just tapping in this shape of a mountain or a bush, let's just say, whatever you want to call it. You're just making the shape of these trees or mountains, whatever you want to call it again. You're making that shape and you're applying a layer of burnt umber. Now once you're done with that, you're just going to take your sepia color and apply it again. Now, we're using the two colors together because I want to show a glow in this, whatever is at the horizon line, let's say, a cluster of trees or a forest, whatever you want to see. They are very close to one another. I want to create that glow which shows the lighter parts of the trees as well, which is the burnt umber, and the darker parts which are shown by the sepia color. Now again, whatever is above the horizon line gets reflected below the horizon line. Again, using a thick consistency of the burnt umber color, you're going to go ahead and just make the same strokes as you did above the horizon line to create the reflection. That is the only thing. Now, can you see it's an inversion of the same structure that I made? Again, you're going to go ahead and take your sepia color and add in your sepia color just to create the darker parts of the reflection. Again, your pigment needs to be controlled. Your water control that we learned in the beginning of this class plays a very important role. If you add too much water on your paint mix, it's going to spread all over and it's not going to be controlled and you're not going to get the same shape. But if you use a thick consistency, you use a more controlled version, then you'll easily get the structure that I'm making right here. Now I want to create the separation between the horizon line and the water. For that I'm drying my brush and lifting off the paint while it's still wet to create this line. When I do that, it just nicely creates a separation. Now, the next thing that I'm doing is just making these horizontal strokes on the paint that I already had. My brush is clean. I'm just moving the paint that's already on the paper and I'm going to create this ripple, which shows that it is a moving body of water. That is why it's uneven. It's moving. To make the ripples in the water, I've just mixed the blue and the browns together and I've got this muted color. I'm making these lines in this curved form, and I'm applying more pressure here. Again, the brush control plays an important role when you know how much pressure to apply. Since this area is closer to the observer, the ripples that the observer sees are going to be a lot more bigger as compared to the one as we move towards the horizon line. Now as I move closer to the horizon line, I'm slowing going to decrease the pressure. I'm going to decrease the pressure on my brush and get thinner lines. Here I'm using my brown shade, which was the burnt umber mixed with a little bit of sepia color. Using that color, I'm creating the ripples. As you can see, they are a lot thinner, they are a lot smaller as compared to the ones that I made on the blue area which was closer to the observer. Now, we'll be using the same concept in our class project. This actually forms a really fun exercise for you to do before you go ahead and make or paint your class project. Just go ahead, add a bit of darker drawings on your ripples, make more ripples around the main ones that you laid out first so that you add in more structure to these ripples. Again, control over the paint mix is important, make sure that it does not have a lot of water. Otherwise, it's just going to spread all over and you won't get the desired ripples that you're actually looking for. Remember, control over your paint mix is very important and crucial when it comes to painting ripples. The sizing of the ripples plays a very important role as well. It's going to be bigger when it's closer, it's going to be smaller when it's far away from the observer and it's going to be more controlled and light. That's pretty much it for the ripples. This is one of the easiest ways in which we are going to be adding ripples in our class project. It's not difficult, it's a very simpler method in which we do that. Here, we were trying to show or achieve a moving body of water or a body which has ripples and try to make the reflection based on that. In the next lesson, I'm going to show you how to make a reflection on a still body of water. 8. Reflection on Still Body of Water: [MUSIC] Let us paint our reflection on a still body of water. Whenever there is no movement in the water bodies, the reflection is very crisp. It is a little blurred out but it's still very nice and crisp. So there is no movement in the reflection, so what is above the water, above the ground is going to be reflected as is on the water. Let us start painting that. I'm just going to go ahead do the wet on wet techniques, so I'm wetting my entire paper. Just like the one or just like the steps that we did for painting the sky and the water in the previous one we're going to do that before the ripples. First I've added the yellow, and then I'm going to add the orange around it and then move to the blue, so the colors are going to remain the same, so yellow, orange, and then at the top we're going to have the mix of indigo and ultramarine blue or you can just take Prussian blue as well. Then using that, that's going to be the blue part of my sky. I'm going to apply that from the top, bring it down. Be careful when you're blending the orange and the blue together because we don't want to create the muddy colors in the sky, so carefully just blending these two colors. Now that the colors are in place, we are going to go ahead and make our paints more vibrant. This can be done in two ways, is what I'm trying to say. Sometimes people like going with the darker tone of the color in the beginning itself. For me I like going with the lighter colors first and then adding in the darker ones once I have things in place, because that gives me more idea about what colors are going to look, how they're going to look together or how I should work on the blending, and it just makes it a little bit easier for me to understand and that is it. I like doing it in two steps and you can choose to put the vibrant paint in first go itself, that's totally a personal preference. Now, once I'm done with the sky, I have blended the orange and the blue together to get a nice blend in the sky, I'm going to repeat the same step at the bottom now. Since we did blue before, if you don't clean your brush very well like I did here, if you don't clean it well, you might get a tiny hint of blue and the paint will turn slightly green because it has blue. Just make sure that you're cleaning your brush completely before you are going to go ahead and work between yellows and blues. I'm going to repeat the same step as I did for the sky to make the water. I'm just going to try and make my blends look the same so that it does not look weird and it does not look like the sky does not match the water reflection. Just try and match these two things together. Use the methods in which you blend the same way as you did for the sky. Try and get the same strokes in, that's what I'm trying to say. Try to make your water look the same as the sky looks. [MUSIC] To get more crisp and clear shadows, what I will be doing for this section, or this type of reflection is break down though composition in background, middle ground, and foreground. We're not going to do the foreground part because the foreground part is going to be about adding the details of the leaves and branches and things like that, but over here I just want to show you how we do the middle ground part to get crisp and clear reflections on the steel body or photo. As you can see here, I haven't added any sort because there is no movement in the water and it is reflecting the sky as is. Now, we're going to wait for our paper to completely dry before we go ahead and move on to the next step. Now that my paper is completely dry, I'm going to go ahead and create my middle ground part, which is adding the details of this little hill with trees on it, let's say, and I'm just going to go ahead and just add in these little lines and make the details. As you can see here, you'll notice because it's a wet on dry method, the details are the crisp, they are clear. You can see exactly what I'm making at the horizon line as compared to the previous one that we did, where our middle ground was more blurred out, out of focus, and over here it's more in focus. I'm just going to go ahead and meet this little hill from the left side, and on the right side I'm going to make a branch and add in a few little details of the leaves, so just a branch and then adding these little strokes, because I want to show you how the still life reflection looks. Basically what I did here is make an element of the foreground as well, and I just want to show you how everything looks when you put them together and try and get them to reflect on a still body of photo. Go ahead and add these little details at the horizon line. [MUSIC] Once I'm done adding the details at the horizon line, it's time for us to paint the reflection. For this, I'm going to use my flat brush. Make sure that you're using a bigger brush over here because it will easily apply water on a larger area. Over here I'm just going to carefully make one swipe, and Right at the bottom I'll make another swipe. Make sure that you're not going zigzag, hear and there. Because we're painting with watercolors it will reactivate and move around. We just need to try and apply water in one swoop, and that is it. That's the only thing we need to do. Because the reflection is going to be on the water, it will be blurred out but not so much. You should be able to see the structure. As you can see here when I'm making the lines, the consistency of my paint is thick, and because of this, the paint is not moving around so much. You can still see the reflection very, very clearly. I'm just going to try and get the deflection to be exactly similar to the ones that is above the ground or above the horizon line. Now, since we applied only one swipe of water, there are chances that water might dry fast, but you don't have to worry about it. Go with little sections. If it dries you can make one swoop or apply a layer of water over it again. In the either way you have to work and you can go ahead and do the same thing. Now as you can see, I've tried to fit the reflection to look exactly like the one above the horizon line, leaving the little white space that forms the separation between where the horizon line is, it just forms a separation. Now, if you notice, I went ahead and added a bit of water on the left side because I felt like it was dry and if I went ahead and added the stroke, it would be very crisp and clear, and I don't want it to be very crisp and clear. I want the reflection to have the shape, but I want it to be slightly brought up, just a little bit. You can add a fairly thin layer of water, very little water, and you'll be able to achieve this type of stroke. As you can see, I went ahead and finish those little hills and those trees, the far off trees, and next I'm going to show you how you add the details of the branch as well. Once we're done with this, we're going to go ahead and add the details of the branch. Now over here, we need to slightly keep in mind as to how you made the branch. I went for a simple one which I generally end up doing, so it wasn't that difficult for me to make. But in case there are chances that you might forget what your branches looked like and how you made them, it'll be easier if you just draw them out once, both up and down so that you don't miss out on the structure of your branch. Again, if you notice here, the consistency of my paint is thick because of which whatever shape I'm making, it's able to retain the shape. It's able to be in that same stroke, but it's just slightly blurring out. As you can see, this one is a more controlled way of doing the reflection on a still body of water. Whenever you have water body that still you're not seeing a lot of ripples in the water, you can opt for this method of making the reflections on the water, which I think is really cool. Both of these are really just beautiful in their own way. The first one is more loose and it's more flowy and it's just, there no care in the world with it. The other one is well controlled, crisp, and you can see all the details. Each of these have like a beauty of their own and you can opt for either of the reflections depending on the reference picture that you see. [MUSIC] Both my paintings are now dry and you can clearly see the difference between the two. The left one is more flowy. It has strippers and it's more soothing, it's more like blurred out and out of focus picture and image and we have been able to really capture that. The second one is more in focus, you can see the elements above and below the horizon line. The reflection is very crisp, we can exactly see the deflection of the elements at the horizon line, the tree and the mountains and all that and it's very clear. You can use either of these depending on what you see in your reference picture. Both are just beautiful in their own sweet way. Now, we've learned everything that we need to know, so let us gather and pick up all of these pieces. Let's pick them up together and apply them for painting a beautiful class project in the next lesson. [MUSIC] 9. Project Part 1: Analysing Ref Picture & Colour Palette: [MUSIC] Awesome. We've covered everything that we need to know about painting lakes. Now let us quickly dive into our class project. I'm going to read down the class project in three different parts. This one or this lesson is going to be about understanding the composition of our painting, deciding the color palette and sketching our elements out. The next lesson or the second part is going to be about, painting the background. We'll be painting the sky, we'll be painting the water, adding reflections and all that stuff. The lesson after that, that is the third part is going to be about painting the foreground elements. Without wasting any more time, let's get started. The first thing that I like to do whenever I'm starting a new painting is to tape down my paper on my clipboard on all four sides using my masking tape. I've taken all my other supplies as well as like the ones we discussed in the materials lessons. I've laid everything out so that it's all close to me and I do not have to run around finding things. The picture that we're taking inspiration from is this beautiful sunset. You have the beautiful yellow sun right there. Then you have the orange bits and it slowly transitions into the blue. Then you have the clouds in the sky as well. The exact reflection is on the water with these beautiful ripples coming from the right side and getting smaller in the left and also lighter where the sun set is happening. Then you have these foreground elements exactly like the ones we discussed in the trees and elements lesson. Everything that we're going to do in this painting it's already discussed earlier. Now, we're just going to put all the pieces of our puzzle together and practice this final lake landscape. What I'm going to do is, first make a basic sketch of my picture. The first thing that you need to do is have all your subjects in place. As you can see, there's a horizon line that separates my sky from the water. That is exactly what I'm going to do. I'm going to use my scale and I'm going to draw a horizon line. Now, you can make this at an exact half of the paper. You can make this by giving your sky a slightly bit more space as compared to the water, but it's still almost a half. Just somewhere around that you can use your scale and just draw a very, very light line. It does not need to be dark. You can barely see that line that I just draw. That is because when you're painting with watercolors, if your lines to dark, you won't be able to erase them, first thing and second just shows and we don't want it to show. Try being as light as possible. Now we're going to sketch out our elements. I see these series of bush or trees at the horizon. I'm just sketching this irregular mountain shape actually and I'm making the exact reflection on the area below the horizon line. The way I drew the subject on the dot is going to be reflected the same way on the water. Now that is the only thing that has the reflection bit on our water, everything else that you see is not reflecting on the water and we don't need to show that. Again, you don't have to worry a lot about it. I'm just making this grounds based on the left and moving towards the right, decreasing the size. Then I'm just going to make in some lines that will show me where my branch go, my foreground elements go. You don't have to sketch out each and everything. This is just for your personal knowledge, just to understand that whatever elements go in the foreground, where they go. Once you're done with the sketch, that's pretty much it. You can choose to skip this step of adding these elements in the foreground as well. It's not a problem. Some people like to draw their branches out, so you can do that. You can draw your branches out if that's easier for you, but it is not a very compulsory step. You can go ahead and just make a light sketch of everything that you see in the picture. Once we're done with that, we're good to go and move on to the next step. The next step is going to be about deciding the colors that you need to pick for the class project. Here's quick practice piece that I did before filming the final class project just to understand the colors and have it all in place and see if it's actually turning out the way that I want. As you can see, for the most bit, I was able to grasp and get the exact colors that I see in the reference picture, try and get the elements and they look the exact way that I see. Now it doesn't always have to look exactly the same as your reference picture. You can always play around. You can always have fun. But I like to just stick around, at least for the foreground elements stick around with what I see. Now, let us talk about the colors. I think it's very important to have your colors picked out before you go ahead and start painting. Now what do you see in the picture? You see that the sun part or the bright part of the picture has yellow in it. I'm going to go for cadmium yellow. I'm quickly going to show you a swatch of the cadmium yellow color. As you can see, this is the yellow that I'm using. Now if you don't have cadmium yellow, you can use any yellow that's a little bit warmer. You need a yellow that's not too cool like the lemon yellow. You need a yellow that's a bit warmer. The next shade that I see the sky is the orange and I'm using golden deep by White Nights here. Now again, you can go for your cadmium orange shade as well. But I've just gone with my golden deep, which I think is a beautiful orange color that I absolutely love and adore and I use it in all my paintings. Now I want to talk about the clouds. For the clouds, I'm going to use a burnt umber color. Now, most of the times you use burnt umber color to make the darker parts in the foreground or make ground. You'd always assume that that's the color that you pick, but I like using burnt umber in the clouds as well. Now, the next thing that I want to talk about is the blue. For the blue, I'm going to mix my ultramarine blue and my indigo shade to get this nice Prussian blue color. You can use your Prussian blue color directly as well. Just tone it down slightly when you're using it in the sky, but you can use your Prussian blue as well, or you can just mix ultramarine blue and indigo to get this beautiful blue shade that I'm going to use today. We have figured out the yellow, the orange, the clouds. Then we figured out the blue part of the sky. Now you also see these clouds that are more neutral in color, and I achieve that by just mixing the brown and the blue together. I can just mix the brown and the blue or the orange and the blue and the yellow together. Just like mixing these colors together on the opposite side of the color wheels that I get like a muted version of the color. That is the color that I'll use for the clouds. I love using this muted gray color in my clouds and it goes really well with the burnt umber color, especially when I'm making sunset painting. That is the color that I will be using for this class as well. Now, once we are done with deciding the colors in the sky, the next thing that I want to talk about is the color for the foreground element. Now, a lot of times people directly go for using black in the painting because you see the silhouette is black or dark in color and a lot of time the easier option is to use black. But I personally like using a darker version of the colors that I see in my painting. If it's a sunset picture, it's more warm. It makes more sense if you're using a dark brown color that makes the silhouette part of your painting. That way the black just doesn't stand out and doesn't look awkward. Now we've figured out all the colors that we need for the sky. We've got the yellow, orange, brown, the blue, the muted color, and the brown sepia color. Now we will be using this color itself to paint our class project. Most of the sunset paintings have a similar type of color combination, especially the warm ones. It has a very similar type of color palette. But this is the one that we will be using in our class project today. We're done with the first part of our class project. In the next lesson, we are going to be painting the sky, the water, and the ripples in the water. 10. Project Part 2: Painting the Background: Let us start painting our background. I will be using my size 2 inch flat brush, my size 2, 4, 8, and 12 round brushes for the class project. Now, the first step is going to be wetting our paper and prepping our paper for the wet-on-wet technique. I'm going to take my size 2 inch brush, dip it in water, and carefully just layer the entire paper with water. Make sure that you are evenly spreading it all around and you're not having any puddles of water on your paper. If your paper is evenly wet, your results are going to be a lot better, your wet-on-wet technique is going to be better so it's very important that you apply a clean, clear layer of water. It works best when you have a bigger size flat brush because it will cover a bigger area with just a few strokes. The key here is to go in the same direction. You can go vertically or horizontally, that's up to you but make sure that you are going in the same direction to evenly spread your paper. Now using my size 8 brush, I'm going to start the painting process. The first color that I want to paint in is yellow. Right in the middle, I have my vibrant yellow color. Using my cadmium yellow shade, I'm going to mix it on my palette, and I'm making sure that my paint is nice and loose in consistency. I don't want it to be thick because this is the background layer and it should be flowy. I'm loading it up with my size 8 brush and applying it right in the middle where the sun is very intense or setting. Now, what are the other colors that you see? You see orange. In the reference picture, we saw orange. Using my golden deep shade, I will be mixing it on my palette and then applying it from the sides. I want to apply it from the sides because I want the middle portion to be yellow and I want it to be vibrant. I go from left to right and stop midway where the yellow is, so that it's all in place and then slowly just move upwards. Then I clean my brush, dab off the excess, and then just slowly move upwards, not all the way. Just stop right at the half of the paper. Now the next thing that we want to put on the paper is the blue color. I'm just going to load in some ultramarine blue, mix it with a bit of indigo and I'll get this nice blue color that I need, and I'm going to start moving it from top to bottom. When I stop midway where I think I am good to blend with the orange, I will just leave that white space, clean my brush, and then blend it downwards. When you're using clean water to blend, you don't form the green in the sky, like we discussed so that is why we are being very extra careful right at the blending of the orange and the blue. Now that I have the basic colors laid out, it's time for us to add in more intense colors. We're going to follow the same process but just intensify the color a bit more starting off with the yellow in the middle, then we'll have the orange in this side, and then we'll move on to the blue. I'm really happy with how the sky has blended right here. Now this next step is going to be adding the clouds that we see. Like we discussed early, we'll be using two colors for the clouds that is burnt umber, and the next one is that [inaudible] brown color that we're using. First, I'm mixing my burnt umber color. As you can see, the consistency of the burnt umber is a lot thicker, and this way the paint is more controlled just like we discussed earlier. Now we're just putting in all the puzzles to paint our class project. Now I'm going from this left and right motion and making a few little strokes like this, make sure that you're leaving your center portion where the sun is a little bit empty because you will have to change the color of the clouds if you bring it in the sun. But other than that, you can just use your burnt umber color. You're just making these little strokes diagonally, some of them are thicker, some of them are thinner. Then once you're done with this color, we'll move on to our mutant shade. That is by mixing burnt umber and a blue color together. Now I've felt like the sun was getting a little bit lighter. I just put in a little more yellow so that it stays nice and vibrant. Now, mixing my blue color and my burnt umber color together, I'll be getting this nice muted color that I need for the clouds, which are more towards the blue side of my sky. Again, using the same process of tapping in the clouds diagonally, I will be making these clouds at the top and I will slightly blend them with the brown as well so that it doesn't just look awkward standing in two different colors and they're more blended together. Yeah, go ahead and add in the clouds. Now you know exactly what you need to do because you've covered this before, you can leave the clouds however you like. If you look at the reference picture again, it's very important we're painting what we see. Look at the reference picture and see how the clouds look. You can change things here and there, I have changed the structure of my clouds because I generally end up making my clouds look like this and it's more appealing to me this way, so you can go ahead and just make it this way or make it how you see in the reference picture. Now that I'm happy with my sky part, I'm going to go ahead and make that bush near the horizon line. Load your brush with some burnt umber color and then apply it at the horizon line. Make sure that your paper is still wet at this time. If you think your paper has dried, then you can just wait for the paper to completely dry and then re-wet the surface and then add in your bushes near the horizon. It's very important that your paper should remain wet for this process. First, I've laid down the burnt amber color and I'm just making the irregular shape that I've seen in the reference picture. Then once I lay that, I will be adding the Sepia color to form the darker parts of the objects near my horizon line. Just like how we learned in the reflection part of the class, the process that we followed is going to be exactly like that, the reflection on the moving body of photos. That's the same type of steps that we are applying for our class project. Go ahead and make in this little bush near the horizon line. Now, once you're happy with that, we are going to move to our water bit. By this time, most probably the water area that we wet before would have dried. But that's okay, you can go ahead and re-wet the surface again using your flat brush. Be a little careful around your horizon line. It's okay if your paints blend in, that's completely fine. Don't worry about that, but just go ahead and wet your entire surface with water. Now what we're going to do is just to replicate what we see above the horizon line at the area below the horizon line as well. Using my size 8 brush, I'm going to go ahead and replicate whatever I see above at the bottom. We'll start off with the yellow, and then following the same steps as we did for our sky part, so we'll have yellow, then we'll have orange in the sides. We'll have the blue as is. Now, over here since we'll be making ripples, we don't really need to show the exact cloud structure. It's okay if you just get the colors that we see in the sky on the water as well. Now, once I'm happy with how the colors of my water look, we are going to go ahead and replicate the subject of the horizon line. Using your burnt umber and size 8 brush, try and get that same irregular shape as you see in the area that's above your horizon line. Now, let this just be as is, we'll add the darker tones once we add the ripples in the water. Now, using my size 4 brush, I'm going to use the lifting technique and lift off the paint to create that separation from the area above the water to the area that's below the water. All you have to do is wipe off your brush, make sure that it does not have a lot of water in it and then just drag in the area that you want to lift off. Then that will just soak in the water and you'll eventually end up with that line, which will have less paint or no paint or it will probably just show the white of the paper. Now, we're going to start off with the ripples. For that I'm just mixing my indigo shade with a little bit of brown and I'm going to go ahead and add in this ripple. Now, these ripples are very similar to the ones we practiced earlier. You're putting in the puzzle for the ripples as well. I'm starting off with the ripples that are a lot bigger at the bottom. As I move closer to the horizon line, I'm going to make them a lot thinner and smaller. The area that's closer to the observer, you want to make sure that you're tapping in your brush a little bit more. Then to the area that's away from the observer, make sure that you have a really light-handed pressure applied. You're just going to go ahead and add in these ripples. Now, you will start off with your ripples being really far apart from one another, and as you move closer to the observer, you'll make them a lot more closer to one another because they're more compact. Just go ahead and create the ripples like we've done before. Now, once you're happy with the few little ripples that you've added, you are going to go ahead and add in some intensity to the same ripples and add in some other ripples around them as well. The big ones will also have some small ripples around them. I'm just going to go ahead and repeat the process of adding in the ripples until I'm happy with how the ripples look. The process is very similar to the ones that we learned earlier. Just go ahead and add in your ripples. Now, once I'm happy with how everything looks, I'm going to go ahead and add the darker part for my reflection. Using my size eight brush and our Sepia color, we are going to go ahead and add in the darker colors for the reflection. Just go ahead and make the same type of reflection that you see above the horizon line at the bottom as well. Then using our brush, we will be making those little smudges at the edges so that they show the irregular shape and the ripples in the reflection part as well. To make the reflection part a little bit more interesting, I went ahead and added a little bit of the burnt umber color at the tip as well. Wherever I'm making those lines, I'm using the burnt umber color and mixing these two together, just like how we mix the two colors together above the horizon lines. It really helps to add in the lighter colors. Since the sun is right there, you'll see a lot of light parts of the subject as well as compared to the dark parts. I think adding in the burnt umber color just changes everything. Now, using a mix of the burnt umber color and a little bit of Sepia color, we're going to add in the ripples which are lighter in color. It's really, really tiny ones, thin ripples, but the more warm in color as compared to the indigo and the brown or the mutant mix that we created earlier. Let's just go ahead and add the ripples using this color. Sometimes it can be really, really easy to go overboard and that's when you should look at the reference picture so that you understand where to stop. I think I've added enough ripples and I'm just going to stop right here. Now that we're done with that background layer, we're going to wait for this to completely dry before we go ahead and paint a foreground element. In the next lesson, we will be painting our branches and the leaves. 11. Project Part 3: Painting the Foreground: Now that our paper is completely dry and I'm so happy with the way our background looks, it's time for us to add foreground elements. Adding these foreground elements is going to make our painting really stand out and look beautiful. The color that I'll be using is Sepia for the foreground elements, and we'll be using the same type of tree elements such as the branches and the leaves like we learned in the foreground element lesson. You need to have two brushes with you. You need to keep a size 4 brush or a size 2. This is what I'm using majorly because I want a bigger size brush to make the bigger branches and smallest size brush to make the details in the leaves. Let's just start right in with our elements. The first one that I'm going to do is the left side corner branch. I've loaded and taken my size 4 brush loaded up with some Sepia. Then I'm going to start by making the branch first. Like we did before you remember, we painted the branch first and then added the leaves. That is one of the most easiest way to make any branch and leaf combination because it gives you the basic structure. I'm just going to make a bunch of branches coming out from the left side. Now, you don't have to exactly replicate the same thing. You're just going to get inspired from it, understand how it looks, and then as you paint along, you can make a few changes. Now that I have my branches set out, I'm going to make the leaves. You remember the leaves that we learned where we were making lines, that is the style that I'm using for this one, so this gives me this illusion of long leaves on the branches. Just go ahead, make a bunch of lines. You can use a smaller size brush here if you want. In case you feel that your bigger brush is not giving you those final lines, go ahead and use the size 0 or the size one brush, wherever your brush is basically. Here I'm just going for a size 4 brush, which gives me a really fine tip, so I'm able to are lot of different details with the same brush. Now that you set the main branches out in case you want to make a few little branches coming out from the left and right side, which are going to be your sub-branches, you can go ahead and do that as well, and then complete your entire section out. I have placed the practice painting right next to me so that you get an idea of what I'm going for. I wanted to keep the main reference picture as well, but I could not because it was too big for my screen. But I've put the practice painting so that you just get an idea. Go ahead, follow me along or just go ahead and do your own thing, add in these branches from the left corner. In the right corner side of the painting, you see that we just have a branch which is empty which does not have any leaf on it, so we'll sketch that out and we can draw that out with a brush. Then at the bottom, the area below that has the same type of leaves that we made on the left corner, so it's the same process like we've done before in our tree element lesson. Just following the steps and trying to recreate what you see. Now, a lot of times people find it easier making these elements in a way that this sketch out the main branches first and then just go over it and paint over it. But that's completely a personal choice. It's a personal preference. If you think you're confident enough to just go ahead and wing the whole situation and make everything look pretty in the end, then you can go for it. If you think you're a bit confused and you're a little bit scared because you've worked so hard on your background and you wouldn't want to ruin all that hard work because you couldn't make the foreground look nice, so you can go ahead and sketch it and then trace the branches out and work accordingly. Again, personal choice. I personally just like winging it. I'm like, I'll just try and recreate things that I see, so I didn't stress out so much on that. But if you want to sketch it out, you can go ahead and do that and complete this little section. I'm just going to keep quiet so that you actually enjoy the process of making this. If you're painting along with me, it would be really fun because it will just give you the time to follow me along and I haven't sped up the process or anything so that you get your time, take your time and just follow along and enjoy the painting process. Once we're done with the top part of our painting, it's time for us to add the crowns and the details for. For that I'm going to use a combination of the color Sepia and burnt umber. Again, I'm going to be using the same two brushes, size 4 and size 2. Now, right here, what I want to do is first load my brush with the Sepia color and make the ground shape. Load your brush with some Sepia and go ahead and make this irregular ground shape by just dragging your brush and adding in the paint. There's no perfection, there's no right or wrong. You can go ahead and make it however you like. It doesn't have to be exactly the way I'm doing. I'm just going for a curve and I'm just slightly making the uneven ground look. That will be it. Once that is done, we'll go ahead and add the details that's above it. Let us start with these slight tweak-like shrubs in the background, and for that I'm going to use my size 2 brush. I'm going to make a mix of the burnt umber color with a tiny bit of Sepia. I want the color for this one to be slightly lighter as compared to the ones at the bottom because I feel like the sun is falling directly on it. That is why it gets that little warm colors in the sky as compared to the ones at the bottom. You're just going to start loading your brush with some paint. We're going to make very thin strokes now again, wing the whole situation or sketched out if you want. I'm just going to go ahead and try and just replicate what I see. I can make a few changes that's totally on me, and the process here again, is very similar to the ones that we did earlier. I have taught you all these elements in the lessons before, and we're just, like I said, putting the puzzles together to complete our final painting. Go ahead and make this our little twig-like shrub, that's what I like to call it, and complete the entire structure, and then we'll go ahead and add the bigger shrubs at the bottom once we're done with this. I know it looks a little bit awkward right now because the bottom looks really empty. But don't worry, once we add those shrubs at the bottom, it gets covered up and it all looks like a piece together. It'll not look as awkward standing out like it does right now. Just go ahead and add in those leaves. The way in which you make this is very similar to what you see, or you just try and observe your reference picture. You're observing your reference picture and just trying to pick out the things that you are capable of putting in. It's very important to look for things that you are sure that you are going to do, or are able to do. When you pick out things like that, it gives you more confidence to paint it out. A lot of times, if you go for extremely difficult reference pictures, and if you're not able to complete it in the way that you want to do it, then it disappoints you and you end up not doing it. Always start off with things you think are simple and you're able to do, and this way you end up boosting your confidence to go ahead and paint more reference pictures and then eventually you'll fall in love with painting landscapes like I've done, and every time now that I look at landscape pictures I feel so happy and I cannot stop myself from painting. There are still a lot of subjects that I find very difficult to paint, or I would need a lot of practice for, but that's how it is. Art is something that you are always learning and exploring. Go ahead and make these shrubs for now, and then we'll move on to the next step. Once we're done with this, we're going to go ahead and add the details in the bottom part of my ground. For that, I'm going to use my same size two brush, and I'm going to load my brush with some sepia right here, not a mix of sepia and [inaudible] But just sepia. Then I'm going to make these little strokes or little lines, and then I am going to just drag it along and make the strokes a little bit bigger. It's very similar to the strokes that you made on the top left corner. But here you're just applying more pressure on your brush. Like I said, hold your brush well to get a good grip over your brush. When you get a good grip over your brushes, strokes will be more clear. You'll be able to control the pressure that you apply on your brush. That plays a very important role in a way that your strokes turn out well. Just go ahead and add the details to your shrubs at the bottom. It's very similar to, like I said, the top-left. Just here the leaves are bigger and thicker and fuller. It's very similar. We have learned this before. It's all about how you apply the pressure on your leaves and the look that you're going for. Just go ahead and add it at the bottom. I am not going to talk anymore so that you enjoy the process of adding the foreground elements. Yes, it does take a lot of time, but it's definitely worth it. We've added all the elements. Now I'm just going to put my reference picture right next to it and make a comparison about the things that I would like to change, or add or if I've missed out on something. As you can see, I wouldn't say painting is a complete replication of the reference picture. But it's highly inspired from our reference pictures. We tried to get the colors right. We tried to get the foreground elements the way we want, and now is the time to make any final changes that you want. Every time you like have a side-by-side comparison, that's when you realize in case you want to add something, or if you've made a mistake that you'd like to rectify now is your time before you go ahead and peel the tape off. I think I would like to change a few little things about my branches, make them longer, fuller, add in a few extra leaves. I'll just go ahead and make any of those corrections. Once you are happy with how the whole composition looks, that is the end of your painting. I am really happy with the way everything looks, and I will slowly peel the tape off. Oh, my God. Getting these clear crisp edges, this is the moment that I live for. I love it when I peel the tape off and not even a single drop of paint has seeped through and your edges are really crisp. It's just the most beautiful feeling in the world. Now we are going to sign our painting to make it uniquely ours. Just put in your sign, and don't forget to always sign your paintings because it's really important. This is our final painting. I absolutely love the way this has turned out. I love the water reflections, it looks so realistic. The clouds and the foreground elements, everything is just my favorite. Here's a quick side-by-side comparison between my practice painting and the class project that I did. I love how each of these are different in their own way in terms of color and foreground elements, but they're just both beautiful in their own way. 12. Final Thoughts. See you in the Next Class!: This is it, you guys. We've reached the end of the class. I'm so happy with the way our class project looks. It almost looks like a picture, isn't it? I've tried to break down this class project and also this class in different bits so that it's not only easier for you to paint this class project or know the steps involved in painting this class project, but also you can use the same concept or idea to paint from your own reference pictures that have lakes involved and reflections involved in them. I have uploaded a few more pictures or reference pictures in the resources part of the class so that you can go ahead and download them. You can give them a try as well. All of the images that are uploaded there, will have the same concept that we have learned today. It'll be a good practice for you to get your hands-on how you paint them. If you paint those or if you paint this class project, please do upload it under the project section of this class. I love browsing through that section and seeing what you guys create. It makes me so happy each time I go through it. If you get a little extra time, do leave a little review down for me because it makes me really happy. It motivates me to make more classes, and it really pushes me to go out there. One last thing, if you're sharing these class projects on Instagram, do tag me @thesimplyaesthetic, and I would love to see them on Instagram as well, and I would love to share them with my followers as well. That's pretty much it. I am really, really happy that you decided to stick around till the end. I shall see you in the next class. Bye-bye.