Transcripts
1. Ink And Wash Intro: Welcome, I'm Ron Mulvey
and this is ink and wash, two steps, and you're done. Today, we're going to do
a great little picture of a mountain with a waterfall coming down and a lovely
little lone pine tree as our focal point, or what we might call our motif. I think you're going to
really enjoy this class because all you need is
a pen that's permanent. Some good paper
canson, 140 pound. This class is for beginners, it's also for
intermediate, advanced. As we all know, there's always something we
can learn from each other. Now that blue is
like an ultramarine. Got my favorite. I'm more of a thalo sene
blue person for a sky. So I'll take a
little drop of this, squeeze the brush
now that is good. Okay. Now watch, we're going to get a pretty intense
blue up here. Made this class very simple. I think you just need
to follow the steps, two steps, inc and wash. You know, I love
this class because I always feel like I'm a beginner. You know what's a beginner? A beginner is someone who's
taking the first step. But what's the most
important step? It's always the next step. I'm always taking the next step. And I've always started at
the beginning of things, learning the very
basic tech techniques that make a great picture. And by the end of this class, let's master the symbol.
2. Ink and Wash Materials: Welcome to the material section. I really believe
good materials make great pictures.
This is very true. You don't have to spend a lot
of money on good materials, just get a few good materials. I like the Graham paints. Excellent paints because
they have honey in them and they don't get all dried up really quickly.
Windsor Newton. Lots of brands for paints. We have cake pan
paints right here. These are little pans, they take a little bit
of time to moisten. I usually spray them and
let them sit for a while. You'll see that in the video. My newest addition, we
call them color sheets. I just cut them off sometimes and put them on a
piece of paper. They're almost like a cake pan, but they dissolve immediately as soon as you put
water on them. You've got pigment
and they're highly saturated and they're
all transparent. The brand I use
is called Viviva. There are other color
sheets out there available. Try them. You'll like them. It's something new and it's really something
worthwhile trying. This is my new friend. It's water in a bottle. You just fill this
bottle up with water, has a brush on the end, and I'm going to show
you that in the second. It's great for putting
water on your picture. That's called a
watercolor brush pen. You can get three of them. I use these in the class. You get three of them for about, I know seven or $8 really cheap. They last a long time. I have my absolute
favorite big wash brush, it's a synthetic squirrel. Followed by this one, which is a Neptune brush, $5 and these are somewhere
around 13 or 20. I think your best paper is the Canson 140 pound cold press. It's a medium, not
even a medium. It's just above light tooth. It's fairly smooth, great
for ink and wash the arches. Paper is wonderful
too, Fabriano, As long as it's good quality, that's what we're looking for. Now, size, don't paint
with big pieces of paper. It'll frustrate you
in the beginning. Even as an advanced artist, doing a large
watercolor painting requires a lot of paint. It's just a lot of
work. Sometimes it's good, sometimes it's not. Our classes are limited
to about this size. As you feel comfortable with this size, increase your size. But that's what we're going
with today in I love to, in now, I haven't used
this in this class. This is a black velvet,
waterproof ink. Okay. These are great. Make sure it's waterproof. I do have these little pens. Sometimes I just buy the nibs
and stick them on a pencil. These are great. We'll use those in a future class.
I couldn't resist. I picked this up for like $20 It's a vintage fountain pen. Schaffer, look around for things that you can mark
your painting with. You can use the end of a
brush if you want and dip it in your ink, Anything
that's creative. Here we have the
Stadler, which is great. I'll use this one in the class, plus a few other ones. You just need a fine
point and a medium 0.2 steps in and wash. You want to see me do a
quick wash on this one? This is one of our projects. Done it a couple times,
like six or seven. This is one I did yesterday. I had nothing to do,
so I got my pen, sat down and did
this little drawing. And I'm just going to
give you a demonstration right here in the
materials section, so you see how the
materials work. I'm going to wet a little
bit with my big brush. Just put it in my water. I have a little thing, I damp it on and watch. I just put that on my
paper but not the clouds. I'm just going to wet a
little bit here and there. Or if I only do a little bit of wet and then I take a little bit of paint
feeling a little warm. Today, I'm going to use the traditional paints
for this right now, I'm going to take a bit
of this yellow here. It has a little bit of
green in it, which I like. It's actually going to
be greenish see that? You just swipe that in there. It's called a wash. Which just put it on
let it do its thing. There's our little
starve art show there. Little pine tree. Notice I'm staying
away from the water. I got a little bit of
blue in the water. I'll put a little bit of yellow in the water. You see that? Perfect. Now, here's
my other little trick. This is my big wash brush. I just squeeze it,
there's the water, and the brush is on the side. See ink and wash
today of the water. Just to show you how
these little guys work, we are in the material section. I'm going to show you
how the materials work. They're full of water. See you just screw that off. Put your water in
there. Put it back on. Give it a little
bit of a touch on your rag and squeeze it. As you squeeze it, the tip fills with water so you don't
have to dip in the water. Let's take my little color sheet here that I've taken off, the viviva color sheet. Let's just take a
little drop of that. See that I rubbed it
for about a second. Let's see what that does. As I put a little bit of that on, look at that, look how
quickly that goes on. It's September, so it's a little cold up here
in the mountains. I'm looking for some
nice warm colors. That's basically
how our materials are going to work today. We're going to use ink, we're going to use Wash. Let's open up class
and get to work.
3. Inking The Pine : Now you can use
any pen you want, but I'm going with
the big wide one. So here we go. First thing
we need to do is the trunk. When I do a trunk, I make
one side straighter than the other so it
looks like it's in the ground. I just fill it in. Nothing like black
ink on white paper, a couple roots sticking out, Then we go to the right. And when you stop like that, you add these little
thorny edges. Pine trees are rough, they're not much fun to climb. There we have the Y, call it the Y tree. You start with a Y and flip that little
stroke at the end. Now we're going to
add another branch, continue up the middle. Now as it goes higher
limb gets narrower, bring a couple little
broken branches on, bring it up to the right again. Stop. Let the pen bleed a
little bit and flip it off. It's a little rough
on the edges. You see adding that little stroke gives character
to the limbs on the tree. We thicken it a little bit, where it comes
into the trunk up. We go again to the right. Notice I'm making little
turns in the branch there is that Y again.
You flick the end. Now notice they're all
different lengths too. Here comes the
flick, there it is. It just leaves a
lovely ragged edge, almost a bark texture. We're heading up to
the top of the tree. Now, now that one went out pretty horizontal,
and they do that. Pine trees have different
ways of growing. Now, if you like birds, like eagles and ospreys, you could put a nest up there. Well, not so little can
put a big nest up there. Okay. Now what I'm doing is
just getting the edges right, making the tree look like it's really anchored into the ground. Now I've changed
to a finer tipped pen and I'm adding the needles. I'm keeping the
needles horizontal. When a pine tree is up
in the high mountains, it doesn't grow the same as
it does down in the valley. There we go. Just lots of
little strokes with the pen, back and forth, back and forth. A rocking stroke
and I'm putting in little details with the fine pen contrasting the thick black
lines with the smaller lines. Now we'll take that little tree and we'll put it
into the landscape. Let's ink and wash our
mountain landscape right now.
4. Fast Wet Into Wet Over Pine: Take your color sheets. There's a version
of the waterfall. I've done lots of versions. I want you to do a
bunch of versions because every time you
do it, it gets better. And I have my
squeezy brush here. Look at this watch, I squeeze it and
look at that water everywhere, Right over the ink. And I'm going to show you, I'm going to show you how to get a great picture in a
couple 45 seconds. It's only going to
take 45 seconds there. I've put the water
on with this brush. I paid $4 for this. It was half price. I guess people didn't know
the value of it. It's wonderful brush. Let's make a, let's make a
mood of orange and violet. I'm going to clean my big brush. I'm going to the big brush
and I'm going to take some of this on my
brush, not too much. I wonder how much that is. Let's check it. Oh, yeah, that's quite a bit. Well,
let's bring that down. I love these little
thumbnails. Okay, here we go. We have the chrome orange and it's going right
over the bottom. These were showing different
strokes, right over there. It's more of a Indian yellow. I think I can go
right over the tree. Then I clean my brush.
Remember the paper is wet. This is the beauty of
ink and wash is when you don't fuss, here's some magenta. Just rubbed it a little bit. Always check and see
how strong it is. Let's put a magenta in here. Which one? This one.
Whoa, that's strong. Okay, here we go, a little more, coming in, just
down in here. Okay. They're beautiful. Beautiful.
Okay. And what at the top? What do you think? I think a little peacock blue at the top. And the reason being
is it's sunset. So you can see the blue
really showing up here. Take a drop of that
quick. Not enough. Not much. Just there we go. And I'm going to leave a little white
showing, you see that? Okay. 123, look at
that, this part here. What do you think? I think I will spill a little bit of
yellow over on it like that. Now I need a, something dark. I'm going to put in the slate. Black is not very attractive. If I take burnt sienna, burnt umber, maybe burnt sienna, a little bit of burnt sienna. Pop that in. See that goes
with the orange here. I just think it needs a
really good dark section here and a little
more burnt sienna in there there, like the cloud. That's all it took was 1
minute to put the color on. That was it. I'm going to put my name right
here with my brush. Watch this just using the end. It's wet there. And
that will show up. Okay, I'm very satisfied. Remember lots of
little sketches, lots of quick, lots of paintings where you're just
struggling maybe a little bit trying
to find something. But in the end, it's the
simple that really works well.
5. Inking the Mountain landscape With Pine: I like this little
project because it's very simple ink and then later we're going
to wash it with color. Now you can just watch and learn as you're
watching or you can draw along with me stopping
the film periodically. Just draw what I'm drawing here. I'm squaring off the picture. I'm going to be
doing it the same size as the one on the right. By making sure that we don't
do everything in the middle, We offset the elements
of the picture. Making lots of little lines. Adding up and down strokes, or round strokes, putting
strokes together. When you're doing the waterfall, you'll see we do those
little triangles. Those are the rocks and the
waters pouring over them, but you'll still see
rocks in a waterfall. The downward lines, that's
the water coming down. Then we put those flat
lines in the top. That's characteristic
of a waterfall, flat on the top, and then
the water pours down. Now we're adding, the most important part is
the focal point. Make your picture interesting,
make it entertaining. Have a star in your show. The star of this show, or the motif is this
little pine tree. I'm using a medium pen here, it's not too fine, but it really works
well in this paper. Finding the right
pen is important. Sometimes I combine thick, medium, and very fine. There I am, spattering those little trees
in little shapes. Little marks, make
lots of little marks. Here comes the mountain,
then one right behind it, a little bit of
interest in the line. Add some lines for interest. There's the background mountain. It actually looks
like the mountain in front of our house. There is a really
good example of a very simple ink drawing
that we can add color to. I've switched to
a finer pen now, just to add some
interest to the lines. Doing a little hatching. No cross hatching, not yet. Just going down. I use my finger as a guide. There's a little cross
hatch going across. I do another painting in
this class where we use a lot of cross hatching, but
this one I want to keep.
6. Simple Wash Over Landscape: Okay, here's some
traditional paints, and here's the Viviva paints. We get our traditional brush, here we have some water. Let's get the viva blue and
see what that looks like. Here it is, Persian blue. Okay. There's Persian
blue, looks shiny. I'll take one drop of that. Like that. Done. Okay? That's one drop of
the Persian blue. Let's give that sky
a quick little wash. So I'm going to move
my painting this way, to put it on really
quickly, rub it across. Notice that I've left it so that the paint fills in
different areas and gives me an interesting sky, the little white areas. I don't care about those. I like that I can
come back if I want. Right now I put some water
and I can thin this down, thin it quite a bit, and I can come up to it and
I can see soften the edge. Leave the white
there for the snow. Bring it down, soften
the edge. Look at that. Now, with most Palo types, you couldn't do that because it goes in the
paper too quickly. You can't get rid of it.
It just stains, right? These colors 100% permanent And a little bit down the water, whatever is in the sky,
I put in the water just a little bit,
leave lots of white. Okay. Ink wash.
That's all I did. That was quick. I've left that
to dry for a moment. Okay. Now I'll go back to the
traditional colors. And I'm going to make
right here a neutral gray, using a little bit
of the Viva orange. By the way, the viva
colors will mix with the Graham or the Cotman, all the different brands, they'll mix in really well. Okay, there we go.
Now I'm going with a little bit of a Neal
Gray, Look at that, see throwing in a neutral
gray a couple spots, then I wash my brush off. Remember it's ink and wash.
We're going to wash it. See, just skipping over a
few areas, creating a mood. I like to mood through
there like a mist. Oh yeah. Hey, this is almost
a pain's gray, which is a warm gray. Can you see the orange mixed with the
traditional cake pan? Blue has created this lovely, mysterious gray or
what we call neutral. Notice I'm still
leaving a lot of white. Okay, leaving white
is very important. That's my gray. One little sweep through here, Look at that. Oh, that's so cool. Mrs. Canson paper, a couple little marks there. There we go. Let that dry. Okay.
I'm at the part where in the painting where I'm going to switch
to a smaller brush, so that I feel like a
little more control. I left up my picture,
what have I got here? I have a nice orange here. Let's make sure my
brush is clean. Let's use the watercolor brush. Here we go. Here's
the water color. There's water in a seat. I'll put it in the
traditional paints, give it a little
bit of a wiggle. Let's see how much comes out. Let's now the paint is
in the little tip here. I'm going to test it down
here, squeeze the brush. Wow, look at that. It may, I'm going to lead a
little stronger, just a bit. Mixes in nicely next
to the gray sea. The sunshine could be hitting
there, especially here. Can you see the sun
coming down through here? Now what I do, I
squeeze the brush a little bit and it
adds water to it. This is wet, so I'll leave that. Now, this little
yellow over the blue. You get three of these for
how much do you think? $6 $7 That's Canadian, it's a good deal over
here on my palette, you can see I have a
pinch of the blue here. See, I want to put that on here. I want to green it up a little
bit. Just a little bit. I've had this brush
for like months and it's still totally pointed because I treat it gently and it's
performing for me. Well, what do you say?
We leave that for a moment and enjoy
it for a second. Pines have their branches
coming out in the same place. You see I'll put a broken one
there, put a little mark. I like the way this
points down here. Maybe I'll bring it down a
little bit more like this. You see this is full
of water right here. I'm going to take a little
bit of yellow to start with. If you're using cake pan colors, you'll get a better result if you let them soak a
little bit like that. The reason being
that they soften up with the vivivalors
color sheets. It just comes off right away. And we're going to let
that dry for a second. If you have too much water, just put your paper
towel on it, soak it up. Okay. Now it's the I'll go over that with
a little blue later. We should be doing
really well. I'm looking for a little white sections. You see as if sunlight
was striking them, but I still leave white showing. You'll notice a little bit here. Here. This time I'm going to take a little bit of the viviva just to
drop like that. Let's see what happens there. See, squeeze it. It's a lovely orange. It's like a nickel azo yellow, But I'm going to put
it in the foreground over the neutral. I want to contrast this to here. I have to make this
a little darker. I'll try some of the
cake pan, burnt sienna. There we go, right there. Beautiful thing
about these pens, squeeze them, they're clean. You can also dip them
in the water if you want a little bit of the manganese blue there. We have a lovely neutral
brownie color, Brownie. Is there such a word as
brownie? I guess so. Here we go. Up here,
I'm going to go. I think what I'll do is take
a little more of the blue. Let's see what that looks like. I'm not sure. I think, yeah, if you go, you're probably
not going to go too far. Remember water colors,
once they're dark, it's a little hard to
change and go light. A little more of
that, squeeze it. Let's drop a little of
that bluey color in here. Just put it on and let it dry. See, oh yeah, we want to
contrast against here. Let's go with a strong orange. Take a little more of this,
take a little more of that. Let's make this darker so it contrasts against the waterfall. See, oh, I like that. Squeeze it. There we go. Now I'm putting an
overall orange wash over my underpainting. See, right over the yellow. I like that. It's warm. I like the warm color. Now I'm going the same
here because I want to get a cool color on the waterfall and a warm color beside it all. A little bit there. Now
that's a little too dark. I squeeze my pen and just thin
it down a bit, it's quite. Orange because in the distance the colors get weaker there. Beautiful. What about
up here on the top? Let's take a little bit more of that yellow and
see what happens. Yeah, still have a few little white
spots showing. I like that. Now it's time for a
very strong blue. I'm going to use
the viva colors. I use a little paper clip
to keep them together. I'm going to go with
the peacock blue. Take a little bit. That's
it. Let's check that out. Right here, you saw how
little I touched that. Oh my goodness, We got
a lot of paint there. Still squeezing the pen brush. Okay. I'm going
to go right there and just going to pop a
little drops on here. See little drops on the end of the pine tree. There we go. We let that dry for a second. Let's put a little
bit down in here, a little more in the water here. Just light, maybe a
little bit over here. See on the top, leave the bubbles white. Okay. Still not much contrast
between here and here. I'm thinking I'm
going to do a wash over the sky and make
the sky a little. I'm going to use my
traditional brush, a big one, put in the water. You can hear it. I'm
going to my palette. All right here, porcelain pal. Great. They just wipe right up. Watch this. No stain at all. That's what I like about it. Like I say, $10 Let's take
a little peacock blue. I just look for
blue. There it is. Pick it up and
there it is, right? There's the green,
there's the dark green. A little water and put
a little water there. There's my blue one drop
of the peacock blue. And it's going a long way. Now I start here, I'm going to just go
along very gently. It can just let,
the brush is just barely touching the paper. Now I'm going to
switch to water. See, I take a little water
now at it over here, I decide I might get a
nice cloud out of there. You know what? I'm going to
take a look at my shape here. And I clean my bush Y well. And what I do is
soften the edge.
7. Quick Thumbnail Wash: Today I'm going to
show you how I take a couple little sketches
and thumbnails, and I work them up quickly. I'm going to take a
little orange, dusk, orange, and I'm going to
put it on my mountain. I live in Canada
and everything is green and gray and tan. There are times when I go a
little wild on my colors. Take a little drop of
this. This is Vermilion. I put that in the
little reflection here. As a kid, I loved coloring. Felt pens hadn't been invented, We used crayons, but I do
like these viva colors. I get a rag and
clean my brush off. Now there's just water
on the brush so I can dissolve the paints
by gently rubbing. These bristles are synthetic. You don't want to really
push hard on them. Now, see how I can push it
around. Bring it up in here. Put a little bit of vermilion
up on the mountain here. There we go. Okay, now you'll see I've
put lots of ink up here. Let's go with a stormy gray. We call this slate black here. It has a little
undertone of blue. We take a little bit of that. It doesn't matter if there's
a little orange in it. That's good. Now, it's probably
pretty strong. All I have to do is put it
on and then squeeze it. See, I got a big
blob of water there. The sky is supposed to be blue. No, it doesn't have to be blue. You can make the sky any
color you want. There we are. Okay. We take a little
bit of this Persian blue. Hey, I haven't tried
the Persian blue. Maybe I better do a better
check the color on it. That is one of the
nicest ultra Marines I've ever seen in my life. Very nice color. That
will work really well. I'm going to use this here. Need a drop of water on here. There, that is a really
good ultramarine. Got some more of that. Just
a little dab with the brush. It seems to really soak
into the paper quickly. So I'm going to add
some more water here. See, I'm going to wet the
paper first. See, I'm wet it. Hey, this is just really
inexpensive watercolor paper from $1 store. It's still not bad. We look at soaking in. Okay, this paper is unsized, which means there's
no gelatine in it. That's what you get in
good watercolor papers. But for what we're doing here, which is a quick little sketch, you'll see it just
sucks it right up. I'm going to just
add some water here. Take a little more. There we go, Add water. Water will spread the paint. There we go. I like that. Bring a little bit
of that blue right into here. A little. The orange up in there, Dane. Oh, look at that. Hey, that's really something, tonality is a word we use. It's an overall color. Say at dawn or dusk, like the peachy
tones everywhere. I'm picking up a little
bit of this from here and just spreading it. Going to leave this cloud. I might make it
purple or magenta. See brush, just
squeezing that water. Okay, let's go
with this magenta. It's number 123123, right there. A little bit of magenta. Let's give it a, there
we go, a little squeeze. Okay, here comes
the magenta cloud. Maybe I'll put a little
bit of magenta up here. Take it from here. I think tomorrow
I'm going to go and get a really nice palette. All my palettes are dirty, I'm thinking with
the viviva colors. I'd like to use a nice
bright white palette. My next little installment,
we'll have that, hey, that's a pretty
good little sketch, you see now there's a
little bit blue in here. It's a little strident. What I'm going to do is I'm
going to take some of this orange and bring it up
into the blue a bit there. Okay, I'm going to let that go. I'll accept that. We have
another one here just quick. I'm going to do
this one real fast. We look at this happy accident. I'm going to take the
magenta 123123 right here, and we're going to
take a goodly amount. And away we go, I'm going to leave this cloud white there. This is the same papers really working fast now because
it's so absorbent, but I get a nice
random effect there. Working fast is good. If you feel confident, I'm going back to
the Persian blue. Amateurs are afraid to be bold and professionals
are afraid to be timid. What'll I do with this
really strong blue? I'm going to put it
right up in here, squeeze it a little bit. I like the idea
of this dark sky. There we go. Now we'll bring
that down in here, soften it, get back
to the magenta. I like it. Oh, let's go with, that's bold, isn't it? A little more in there.
See? Just dab it. That's the slate black. Let's go with the
green. Let's find a green here, there we are. What we're going to
do is do a sap green, a little drop of water on it. The green will really
go with the violet. Green and violet just
love each other. They work really well together. My two rocks. Now I want, it says light green. Take a drop of the light green and we're
going to put that, we're going to try
it on here first. That's not very light. Probably if I add a lot
of water, it'll go light. There we go, I'm
offsetting the rock here. Oh yeah, it's getting light,
There's a great cloud. I was a little bit
nervous there. You got to be careful
with those little words that come to you like,
oh, that's no good. Just move, move, move on. Things turn out okay, orange. We need an orange. Now see? Green, purple, orange. Great color combination. Green, purple, orange. Try to limit your
palette to three of these magnificent
viviva colors. If you get too many colors, get what's called
artistic indigestion. I'm going with the
smaller brush now. This is too much fun. Why do I have a black background here? Black sets colors off. Black makes your
colors more saturated. Let's take a little orange,
that's pretty strong. I have too much on my brush. I'm going to have too
much on my brush. I'm going to let go of
some of it. There we go. Just spread it with a
little bit of water. Who looks like B? Why does it look bright? Well, black around it. Violet and orange. Very good color combination. Now let's go with brown. We're going to do
little burnt sienna. Or should we do yellow
ochre? No burnt sienna. Burnt sienna. For the
beach. There we go. Great little water color. I like the white cloud,
not going to touch it. Just find there, no,
not going to touch it. Know when to stop.
8. Building A Successful Ink And Wash: I draw out a little
thumbnail like this. If I want to make
it longer, I can. And then I choose my horizon line below the
middle. Always a good choice. But maybe I want something
longer and above the middle. But the middle is not the
best place to put it. Now I'm going to put my rock in. I say I want a rock and a tree. I'm placing some of my objects. The light is coming
from the left. It's just a few little
grassy strokes here. Then I have another big
shape coming down here. Another tree that's
a bit smaller. The land comes out a little
bit here and scoots in here. Another little rock,
maybe a rock there. A bit of land here, a little bit bigger land here, A little land formed there. Now here's where I know
about my perspective. I start in my thumbnail, I'm working out a few things. This land is closer. It comes down below
this line here. This one is close to. It comes down below this line. Now I have in the original
picture here, original sketch. The second stage sketch I have disappearing
in behind here. I'm going to mark those
little areas off with my pen. Wider lines here because
it's farther away, and this one is closer. There we go, I put a couple little trees
here, maybe three. They're not the same,
they're different. Some are bigger, smaller, leaning. There's the rock. This one, I'm going to
make it a little darker. We have that. Next
is the last part, is the mountain past the middle. Some voluminous, that's
I like that word, but I'm not very
good at saying it clouds some reflections,
some water. There's my thumbnail sketch. All I have to do now is get a little bigger paper
and enlarge it. Here's a variation on this one. This one is more forested
and a little more serene, the birch trees here. But I'm going to go with
this one now and I'm going to show you
how to enlarge it. There's the first one.
Step one complete. Let's move to step two. This stage here is
going to be on here. You do it on paper because
you need to practice too. Okay, remember we do the rock. Here's where I start
to think a bit. I start to put the rock on an angle like that and a
little bit of shading, a little grass and the
tree right up the middle. I leave a little space here
and there because like that because that's where the
branches are going to be. See some of the branches
are in front like this. But when they get up here, they also point
up a little more. There we go. So I'm going to keep
this very simple. I'm going to get the bigger pen, actually the bigger pen, and put the limbs
in pointing down. If it's a pine tree, they
are actually segmented. But as we get near the top, they actually point
up a little more. There we go. Once again we're using the
big pen for the big stuff and the little pen for
the needles members. This is still not the
finished painting. We're just exploring
possibilities. That's a good enough
tree, the little rock. It's in the water. So we
make it round on the bottom. Put a bit of a
reflection in there. A little more of this,
a little more grass coming across here is
that jetty of land. Something like that. Little
grass there over here. The second one, another rock, a little shading,
a little texture. And the second tree right there, I'm going to do my
little tree trek. Point the pen and
just keep it moving. Come down the trunk,
keep it moving. This looks more like a, not a pine tree spruce. This one's right out of
the picture. It's strong. See a little shadow there?
Some little bushes. Okay. Now we're
coming across here. I want to go past
the rock and then I want to come up with
a tree shape there, another little line here. And put in another tree. You got three trees
so far over here. This is where the bushes
are, small trees. 12 will put in three trees
here too. Different heights. I'm not really getting fancy, just wiggling things in still
exploring big mountain, coming in here, down, it adds interest to a shape
rather than one long line. Let's see it in
this one over here. We're looking at this
one, There's the middle. It comes, I could do it from
here or I could do it here. I think I do this one from here. Come up like a little
straight jag there. Then another little
down behind this. You'll be careful, you don't end on the very tippy
top of that tree. Then I think I'll go
right to the end of the picture there. Here we go. Some big clouds, big cloud bank. The little one over here, a couple shady marks there. This is all done
with a fairly thick pen and it's permanent in. There we go, and I'm going
to put some little swirls in the water over here and
a bit make this darker. And put in the reflections
of these little things here marks make
good reflections. There we go, a couple
little lines up here. That's my second one.
Here's my first one. Here's number two. Let's
go to the next step.
9. The First Wash Is Simple And Quick: I like to use my cadmium
quite thin in water colors, unless I'm using
an accent color. Then I'm going to
take some yellow, which is a very ambiguous
name for this pigment. Because this is yellow
also. And that's yellow. This one is a cadmium
yellow light. I'm getting a very
vibrant orange. I'm going to take that orange, I'm going to put
it into the grass. Notice I have a
big, not a little, I think I'll skip over the
little tree here is bring it across into the mountains. Into the reflection, I'm going to leave this
because that's the sky. It's a little bit in
the reflections there. Then I clean my brush. I know, you know I clean my brush because you can hear it. I'll take some manganese blue. Sometimes in these cake pan
colors a little indistinct. This is almost a Serilian
manganese cobalt. It's a warm blue. And I'm going to do the sky and turn my painting
upside down. You love this ink and was. It's like you can
only do so much, only have so many ingredients. It doesn't confuse you because you've got
a strong drawing. With the strong drawing, there's the white cloud, it's going to put a little bit here at the bottom
here. A little blue. Probably put a bit of
blue into the mountain. Now there's a little orange I'm going to bring
into the mountain. See, I'm mixing
right on the paper, right into the wet
orange a little bit. Put a little blue
in the shadow here. Now here's a little
trick, you'll remember. The rocks carry the sky color. Clean that off. Take
just a drop of the blue. Just put a little
bit on the rock, the top, I can warm it up later. Let's take a Alizarin
Crimson this time, sometimes called violet. Let's put that into a little
bit of the cloud here. You see just in the bottom. Don't touch the top of there. Once you lose your whites, they're gone. There's not much. You can do a little purple and put a little
purple down here. Maybe a little touch
of purple in here. Then look around for
some hard lines. See there's a hard line from
to soften it. There we go. Another quick wash
over my ink drawing. I just leave it like that
for a while and let it go.
10. Popping Color Accents: One little white. We're done. See, even with staining colors, it cleans up right away. Let's add a little water with our magic water adder
Se squirts right out. Take a little peacock
blue from the viviva. Just take one little touch
of it, put it right there. Let's offset that blue
with a little bit of the traditional
pates right there. A little bit of the manganese. It's got a little green in it. That's from the last
little session. There we go. I like that. A little bit of the ultramarine. Let's do a little
more on the top. I'll just take my paper
and bend it a little bit. What I want to do is leave those little white
marks beside the tree. Notice how the cloud is
standing out more. Now. I'm going to go across the top, skip over a little tree, then clean my brush off. It's just has water and
bring it down like that. A little bit of
motion in the sky. Put a little more in here. A little green there,
a little shadow. I like the shadow here. Let's bring a little shadow
right across like that. Looks like the lights
coming this way. We're going to put
this in shadow. See, just touching it there. One more little green here. I say green because when you put blue over yellow,
it turns green. Notice I'm leaving
the white here from the marks with the black. Put this hole in shadow here. It looks like a
little bush there. A little bit more in here. Just one look. It's going to be bright
yellow in a little while. That's going to be a nice bright yellow. Come across there. Oh, this is nice. I like this. Okay. Going to continue
this when it dries. One of the main things
that I have learned, especially with ink and wash, is how to make things
go from dark to light, or we could say to lean. So we take some rich yellow hair and give a little coat there. See we take a little
more as it goes across. I'll just clean my brush
off with a little water. Keep it light here
and stronger there. This is where the viviva
colors are really great because they're
such strong colors. Here we have a yellow
ochre type color, we call it chrome, yellow. Take a little bit of that.
See how strong it is. Strong colors as
opposed to weaker, makes it look like
it's farther away. We'll do the same thing here. We'll take a strong color and then just lose
it down into here. Put some strong
color right here. Now the strong colors are the farthest away from the light. Dissolves colors you
see leave that light. Make the strong color as
it approaches the shadow. These are principles that make
your painting interesting to look at. Weak. We'll take a little bit of this. See strong color,
a little weaker. Let's try the green,
clean my brush. Just push on it.
Love these brushes. Like I say, $6 Get
three of them. Okay, let's right here. Let's go with the green here. Here's a whole bunch of greens. One of the things
about the vivivals and other color sheets, there's different brands,
they're all marked. I'm going to go
with this one here. It's on the left side,
so it's on the top. We call it light green. It's quite dark to start with. But as you add water,
it will get lighter. Now, look at how
intense that is. You see that? Now, work it
right across the yellow. I might even go darker and
I'll use the sap green. Pop it right in this corner. See that's the darkest. Because these are
stainer colors, they'll always look very transparent. You see
how I'm working that. A little bit of sap green here. I'll put it up into the tree. Just wiggle it in
here and there. The beautiful thing
about ink and wash is a lot of the
work's done with the ink. Okay, I'm going to do
it on the other side. We're going to take
the light green. I'm going to use my
palette this time, add a little water to it. Light green. By the way, these last
almost as long as these do, that's pretty good value. See how I left those
little white spots. This one is in the sunshine. Maybe we'll add a
little sunshine to this one up here where
the papers white. Okay, let's carry across
with the dark green here. Let's add a bit of green
in the far away trees. As things get farther away, they lose their color. But we do add a
little bit in there. Here's word I like.
I'm going to make this come alive with the light green. Take a little bit
of the light green, add a little water to it, bring it across here, right up, and some
bright yellow. See if we can get a
bright yellow here. We have burnt sienna. I think the chrome yellow is
about the best yellow. A little bit of chrome yellow
right in here in the water. Little drop in the water. Reflection, very close
to the Indian yellow. Look how clean that yellow
is. Very nice yellow. Okay, let's go up
to the cloud now. Once again, clean my
brush. Just squeeze it. If you're using a
traditional brush, make sure you clean your brush every time. Very important. Okay, let's go with the
notice I'm not mixing colors, I'm just using the colors
right out of here. We're going to go with the
magenta here just to drop. I'm going to turn
my palette so I can get a clean place, very light. I'm going to put a
little magenta against. Now, watch the white
on the mountain, how it will stand out because I'm
darkening around it now. How do I get that
to move around? Just take my brush and
squeeze it a little bit. Watch, squeeze it. The water comes out lovely
now because it's up here. I'm going to put some down here just a little
to echo the sky. Purple here. Purple
here, over here. I don't know, That
looks pretty cool too. Let's see. Try a little
bit of the magenta here. Let's actually go with a
little more neutral there. If you can remember, all
you need for neutral. Another way to describe
neutral is dirty colors. We don't want brown,
that's a little too brown. We're going to add a little
bit of blue to the violet. Let's just check that out
on a clean piece of paper. Let's put it on here. Perfect. See not as
brilliant as that. Once again, put it, come up to a little
green around the trees, so it'll show up more. Maybe we're just adding thin, little washes of color. Beautiful. I don't
know, thinking the rock maybe needs a little bit
of brown on the top. There we go. Maybe the rocks. Yeah, you know what
the rock needs. It needs a good shot of, Let's see what we can find here. Burnt, burnt umber. No, burnt umber has
a green undertone. Put it here, it's quite dark. And I'll mix that with slate black which is like pains gray. See how dark that is? Quite
let's see how dark it is. Let's put it on here. Oh, not too bad. It's a
beautiful earthy brown. Perfect for a rock. And we just tap it into the shadow area. See on the rocks, we'll tap a little bit into
stem of the tree trunk. Just drop it in Uber. I forgot about that tree. Pretty good there, you know, I'm almost done this picture. I'm going to add a little
bit of green on here. I'll just use the
pure sap green. Here we are, maybe
the light green. Make sure it's not too dark. There we go, just drop
on a little bit there. A little bit of the reflection. That's a reflection
of that mountain. There we go. You think
of anything else really? I think that's just fine.
11. Quick Wash For Mountain Pine: Two steps in and wash.
12. Fast And loose Wash/Thumnail: The advantage of the small
sketch and one color. I take one of my
watercolor pens, I take a big one here,
some light green. That's all I'm going
to do is light green. I'm going to keep this
in the green mode. Just going to use green to start with because it's
ink with a wash. This could be like a birch tree. You see if that reflection
is green? Has to be green. Notice how the green
is getting lighter. Because I'm pushing a little bit on the pen and it
has water in it. Everything's going to get
lighter as I go back. You see, because there's
less paint and more water, I'm being very careful
to leave some of the white show Now
if that's green, going to reflect into the water. But there's a cloud
here right about here. I'm going to leave
it, look at that now. Now that blue is like an
ultramarine, not my favorite. I'm more of a thealocene
blue person for a sky. I'll take a little drop of this, squeeze the brush now
that is good. Okay. Now watch, we're going to get a pretty intense blue up here. This is the really cheap
paper from the dollar store, but I like it because it
gives a nice grainy look. You see now, there's
less on my brush now, but the cloud is there. So what I'm going to, there's
the reflection of the tree. So I'm just going to
squeeze it out a bit. See, get it lighter, Squeeze the brush,
squeeze the brush. And maybe a little drop
of the ultramarine. Now, there's that cloud
reflected in the water. Yeah. Okay. We're going a
little magenta on here which is great
for birch trees. See what's up here? Ends up down there and we'll take
a little bit of the burnt umber mix it
in this burnt sienna. We're going to put that on this tree a little
bit in the water. Put a little bit in here, a little bit on the
top in the water. The last one would
be a very small felt clean that brush off
so it comes out clean. The last will be the little
bit of magenta in the cloud, just in the bottom of the
cloud, B in the water. Okay, there's a quick sketch that could turn into a
great little picture. Of course, I can keep
enriching it simply by adding a few deeper colors,
like the yellow here. There we go. There's
four little sketches that could easily be made
into larger pictures.
13. To Post Or Not To Post: Hey, thanks for
coming to the class today. Post your efforts. Let me see what you're doing. You saw what I'm doing. I sure would like to see what you're doing and that's
the truth of it. I really, I love teaching
and the reason I love teaching is I like
seeing what I've taught you. Show me your work. Don't
hide it under a bushel. Get it out. Put it up in the light and let
some people see it. If a couple hundred people take this class or
a couple thousand, I would like to at least
see one or two of you post your picture
so I can see if I'm actually reaching
you and teaching you. Reach and teach.
That's what I do. And there's lots more ink and wash classes coming your way.
Ron Mulvey✏️, Artist / Art Teacher
