How Value Studies Instantly Improve Your Paintings

1. Intro: Hello. My name is Danes. In this class, we will learn how value studies can instantly impure your paintings. If you ever looked at your paintings and thought it feels flat or unfinished, the problem usually isn't your colors. It's your values. In this class, we will focus on values, how value can bring your painting to life. We will start with a simple five step value scale to see how water changes the strength of paint. Then we'll practice applying values on basic shapes like cube, cylinder, sphere, and cone. Because once you can paint this, you can paint almost anything. From there, we will move to real examples. We will paint a simple pier. I'll show you how to slowly layer it to create a three dimensional effect just by using values to create depth. We'll also paint a simple landscape, and finally, I'll show you how to apply a value scale to a cityscape painting. You don't need fancy materials, just a watercolor paper and brush and few simple paint. By end of this class, you'll be able to look at your subject and simplify into values and instantly improve watercolor paintings. Let's get started. 2. 5 Step Value Scale: Before we dive into value studies, let's start with the basics. What is value? Value simply means how light or dark something appears regardless of its color. It's a measure of lightness and darkness that helps us to see shape, form, and depth. You can think of it as the backbone of your painting, and you can see the value scale ranges from zero being white and ten being dark, or sometimes people use ten being white and zero being dark. Without the strong values, even the most beautiful colors will look flat. Now, a value study is a simplified version of your subject painted just in a range of values from light to dark. We can focus on the structure and lighting without being distracted by color. Traditionally, artists use shades of gray from pure white to deep black. But here's the good news. You don't have to limit yourself just gray. You can do value study in any color as long as you vary it from its lightest tint to the darkest shade. Think of it like you're watching a black and white movie. You can still read the light, shadows and mood perfectly because value defines form, not color. Let's do a quick exercise. I'm going to create a five step value, and I'm going to be using neutral tint in the first rope. Maybe I'll be using French ultramaron blue. You can write the values from a ten step value or eight step value. This is just a demo. I'm going to do only a five versions, let's get started. In order to get the lightest value in watercolors, you have to get more water in your brush. I'm just going to more water in your brush and you can see that. I'm going to take a little bit of utrotint. I'll just take some more water and you can see that it almost looks like decsistency. I'll do on this one, and I'll just get it off my excess water. I'll just do this. I think I have more water in my brush. Again, I'll try not to be perfect. You can see that I was able to create this really nice value of neutral tint. Let's call this value one. Before it dries out, I'm going to focus on maybe French ultram blue. I'll just go and fill French alterulue here. And you can see that it's running and doing its thing, but I'm not worried about it. I'm going to clean my brush again. Now let's use a differ darker color. I use bon timber. This is the color I usually use in my classes to teach the value studies. These cars will have the darkest dark and lightest light, based on the amount of water use in your brush and the pigments you use in your brush. Now we finish the first value. Let's go to the second value, and I'm going to go a little bit more of the pigment. And less water, and you can see how docker it is compared to our first one, and I'll just go and feel it. If you put more and I just want to wipe it out in your brush like this. Excess paint, I'll just do it like this. Now you can see that I cran the second darkest value. Now let's do the French ultramum blue again, same thing. I'll use more pigment and less water. Again, you can use any brush you want. I'm using this caligraph brush. You can see that this is a little bit darker than our first value. Some more. I'll just fill it yours and you can see it. I'll go to the next one, the burn tamber. Same thing. I'll use less water, more pigment. It's all about water and pigment and that's how you vary values. This will be quite andy after you do this exercise. When we do the other classes, other chapters, it's going to be easier for us. You can see that after painting one and two, this got a little bit easier. Let's go to the next one, and I'm going to be using more pigment now and less water. And this is our third value. Again, I might go a little bit darker on this one. That's why I'm just trying to fill the shape you can see that we cannot create a third value. Let's do the fringe turn and blue. I should have done just the neutro ten by itself. Then I just want to show that can also do with other colors. The value doesn't just applies to black and white. It applies to any colors you can use for painting. That's why I want to show all the colors. I'm going to wipe it and I'll go tamper you can see that as soon as I do couple, I'm getting more confident in my stroke. It's doing a warming up when you go into a gym and you can see this is our third value. Let's go to the fourth value. Again, once this dries out, this gets a little bit lighter too. That's how watercolor works. The value goes one or two scale lighter. That's why I picked a five step value. And you can see that we got a little bit darker on this. Insi french alter blue. Sometimes what happens is, let's say you are doing a value exercise or you are painting an object. Let's say you want to increase the value on something. You can do that by layering. For example, if you go and paint on top of the third value scale, the value will go a little bit higher, darker. I can see that I was able to do that. I think I really like the way I created the darker values on my bone tamber. You can see that we cannot create a nice variances. This is the last one. This one, what happens is you don't use any water, you just use pure pigment from this. This is mostly this value is the shadow value or the value you do with your dry brushing. But I do have some water in my paint itself, but still you can see that I can able to get the value bit darker. Let's do this one. Same thing. It's almost pecking the pigment from here. Pigment is not coming. It's dried quite a bit, so I need a lot of paint to get the darker value. You can see that we got darker. Let's do the last bone tamber. Yeah, there you go. This is the final value. But you can see that just by having more pigment and less water in your brush, we are able to get the darker pigment, almost like a dry brush. We learned how to do this five step value scale and you can see that we start with the light and we slowly increase the value of the darkness. 3. Gradient Value Scale: Last chapter, we created a five step value scale. In this chapter, you don't need five paints to get five values. You just need one, and we're going to use lodo brush with water for our darkest value to paint straight, then gradually add more water to create a swatch until you get a light gray. Think it's like it's a coffee, espresso, Americano, flat white. You are controlling the intensity by controlling water and that's what we did here as well. In our last exercise, we worked on car swatches, moving from light to dark, now we are going a step further. So I'll be using just one color, creating five different values from it, from light to dark. For a little challenge, let's do a dark to light, to darker, and light to darker to light. Why are we doing this? Simple. These exercises will help you learn how to control your values, to create shapes in your painting. Making a smooth gradient is one thing. But when you're painting a cityscape, a landscape or any subject, you will need to shift your values with intention. That's how you create depth, form, and mood. Think of this as a value training for your brush, getting ready to shape your paintings with confidence, let's get started. I'm way to do the same thing here as well. I'm going to clean my brush a little bit. And maybe let's do a neutral tint and French Alternblue and Burns and I can. I'm going to create let's do dark. You can see that as soon as I'm not using that much water in my brush, this is a little bit of water but more pigment. I want to take this little bit lighter. And you can see that I'm using more water in my brush now, and I want to make this a little bit darker. What I'll do, I'll take more pigment, I'll get rid of my excess water, I'll take my more pigment and slowly move like this. If it's not intensity, it's not enough, you can do this asphalt. You can just slowly rub it like that. Again, I'm going to lighten it like that. I'm going to darken it like this. Maybe I'll go a little bit darker. You can also slowly take it up like this, and you can also mix it here as well. You can see that we created a darker, lighter, darker, lighter and darker. We can also do this opposite way too. Let's do this. I'm going to this one. Try a lighter and darker. And I'm going to go a little bit. Lighter? I'm going to go darker. Same thing as above. You can see that we are able to create these really nice gradients and it almost looked like a sky and water there. You can see that it creates blooms and stuff like that, but I'm not worried about it because this is just a practice purpose. Nets apply a different color to it. This time, let's use French ultra and blue. It's the same thing. The reason we are doing this is control the intensity. What I'll do is I'll start with a darker, no pigment, no water in my brush, little bit of water. And I'll just take some more and come here. I'll go to bit darker. Maybe I'll go darker here. I want to smooth this transition, so I'm going to slowly transition like that. I'll bring it here and I'll just use lighter. And you can see that we can add light, dark, light. Again, it's all about pigment and water consistency and that's why it matters. Let's do the opposite way. I'm going to do lighter first. You can see that the first one, we had a little bit of difficulty and it gets easier and easier. I'm not worried about being, you know, scared about going out of the lines. This is just a practice to loosen up for our other exercise and go doctor. Whenever you have this sudden transition happening and go slow above, it's like you're painting a cat and you'll get this really nice transition and blend it like that. You can see that. Now you can see that we can able to create gradients of different variations. Let's do one more, the last one. The last one I'm going to be using, maybe I'll use Cipia. CFia is another darker color of bone tamper. But I also really like this color and this gets really nice darker pigments. What we'll do is we'll start with light. And as soon as I come here, I'm going to go darker. Maybe I'll go little darker. I'm going to clean my brush, take some more water, and I'll just gradient like this and go darker. There you go. Again, to get the transition, get the excess water and slowly blend it. Like that. There you go. Now we can see that we cannot create this really nice transition from dark and light dark dark. Using this concept of creating values of different variations and we're able to create any shapes and forms and we can able to create any objects as well. 4. Painting Primitive Shapes Using Values: Now that we practice controlling values with gradients, let's put this skill in action. This time we'll be using simple shapes like cubes, cylinders, sphere, and cones to see how values can turn flat shapes into three dimensional forms. Here's why this is important. When we paint, everything we create is technically flat. It's just a pigment on paper, but with the right use of light and shadow, we can make it look three dimensional. That's where the values do all the lifting for us. I'll start with the cube. Let's see. I'll put one cube here. Again, I'm thinking about the planes of the cube. This is our side plane, and this is the front plane, and this is the top plane. There's a simple cube you can see this is top plane and this is side plane. And let's do a sphere and sphere doesn't matter. You just have to be like that, and let's create the light is coming from here and it'll be heading there and it will create a shadow here. If you want to learn how to create three dimsal forms, you can also check my other Skillshare class as well. Let's do a cylinder. When you think about a cylinder, it's usually rectangle, but there's an ellipse at the top like this. At the bottom, it's like this. I'm thinking about the lighting. Let's hit the light here. We get a really nice shadow at the back of it like this. It goes like that. Let's do one cone as well. Mine as well. Cone. Think of a both hat, and let's hit the light reading there. For this cube, I'm thinking the light is coming from this side, so it's stating top. I'll use different colors to show that we can use different values. Maybe I'll use a different brush this time. For the cube, I'll use maybe cifa. So the first value is this guy. This is where the light is hitting. I don't want to keep it white, so I'm just going to fill the shape like that. And for the side plane, maybe the top plane, I'll just vary the values a little bit. Like that. Once I go to this corner, it might bleed, but it's okay. This for practice. For the shadow plane, it's going to be darker. Just by using three values, we're able to create this flat shape into three dimensional forms and I'll add a shadow. There's also another way of doing this. It's a layering method. You can see that it looks three dimensional with a nice light and shadow. I'll just put it there and I'll put here, here, a gradient there you go. Now we're able to create this flat shape just using three values, a light value, a midtone value, and a dark value. Let's do the sphere. For the sphere, I'm going to be using French alternumblue. So since the light is heating here, and I'll just leave some white spot for the eyelids. So if you don't know what's a form principle, again, I really recommend going and checking out, um, my three dimensional, how to create three D forms in water clos in my class. And I explain how the form principle works on all the objects. And that will be easier to understand. This is like a terminator which kind of goes like this, which separates the light on the shadow side. And you can see that I'm increasing the value slowly and I'm going to more one value darker. And I'll go super dark. Almost no water in my brush. You can see that we are able to create this really nice three dimensional forms already. Usually the core shadow happens here, so it belittle darker. I'm just going to add it until it's wet. You can see that we are able to create this really nice three dimensional objects already. There's one thing is missing is the shadow and I'll take a really dark pigment, which separates the sphere from the ground. There you go. Now you can see that we are able to create just by using at gradients what we did in the previous class and we use the same technique to create this. If you want, you can also create a vignette like this and that also makes your object will pop more. Let's do the cylinder now. For the cylinder, what color can I use? I'll use a red. This winds are red. We are thinking that the light is coming from here, so I'm just going to put the shape of it here and here as it goes back, it gets darker and darker. And you can see here. At the top, I'll combine it like this and fill the shape with a darker pigment what I did here as well. You can ask me there's a white bit This is the magic of watercoloss. I'll take this guy, take some white paint. Not white paint, water, clean water, and I'll just soften this edge like this. We able to create this really nice eyelet for us at the bottom. You can see that we are able to create this form. Still, it doesn't look like it's rolling. What I mean by that it doesn't roll like this, this is the cylindrical form rolls. You will see as soon as I put something here and you can see that it rolled a little bit better. I'll also make core shadow. There you go. Now at the cast shadow, which goes behind this guy and I'm using almost like a dry brush technique for it. You can see that we are able to create this really nice cylindrical form just by using one color. Just by using three values. Let's do the cone and let's use a different cover. I'll use burn Sienna. I like this color. This technique I'm going to use a different way of painting this technique. What I will do is I'll start with a the darkest value and you can see that there's a lot of water in my brush. I'm not able to so I'm going to wipe my brush with a rag, then I'll take a pigment. You can see I can take a pure pigment from here. Now, it's the same thing what we did with other exercise. Take some water and leave a white eyelet what we did here for the sphere and the cylinder. Going to go around like this. You can see that it's already turning and the form is going to roll. What we have to do is we have to add something dark like here. You can see that as soon as we add the Docker value, it did. I also want to add this terminator. I'm adding the terminator now. This is called the terminator. It also happens here. I also happens here and the terminator happens here as well for the cube. There's only one thing that's missing is the cast shadow. I'll add that. Cast shadow I have a little bit lighter. I don't know why. Okay. And there you go. Let's say if you want to decrease the value, you can use a clean brush and take some of the paint like that and blend it. There you go. Now we're able to create using different values, using different shapes. 5. Approaching An Simple Object Using Values: Paint something simple. I found this onion in my kitchen, so I took a picture of it. Before I jump onto it, I'm going to approach this first value study, people who are new to Was are doing this value study for the first time. You usually sketch the outline really light, and then you squint your eyes, looking at your rough fronts and identify where the shadows are the darkest. That's where your darker value goes and leave the brightest parts untouched, and those are your eyelids. You only need three values. Check this onion. You can see the light mid tone and dark, and that's it. It's about seeing, not guessing. This is where your painting starts to come alive. Let's get started. I'll just do it like this. Or composition is like that. It's almost like a sphere and right tank. And there you go. And in waterclos we start with the light, we slowly build it up. You can pick any color you want. It doesn't have to be the color I'm using and make sure it can be french alon blue Cepia, burn timber or neutro tin, something which goes darker. You can also use this dark green as well, but I'm going to use CFIa. I'm going to layer this slowly because this will help us in other chapters AsOll. I'll also show this layering technique. I'm going to apply the first wash this is our the base value, which is sitting on the let as I'm showing in the figure right now, I'm just painting that first. I'm getting the shape of this really fast. It looks like a fish almost. I'm just going to do it. There you go. Now we lay it. What you could do is here, you could wait them to dry, then you can also do wet on wet. So you can apply something on top. Now I want to take my clean brush. I'm going to clean my brush with a rag I'm just going to take off the iglted areas like this. You can see that we can create the elated spot as well as a base value for our overall onion. It looks flat. Now let's apply the second value, the midton value. I use libra water happening here on the sides and couple here and here and the mid tone value also go here. You can see that I'm slowly layering it, not rushing to the process. It also goes here and this valley also goes on top like this. And you can see that we cannot create a base value and we cannot create this. I'm going to blend in. I'm going to take some clean water and slowly blend in like this. There's not a sudden transitioning happening on the onion, it creates this arounder form for us. That's why we're after. Now, just go. Now there's only one thing is missing is just the docrop in the front. Just checking I'm also making something up, there's a couple of those bits which are folding. There's a couple of this here. Now you can see that these veins, which is coming here and we can also add that as well. It's a darker part of the things. This also helps to show the shape of the awning a little bit better. As soon as we can add those veins, because it's showing the form out turns and out finishes. So take some more. You can see that I didn't wait for this to dry. I'm doing it in a one go. It's darker here, and we are doing this darker and it's going to dry quite a bit. And you can see that I'll just it at the floor and I'll just at the floor going around the onion. And separating it like this. Easy simple steps. If you think your shapes in three values, a mid tone value, a darker value, and a highlight and you're halfway there of creating a shape looking three dimensional. There. Since there's not that much of a light direction is going on, so that's where there is no shadow, but the tiny shadow is happening there. I'll use this wet on wet. What I'll do is I'll just put it here like that. Just making up the shadow. I don't want to read that much and there you go. Now you can see that just by using simple shapes, we're able to create this onion and three dimension forms. As in the beginning of the chapter, I said, we can also do some layering. Now we write quite a bit. If I want to create more volume of the turns, I can also increase the wall value by going another layer on top of it. Just by adding another layer, you can see that, the forms even turn even more. It's all about squinting your eyes and checking the values, and I'm also checking my value. There's also darker value which is happening here. I'm also adding those all the darker values here as well. I'll soften it once I block the values. There's also darker value here. Now I'll go here and I'll just soften the edges like this. You can see that now we are able to create this really nice the Anian with the three dimensional shapes and it started looking realistic as we keep on increasing the value. I'm just going to stop it here and if I do it even any further, I'll ruin it because this is the easiest way of controlling our values if you're starting new to WaterclssT how we can see everything shapes and forms and values. 6. Study from A Photo: Chapter 01: The last chapter, we did this in of simple three value studies. But this one I'm going to show how to lay a altebra of more value and get a realistic look. This one we're going to use the object with the peers. There's two piers and I'm just going to ignore one and I'm just going to do the bottom one as I can show in the figure. I also took this picture as well as I desaturated and you can see that if I squint my eyes, I can see that there is three latd areas. There's a mid tone and there is also dark shadow and even the cloth has a different value as well. That's why I picked this. Let's go on block in this Again, I'm thinking this is a top part. Sense and kind of goes like that. Checking here. There you go. What I will do is in this drawing and I'll just add the shadows now so I know where the shadows are going. This will act as your map for you. But eventually, when I paint, I don't do it. But this is just showing it. It just makes your life easier. Know where the shadows at. You can also use Ach So our shadows. There's also the shadow which is happening at the top, and you can also go and shade it and you can also adch it like this. You can see that we are able to create it. There's also the midton values. We can also add it like this. Just checking the form how it turns. And there's also this form, which is starting If you're new to it, that's why I'm showing it here, but I don't paint like this. There you go. Now you can see that we're able to create this. There's also a cloth underneath and they also have the shadows too. If you want, you can also add that as well. Just blocking the shapes of these guys. There you. Now we created this. This time, I'm thinking maybe I'll use, um, uh, what kind of car we can use. We could use neutral tint. I can show the little bit of a darkness side. I'll show how to layer it. I'll do the first wash. And this is where our eyelid spots this helps us to see where our eyelid sits. I'm checking, is there any other outlets there, there there. I think this is more than enough to create our eyelets. And that's it. Now I'll take this color. I'll just go around and mix it like this. The dilated areas, I don't want to leave the sharper, so I'm going to smooth it. I'm going to take a clean brush and clean my brush, put some water here and soft on those edges. You can see that as soon as we soften it, it's already showing the forms of the piers itself. There you go. Now, we're able to create it. You can also use a tissue. I'm going to show the tissue trick as well. So once you have it, take a clean tissue and you can just do this. This also another way of leaving some rods as well. I'll let it dry and we'll come back and do the next wash. 7. Study from A Photo: Chapter 02: Back, I did dried a bit. I'm going to add the next value. So go here, take here. I'm checking, I'll just start with the corners here. Even it goes away from the shape, I'm not worried about it because I know that it's going to be darker on this side. And it gets lighter here. I'm going to take another brush because I want to make sure I'm getting a smoother transition. I'm going to go here, take a clean water. Since it's a rounder shape and it's going to be softer, there's not that many sharp edges. Even this one is a sharp edge too. Do this and I'll just do this as well there. You can see that we soft really nice. I'll do the same thing on the top here. Take a clean brush. There you go. There's also another darker value happens, but we'll do it at the end. I'll take a darker value with no water in my brush. This is called the terminator, which terminates from the light and the shadow side. That's why I'm putting it here. Since it's word, it's bleeding and doing his thing. But don't scare about it, and I'll go here and I'll just do this. Take the pigment a little bit away from it. Now you can see that it looks exactly like that. I have to soften it even further. There you go. And there you go. I'll do it here as well, take the clean water and blend it like this. The same thing here as well. You can use any brush, and this brush reaches a really nice flat bristle. That's why I'm using. Don't think that you have to use a calligraphic brush to do it. You can use any brush to do this. There's a sharp edge as well, I'm going to leave it as it is, and it goes like this and it turns. I'll go here, clean my brush. I'll just soften it like that. It's all about softening and creating this shape, and that's all we're trying to do. There you go. It's a little bit of darker value. Prettier like that. Right there. This also have to be softer. Taking clean water and softening it. It's all about putting the value, softening it, putting the value, softening it. You can see that this guy is not giving a sharper look. What I'll do is I'll take this and blend it this side with an eyelet. There you go. There you go. Now you can see that we create that really nice eyelet. There's only a couple of things need to be done. It's here, this shape. But I'll put one more shape here. I take some clean water. I'll take this to the lets right here and joining it here. You can see that it gives this really nice blending already. You can see right here. I'll do the exact same thing. There's also another thing which is at the bottom as well. This is a foul shape. Now you can see that we are able to add those valleys on top. Again, there's also another valley we have to add and you will see it in a second. There's also the top part. I'm going to add it now. I'm going to leave some eyelets like that. There you go. Now we can see that we're able to create the value. It looks three dimensional, but this will make more sense once we add the value for the cloth. The value is a little bit darker compared to the peer itself. I think that works pretty nice and this also helps us to shape. This is going to bleed, that's fine. That also looks really nice cool look and I'll leave it as it is. I won't worry about it. Or else I would have dried the paper, then I would have done it. But it's okay. I'm going to speed up the process p a little bit faster. You can see that I went over the top part of the peer itself. I'll show in a second why. Just filling the shape as fast as possible. I'm checking if the value is a little bit lighter than our pier and that's what I wanted. Yes, I think this works pretty nice. I'm going to do one more thing. What the trick I showed you guys, Leaving some eyelids at the top. There you go. I think it's pretty good. But my value is ibiker here. I'll make it ibiker on these areas because I want to see the separation between the peer and the cloth. That's the other way of checking your values too, if it's right or wrong. Now it's done. I'm going to dry it, then we're going to come back. 8. Study from A Photo: Chapter 03: So this is where you have to ask yourself this question. Does per when I look at my reference, when I look at my peer after drawing it, does it look three dimensional? Does the value look close to it? If not? If it doesn't look good, you can layer it again. That's why it's always good to start with the lightest lightest value, sorry, lightest tone or value and we can slowly build it up. This value is good. I'm going here. I'm going here. I'm going here and there's also a value change which is also at the top. Now the same thing what we did here, take some clean water and slowly blend in this guy like that. Same thing here as well, same thing here as well. Take a little bit of this color and I'll just go. I'll just combine at the top and I'll bring it slowly bring it with another valley here and I'll end it here. This guy is softer too, and make sure to capture that. Now you can see that as soon as we match that value, it looks three dimensional already for us. I also bring a little bit here and just focusing on that eyelids and take a little bit of this value, rounding the form here and same as here. I'll just soften it to get the tilt. You can see that we are able to create this really nice three dimensional form already. There's also this guy, it could be a little bit darker and that's the same thing and it will just blend in. Now I'm going to add the top part of the peer which is a darker part. And I'll just go and add it like that. We also lift some eyelids, make use of it. There you go. Now what we can do is we can add the shadows or we can add the docker value at the top first. I'm going to add the Docker value on the top. You can see I took more pigment and since it's so wet, it's going to give the really nice eyelids for us. I'll just combine it like that. And let's add the shadow. So the shadow kind of goes like that. And I'm checking where it hits. And I'll just combine as a one single shape. I think I went over my peers. So what I can do is I can take a clean brush. Don't freak out or anything, clean it like that. You can also blend it as well. And you can see that now it separates the peer from the cloth what we added. You can see that this happened. Clean my brush. I'll just blend it there. I also create a really nice detail for us for our peers. Peer, not peers. There you go. There you go. Now you can see that it's really nice blending. Now I'll add the cloth shadow. First, I will add the darker part like that. Checking the waviness. Goes like that. It also frames here really nice. I like that effect. Before it dries out. I want clean water a little bit of this. I'm going to soften it because it will have in cloth when light it, there'll be a sharper side and a lighter side. This creates this really nice soft ridge for the cloth. I'll just bend it like that. There you go. Now you can see the cloth which is happening on the top as well. One more thing is pending is this value of this guy, and I'll just soften it again like that. And there you go. There's one more step I'm going to do. This one is optional. There is some damaged mark, so I'm going to take my brush. This I'm adding it so I can show that the shape which is turning the pierce is turning, and that's a one leg reason. And it's enough, and that's it. I can see that we able to create a really nice peer with a little bit of a value side. There's one thing which I'm not happy about it is this shape at the top. I'm going to use my clean brush and just clean it a little bit to get the shape a little bit better and that's it. I just ruin it. I think that there's also darker value here right here. As soon as I add it, you can see that it frames the peer even better. I think I'll stop it here. Now you can see that we are able to take the values, slowly build it up, draw it, and able to create this three dimensional look with light and shadows. 9. Simplifying A Landscape: Layering Technique: Last chapter, we learn our first value study. In this chapter, we're going to use the same techniques and layering and how we can apply on a landscape. This is a simple landscape, nothing to it, and this is just to show you how we can create depth just by using our values. And maybe I'll dry my paint once I do some washers, or also I'll keep trying it. I'm trying to vary the shapes not exactly the same. Put some one here, I'll put one here, which goes like this and one which is picking like this. You can see that it's a stepping. It starts from all the way at the back and slowly coming down. You can use any colors you want and what I will do is I will use CFA for this one. Again, you can use any color and the first wash is just something to kill the whiteness from the paper. There's a lot of ways to do it. I should now went over it, but since it's a value exercise purpose, I'm showing how laying works in waterclos. This is also really good way of learning how watercloor works. Once I apply the wash, so we have to wait this to dry. What I'm going to do is to speed up the process, I'm going to draw it and we're going to come back. Now I dry the paper quite a bit and let's start with the background. The background is the furthest. In landscape or anything you see in reality, usually things which are far as a liters value. The easiest way to think this is squint your eyes when you go out. I do the first value like that and you can see that I create the first mountain by itself. If you want to create a foggy look, so you can take a tissue paper trick as I showed in the beginning and you can also get rid of some of the paint like this at the bottom. Now you can see that there's a foggy things which is happening on the background. Next, let's go to the next mountain right here. Same thing. I'm going to go a little bit darker and it's going to bleed, that's fine. I'll just do it. You can see that I'm doing it in one single wash. This one, instead of creating a fog at the bottom, I'll use more water and I'll just blend like this. You can see that we created a depth of lighter one and a little bit of a darker one at the top. This way, I don't have to go and weigh it and dry, sorry. I'll just do one of the wash like this slowly blending. You can see that we created another darker value from this one. Let's do the third mountain right here, which is going to be a little bit darker. It's going to bleed here. That's fine. Because I just want to speed up the process and that's why I'm not doing it. I think I'll just do this. Now it's a little bit darker than this one. Again, same thing. Clean water. I'm just going to do this. This one, I'll dry it. I'll show you in a second why I'm doing this mount. These three mountains, I'll dry it and I'll come back. I can show the layering technique. You can see that when we did the blending with the water in it, it created this really nice blending by itself. That's a beautiful thing about creating loss and loose edges. I'll do this one, this one, I'll just do like that. I'll create some texture. You can see that it's darker than this one. I'll just take this guy and I'll just blend it like this. If you leave some white bits here and there, it looks like a snow in as well leave it. At the bottom, I'll just use clean water and I'll just do this. If you want to take more, take a clean brush and just rub it off slowly. You can just bring this down, not a bit like this. So you can see that we can create a really nice depth of layers of mountains. For these ones, what I'm going to do is I'm going to dry. The reason being is I want to get a hard edge. If I put something here, just to show an example, if I put something here, you can see that it bleeds, but I want to create a hard edge so we can create depth. Now I dried it, you can see that quite a bit damp, so I can put on the wash. Now what I can do is I can take and you can see how crisp the edges we are getting and you can see how loose we got this and this looks really nice. That's where I want it, and I'll do the same thing on the small mountain tou. I think I went a little bit darker. It's okay. I'm just going to do this. Same thing on here as well. Now what I will do, take this guy and blend it like this. You know what I'm going to do? I'm going to bring it all the way here to this mountain, the foreground. You can see that we can create a depth it's almost coming in the foreground for us. I'll just do this and there you go. I went over this mountain nut here. But what I'll do is I'll do the same thing, dry it, then I'll wear it. That way we can create a really nice depth using values. Again, since it's a layer, you can also go and increase the value too, for example, this one. This one, I want to get this really nice edge. What I will do is I'll go here and do this and I'll slowly blend in like this. Brush. You can see that create a really nice blending. It's another value applied on top. Same thing goes on here, but you need more water to get this crus page and you can also do it as well right here on the top. I'm going to take a clean brush, and you can see that I'm constantly putting more water as it goes in the background, I'm using more water. When it comes to the foreground, I'm using less water. That's a trick to creating value studies. We also did it in the last chapter two. Let me doing the pier, there you go. I'm going to dry now and I'm going to add the foreground. Then you will see the depth it created using shades of lighter value to a dry out. It's quite damp and there's a little bit of wetness, but still I can apply a wash on it. There's one thing if you notice in watercolors is even though it was quite dark once we applied the wash, but you can see that it got lighter. The rule of thumb is even though if you're putting a value even if you're putting a value of eight, even if putting a value of eight, it goes to maybe five or four based on how much water use in your brush and your pigment. Now let's apply the foreground. I'm going to use no pigment at all, sorry, no water at all. I'm just going to create this really nice, um, mountains. I'll go like this. And you can see that this mountains, what I'm adding now, it's coming to the foreground. You can see that we are able to create depth and distance just by using values. This is how a lot of artists use values to create depth and distance in their painting. That's why a lot of artists they believe in values, they don't believe in colors. If you know how to control your values, then you can sell this painting to anyone. You can see that came down. Now I'll do this one and this one, what I'll do is. Oh. You can see that it's almost dry brush. Just adding some trees on top of these mountains and it's going to bleed here. That's okay. That's fine. This is where I should have dried it, then I would add it, it would have created more depth. What I will do is to speed up the process, I'll just finish this side first. Then we will go and add the other side. You can see that this mountain is closer to us than this mountain. We are creating that depth using values. Adding that trees. Now I'll dry because I want to get this actually, it's quite dry, so we'll try it. It's dried quite a bit. Yeah, it dried. Now I can add this trees and you can see that it came close to us and it pushes everything all the way at the back. I'll use some water and I'll just do it. Nice. Now we can see that we created these really nice mountains of creating depth and distance just by using values. This is really important when painting. Even if you want, you can just go on layer it, bring this a little bit close to this mountain. And take some clean water and it just blend in like this and there you go. You can see that now it's a little bit close to this mountain. There you go. You can see that came closer. If you want, you can add some details on these mountains. Just using a brushstroke showing the way it turns. I'm going to use more water for these details because this is far away from us, so there will be a lot of atmosphere in and same thing, more water here because it's far away from us and more water here as well. This one I won't add anything. Even if you want to add, add more water and you can keep it really subtle. Now it looks like there is a layering happening, but once it dries out, it's going to create this really nice texture for us. We can also create atmosphere, I'll create atmosphere here. What I mean by that is, this is called to create a aerial perspective. This will quite come in handy. I'm going to put a value where my silhouette. I mean, near the background mountain and I'll slowly create a gradient. Like this. There you go. Clean my brush, take some more water. Slowly rub it off like this. Now we can see that we can have created another gradient at the back and we can also create a value at the top. Sometime what happens, let's say we apply more value on the top, take a tissue paper. Slowly rub it off. And you can see that now we cannot create this really nice gradient from top to bottom. Now I'm going to dry it and we'll see how the final looks like. This is how the final painting looks like, but you can see that we cannot create a first wash, using just littlebraf Cipia and creating a wash and we slowly started from the background, adding a lighter value, then a litibra of darker value, the third value, fourth value, fifth value, six, and vice versa. You can also see we can also add the details using the same technique, having more pigment in my brush, less pigment, more water, more water, more water and more water. You can see the details there, it is there, but it is lighter. We also create atmospheric perspective just adding gradient from top to bottom, just by using values of wearing the darker value to the lighter value. Now it's your turn and take this exercise. Don't worry about how the landscape is looking, the shape and everything. This exercise is just to practice and applying the values what we learned so far. 10. Bonus Chapter: Cityscape Value Study 01: Come to the bonus chapter. The last bonus chapter I showed how to apply value studies on a landscape. Whereas this one, I'm going to show how to apply on a cityscape scene. The reason being I'm showing this is to understand how we can apply values on different subjects. Again, I changed my proportions and everything, as you can see in the reference, this is longer, but I tried to fit it in a square. The reason being this kind of exercise is just to learn, not to to create a pretty painting or anything. You just understand the values of whites and darks. The last one I used Cipia. Maybe this one I'll use bon timber and you can see using bon timber here. As you can see, if you see the cloud, even the cloud is a little bit darker. And there's a gradient. If you skin your eyes, if you check the reference a little bit closely, there's a gradient which is happening at the top. I'm just going to leave some white bits for the lights. If you want, you can also leave some white bits for the poles as well. Again, in watercls, these are certain techniques you can utilize just leaving the negative shapes. That means what I'm talking about is the lightest value. And a lot of people don't use white paint. The traditional method of painting in waclos is just leaving white paint for the lightest values or the lands. I'm just going to go here and you can see that we can create a little bit of value on our sky. I'm also starting with the bigger shape in my scene. Again, the biggest shape would be always the sky in most of the instance. I know that this side is darker, so I'm just going like this. If I screen my eyes and I'll just apply this wash, then I'll create the gradient, the darker value. I'll just go like that and even I'll just go here and I'll just apply this value. Even this area is going to be darker and I'm going to leave some white bits for the speed sign. And you and this guy here, this is going to be on the light side, the shadow side, sorry. I'm just going to apply a wash here. You can see that in a matter of second, I was able to apply this wash all over. You can also bring this washes, I'm checking my reference. I'm constantly checking my reference where my values are and what kind of values are there. If I see white bits, for example, for the window, I left some white bits, and even for the windows here, there's libra white bits here, and the shop sign, there is a little bit of value there. Let's leave it white. It gives a really nice contrast and I'll just leave some like that. At the bottom, I'll just do this for the road. Sometimes it's really hard to judge the value without having any value because we are constantly comparing our values with just a white paper and it might get tricky. That's why you have to start with a light value and slowly build up. If you're really confirmed with your values, then you can go darkest dark and lightest light. But I recommend if you're beginner and even when I started, I slowly increase my value. This is a value I'm seeing for the sky and you can see the sky, even it has a libra gradient there. I want to create that gradient at the top. I'm just going here and it goes. The gradient blends here as well. I think this is the greatest paper to use, but I'm not aware and you can see that I cannot create this really nice gradient. I want to use my flat brush to blend it a little bit better. Again, I'll keep on saying this value study is just to um learn the values, not about creating a um nice painting or anything like that. I'll just apply some values. I also picked this subject because it's a white wall. Even the white wall has a little bit of value, but I'm going to ignore it. I'm going to keep this as a white wall. You will see the contrast which is going to give for our painting. Whenever I see the light hitting the wood part and I'm just going to ignore it. This is just to see where my value is going to sit and everything. This not the end all be all and I'll just go here and I'll just go here as well. This is on the shadow side. There's also the post there in as well make this like that. You can see that just by adding the values on everything, we create this really nice gradient. Now also do one more gradient for the light post. Remember, if you remember the lessons we learned the chapter, how we can make things three dimensional through forms through primitive shapes and this comes in Andy. This is a cylindrical shape. What I'm doing is I'm applying a wash and I'm going to take some clean water and create a rounder form to get it, and there you go. Now we can create a rounder form for it and for the speed sign, I'll leave it as it is. Now we can see that I'm applying a wash now. Now I can increase the value, decrease the value. I'm happy with my sky value. Let's start with the background. So I'm squinting my eyes. Does it look right? No, it doesn't look right for me and everybody sees values differently. Each person, each artist values, colors, everyone sees differently. So you don't have to exactly match my value. You can skin to your eyes and check the value and match to it. That's how you develop your own vision of your own expression as well in your painting. If you noticed it for a designing purpose, I also moved this window. It was like literally intersecting this guy. I can move a little bit this side. These are the things you can do it in painting. That's one of the beautiful thing about painting is just, um, you can move things around to create a really nice composition. Whereas photographers, they can't do it, but we can learn from a lot of things from them as well as a composition purpose. This they cannot do it, but we could do it. We can also change the lighting directions, the values. Again, this is a lubra for Docker value as well. I'll just leave some white space for this guy. And I'll just do this. I'll just there you go. There's also a little bit of value inside or windows. I'll just add that as well. You can see that you don't have to go and paint everything just a tinge of the value. It's already started looking three dimensional already. I'll go to the bottom part. I see a little bira of Docker value for the bottom part. What I'll do is I'm constantly checking this guys I'll leave some white bits here. I'm also constantly thinking about my light as well. I'm just not doing value studies. I'm also analyzing my values as well as where the light is coming from, where the shadows are going and everything. And the shadows are going inside the ear. It's going to be darker. Again, I'll just leave it as it is worn off. You can see that in a couple of seconds or a couple of minutes, we're able to at the value for the background store which is at the back. Now let's focus on this guy. This guy going to be super darker. I'm not going to paint there because if I paint it, it's going to bleed. The windows have a lighter value, so I'm not going to do anything for it. I'm just going tot this as single shape. As soon as I add this value on this side of the building, and you will see that the pole shows the pole become lighter. And there you can see it. If you want, you can also add the shadow as well. I'll add the shadow here and there's this part, I will just add. And I'm thinking about constantly about the perspective as well and how it goes and the shadow went behind it. I went over the pole. What I'll do is I'll just do it. It's fine. We won't tell anyone that the shadows going in the pole. I like this way and there you go. You can see that we create this really nice shadow. The shadows is going this way. Meanwhile, when we are here, we'll also add the shadow for the light pole as wow there you go. Actually, what I'll do is I'll just add the shadow like this. It creates this really nice shadow angle for the lightbulb. This is dried quite a bit, so I can just go and increase the value here as we warm. Now the top part and the top part if you see, it's the same thing and making sure to leave some eyelets for these guys. Checking. I'm treating as one single shape, and there you go. Now we can see that we create this. As soon as we add this value, the background went back. That's a power of value. In the last chapter, we did the exact same thing in the landscape on the rocks. And even it's wet on wet, now we can add a value, increase the value, decresive value. When I say decresive value, how you could do that is, for example, if I want to create those windows, which has a lighter value. I'm going to take some clean water and I'm just going to put like this. I'm just taking the pigment from my paper. I'll just do this and you can see that. I'll do the same thing here as well. 11. Bonus Chapter: Cityscape Value Study 02: And we'll put some water there and you can see that which gave some eyelids for me, even for the windows here. I don't know where it go, I'll just put it there and there's a couple of windows here and I'll just put it here as well. There you go, now you can see the windows there. Meanwhile, what I'll do is I'll go on other Darko values in here. I'm also doing this in one go. There's no cutting or anything. The reason I'm showing this way is showing that watercolor is really fast to paint as well. I'll just do this guys like this. And what I'll do is there's a couple of this trees which is going up. Let's add that as well. We are using only quite a little bit of values, but you can see that everything reads really nice. There's also this two doors here. I'm adding that, taking a pure pigment, not taking any water in my brush and the same thing here as wall, I'll do the same thing for a couple of windows. I'll do the same thing here as well. It looks like a windows there. There you go. For the bottom part, where it meets the ground, I'll just do this so that we know where the dark pots. There's another dark pot, which is trim, which is a in the buildings, and I'll just add that. Just by adding this and you can see that this midground building came to the foreground and the foreground, the background went all the way back. Now, again, we can leave it as it is because I don't want to ruin the background. This also creates a really nice depth and contrast for our painting. Now let's focus on the the shadows of the guys. I'm checking the shadows. I'm just going to it's a lighter shadow, it's not a darker shadow and keep that in mind. I'm checking here. And everything goes on like that. There you go. There's also a shadow, which is coming inside. I'll just add that. Now I'll just add another shadow, which is coming from here, here, here, this on the shadow side. I'll just simply make it like that. You can see that we can create a really nice shadow there. Even this value is a little bit not that great. I'm just mixing it. There you go. Now you can see that I can add the shadows for this guy. There is also one more value we have to add and once we add it, that will change everything. In these guys. I'm just adding the top part like that. There's also a value, which is sitting here, lighter value, and I'm just going to add it. Using a lot of water in my brush. I'm just combining like that. There you go. Now we can see that it started looking I think what happened is I made a mistake. This guy, the roof ends here and it also goes like that. It goes behind the light pole and stops here. And I'm just adding a Docker value on top of it. Now you can see that I can add a value on top of it. I'm going to show how I added the round wet, I'm going to do the same thing here as WOW you can see that as soon as we add the value inside a value, just by creating on wow wet. I'll do the same thing here as WOW once we add that value and you can see that um we can see the enhancement of three dimensional values even more in other things. The same thing here, bottom part of the bought the floor and this guy, this guy like that. There you go. You can see that we create this really nice value and there's going to be a value. I'm going to add here to increase the value. The value I applied car lighter I'm just going to increase it. There you go. There is also a couple of this bushes as darker shadow inside. I ask you go and add it. Once we add it, you can see that it separates this value from this value. There you go. I think you can see that I created this really nice value studies for the cityscape. There's some things I'm going to add now. These are the file stages, the details and everything you can add at the end. You have to really plan your values before adding all those details. You should ask some patience before you do anything, and I'll just put 30. There's also this frame. I'll add it like that. I'll add a shadow for it as well. Now I'm going to add a couple of the darker values. That means the shadows, which I can apply now. You can see that as soon as we add it, even this started, the lighting and shadows start appearing on our scenes. Again, keep it really simple don't overdo it, especially if you do the background. It says convenience here. I'll just put convenience and market like that. There's also Darker value that's going inside the market, I guess, and I'll add it like that. I'll add one here as well. There's two entrance to this market. There'll be a shadow from the board, which is here as well. And I'll add something at the bottom. I'll just put a one more value on the windows here just to show the difference, and there's also something at the top. I'll add that as well. Now you can also add another value within a value as soon as you add it and you can see that the more ships started appearing on our scene. You can see that I'm only doing a little bit yet our scene started looking three dimensional already. I think if you want, let's increase one more value on the top, just to show the roof has a darker value than the bottom one. I just want to show this how this sits on top of it. I'm going to do a couple of things here and I'm going to put a line here so I know that where the road goes as well. And a couple of trees here, and maybe a couple of strokes here. There's also some things happening on the white wall. What I'm going to do is I'm going to create the texture like that. And like that. It's not like a one straight value and I can take some tissue paper and create the texture. Now we can see that we create this really nice gradient. There's one more thing I'm going to add and this one you can skip it, and this is the file stage of any painting I wait for it just to add the details of it. But this one, you want to add it, you don't have to add it. I just it's up to artists preference. I'm just showing which side is the darker side and the lighter side. I'll just put one year like that. Maybe I'll increase the value here. There you go. You can see that now it goes all the way in. You can make this dit just by squinting your eyes. I think I'll stop here. Maybe I'll do one more detail just to create this really nice composition of just to show that it takes us into the painting. What I'm talking about is just the wires. I'll add one more wire. There you go, and I'll just add one more. It's becoming thick. It's usually be a little bit thinner, but we won't tell anyone there you go. Then now you have it. Now you can see that we apply the values on a cityscape as well. Now we have all the tools and go on tryout and use the magic of value studies. In the next tutorial, I'll show how to use some light and shadows in watercours. 12. Bonus Chapter: Landscape Value Study 01: So welcome to the bonus chapter, and this chapter, I'll be showing how we can apply the values on the landscape which I have given in the class section. Again, you can see that the sketch is really, really simple. The reason being I kept it really simple is this is just for study purpose and not to worry about anything else. Again, what color we can use? I will use maybe burnt amber this time instead of CFIa. It's like a similar color, it's a little bit more brownish and you can see it here. And I'm just going to bring it in. First, I'll start with the lattice wash. When I squint my eyes, this is really important when you're painting in watercolor is squinting your eyes quite often. This gives and simplifies everything. The litrus value which is happening at the bottom, and as we did in the landscape exercise. I'm just applying a simple wash just all over it. This is the lruse wash I'm seeing from the sky I took CFA by mistake and I'll just do that. You can see that I instantly did this. I'm going to slowly increase my gradient like that. You can see that you can also go from top to bottom and it's up to you. I'll just keep building it up. Less water more pigment and I'll give more pigment at the top. I want to create the gradient so I'm taking more pigment. I'll just slowly bring it down until it gets lighter the value we have at the bottom. Again, if you want to take out values at the bottom, again, I show a trick take a clean brush and slowly rub it off. This also another way of blending too, make sure you're using a good paper if you use a crappy paper and the paint will come right off. I'm also going to be painting a little bit faster because now you should be comfortable of creating a value by itself. Again, this looks really dark, but it will get lighter. I know that. There are also a couple of skies at the bottom. I'll take my tissue paper and I'll just create some eyelids and there you go. There's my cloud and I'll just do this. Again, I'm not being neat and just doing what I want to do. There you go. Now we create these clouds and it's also a little bit of darker value and I just apply and wherever it is here. I like that. This gives a really nice blending for the cloud. Same thing here as well. I'll just put some here. Now we can see that we can create this really nice cloud and just take tissue paper, and that's about it. Maybe I'll take some more here. And you can see that we can create the sky as well as the thing which is at the bottom. Now it's a little bit wet, so I'm going to dry it, then we're going to apply the wash on top of it. Now you can see that we create this really nice sky with simple steps. For these ones, for the clouds here, I'm just going to mark couple here and there and that's it. That's our cloud. I'll start with C. If you skin to your eyes, there's a little bit of a darker tone which is happening here and I'll just create I just checking. Even if it goes in our rock I'm not worried about, because the reason being is the rocks going to be darker. Now, as we did in the previous techniques in the previous lesson, the landscape, I'm just going to create this gradient. I'm going to take some more water and less pigment. I'll just come here and it stops here like that. I'll leave some white space for the people here. Actually, it goes all the here and it comes here as well, and it goes this mat. I know that value is darker here. This is another way I know where the rock is going to sit. I'll just go here, and that's it. I'll also bring this guy all the way here. Now you can see that we created the value for the river. By the way, this picture was taken and I took this picture in Portal Rocks, which is in Nova Scotia, Canada. This is done. Now I'm going to apply a base wash for the rocks. Here a couple more pT one. Keep on going to CFA for some reason. I'll just go and create the shape of this rock. We know that the reason I'm being doing this is so I know where exactly this rock is going to sit. This is a base value. Again, the first time when you try it or you're going to try it, it's going to be a little bit harder, but it's okay because the first time when I tried it, it was quite harder for me. But the more you do it, it gets easier and easier. But at the bottom, I'm going to leave some contrast, so I'm going to put some more water. I'm going to increase the contrast at the bottom. What I mean by that is I'm going to enhance a light a little bit darker lighter at the bottom. I'll just blend it like this. Now I let it dry, now I can go to this guy. If you see the tree there and it's Cipia If you see, I'll see on the right hand side of the midground, and there's a tree there. I'm just going to make some shapes with my brush. Again, I'm not trying to be neat. This is just for study and thinking about how we can simplify the values and how this will be useful for our painting. There's a couple of things which is happening. I'm just going to even break it further. And it's darker at the bottom. It's going to be darker at the bottom. What I will do is, I'll leave some shapes like that. This also able to frame our rock. It's quite neat. I'm just going to break a little bit like that and lay on it. It's going to be pure pigment at the bottom, no water in our brush. You can see that we created these trees and this mountain together as one single shape, it's in the shadow, but we'll add the shadow later. Now it's dry and I'll focus on the top part of the trees. Again, same simple strokes, not to fuss about anything. I'm also painting a little bit faster, but I'm constantly looking at my reference and squinting my eyes as well. There you go. I'm just going to do that. There's also a little tree here, which is hanging here. I'll just add that as well. It's quite nice in this place and you can kayak. The water level goes till this part at night. It's interesting place. There's also a darker value there, so I'm going to add it at the bottom. You can go darker than this, and this is the darkest it can go. You have to play with the values, how much darker you can go, the lighter and darker. Same thing here as well. Now we can create the trees as well as the trees on top of the rock. Now what we're going to create is the shadow of the rocks. The shadow, it goes like this. I'm going to blend in. 13. Bonus Chapter: Landscape Value Study 02: Go here. I just go here. There you go. We're almost there. I'm just blocking in the shape of this rock. Usually in rocks, it's usually the arch edges, not soft edges because of the shape of the rocks by itself. I'm just going to add a couple more, the darker shape here. I'm going to add the darker valleys here as well, since it's wet and wet. There's also a couple of docker values. I think by mistake, I took see maybe, no, it's okay, there you go. I'm adding the Docker values here. As soon as we add the shadow for this guy and you will see the light appearing on our scene. I'm improvising it a little bit and the shadow goes there. This all on the shadow side. What I'll do is I will add a Darker value here as well at the bottom, and this will frame the contrast even more because that's a value there and I'll just go and layer on top. You can see that were able to create this really nice lighting shadow really fast. And I just a couple more. At the bottom part, there's a lot of this seaweed, which is settles at the bottom and let's add that. This is really nice to look at the texture on it. And you can see that it can create texture like that. There's also this shape which is happening. I'm adding that. There you go. The, the things which are at the bottom is a darker value, and I'll add that as well. You can see that now we created the rock as well as the shape of the rocks, the light and shadow. There's only one thing bending is what is called the shadow. Once we add the shadow, and you will see the people there as well. There's also a couple more values, which is happening all the way at the back on the s. Let's add that to. This guy and this guy, there you go. Couple more things which is happening behind them, and I'll add that. You can see that already this old things, the old scene is coming alive. I'll add a couple more here and a couple more here. There you go. Just to break up the shape. One thing I'm going to do now is just adding the shadow and this called a day. Just by creating the value, you can see that how easily we can create a painting. This is on the shadow side. I'll just add a shadow here. There's a little gap which is happening here. There you go. There's also this shadow which is happening here behind this guy. This is a little bit darker and you can see that there and there's a shadow in the foreground. It's getting closer, but I want to create some drama, so I'm bringing it all the way close to me. Think about if you're using a lot of values and c in it, this will look beautiful. What I will do is, I'll create one more shadow going like this. There. Now you can see that it creates this really nice gradient. Another thing if you notice, the sky is reflecting literally here. What we could do that is, I'm going to take tissue paper. I'm going to see where that is happening. I'm going to create the sky like that. Now you can see that it has a lighter value. Now to break it even further, we can just make some marks so that it is reflecting, but there's also some values in it, too. And there's also a little probado. Now we capture the gestures of our landscape in here and this is where the three dimensional effect take place. What I mean by that is when you squint your eyes and check your reference and you can check the values align or not. For example, the value doesn't align. There can be one more layering I could do on the rock itself. Again, this is where artistic vision comes to place because in order to create a contrast, we can leave the rock as it is. But if you want to match exactly to the reference, you can go on layer it and create this really nice dimensions to our rock. I'm just going over it. Now, after this layering, if you check your reference and this looks closer to our reference. This is how we can adjust your values. The other thing I notice is these people there, their value got lighter, so I can go here and fix it. You can see that these are things we can do. There's also darker value, which is happening at the bottom of this rock as well and now at that as well. Even when I screen my eyes, I'm not happy with this value here. I can go and layer one more value or create a texture on top of it to give that look. As soon as we add this and you can see that it's almost looking this value is closer to our reference. This is how we can layer it, squint your eyes, and check your reference. If you keep on doing this, something magic will happen is your painting will start look appearing three dimensed even here, I'm just going to add some here. I'll just do here and couple here. You can see that just by adding these details, everything comes alive. Now it's your turn, take my reference or take your own reference and try to play the concepts of what we learn in this chapter. 14. Outro: Well, then, you just learned one of watercolor's biggest secrets values. By practicing with light mitons and shadows, you have built the foundation for all your future paintings. For your final project, paint something personal in three to five values and share it in the class gallery. I would love to see your work and give some feedback and critics on it. If you enjoy this class, leave a review and follow me year on Skillshare for more watercolor lessons and tips. Thank you so much for painting with me. I can't wait to see what you paint next. Until then, I'll see you in the next one.