Learn to Paint a Watercolor Landscape

1. Introduction: Hi everyone and welcome to learn to paint 15 steps to being a better watercolor artists. My name is Paul Richmond. I'll be your teacher. And in this video course, we're going to go through all of the steps from start to finish to create your very own watercolor landscape painting, you will go from a blank piece of paper to a beautiful finished watercolor painting. Watercolor is such a versatile medium. You can be really loose. Let the paint go where it wants to go, or it can be tighter and more controlled and you can get a lot of detail. In this course, we'll be learning things like how to mix the colors that you want, how to create depth, what types of brushstrokes to use, where to create different textures in the scene. And so much more. I have been drawing and painting my entire life. I started taking art lessons at a very young age and just fell in love with it. Art has pretty much been my life ever since. I've had the opportunity to show and sell my work all around the country. I've done a lot of commission work including paintings, Dolly Parton, Teresa Vaughn, whole bunch of other awesome people. And I want to share what I know with you. I really believed that everyone is an artist and through the process of being creative, we learned so much about ourselves and how to express ourselves. If you've never painted before. Don't worry, this is a great class to start with. And if you do have some experience, but when a refresher on the basics, come join me to this class is great for everybody. The more, the better, and I can't wait to make art with you. 2. Project: Hi everyone. I'm Paul Richmond. Here's my version of the project that we'll be making together and I would love it if you would share your finished work with me to in the project section here on Skillshare. I love seeing what you've made, being able to comment on it and interact with all of you. That's half the fun of teaching these classes honestly as knowing that there are so many artists out there making art right along with me. So let's get started. Are you ready? 3. Overview of Materials and Sketching the Image: Hi everyone and welcome to learn to paint 15 steps to being a better watercolor artist. Every day for 15 days, I will send you a new 10-minute video lesson. You will go from a blank piece of paper to a beautiful finished watercolor painting. I have been drawing and painting my entire life. I started taking art lessons at a very young age and just fell in love with it. Art has pretty much been my life ever since. In this lesson, we'll be going over all the materials showing you how they work, how to prep the paper so that you're ready to begin your watercolor painting. And then we will do a sketch of the image that will be painting. Let's start off by taking a look at our materials. So this is everything that I will be using in this course. I have some paint brushes. These are pretty inexpensive. For watercolor. You just want brushes that have nice soft bristles. Usually in the art store. The brushes will be divided up between being watercolor brushes, acrylic oil. It doesn't mean you can't use them for other things, but generally the watercolor brushes are a bit softer. I also have a pencil for sketching out the drawing first, and I like to use a harder lead when I am doing a drawing for a watercolor paintings so that the lead doesn't come off and smear around when I start painting. So I'm using a to H pencil. The H stands for hard. So actually any H pencil would be just fine. Whatever number is in front of it just means that if it's a higher number, it means it's a harder lead. You don't want to press hard when you're drawing because it will make grooves in the paper. But the nice thing about the harder lead is it won't smear when you start painting. We have brushes, pencil. What else do we have? We have watercolor paints. You have a lot of options here. I like the watercolors in tubes, but I've also used the kind that comes in a little tray. You can also get like little rectangular, kinda like pouches of paint. So there are a lot of different styles that they all work the same. They're all very interchangeable. So experiment and see what you like the best, but this is what I'll be using. And then since it isn't a tube, I also got a palette here, just a plastic palette that I can put the paint in while I'm working. Watercolor paper. This is, you'll see cold pressed paper and that means that it just has a little bit of texture to it. When watercolor paper is hot pressed, it makes it very, very smooth and slick. But I like painting on cold press because it has a little more texture. I feel like it absorbs the paint in a way that I like better. But again, that's something you should try out different, different types of paper and see what works the best for you. Then I have this piece of very smooth than wood that I am going to use for taping my paper down while I'm working. The reason why you do this is so that it doesn't start warping and get all distorted. The tape will hold it steady. If you don't have a piece of wood like this, you can use any kind of smooth hard surface. So cardboard, foam core, whatever you happen to have mat board or I've seen artists just tape it right down to their table, but just make sure it's not a table that you would be concerned about getting paint on. And then lastly, I have masking tape, a cup of water, and paper towels. So don't worry if you don't have the exact same things as me. If you have different brands. This class is all about you figuring out what works the best for you. So don't use that as an excuse to put it off. Use what you have. And let's go. I've taken a piece of paper out of the book. I'm going to put it here on my board. And then let me move this out of my way. I can see myself spilling that very quickly. I'm just using regular masking tape and tear off a piece that's a little bit longer than the width. And what you wanna do when you tape it down or what I like to do, I guess I should say you can do whatever you want. I like to try and make it very even. So, same distance from the edge on both sides. And then I'll try to match that distance all the way around. Because it's awfully fun when you finish a watercolor painting to peel the tape off and have that nice crisp white edge. It's just like a little border. It's fun. Trust me. So put the tape evenly so that it will look really nice when you peel the tape off and go ahead and repeat that. All the sides. Now they do make some watercolor books where the papers are all, the pages are all attached to each other. So if you have that kind of watercolor book, then you don't need to tear it out and tape it down to the fact that the page is kinda come all together as one block. It, it serves the same purpose as the tape. All right, two more to go. Get it just right. I'm not a perfectionist about most things, but something like this. It brings up his qualities of me. I've even been known to take a ruler and measure, believe it or not. You don't have to go that far though. It is supposed to look like it was made by a person, not by a computer. So we're going to just embrace or imperfections in this course. So be good therapy for all of us. Me included. Alright, I have my tape on and then I just like to run around the edge with my phone and make sure that it's sealed really good on this side so the paint doesn't creep up underneath there. Alright, now we're ready to get started. And so what I'd like to do with the rest of our time in this lesson is to start sketching out the image. Here is the reference that we will be working with. I chose it because it has a nice combination of big open spaces and also some interesting textures and details that we'll get to work on together using your two H pencil. I would, for me, this is how I like to sketch for a watercolor painting. I like to use as few lines as possible. So I'm not going to be going in and drawing every little leaf and branch in rock in the water. I'm going to save a lot of that for when I go to paint it. So I'm just looking for the main shapes right now. I'm going to choose the horizon line first. I'm going to draw that, which I'm reading as the line where the dark green ends and then that kinda blew distant trees, tree line shows up. So that is, so here's the halfway point. And if we come down a ways from that, maybe about here is where I'm going to draw that line. Now, your paper might be a different proportion than mine, might be a different proportion than the photo reference. So thinking about your composition and how you line things up is a really important part of this. So don't rush it. If you need more time than what I'm giving you here in this video, just pause it and take your time. Alright, so now what I'm drawing here is just sort of like an indication of where that row of distant trees are not going to get very picky with that. For now, we will eat it. Just making some little bumps, lumps. I don't even know if you can see because I'm drawing so light. I'll try and go a little darker for you all. In general though it's a good idea to draw a very light when you're sketching out a watercolor painting because you, unless you want the pencil lines to show and be a part of it. Otherwise, they're hard to get rid of once you start painting. So alright, so now I'm going to draw the bank, I guess the bottom part of that dark green patch of land. So another kind of lumpy horizontal line. We've got this big patch of grass you look and stuff down here that I'm going to draw. And last but not least, the distant mountains. So they would see there's one mountain over here. Also feel free to change some of the shapes if you want to, if you want to make the mountains of different size, or if you want to put trees somewhere else, it's your painting. You don't you don't have to follow exactly what is in the photo. If you have other ideas. Here we go. I think these trees over here needs to be a little bit taller. This is what the sketching process is, four, so you can make any corrections that you need. All right. Yeah, kinda sketch in where this big tree goes in front. There's a few over here. And I think that's enough detail actually for this one. That's, that's where I'm going to start. Um, different artists approach things differently. So if you feel like you want to draw things in tighter detail than this, please go right ahead. But I like to leave a little bit of room for interpretation while I'm painting this, this looks good to me. Great job everyone. Now you are ready to go. I will see you in the next lesson and we can start putting some paint on this. 4. Wet on Wet Technique: Hi everyone and welcome to lesson two. I'm Paul Richmond, and in this video we are going to start painting. So get ready where it'd be learning the wet on wet technique today, which is where you actually wet the surface first with just plain water, then you add the paint. This allows the colors to bleed together. You get that really beautiful organic watercolor look. So we'll be using that in the sky of our landscape. Alright, let's get started painting. Are you ready? So I would like to start in the background and work my way forward when I do landscapes. That's my personal preference. But since you're watching my video, That's what we're gonna do. In the photo, the sky, it looks a little washed out. So this is a case where I'm going to use a little bit of artistic license. I want to make my sky a little bit more colorful than that. You can also stick right with the photo if you want to. But I'm starting with some orange. This is cadmium orange hue because I definitely see that in the photo. Even. Then you just squirt out a little bit in the tray like that. The nice thing about watercolor is that if you put out too much paint and then it dries in the tray, you can use it again. All you have to do is rewet it even weeks from now and it will still, it'll come right back to life. Alright, I'm gonna put a little red out also. And you're going to quickly find that I love color. I, most of my paintings end up being a little bit more colorful than whatever references I was using. So this can be a fun chance for you to figure out what your preferences are. You might start out with using more calm, neutral colors and then build up to whatever, whatever you're comfortable with. Alright, so i'm, I'm gonna make my sky similar to the photo, but it will be really warm down here, kind of like a sunrise or sunset and then get cooler. So more towards the blues and purples as it goes up to the top. Now, this portion of the painting I wanted to demonstrate for you something called the wet on wet technique. This is a great way of allowing the paint to do the majority of the work for you. Before we do that though, I'm going to grab an eraser. This is a kneaded eraser. You can use one of these, or if you just have regular erasers. Those work too. But I just like to kinda softened my line drawing a little bit. So just kinda very gently go over it. Take the edge off of the lines, make it so that they don't show up. The final painting you own, it only needs to be visible to you. All right? Plus I like the fewer of the lines, the better for me because then I can sort of invented as I go. Alright, so the wet on wet technique is similar to what you see in a lot of watercolor paintings where the different colors blend and bleed together on their own. So the way that you achieved that, it's very, very, what I would just call it very watercolor. You look, take your brush, put it in the water, and just wet the area that you're planning on painting. So don't put any paint on it at first. Make that paper wet. To do this pretty quickly. Because once it dries, it won't work anymore. That having water already on that section will make it so that the paint just kinda takes off, takes on a life of its own. It will bleed, it'll just flow. So with a lot of water on my brush, see, I'm just grabbing the pure pain. I'm dipping it in the water, getting it nice and wet. Come in and see how it's very transparent when I put that color beyond very light, very bloody. Then just kinda switched my brush around in the water and go for red this time than it then. The key really is, the fewer the brush strokes you can do, the better. And that's kinda true for a lot of watercolor painting. You don't want to overwork the paper or it will show, believed me. And if if you if you start scrubbing, are working in an area too long, you're you could damage the paper. So it is a really good idea to try to just do it with as few brush strokes as possible. Right now I'm going to my purple skin. I just kinda let one color go right into the one below it. So you're not getting crisp edges. And that's because of the wet on wet technique. And I'll be showing you how you can paint in a way to create very tight details and sharp edges as well. That's one of the things I love about watercolor is that it's so versatile. You can get all kinds of different looks. Blue now, putting that up here in the sky at the top, I'm trying not to make it look very obvious where one color stops and the next one starts. So you do kinda just want to paint a little bit into the, the last color. If you're going for a look like this, afternoon, my water, it's going to end badly. Move very busy art is another secret to watercolor painting, is that it's generally a good idea to start light and then build your way up to dark. Watercolor painting uses the white of the paper to create the light in the image. So the lighter you want a value to be, you use more water and less paint in that area. And then if you want an area to be darker, more solid, then you use less water and more of just the pure paint. So we've got our sky in. And I don't want to jump right to these mountains yet because there they are butting up right against that very, very wet sky. So we're gonna give those a minute. But what I might do, since we have a couple, a couple of more minutes in this lesson is put out some green. This is called Hooker's green light. Any kind of dark green will work. And I'm going to go ahead and just lay a base coat over this green area where the ground and the middle ground trees are. Alright, everything in that spot is pretty dark. But I'm still going to thin it down a little bit because I just, I don't wanna get too locked in to super dark colors right away. Alright, now see, since I did not put the water down first this time, I'm able to paint with a cleaner, sharper edge. So just already in this painting you can see two very different affects, two very different approaches to putting the paint down on the paper. I'm not going to get to hung up in detail just yet. We're just covering the paper right now. That's how I like to think of it. It makes it a little less intimidating. It doesn't have to be perfect. Just get something down. Then we can adjust. There's a lot that you can do with layering color. We will definitely be getting into that since watercolor is a very transparent medium, when you let one layer dry and then put another layer on top, you, depending on how much water you use, you will see the base layer come through and maybe mix with the color. So we're going to take full advantage of there. I'm just, I'm using this flat brush because it's really helpful for just going in and creating some of these effects of the branches and the leaves not being, not being too picky right now. They're just trying to just trying to get them in there so I can start to see it. Then we'll adjust as we go. Last but not least, you. Alright. Here we go. Alright, you did it in our next lesson, we are going to start working on the mountain. So get ready and I'll see you then. 5. Painting the Mountains: Hi everyone and welcome to lesson three. I'm Paul Richmond, eager to get back to painting with all of you. And today we're going to paint the mountains. So my sky, in this section here in the middle ground, everything has dried and I'm not going to use the wet on wet technique this time for the mountains like we did in the sky, because I want them to have a sharper edge. You can see how interesting the sky looks now that it's dried. You can see all those areas where it looks almost kinda like crystallized, where it goes from one color blending into the next. That is the really organic look of watercolor that I think is beautiful. And it's kinda just handing over control. Letting the paint do it at once can be challenging. But I like that look a lot. But like I said, for the mountains, we're not going to do that because I want the sharp edge, so I have same colors as in the previous video. I see the distant mountains or a pale blue. What I'd like to do is scoop up some of that blue. Put it in the middle. Here. This is the way I like to mix colors. Then I'm going to take just a drop of purple, drop of red. You don't want too much or it'll make it muddy. But I'm just trying to take the edge off of that blue since the mountains are very far in the distance, I don't want it to be super, super bright blue. The reddish orange color is good for toning it down just a little. Since I have purple in my sky to use a little purple with it as well. Now the color is still looks too dark here on the palette. But remember the way that you make the color lighter is not by adding white, even though some watercolor kits do have white and you're welcome to experiment with it. But I've never really liked the way that the white watercolor works. I prefer to just use the white of the paper, right? Let me get another paper towel. When you are done mixing a color with your brush, just swish it around in the water and then I like to take the paper towel and just kinda pinch it. And you'll see that because the bristles of my brush were white, the paint has stained them and that's okay. It doesn't hurt anything as long as you get the wet paint out of it, you can go right from that to whatever color you want to use. But in this case I'm still using blue, so it doesn't matter a whole lot. I'm going to thin it down quite a bit. So I'm dipping my brush in the water. See how even on the palette look, how much lighter it looks. That looks very close to the color that I was going for, so that makes me happy. You want to think about a strategy for where to rest your hands when you're painting. I'm right handed, so I'm going to start painting the mountains on the left side and work my way over so I can always rest my hand on the paper. You don't want to. There's nothing worse than painting something beautiful and then sticking your hand in it. And I'm speaking from experience here, I have I have been there. So I started on whichever side works for you. And I'm going to start right up here and define the edge of the mountain. And like I said before, but can never say it enough. It is a good idea to try and go as light as you possibly can. At first. You can always add another layer and darken the mountains. If you want to read, to darken anything if you want to. But if you go too dark at the beginning, then you're sort of stuck with it. Since the trees that are in-between the green section in the mountains or a darker blue than the mountains are. I'm just going to go ahead and paint the mountains right on down to the green. And then, then when it dries, we can paint the next row of mountains on top. And you can paint right into the greens, see how it's not hurting anything. Now if you scrub too much, it might reactivate the green. So you do want to be a little bit careful, but it's okay to let one color overlap the next. It's okay to do whatever you want. It's your painting. And I do hope that you are having fun with this and not feeling stressed about it or thinking like, oh, this has to be perfect. This is just an opportunity for you to learn the techniques and have some fun. I've titled lot of art classes over the years. And I know that for some reason us grown-ups especially tend to like to stress out about things. We worry that what we're making, maybe what if it isn't perfect? Maybe I shouldn't even be doing this. Am I wasting my time? I have 20 other things on my to-do list I should be doing and why am I bothering to pain if I'm not even good at it, blah, blah, blah, blah, and I can just hear it because I have heard it all from many of my students. And I understand that. I mean, we all have that voice in our head that's kinda gives us that imposter syndrome feelings. So this isn't a Therapy session, but I just wanted to say, don't worry, really just take the time to enjoy this. I find watercolor to be a very relaxing medium. And I think the more relaxed you are about how you are using it, the more that will come across in the finished piece. So just it just enjoy no stress. We're taking our time and building up the layers here. So we're going to see this painting evolved quite a bit as we go along. We are still in the just cover the paper phase of this process right now, which is a good fees to be in. Now I have made my mountains a little bit lighter than they need to be. And that's a good thing because if you really look closely at the photo, you'll see that the bottom of the mountains gets a little bit lighter. There's some sort of light filtering in there that's making it so that the tops of the mountains are darker and the bottom of the mountain is lighter. So what we can do while we still have this color here is, well, I say that but premise about out. So I'm gonna grab a little more Actually, Nixon, my purple, red, little more blue. I'm going to go ahead and go back across just the tops of the mountains and darken them a little and let that bleed or blend into the lighter blue. Alright, so I'm cleaning off my brush, getting it nice and wet. And I'm just going to come right back over here. I'm resting my hand in the sky because I know some of this might still be a little wet. And I'm just going to do another layer, see how it gets darker this time. Same, same paint basically, but it's because I'm using a little bit less water and also because there is already paying on that area, so it's just adding to it and the pigment is getting darker. And then I'm just going to, the way to make it blend is by going along the bottom where you want it to get wider and just using water to let the let the opaque paint at the top kind of blend into just water. And I'm going to work my way across. Now I noticed these mountains over here. The smaller ones are pretty light even in the distance. So I'm going to skip that and come up here to my next tall one. Even going to try to get some of those little bumps that I see like look probably little or even big trees that are back there. So if you want to get real detailed, you can, if you just want to create simple mountain shapes, that works too. I'm actually going to bring this shadow color, this darker color down because I'm seeing in the photo of it, we actually do see a little bit of a distinction between this mountain and the one beside it gets a little bit darker here, so that just add some more interest and depth to the piece. Remember, less is more when it comes to brush strokes. If you can do it in one big stroke instead of a whole bunch of small ones you're painting. Your painting will. Thank you. You don't want it to look over work. Alright, there we go. We have some mountains now. Nice work, everyone, See, I knew you could do it. In our next lesson, we're going to move on down to some of those distant trees. So get ready and I'll see you then. 6. Painting the Trees: Hi everyone and welcome to lesson number four. I'm Paul Richmond, and today we have some trees to paint. So let's get started. Alright, I am going to work on this distant row of trees now in the background. And they are also pretty blue. But I see just a touch of green in them too. And I think that is bringing in this foreground color just a little bit, makes those trees stand out from the mountains and come a little closer. They're also quite a bit darker than the mountains are two, but we will work up to that. So far I've only been using this one, large flat brush. I'm gonna go down to size now this is about half the size of that brush because I want to be able to get in and make some, some interesting tree shapes. So getting it wet, sometimes new brushes will feel a little stiff at first and then you just wet them and then they soften right away. This is a very, these are very soft brushes. Alright, I'm going to scoop up some of my cerulean blue. Actually going to take all of it. There's a lot of trees, they're clean off my brush a little bit. It doesn't need to be perfect. Then I'm just going to take a little bit of green. You don't need too much because it's still mostly blue. It just has a little bit of a green edge. Here we go. Like that, although that might have gone a little too green, let me put a little bit more blue in there. Mixing colors is always a balancing act. Little more blue. See what that gives us. Oh yeah, like that. That's beautiful. So don't give up if you mix the color and it doesn't look quite right. Take a minute to analyze it and see, well, what does it need? In that case, it was a little too close to, too far, towards green. So adding more blue brought it back. Alright, clean off my brush gets a little bit wetter. I do want it to be pretty dark, but I'm still using water because I don't want it to be. This is still my first layer, so we'll build up to the darkest value. But for now this is good. Then what I like to do with trees like this is to start by just figuring out where the trunk is, the center line. And then just kinda come outwards from that and do little leafy shapes until you get towards the bottom and then it all just becomes more of a solid. There's one, we've got a lot more to go. And just like the painters on TV always say, you can make this world. How ever you want, put your happy little trees wherever you imagine them. I do like that actually it is a good way to think about painting because I feel like sometimes, well, it's often very easy to get caught up and worried about thinking it has to look exactly like the photograph, but it doesn't so secret, okay. But for real, nobody will ever be comparing your painting to the photograph and dislike how I made the decision. I wanted more color in my sky. You can make artistic choices all throughout the process and change whatever you want to change. Or if you mess something up, you can just say, well, I meant for it to look that way. Famous, famous line of most professional artists. Some point you have to use that. Alright, this tree actually comes up above the horizon a little bit or above the mountains, excuse me. So I'll do that. Building them on trying to make the shapes interesting. You know, don't, don't think of them as trees or you might revert back to just drawing what you imagined trees look like when you were young, like this little triangle Christmas tree looking. Just look at, study the shapes, the organic shapes, the direction that the leaves grow and just kinda mimic that with your brush. But you're going more for the feeling of it, not an exact replication of this V specific trees. Working our way through. This is looking good. Still mostly just one color. I really, we're not doing a lot of, you know, blending yet. We will be, will be working more colors into this course. But keeping it simple for now, just kinda find a color that works well with that overall section. And I'm using that. You'll see that I am trying to leave some little gaps here because it's kinda nice to have some openings in the leaves so that it feels like they aren't just solid wall of trees but more interspersed. Maybe there's a few layers are a few rows and there's little negative spaces. That's what you call the openings, where you see through to what's behind something. You want to try to include some variety in the shaping and in this size t, You don't want them to all look the same. So I've made some short ones, some tailwinds, some that are clustered really close together, some that are more spaced out. What, what would make this start to feel very unnatural as if you did the same tree over and over again and had them all be sort of equally distanced from each other. That would, unless you are going for more of a whimsical style with patterns and stuff. But if you're going for anything that's remotely realistic, variety really helps with that. It makes it feel more, more organic, more and more like it would be in nature. I know that this green that I painted down here is going to get darker eventually. So I'm not worrying too much about if I get some of the blue into that. It's okay. I think it's always better when you can to just let the paint kinda move, move into the space of its neighbors as long as it's going to get darker there. Because then you don't end up with all these brushstrokes that just feel like they're very carefully avoiding that spot. If that makes sense, you can start to almost look like there's like a halo around it or something if if you're not careful. So I just paint right on them. Working our way across. How are you doing? You having fun making your trees. Let's looks like a pretty beautiful place. I would love to go there. I guess we kind of get to, at least in our imaginations, tree back there hiding behind the green one. Maybe one more little taller with you. I think trees are really fun to paint. I like all painting all different kinds of trees. Trees like this, but also big. I really love like big twisty trees with branches that kinda twist around and have interesting shapes. So much variety. Spend a whole career just painting trees. But personally I like painting people too much for that, so I'll have a tree in the background, but most of my painting. All right, let's do one here. One thing that you might have noticed by now is that when you are finished with your painting for the day and you let it dry. When you come back to it, it might look the paint might look a little lighter than it did, or the new remembered it look good. That's very normal. Watercolor paint tends to dry just a little bit lighter than it looks when it's wet, which can be a good thing. Especially if you're trying to build up too dark and if you're a bit heavy handed, I contend to be some times, then that might that might be what saves you. But it is also something that you kinda have to plan for when you get towards those final layers. Just knowing that it might dry a little bit lighter than what you see when it's wet. So you can make accommodations for that or just go back and do another layer to darken it more. One more tree over here. I'm just going to kind of bring those all together because there's just a big blue section here. Alright, there we go. We have our middle ground trees now. Beautiful work. You can start to see it coming together now, can't you? We still have a long ways to go, so don't judge your work too harshly yet, our next lesson is going to be super fun because we are going to start painting the water. See you then. 7. Painting the Water: Hi everyone and welcome to lesson number five. I'm Paul Richmond. And today we're going to start playing in the water. We're going to paint ripples and reflections and all that fun stuff. So let's get started. I'm excited for this part because I love painting water. I think you can have a lot of fun with it. Be very loose, and then go back in and add more details and ripples. So this first coat will be using the wet on wet technique again, like we did in the sky so that it will have that kind of flowy organic look to it. And one other thing I wanted to mention is that I'm going to paint the water in completely cover up this section in the corner where you see those grasses. And that is because I want to be able to get the water all the way finished first and then put those in as a final touch. Everything on the grass is darker than the water around it. So it'll be very easy to go in and paint that at the, at the very end. Otherwise, if we painted it now, we'd have to be working around it all the time that we're working in the water. And I like to be able to be looser. I'm doing something with reflections and ripples and things. So I think that's a good example to just point out how when you are making a watercolor painting, sometimes you have to be a little strategic about what you choose to paint and when. So in this case we're going to just cover that whole bottom portion of the paper now with clean water. And again, when you're doing this, you have to work fast. So I would suggest nice big brush, like the one I'm using here. With that whole bottom area. That's why we tape it down. If this was instilled in the book and we were doing this much water on it. It would be a crumpled up mess right now. Thankfully, we're not experiencing that. Alright, so now the water, the colors in the water are basically a mirror image of what's happening above it because the water is reflective. So I'm going to start with this reddish orange where the opening is between the big opening between the mountains. So I'm just going to come in and a lot of the strokes that I like to make when I'm painting water or horizontal. You can see that in the photo that the ripples, the movement of the water is very horizontal. I would use your brush strokes to mimic that. It's a good idea to always think about the direction of what you're painting. Like. When we were painting the leaves on the trees, they were going every, every which way to match the movement of that. With water. Think about the way it's flowing, the way our eyes are seeing those ripples. And kinda just almost imagine that you're sculpting each little section of your scene. Alright, so now I'm gonna do a bluey purple color. Just using a touch of the purple too. Because that'll make it blend nicer with the orange too. If you go straight from blue to orange, since they're opposites, it will turn a little muddy on you. So it's good to use a buffer. And that's what the purple is in this case. Okay. That's kind of a color theory thing, but I think it's good to, good to think about. Seems true for when you're painting a sky, e.g. if you are doing a sunset, maybe the sky goes from a yellow color at the horizon to bluer color up above. If you went straight from yellow and then blended it into the blue, it would turn green because blue and yellow make green. So you want to put in some other color as a buffer in-between the two so that you get more of a natural transition. Again, keeping it very, very light here. This is definitely a section that we're going to be building up as we go. This is just our first stab at it. I'm gonna get a little more. It's my cerulean blue. I might go ahead and put out ultramarine blue to if you have that, that's also a good one. Cerulean blue is a little bit warmer. It's kinda like a sky blue color. Ultramarine blue is deeper. In cooler. It's got a little bit more purple in it. This is all still wet and it's not overworked at all. So I'm just going to continue now adding in some blue. See how we know it's wet because when I put the brush strokes and you don't see an edge, it just bleeds into what's there. Look at some of the areas where maybe the blues get pulled into the orange section. It's not like everything is evenly divided perfectly. It's, the water is moving. The ripples are creating that movement in texture. So you want the colors to kinda follow along and move in and out of each other. That will give you the most realistic look here. It's gonna be so fun. Just think after this lesson, the whole paper will be covered. We're about a third of the way finished, and we're in a really good position because we've got paint everywhere on the whole paper and now we get schizo, go back and refine to our heart's content and make it gorgeous. If you're not loving your painting yet. Don't worry. I think one thing I, a lot of artists do is judge their work too soon. Decide that it's no good, it's not working. This is a mess. I don't know what I'm doing, but well below. But if you can just accept that it's part of the process, that it's not going to look perfect right away. That it takes, takes awhile. You don't want to overwork. Just getting the colors to feel like they're moving through in a natural way. You can do some thinner lines even if you want just using the edge of that brush. Do more with the next layer of the eye to go ahead and get some of that movement happening. Now it just helps me to see see the water. It's shows up on the pH. Sometimes when you drag your brush through a wet area, it can actually lift the paint a little. So it will go from making a darker mark, making a lighter mark, which I think is interesting. And I'm going to add just a touch of green to it to create a little bit darker green or blue color to use back here along the bank. Because that's where it would really reflect a little bit more of that color. I'm not going to go crazy with it. A little too dark. If you put down a stroke and it's too dark like that, just kinda clean your brush off, get it good and wet. You can go back and just kinda work it in. There we go. That happens sometimes it's it takes a lot of practice to get used to gauging how dark or light the paint will actually look just based on how you loaded your brush. So if you're new to this and that's a stumbling block for you don't worry. It's something that you get better at with practice. Alright, I'm feeling pretty good about this water for now. I definitely want to come back and do more into it with our next layer. But as a starting point, I think it is often rendered. Nice job Wasn't that fun? I love painting water. You can be so free and loose. I think it brings out some of the best qualities of watercolor paint. In our next lesson, we're going to start going back over some of what we previously did and adding more detail. See you then. 8. Adding Detail to the Mountain: Hi everyone and welcome to lesson number six. I'm Paul Richmond. And today we are going to go back over some of what we've already painted once, including the sky and the mountains, and just do some tweaking and adding more detail. So let's get started. Now that we have the whole paper covered, we can go back, kinda take it section by section and start adding detail, refinement until we get it to a point where it feels like it's finished. So we're in good shape. We are one-third of the way through this course and we still have so much time to get to tinker around, which is one of my favorite things to do with the painting. I like to backtrack and kinda go the same way that I did for the first layer. So I'm going to start sky then work my way forward through the mountains trees, then finally up to the water area in this grass in the front. I'm pretty happy with the sky overall. I like the looseness of it. I like the way the colors are doing. They're fun. Watercolor, you bleed the thing. The only thing I'm not loving about it at the moment is I feel like the color of this yellow, orange just gets a little bit too intense and maybe it takes away a little bit from the rest of the image. So let me show you what you can do if you end up in a situation like that where you have an area that you want to tone down a little. You can do something that you would call a glaze or a wash. So we'll be painting very, very thin, mostly water, just a touch of pigment over top of that area so that what's there will still show. It'll just be tinted by the color that we're layering on top. So what I wanna do is tone down the yellow. So I look at the color wheel in the opposite color of yellow is purple. So I'm going to take, I'm using this rounded brush this time, you can use whatever you want. I'm going to take just a little bit of purple. You, trust me, you don't need much. And I'm actually going to go ahead and put a touch of that orangey color in there too. You touch of red. What I'm what I'm trying to get, I don't want to just put pure purple on there. It'll stand out, but I want the purple and the yellow to start to neutralize each other here on my palette. So it almost looks kind of like a, maybe a more of a, just a brownie. Brownie. I must be hungry. A brown tone with some purple tinge to it. You might not even need this. So I'm just showing you if you ever, if you ever do, if you're happy with your sky, as is, don't worry about it. So mostly water and which is very gently go over top. My yellow and just tone it down just enough. See that it's not really, it's not changed. You still see all the strokes and textures and everything. It just takes the edge off of that color, which is exactly what we wanted it to do. There we go. I'm liking that better. Still break, which is fine. I like a bright sky. Just doesn't feel so out of the tube. Yellow, orange. Now, you can do that as many times as you need to, but you want to let it dry in-between. I'm actually pretty happy with that as it is when I get the rest of the painting work done and then can always go back and do more if I feel like it needs it, but I think we might be good here. Okay. That was easy. Now, next step is I want to move on to the mountains again. Give them a little bit more love, see what, see what they might need. I think a big part of doing any kind of a painting, especially a representational painting like this, which means it's based on something real. You want to take a minute and really look at the reference and what do you see in there that is not showing up in the painting yet? When I look at it, I see some hints of little ridges here in the mountains. And I see that the mountains also pick up just a tiny bit of a warm tone down here in this light area, It's almost like some of the warmth from the sky is just being reflected right down here in this lighter part of the mountain. Now that's a pretty subtle thing. You might not, you might not have noticed it or maybe you still don't see it. But if you really zoom in on the image and look the temperature of the color, which means the, whether it's warm or cool, the temperature of that blue shifts just a little bit toward warm. Down here. I want to start by, I'm going to just use some of this blue with a touch of purple again. Just go ahead and still use that middle area of my palette. So blue and purple, keep it pretty thin still, I'm not, I'm not trying to go real dark here. Then just come back. I'm using a little bit smaller brush this time. And just painting in some of those ridges that I see. Going for detail. Remember you're just getting a few strokes in there that will help it to feel like. It's not just one big solid thing. It has texture, edges, stuff kinda starting from the top and pulling down because that's where the ridges are more apparent in the image. It seems like it must maybe there's a little bit of a fog or mist down here because as we get down into the lighter part, I don't see those kinds of details as much. So I'm going to follow, follow what I see in the image. Just kinda paint them where they are showing up. I think that's one of the biggest challenges for artists in general when you were doing realistic work is to not just paint what we know, what we think something looks like, but to really study, really look at whatever it is that our, that is our reference. And try to pick out some of the subtle things that maybe other people would notice. Even, even some of this kind of detail that I'm painting right now might not have been super obvious to everybody looking at this image until you really slowed down and study it. Here I have a little of the yellow kinda spilling onto the mountain. But I don't mind that it kind of to me, it looks like the sky color is just reflecting in the mountain a little bit, so I'm gonna go with it. But you could lift it up if you wanted to. If you have color in an area that you don't want it, if you just take a clean brush with water on it and kinda go over that. You don't want to scrub it, but just very gently. You can reactivate the paint and then lift it up with a paper towel. If you get paint somewhere where you don't want it and you want to be able to remove it. That's how you might it might still leave a little bit of an impression, but you can get the majority of it. Since it's pretty subtle what we're doing here, but it does make the, make the background just feel a little bit more interesting, a little bit more activated. And not just like random brushstrokes everywhere. The brushstrokes are adding to the story, I guess instead of just being a means of filling in the space. And then one more Hold on. Spill in this top a little better. The goal is to just make every brush stroke look like it's intentional. Lot of happy accidents happen. But if you can just go back through and make it, make it all feel like this is this is what I wanted. All right, and now I'm going to clean out my brush and grab just some little orange, red touch of purple, so it's not quite so bright. Then we want to really thin this out because we're not trying to paint the mountains orange. We're just want it to go a little bit warmer towards the bottom. This would be one area where it'd be very easy to go overboard very quickly. I'm just pulling a little of that color in. Very subtle. If you get too much, you can just kinda bloated up with a paper towel. But look at what a difference it makes. Just kinda brings that, brings the whole mountain together and connects it more with the sky. It's very subtle, but when you can get colors moving through a piece, instead of just being in one isolated area, you end up creating an image that's much more harmonious. That's the technical term, or you could just say it makes it look good. When you have color that is only showing up in isolated areas, like if all the leaves were green, the sky is blue, whatever, then that's called local color. That means the color is just staying in one spot, which is fine too, if that's the look you want. But if you're going for more realism, more movement of the color throughout, then this is the way to do it. Just kinda look for where you see those temperature shifts and things and try to, try to bring that out a little bit. A teacher told me one time if you want to make a painting look realistic, and they were specifically talking about landscapes, but it works with anything. Wherever you see a value shift in something. So where it goes from darker to lighter value just means the lightness or darkness of the image. Wherever you see. The value shift, like we see here on these mountains, there will also be a temperature shift because when something is in white or in shadow, the temperature of the color of the warmth or coolness of the color will change a little bit. So this is actually, it's very subtle touch, but it really makes a big difference to the overall piece. Nice work, everybody. In our next lesson, we're just going to continue on down by adding more detail into the distant trees. See you then. 9. Adding Detail to the Distant Trees: Hi everyone and welcome to lesson number seven. I'm Paul Richmond. And today we are going to go back into the distant trees and start adding some more detail. Let's get started. Now it's time to go back into the distant treeline and bring out more details. Really study all the different colors and tones that we see in that section of the image. So I'm going to zoom in on the image a bit so we can just focus on maybe just about half of them for now. Then we'll go over and do the other half later. This is not to say we have to paint every tree exactly like it is, but it just lets us pay attention to some details that we might not pick up on if we are zoomed out. So my general rule when I'm painting something like this is start the painting looking at the whole image so I don't get too consumed by the details too quickly. But then when I'm ready for detail, zoom in so I can really see what I'm doing. Now I'm using a smaller brush to that kinda comes to a little tip. This will be great for doing some of those tree trunks and branches and adding in some additional details. But I'm going to use a bigger brush for mixing the color. I want to mix again that blue that we used for those trees. And then we'll be able to create a few different shades of it. I'll put some work, my civilian blue on the palette. And let's put a touch of purple, green that was more than touch. You always get carried away. If you put too much of a color before you mix it, you could just wipe it up. Yeah, that's it. I just wanted about that much green. Beautiful green. Touch it this blue to remember, if you're still using the same palette that you've been using the whole time. If the color is starting to dry or if it has dried all the way, all you have to do is add some water to it to bring it back to life. More purple. That's a nice color. So the purple is what's helping it to feel like it's moving back in the distance. And then the green is kinda pulling it forward towards the green here. So this portrays are very stuck in the middle. But when you zoom in and look, you can see areas that feel a little more green in areas that feel a little more purple, even though overall it's blue. So I've got my color and I'll probably grab just some of the other pure colors too, is ongoing. But let's start with this. Don't need a whole lot of water on your brush, but you'll want a little. One of the first things I noticed is that you can really see the trunks little more than what I had painted. So I'm going back in and just doing going a little darker with those maybe some some branches. You don't want to do a lot. You don't want it to feel too forest or too cartoony or anything, but just adding in those little extra details. And there's a few that where you see just the line of the trunk and there's not leaves on that section, so just maybe some some branches that stick out. So I'm going to put that into how you can using this more pointy brush. You can really get in and do some nice detail work like that. If you're a detail person, we have reached the part of this course that you are going to love. I'm also going to go back and just make some of the sides of the tree, some of the, or the edges of the leaves break them up a little bit more. Interestingly, smaller, smaller little clumps. Just adds another layer of interests in detail makes it feel a little more precise. Maybe I'll do an area over here where I add a little bit more green to it because I think that can be nice sometimes to see how some colors shift within an area you don't like like I was saying before, you don't want it to stay to local color. You want to move the other colors through. Maybe even to do like some of the trunks are some of the areas with just the ultramarine blue or civilian blue. Just different, different whatever colors you want. All these little. Details now, making the edges of the leaves feel more accurate. I could spend forever doing this. We're in trouble now. These lessons are gonna go from 10 min each to 10 h. Really, I will stick to my time limit. I mean, that's the beauty I think, of watercolor in a way, it can feel finished at any stage. If you're painting something from life. If we were actually out here in this environment painting this scene, you'd have very limited time, probably limited resources because you wouldn't be able to carry a ton of stuff with you. You could make a very finished looking piece that might not be super detailed, but that captures the ambiance, that atmosphere, the overall feeling of the place. No matter how detailed your painting is, I think that's really what it's all about because we already have the photo, so we don't need you don't need that replicated Exactly. We just want to be able to have a paint, the painting with more expressive areas that still feels like that place and might even feel more like that place. Because sometimes photography can be a little bit limited. Especially if you're like me and you don't know a lot about it. I'm not a great photographer. I've learned enough to be able to take reference photos for myself if that's about it. But if you know e.g. that a lot of times skies in really bright areas tend to get washed out in your photos. Then you can do like what we did here in this painting and just go ahead and make it darker. Add in some color that you think was there. That's why it's also great to paint from your own references because you actually have been there and experienced that environment and you might remember details that are not captured by the photo. There's nothing wrong with painting from other people's photos or stock photos or something. But if you, if you can paint from your own, It's even better and you, it's more original to you, completely own that concept. You can paint from anything, especially if you're just practicing, find, find images that you like. One of the wonderful things I love about teaching painting to people, especially with just thinking about working with color, is that it really does change the way that you see the world after you have been working on this painting. If this is the first time that you've done something like this, you're going to notice so many more colors now in the world around you. And more and more subtle things because you've been forced to stop and really pay attention and look closely on this one. I've had so many of my students tell me, paul, you ruined me. Like what do you mean? Like they say I can't get anywhere on time now because I'm always having to stop and pull over my car so I can take in the colors of the sky or the sunset or whatever it may be. I don't think that means you're ruined. I think that means you are appreciating things more. That's a good thing. Because I wouldn't say that though. I don't want to feel like I've ruined somebody. So just take your time with this stage. I think when you're doing that initial first coat, it's good to go quick. So you don't overwork an area. You don't want to kill the papers as how it's commonly referred to you if you do too much too quickly. But now that we're in this detail phase, if, especially if you're using a small brush like IN, take your time and really see what you can bring out. Just go in one little section at a time. Bringing out touches of the tree branch here and there. I'm skipping though because that's kinda how it appears in the photo. And that makes it feel like maybe there's a clump of leaves that is overlapping that portion or something. It's not you don't want it to look too cookie cutter, I guess is the way to word there. Okay, we are going to continue working on this section of trees in our next lesson. So be sure to save these colors. We will come right back to this. Great job everyone. I hope you enjoyed that. And our next lesson, we are just going to continue on working on those trees. So I'll see you then. 10. Adding More Detail to the Distant Trees: Hi everyone and welcome to lesson number eight. I'm Paul Richmond. And in this lesson we are going to continue what we started previously, which is painting the details on the distant trees. So let's get started. Let's pick up right where we left off on these distant trees. I made it about a third of the way over. I'm going to see if I can make it all the way this time. Not making any promises. Alright, let's do it. Just getting my using the purple, cerulean blue, ultramarine blue, and hookers green. I just have them right here in the middle of my palette and grab a little bit from one section, grab a little bit from somewhere else. I am not somebody who keeps a super orderly palette, no matter what medium I'm working in, my palette tends to become a bit messy. I like that, Okay, That works for me. Some artists really need to have everything a little bit more organized. So if you are, if you are that person, clean off your palette and make it work, you. But I just like having these little spots where I can stick my brush and grab a little of this little event. And it comes out a little different each time. That works well for this stage. Because I don't want to just keep using the exact same color each time I want to get some variety in there. I love the layering aspect of watercolor. Really have every medium, every, every paint medium that I use. One of my favorite things to do is to lay or even when I do oil painting, you can build up interesting transparent layers and do glazing and all of the, all of these things. Each medium has its own specialities. But there's also a lot that you can carry over from one to the next. So if you enjoy this, then you might enjoy painting with other mediums to it's worth trying as much as you can to see what you like the best. And I will definitely be offering more classes in some of the other painting mediums like acrylic and oil and different things like that. So we can just try everything out together. See what you think, what you liked the best. If you're like me, may end up just liking them all. That's okay too. I'm not trying to do everyone the same either. I know I've said that before, but it's worth repeating just because when you are doing something where there's a lot of repetition like this, it's easy to just kinda fall into a brick laying mindset where you do the same marks and same treatment to each, each thing. That's why I find it very helpful to have the reference photo by beside me and to look at it frequently. Even though I'm not necessarily painting exactly what I see there, it just gives me inspiration for different ways of moving the brush, different kinds of shapes to make so that I don't just fall into that. Doing the same thing over and over again. You're treeline shouldn't look like a rubber stamp. Over and over again. Each one should be a little bit different. Now it makes it more fun for you to honestly, I hate doing anything that's too repetitive and it just feels very monotonous to me. So I like I like variety. In some of those trees are farther back than others. So some of them you see more detail and others you don't. So you can kinda decide that like maybe this one, it already looks a little bit lighter than the others, so I'm not going to go real dark with them and we're going to give this one more of the feeling like it's kinda farther back and maybe we won't even see any of the trunk on that. We'll just kinda do the edges of the leaves a little better and then call that one good. So it doesn't look exactly like the one next to it. I really do like to imagine when I'm painting something like this, that I am there. This is reality. I get drawn in by what I'm painting. It's a great feeling. It's like such an escape. Just get to spend this time being in this beautiful landscape and imagine what it's like walking back there, seeing all these, all these trees, the warm light hitting you. So I find it so relaxing and wonderful. Being an artist is the best thing in the world because you can just stay right in your room or your studio or wherever you're working and travel all over the place. I started teaching online a lot during COVID, where especially working with kids too. And that was one of the best things about being able to teach art to them during that time was they were all stuck at home. But during the, during the time that we were making art together, they could imagine they were anywhere. And it's not just for kids. Definitely play time for grownups too, to get to make art and you deserve that time. Everybody needs to have a chance to be creative. So much competing for our time and attention. Now, probably, probably has been like that always just in different ways. But I feel like the older I get, the harder it is to carve out time just to paint for fun selfishly. That's why I love doing these classes. Because I get to paint right along with you and it's a blast for me. Bringing these trees to life. We've not made any really drastic changes to them. We're just adding little refinement, making the shaping a little bit better. Adding some details of trunks and branches and that kind of thing. But it's not, it's not as you don't see as dramatic of a change in the image as you do when you're doing that base layer. I mean, because it's going from white paper to something. Now we're just going from, you know, a little bit of a blurry or landscape to a little bit more in-focus detailed landscape. But the essence of it is the same really. And I think that it's, for me, this is the stage of the process that is the most fun because I've not really having to worry about putting things in the right place or did I get the shape of that rate because everything is already established, it's there, it might be loose, but it's things are basically where they need to be. So now, now I just get to go in and make them look good. I like that. You can throw whatever colors you want a new to you. I think it's really a great thing with watercolor to use a lot of color. When, if, unless you're doing something that's really dark and moody, neutral, but if there's a lot of color in imaged and then go for it because the paint will work together so beautifully when you start layering and throwing in little touches of unexpected colors here and there. I love that. Over on this side I see a lot like kinda like a whole little row of trunks, tree trunks. You see that? Some of that in never noticed that before. It's amazing how when I first picked up this photo, I thought it was pretty simple. That is the trick of art. Things that you think are simple usually end up being not quite as simple as you imagined. But I mean, that's a good thing, really makes it much more interesting. It's also why I really like painting people to you. I do a lot of portraits. When I get to take the time to paint someone, especially if it's somebody that I know. I feel like I get to know them even better because I'm taking the time to really look closely. Same is true for painting these trees. I feel like I knew them a lot better now than I did when we started. Okay. I'm going to stop here and I still have just a little bit more to go on my background trees. So in the next video, we will finish that and then move on to the middle ground area. Good job. In our next lesson, we're going to move on up a little bit and paint some of the middle ground trees this time. So many trees. I'll see you then. 11. Adding More Detail to the Middleground Trees Part 1: Hi everyone and welcome to lesson number nine. In this lesson, we are going to begin painting the trees and the middle ground. So we'll be adding more detail and bringing that area forward in space. Let's get started finishing up this last little section of distant trees over here first. And then we'll move on to the green section in the middle. If you need longer with the background trees, take all the time you need. You can always put me on pause. And then just laughing because I imagined that there's some people in real life we would love to be able to do that to me. If you need more time though, pause, pause me and take all the time you need to get these trees feeling just right. I've gone in and kinda put a bunch of these vertical lines to create the trunks back there. Now I'm just kinda blending them up into a little bit of a darker tone so that they feel like there's leaves over top of them. Not just like a striped wall back there. Sort of break it up a little bit too. So even the lines don't feel perfect because there would be disruptions. There might be some that have lower leaves or different things that would make it not look perfect. Right? Now I've got this little guy back here. I talked to my paintings a lot. I love the, just the delicate little lines that you can get from using a tiny brush like this. Especially the contrast between that and then just the very fluid large brush strokes in the sky. I think that's such a great way of illustrating for you all the range of looks that you can get with watercolor. I, I really loved the loose aspect of it, but I also enjoy being able to go in and make really small subtle marks and details as well. And I have friends who are watercolor artists who do everything from very, very tight, detailed, photo realistic looking images. If you are that type of artist. Watercolor can do that for you too. Or everything from that to just very loose, fluid, organic looking abstract paintings. It's such a versatile medium. I think that's why it's great for people who are starting out with painting, especially because you can try a lot of different looks and see what, see what works for you. Alright? I'm feeling good about my distant trees and I am ready to move on to this middle area, the dark green part. Now, as we can see, that section is actually supposed to be quite a bit darker than the trees behind it. And currently it's the reverse of that. So I've got a little bit of work to do to get that green part to catch up with what's behind it, I'm going to start with a bigger brush. This is probably gonna be a couple of step process here. I want to start by just getting the value, the darkness and lightness where it's supposed to be. Then I'll go back with the small brush and do even more detail. Okay, so we've got this dark green in my brand of paint. It's called Hooker's green. So I'm going to take that, put that in the middle. But I also see some very cool tones within that section. So I'm going to grab some purple Still. That's good for, it's nice and dark. So it'll make it nice and shadowy, but it also cool it off a little bit. And I'm going to take grab some of my ultramarine blue. I'm just kinda lined up the three colors that I think I want for that section right here in the middle. And then I can kinda pull one into the other if I want to blend or I can use them isolated. So what I wanna do is go through this middle section and just start identifying the big chunks of space that need to be pushed back or pulled forward. I'm going to start with this purply green. And purple has red in it. Purple is red and blue. Red is the opposite of green so that it will, it will neutralize it a bit too, which is good, that's what we want. So starting out, I see that there's a section over here. On the left that has a darker patch of trees in the back and then kind of overlapping. That is a lighter section. So I'm gonna go in and paint that dark section in. I don't like to when I'm painting something like leaves, I don't like the edges to be super sharp, especially since this is sort of in a shadowy areas. So I'm just going to kind of soften the edge here. So it feels a little more gradual. Instead of a really cut outlook. I also want to show you kind of an interesting way of creating some texture. If you want that in your, in your piece. Let me just get, this section will come back with the small brush and do more. But just get it looking a little bit leafy. I'll show you a texture trick. This is pretty dark. This, this works really well too, when there's a lighter color under it, that dark tone is still wet overall. So if you wanted to try creating more texture, you can take a paper towel and kinda wanted up like this and just stamp it. I guess you could say it just kinda like lifts up the paint in certain spots and gives you a little bit more of an organic looking texture, which works really well for leaves and trees. Alright, now I'm going to keep working my way on over. So what I see next is that there's a kind of a division here. There's a section that appears like it kind of goes like this and comes down. I'm drawing with my brush right now. This is not a detail that I brought out with the pencil, but you can still think of it as drawing. To go in and add, divide things up into sections or to add more detail. Sometimes you do have to kind of orient yourself with wine to figure out what's happening. So that is okay to do. Section comes forward a little and actually divides. There's a little water that goes back behind it. So that's why I'm pulling that down. It's more shadowy at the bottom, gets a little bit lighter. Towards the top. It's always good to think about the light source whenever you're painting something realistic, the light source is what creates all of those highlights and shadows. And if you are aware of that and thinking about where the light is coming from, then you can really make your painting feel very dimensional. Right now there's another row here. So the darkest tones that I'm seeing are the farthest back in this section and maybe a little bit bluer. I'm gonna go a little bit bluer with it so that it'll kinda feel like it's going further back in space. Cooling things down or graying than out tends to make things recede into the background and see how we're just, it was just a solid green clump, but now already it's starting to break up into different sections, which is just what we want. You can put as many layers as you, as you would like. Just have fun with it. This is where it's starting to really feel layered and dimensional. Now if you look at just that part C with all the different things that we've done it, it almost feels like you could just walk right back into that. That would be fun. I do want to go here. We're going to stop here and then pick up where we left off in the next lesson and continue going. Yay, good job everyone. Alright, in our next lesson, we are just going to keep on, keeping on with those middle ground trees. So I'll see you then. 12. Adding More Detail to the Middleground Trees Part 2: Hi everyone and welcome to lesson number ten. In this lesson, we are going to continue painting on the middle ground trees. So let's get started. Alright, friends, we are back in the weeds literally and figuratively. Figuratively because that's a good way to describe what you're doing when you are getting into the little tiny details of a painting. Alright, so I was working on this section right here and I kind of stopped right, right at that point. So I'm going to pick up where I left off. I've got my purple, my ultramarine blue, and my green. I'm just grabbing different combinations of those each time. Just kinda based on what I'm, what I see in the image. And I'm going to start by doing the, there's a pretty dark shadow right at the bottom here. This little clump. Then there's just like a little row or a little? Little yeah. I guess a row would be the right word, but a little row along the top of it that is actually a lighter, warmer green, almost like the green that I already have there. So we'll just let it blend up into that and see how that looks. That's because it's shaped so that it's, that section is turning a little bit more towards the light. We talked last time about light source, that's a big consideration. And realistic paintings. Oh, it's looking so cool. Love it. That darkness really goes all the way across. I'm going to go ahead and do that. And I'm just using water along the edge so that it doesn't end. No, the shadows into sharply. I think that just because it's such a busy area with lots of interesting textures and things. You don't want it to look cut out, I guess, too sharp. Always go back and do more paper towel textures to or try different, try it, try different things to stamp into the paint. One thing that can be fun is to use like plastic wrap, like Saran wrap and crinkle that up. That'll create a very different kind of texture. There's all kinds of different ways to get different textures with watercolor. Could use a sponge, like a natural or real sponge as opposed to a fake when you do it. I mean though. Alright, going back in and getting this kinda, this area, I love taking the time to just really study what is going on in each of these sections and try to bring it out and with paint. And it might not happen all at once. You might need several layers, several more layers than this, even to get it where you like. I'm feeling pretty good about where mine is at, but that doesn't mean that it couldn't you couldn't take it farther, go do more. As long as you are not overworking the paper, you can add several more layers to this at least. So don't try to accomplish everything at once and don't worry if it doesn't look great, write-off right out of the bat because it might, might just need a little bit more work. Alright, I'm gonna do a little bit more paper towel texture in that section. So crinkle it up, stamp it like that. It just kinda makes it look a little less predictable, little, little less controlled, I think more organic texture. There are some big trees here. Some of that I'll come back with the smaller brush to do some more detail work on those. But let me go ahead and do a little bit. Now, since this brushes, one of those kinda flat brushes, if you turn it on the side, it's good for making lines. Also get some nice, nice lines with them. Then just kind of break it up into leaves. I'm going right over top of the lines that I just drew because it will you still see them, but it also just kinda blends them out or blurry is the amount a little bit so it doesn't look too, too lining. And try to leave some negative spaces. You don't want to totally cover up everything. Leave little openings because there's lots of lots of that and that allows the light to come through the trees more to, so they don't feel so heavy. I think it just makes more interesting shapes. Also. Some of these colors that we're getting by doing this are just not colors that you could achieve with only one layer because it requires that buildup of transparency of one color showing through to the other. I think in general, color is one of those things that people really struggle with when they're first starting to paint. I can't get it to look like the color that it's supposed to be. What am I doing wrong? It might just be that you need more layers and you put one layer down. And then you can analyze it. Ask yourself, what, what is working about this and also what isn't working? What do I need to change? Is it to warm, is it to cool? Is it to neutral? Is it too bright? Then just do another layer on top that is emphasizing the opposite of whatever is not working about that color. If that makes sense. So basically another layer to kinda push it in the right direction and see how, now that these trees are getting darker, they are pulling forward. They feel again like they are in front of those distant trees. Usually in a, in a landscape, you will see more dramatic contrast as elements get closer to us. So things are a little bit softer and more subdued in the back. Then as it gets closer and closer to the foreground, you see darker colors. You see more contrast of value, more contrast of color. And also you see more detail. We implied some of the trunks and things, but in this section I'm really trying to bring out more of that detail so they feel closer to us. It's really helpful if you just stop and think about the depth of the image and what, what is, what is in the foreground, what is in the background? How can you make each of those things really inhabit the space that they're in. There. A lot of big concepts. It takes awhile. I've been painting a long time. So a lot of this is second nature to me, but there are still many times when I go and sit down to paint where I feel like I have no idea what I'm doing. Did I do I might just like a fraud. Do I even know how to paint? That's the thing is though. That's so normal. Every artists that I know feels that way sometimes. And it's actually a good thing because it keeps you on your toes and it keeps painting from ever becoming boring. You. Every new painting has something new to teach you. If you're open to learning and you don't want to get into a rut creatively. So I don't mind that feeling now because I know I will work through it and I will figure out whatever that obstacle is and then I'll, I'll learn from them. Fail. Failing is just as valuable, maybe even more valuable to an artist. Succeeding. It was clump of trees is starting to come together. We're going to stop here and pick up on this section in our next lesson. Awesome work. These trees are taking a while. We still have more to go in our next video lesson. So I will see you then. 13. Adding More Detail to the Middleground Trees Part 3: Hi everyone and welcome to lesson number 11. In this lesson, we're going to finish working on that middle ground area with all of the trees. So let's get started. Alright, back to those trees again. We are going to finish up this middle ground section, I think in this lesson, just going right back into this big clump of trees here and continuing to add some more trunks, some more kind of implied leaves, clumps of leaves. You're not really painting individual leaves. Your painting kinda like the little clusters of leaves. So I guess is a good way to think about it. If the tree we're really close, really big in the foreground, then you might be painting it individually leaves. You always want to think about how far away is something from me and how much detail would my I be able to see? And if you paint more detail than you would be able to see, it's not going to feel like it's in that area of space that you want it. Then see how fun the layering is, even where I've already gone in and put some dark I'm going in and doing more, breaking up the, this, this line feels too straight across. So I'm gonna go in and kinda make it a little bit more broken up. Different sizes, different. Anything that seems too predictable? Like to just mess it up a little. That's looking pretty good to me. All right. Over here now, again, I'm using my purple, my ultramarine blue, and my green. And you feel free to throw in whatever colors you want. If you have different colors that you want to try in there, go for it. The more the better I think. And try different ways of holding your brush too. I think when I'm painting leaves like this, e.g. you see how I'm, I'm always kinda turning my brush in different directions. That's one way to create some interesting texture that's not all going the same direction. Just kinda keep your brush on the move. All right, Now, I want to do one more, a little paper towel dab in that part, so scrunch it up. There we go. Oh, I like that. Sometimes I hold my breath when I'm doing that because you don't know if it's going to look good or terrible when you pull it up. But in that case, I think that was good. Now I want to take my small brush. Just go back in and add a few more little details throughout this section. Doesn't need too much. I think it's looking pretty good, but I just want to refine it, make it feel as resolved or maybe even a little more resolved. The nut trees that are behind them so that they will come forward. See how I'm using the point of the brush. I'm pointing it, I pointed outward so that the tips of the branches are the clusters of leaves will, will end in the most smallest point in the thicker part will be in towards the interior of the tree. Make that let the brush do the work for you. Another thing that you can do, I mean, I can't right now because I have a taped down to hold it in place for you guys. But you could take your paper and just turn it if there's a different angle that would make it easier for your brush to get into certain parts, um, that is allowed. I'm gonna pull a few branches out and kinda do like what we did in the back. I think that looks cool. Anything that just adds those little touches of detail to make it more interesting. I think it's really as it could be. A little bit of that over on the left. One question that people ask a lot is how do you know when a section is done? If anybody ever finds out the answer to that question, please let me know. Because I don't think there is a very clear answer that works all the time to that question. You just have to feel it out and you don't even have to think of it as done, done. You just have to think of it as have I gotten it to a point where I feel like I can stop working on this section for now. Then you can always come back to it later after you do more work elsewhere on the painting. I think that's one of the wonderful and also challenging aspects of painting, is that everything is so relative. I mean, did you notice how different the sky and the mountains looked when there was nothing else on the paper. If when you were just comparing it to the white of the paper versus how it looks now with color everywhere it changes so much. So I think sometimes we can get really obsessive about working on a certain area of a painting before we even have enough information on the paper to know if what we're doing is helping it or hurting it really. So I try to encourage people to just get things on there first and then build everything up at the same speed. You know, get, get each layer, each section to a point where it's it feels like it is resolved as much as everything around it. And then you can always decide to go back in and take everything farther. Or you might decide, it's good, That's all it needs, it's done. But definitely if you find yourself getting hung up in a particular area and just continually adding more pain and it's still wet and it's just believe me, I've been down this road so I can tell you that's not going to end well, it's always better to stop. Let it dry, move on to a different area for awhile. Clear your head. But kinda thing, and get away from your artwork. As often as you can. These lessons are short enough that by the time we reached the end of each video lesson, it's a great chance for you to just step away from the painting for a bit, then come back to it with a fresh perspective. I wanted to just do some of these little vertical lines here. Break that up a little bit. Starting to look interesting. How are your painting? It's coming. I hope they are making you happy too. I definitely would love to see them. So one of my favorite things about teaching, actually especially doing a project like this. However, many people end up making this painting along with me. They're going to be that many different variations because everybody sees things differently and picks up on different things. Everybody has their own way of mark-making. That's totally unique. So I love seeing what you create, please share it with me. One thing that I've noticed that I wanted to do at the very, the very final touch for this lesson. If you look in the photo, there's a little, little strip right here in that blue tree line where you see it almost feels like it's a hand up the ground or maybe there's more water, there is something but it gets a little bit lighter. This is like a line right across. You see that? I want to show you how you can do that if you've already painted the area and it's darker than you want it to be. Remember, we can't really use white with watercolors, so we can't just go in and paint it lighter. But what you can do is take a clean brush, get it wet, and then go in and just very gently lift up the paint. You see how I'm being very general. If you scrub with it too much, you're going to hurt the paper. But if you are very gentle with it like that and then just pad it with the paper towel. Look at how you can lift up the paint and the paper is not disturbed or damaged at all because I'm not I'm not pressing hard. I'm letting the soft bristles do the work for me and clean water for each stroke. And you can get the paint to come right up if you want it to. Then you get that nice little added touch of that little bit of light. But it helps to divide the sections, but it also just makes it feel like there's more of the water at the surface back there is a good way if you ever need to pull out highlights on something or just if you get paint somewhere where you don't want it, you can still earn it dries, you can still recover that. I see it a little bit over here. More here, I guess. And I see it a little bit over here. Actually, it looks like it has a little bit of a warm tone to it. But what I'm gonna do for now is just let that area dry. And then when we come back in the next lesson, I'll do a little bit of painting that warm tone in there. Alright, there we go. Awesome job, everyone. All right, We are ready to move on to the water next time, and I'm very excited about that. I think it's probably my favorite part. I'll see you then. 14. Adding More Detail to the Water Part 1: Hi everyone and welcome to lesson number 12. I'm Paul Richmond. And in this lesson we are going to start working on detail in the water. So ripples, reflections, all of that fun stuff. Let's get started. Okay, This is coming along. Great. Let's go back very quickly. Put a little bit of a, just a touch of a warm tone back there in that patch of land that we carved out at the end of the last lesson. I'm going to take a little bit of orange, red, and a little bit of purple so it doesn't get too bright. Mix it all together. There we go. Something like that should look kind of like a brownie. I keep saying that your brown it's brown, not brown. Bottled water, a little bit of paint. Just go in and add little tinge of that to that section. It'll push it right back. Here we go. Oh yeah, that's nice. Just kinda connects with the warm tones in the sky a little bit because we're in the middle of very cool area here. But it just that little touch of warm makes a difference. The other thing I wanted to do really quick, I noticed some of the negative spaces in this tree and I really kinda like those. So I'm going to just use water on my brush and just lift out a few spots like that. A couple more. And then I'll go back and hit those areas with the civilian blues. So it'll feel like we're seeing through to the distant trees in those openings. So we're kind of working backwards like S, but it'll just open them up a little more, I think. So. Got the, got the light spots now I'm going to take my cerulean blue. Just come and fill in those sections. They're just makes the trees feel a little less solid, little more like, you know, they have open spots and we can see through to what's behind that. Okay. Now, I'm ready to move down into the water and that's going to take us a little while. We're going to have some fun with that. I'm going to switch to my medium-sized brush here. And the first thing I wanna do is go in and get some of the darker tones where I see them in the water. If you kinda look at that whole big section of the water, There's a lot going on there. And don't get overwhelmed or think that you have to paint it all at once. What I like to do is just break things down into simple steps so that, you know, you can really paint anything. So to start with, I want to create that shadow color that I see back here because there is the shadow of all of the land and trees and stuff that makes the water a bit darker over here, over here. And then there are just some dark streaks that show up throughout. I'm still not worrying about the rocks and I'm not worrying about this clump of grass over here. I think I wanted to use my, I'm going to take some of my ultramarine blue. It's hard. It's dried but I can re-wet it, bring it right back to life. And some green. Maybe a touch of purple. Seems to be my favorite color. Oh, that was more than a touch. Alright, fine. Be that way. More blue, more green. There we go. Maybe even some cerulean. I'm just throwing everything in there now. We're green. There's no precise formula and there's many colors in that water, so just get something that feels right to you. I think I see this as kind of a close match to some of the shadow tones that I see, the green, blue, purple combo. And I'll start off right back here by the land because they know that that's going to be dark and I can even let the brush strokes can go up into the land a little bit so that it will just kinda connect it right there with that water. I'm going back to very horizontal brushstrokes. That's how I paint water, at least in this case. That's how the water is moving. Taking advantage of this square or rectangular tipped brush so that it's kinda doing all the hard work for me. I'm just moving it back and forth. Let's start to get some of those dark tones. See how just getting, just getting even that little bit of dark in the water right here. Below the land. The water starts to feel so much more believable and it feels like it's coming up right to the bank here. There's a lot of dark shadows over on this side. I'm going to go ahead and put some of those in. As you're doing those lines, you want to try to create some variety in your stroke. So you see how some of the ones that I'm doing are very thin. Some are thick. Lot of them, even like change as they move along. So it might start off them like this and then I'll press more with the brush and have let it get thicker. So it's all about just creating that variety. You definitely want that in the water. It will make it feel more like it's moving. It'll bring just kinda of a lot of great energy to that section. Just wherever I see the darkest ripples, that's where I'm putting this color. I'm not totally covering up. You can see through and around the strokes to the color that was there before. So this is another example of using layering to your advantage. Just kind of grab different colors each time, even submit it. It's a nice variety to it. Gets pretty dark in places. I noticed that down here in this bottom right corner, some of the horizontal lines take a little bit more of a diagonal turn, they start to aim up this way. Just a little must be because of the way the water is moving. So I'm going to paint that way. It's kind of amazing how all it takes is just a few, few strokes and you can completely change the way that we perceive that water to be. Moving on the page. There are some, as we get closer to the foreground, there are also some smaller ones. We see a lot more, lot more interesting details. So some dark when some light ones in the back, They all just kinda like go together, become very horizontal and straight B. But in the foreground, we see a lot more individual, different colors, different sizes, different shapes. So it does help to think about the depth of your image when you're painting what is close to us, what is far away? I'm not going to worry about painting too much down here because I know that will be covered up. Do you want to bring out a little bit more this kind of like this green dark green section up here. The water overall is pretty dark, so I'm going to get that in. Starting to come to life. I'm excited. Alright, but that brings us to a good stopping point for now. And we'll pick up with the water again in our next lesson. Nice job everyone. In our next lesson we're going to continue working in the water. So put on your flippers and let's go for it die. I'll see you then. 15. Adding More Detail to the Water Part 2: Hi everyone and welcome to lesson number 13. Today we're diving back into the water, so let's get started. Okay, Let's get right back into that water. I'm just going to jump in actually first I need to put out a little more paint. I'm going to grab some more cerulean blue because I'm getting low on that. Anything else? Maybe a little more ultramarine also. And I'm going to grab one of their color. If you have it, you might want to put this out to you and that is burnt sienna. It's kind of an orangey brown color that I think might be good to add into just a few of the ripples because it feels like a more shadowy version of the orange in the sky. It's kinda like a rust colored, but when you thin it down, it will work really well for that. Alright, so in this lesson we're going to finish up making all the ripples and reflections and things in the water so that next time we can go in and add the rocks. And then in the final video we'll do the grass. I can't believe we're almost already to the end. That's crazy. Alright, so get busy and take some of my cerulean blue first and maybe neutralize it a smudge with a touch of the burnt sienna. Oh, there we go. That's pretty alright. I'm going to do more of the serene blue, burnt sienna. Just takes the edge off of it a little bit. Alright, now I'm gonna go back because I noticed that I wanted to just kinda get a little bit more blue and kind of even out some of these areas over here. So I'm going to just very lightly kinda do a wash of color. Just pull some of these sections together, get a little bit more of a shadowy feel. Then I'm going to pull that right through into the are more orange area because if you look in the photo there's a lot of ripples, very subtle ripples that sorted just break up that section. It doesn't feel quite as big and bright as it does in my paintings. So now my sky is brighter than the one in the photo. So I do want to take that into consideration, but I still think I can go a little bit darker here. And also using my burnt sienna, maybe with a touch of purple to tone it down. I'll do some warm ripples as well. Especially like right right in here. Oh yeah, I like that. Because this area is more in the shadow of this clump of trees and lands, so it might still be warm because of the light from the sky, but we can still go darker. It can be dark, dark, and warm. Just take your time. Remember, you want to try to not go too dark, too quick. You want to cover a whole section and regret it. So that's why I'm just building up to these dark tones, I guess is a good way to describe it. I'm not jumping right to super dark, I'm just taking my time. You can see how it's starting to pull together just by having some more variety of tones in there. More sections of ripples. It's really activating that space in a beautiful way. I think painting water is really fun because especially if it's reflecting what we see elsewhere in the image, It's kind of like you get to paint. You get to paint it twice. But the reflected part is so much more abstract. It's really freeing, especially with watercolor because my gosh, such a great medium for being loose and letting the paint kinda go where it wants to go anyway, would be a very good therapeutic activity for somebody who is very needs to have everything in control all the time. Because sometimes I feel like the best watercolor paintings or when you just let go of that and let the paint do its thing. I'm trying to do some bigger brush strokes in there too. Not just all the super skinny ones because there are so many different sizes and shapes of ripples that I see in this image. So variety, variety, especially as it comes closer to us, we're going to see more. Let me do a little more of the orange and the purple warm-up. Few spots in there too. That's pretty I like that contrast between the really warm tones that we're getting from the sky. And then all the beautiful blues and purples and the cool greens. Nice, nice contrast. It's very eye-catching, very pleasing to the eye. We're working both sides of the color wheel in this one. Just pulling some cerulean blue through the two sides so that it's really clear that we're getting the reflection of that mountain in there. Some little mine. You can experiment with different sizes of brushes for this. I, when I'm doing a lot of lines like Ripley lines like this, I actually prefer a little bit bigger brush rather than the pointy one. I liked the pointing when for doing little lines and little details, but when I need to make a lot of very fluid lines for me, it's easier to use the bigger brush. I don't know why. So just experiment if this is all new to you, try out all the, all the brushes, all the, all the options. Because every artist is different in certain things will work for you that don't work for other people. I love painting water. I think you can just be so free. And I think it's because I really like wine. And this is a way to really bring wine as an element into your painting just to do all these ripples and make them all different. Looking great. I hope you're enjoying yours as well. A few more little accents of that really, I want it to feel like the really warm tones, the real orangey color is farther back here. Because you have to think, what we're painting in the water is a mirror image of this. So the brightest tone will be the closest, and then it will start to go that way only as it goes down. It's always a good idea to have some differences when you're painting a big stretch of space like this, you don't want all the same colors and shapes back here that you have here that flattens it out. But if you can put some variety into it, making it so that there's different colors, different, different types of strokes in the distance than in the front. That will create more depth in the image. I think depth is very important in a landscape, especially. You want to, you want the viewer to feel like they could just walk right into it or swim into his or whatever the case may be. All right. I'm feeling pretty good about this water. I'm excited to get the rocks in the grass and all of our little finishing touches. So that's a good stopping point for now. Awesome job everyone. Okay, so our water is good to go. In our next lesson, we are going to start adding some rocks. I'll see you then. 16. Painting the Rocks: Hi everyone and welcome to lesson number 14. I'm Paul Richmond and I cannot believe we're already here. This has gone by way too fast. Alright, In today's video, we are going to add some rocks in the water and it's going to be a lot of fun. So let's get started. It's rough time. I am going to put out some colors that I think will be good for the rocks. So take a minute and study those on your screen and see what colors you see in there. Your brain will probably be telling you that they are gray. And there is quite a bit of gray in them, but there's also other colors. So I want you to look to see what you see. I see blues. I'm putting some ultramarine. And I see some cerulean, little purple, little bit everything. Then took to neutralize those. You need a little bit of the opposite of some of them. So I'm going to jump across and grab maybe a little bit of this burnt sienna, which is a nice warm brownish color. And using that in combination with those will help to grade them down a bit. Maybe a little read to you. Why not? Okay, so I'm going to start with a smaller brush and do some of the distant rocks first and then work my way toward the front where we have some bigger ones. And that's another tricky way of introducing more depth into your image just by allowing the rocks to get bigger as they come closer to us, it will reinforce that idea of the space. So that's always a good thing. So I'm taking some of my ultramarine blue, mixing a little of the burnt sienna with it and see how you get this kinda nice, really rich gray color that you can take more towards the cool or more towards the warm, depending what you mix in with it. I'll just start back here where I see little clumps of rocks. I tried to do them with just a couple of brush strokes. You don't need a law, just getting the essence of them in there. We don't see a lot of details in those distant rocks. Depending on the way that they are turned. Some of them are lighter than others. Some of them have more blue than others. So just like when we were painting the trees or anything, It's good to have variety, so don't just make them all the same. Have some mute. I see some over here that have kinda like a dark edge, but then there's a highlight on top. What I'll do for that is make the dark base of it first. While I'm at it, I'll just go ahead and make a few. Then. Clean off my brush. Maybe get a lighter color, maybe a blue, cerulean blue. And then come in and do the top of the rock lighter. Now see how it has a highlight side and a shadow side and it becomes so much more dimensional with very little work. Just that's how I like it. Make things as easy on yourself if you can. Why not? Okay. These are looking good. Some kind of overlap the land a little bit. Just the more variety you can get in there, the better. I love the way that they break up the the water. I think it just adds a nice little moments to pause. And that's kinda how I think about things in a painting, to be honest with you, when I'm painting something realistic like this, of course you want it to look like whatever it's supposed to be. But ultimately, you want the painting to work well as a painting. And you should be able to have, think about all the elements that make an abstract painting good, which are the way that the colors move through it, the way your eye travels around the shaping, all of that. All of these things should still apply in a realistic painting too. So even though these are rocks, they're also just kinda like little visual beats that helped to break up the very directional movement of that water and create a lot more interests for the viewer. Little, little interesting things to see along the way. I do always try to think about when I'm painting a landscape, how is the viewer traveling through this? What do they see first? Where do their eyes go and where did they go next? And you actually can control that as the artist, you get to decide that for people, wherever you put the most contrast of color, a value, that's where their eyes will go first. And then where do you, where you lead them from there is completely up to you with the directional lines, elements that kinda catch their eye next and helped to lead them through the piece. Thought to think about, but it's also just a very intuitive thing. It doesn't have to all be. You don't have to sit down and write out a plan. Uses start, but just think about that as you're going. Where, where's the, where's the focal point of my painting? Where do I want people to look? I want to pull people right up to this middle part here. So all of these lines to help you to kind of zigzag through the piece. I think that's, that's what I'm thinking about with this one. A good painting. Composition trick is to, you want to lead people's eyes through the piece and then have something to pull them back so that you're not just shooting their attention off to the next painting. You want them to want to stay and look at yours. So you keep elements that kinda keep moving there. I threw out, I went out and found quite a tangent there. But hey, we're just painting rocks, so we're talking about something. You know me, I can't ever shut up. All right, That's good. We're about ready to move into the foreground and do that really big one. I just wanted to get all these little guys in the back done first. You can put as many rocks as you want. They don't all have to match the photo or my painting. Them wherever you feel like just like nice little accents that kinda make it, they just break up that water almost feels like little sparkles, almost a little, little points of interest along the way. Then one thing that I am doing that you might have noticed, but I should say that so that you really understand. I am going around some of them and putting little ripples in the water just so that it feels like the water is moving around. The rocks are also maybe like there's a shadow of the rock in the water. It will feel that way. It just feels a little bit more like it really is sitting there and not hovering. Little lines, little ripples, little shadows, just anything underneath the rocks to anchor them in place. Alright. Big foreground rock time, woohoo. It's about right. I don't wanna, I don't want it dead center. In the photo. It's a little bit to the right. I might move it even a little more. Take your artistic license however you want. Now, since this one is big, I'm starting off painting it a lighter, bluey gray color, just like we've done with all the other sections. I'm going to do the lighter color first. And then I'll go back and add darker shadows and make it more three-dimensional. Since this rock is closer to us, we're going to see a lot more detail on it. So just get it on there first. Then get your darker color. I'm using my blue and purple with a little bit of brown to neutralize it. And come in and go, I start from the bottom because I know that's where a dark shadow should be. Painting rocks is all about really thinking about the different planes of the surface. You don't, you don't want to paint it all the same when it's up close like that. You went to the light will affect each little section differently. So just pull out some shadows and highlights however you want it to be shaped as fine. But I always just encourage people when they're painting rocks to really think about and emphasize the sections, the plains of like almost like you're sculpting it. And then we will see a little bit more of the ripples and shadow with this one because it's a close. I'll even do some smaller ripples that move away from it like that. See how that just really sets it down in there. Now. One more little rock right here. Maybe that one's just peeking up just a little. Alright, we have rocks. All right, great job everyone. And our next lesson, which is also the last lesson, we're going to add the foreground little clump of grass. You will sign your work and then we will take off the tape. See you then. 17. Finishing Touches: Hi everyone and welcome to lesson number 15. I'm Paul Richmond, and today we are putting our finishing touches on this piece will add the clump of grass in the foreground. You'll sign your name and then we'll take off the tape and you'll have a beautiful finished watercolor painting. Let's do this. All right, Last but not least, we're going to paint this little clump of grasses here up in the front. And then we'll sign it and then take off the tape. The best part. Okay, I'm going to use the same kind of medium-sized brush that I've been using for a lot of a lot of things and I might use a smaller when even to do some of the grasses, but we'll get it started with this. And I want to use my green, dark green. I'm re-wetting that to bring it back to life. We go then grab a little blue also and just bring it over here so we can cool it down if we need to do a little purple to darken it if we need to. Okay. Got my colors. So to start with, just like anything with watercolor, you know, you don't wanna go too dark at first. You want to build up to it. So I'm going to thin it down a little bit and just come in and, and kinda get the whole main section of it first. It's more solid. Then start laying in dislike like some really delicate lines. You know what, I'm going to switch to my Queenie brush because I think that will work better for this. Okay? I think the key to making really elegant lines is to go fast. If you go real slow, they start to get shaky. And you want to try to make it so that they're thicker on the inside and then get thinner towards the tip. Just really look at the direction that they're falling, even the ones that are inside of the clump, it's coming toward us. You can still throw some brush strokes in there to almost just try to make some really delicate elegant lines. That's what I would go for almost like calligraphy. And let them overlap each other and try to get as much variety as you can. Notice how in the photo they don't all go the same direction. Some, some angled down really far, some go up. So variety is the key here. If you're building up from light to dark, the way that you create some light winds on the inside is actually by going around in painting the shadows beside them. So you see how over here It's starting to look like there's some light, lighter grasses that are coming out, but it looks like that just because I'm going around and making the shadows beside those sections. So it's painting in watercolor a lot of times requires a little bit of thinking in reverse. But this is your 15th lesson. You are a watercolor Pro by now, so you can handle this. I do really hope that you have enjoyed this course and you feel a little more comfortable working with watercolor now that you will continue using it and trying it with all kinds of different subject matter. It's a wonderful medium. It's great for so many different things. There's so many different ways to work with it. I would also encourage you to experiment with watercolor pencils. If you enjoyed this, that you can color it with these colored pencils. But then when you run a wet brush over it, it, it turns into paint. Basically, it's like magic before your eyes. And it's watercolor, but just in a pencil for him. So there are all kinds of different tools and ways of using the medium that we didn't get to in this class. We'll have to do some more classes because there's just so much to cover with all this. There's also a great tool called brisket, which is just a little, little jar of this liquid. And it's used for when you want to maintain highlights like say, these little negative spaces and the trees, you paint the frisk get onto those spaces and it dries and hardens kinda like rubber cement almost is what I think it looks like. And then you paint everything and it protects those spots. So then when you go back, you peel off the brisket and then it's still preserve the white of the paper there so you can you can still paint it another color if you want, or maybe you want it to be pure white. That's a fun tool. They make these wonderful paint brushes now that are great for when you're on the go. You actually can load the water in the handle of the brush. And then you just squeeze the side of the brush and it comes out through the bristles. I use that on our recent I went on a cruise not long ago and I wanted to do a lot of little watercolor paintings while I was on the trip. But I want to have to haul a bunch of supplies. So I got those water loaded brushes and it was wonderful. So go visit your local art store or look online and get yourself some more toys if you've been enjoying this. I'm going to use that trick of using the water and just lifting up a couple here to get some nice oh, yeah. Nice little highlight. A few. All right, my friends, we are just about there. Cheese. This went so fast. We need to do this again. And we will, we will be making lots of videos. I already have quite a few out there. So be sure to check those out too, if you've enjoyed working with me in this lesson, I love thinking that there are so many people out there in the world who are making art along with me and learning, learning new skills and techniques as you go. Then take that information and apply it however you want in your style. That's the main thing. Your artwork doesn't need to look like mine. It should look like however you want your art to look. Alright, we have a finished piece. So now the final step, of course, artist has to sign their work. People don't like that doing that sometimes, but it is something that if you become decided to make this a career, even just on the side, side hustle of selling your work. I will tell you, collectors really do look for that signature. I use a little logo that I came up with, just with my initials, so that's how I signed mine. That works just fine. As long as you have something, then I always sign my full name on the back. P. Look like stencil letters. If you don't have a fancy artist's signature, if they get out for yourself yet, That's okay. Just just write your name or sign it. However you would sign it. You could do it with a brush. But if you're not comfortable with that, as long as the area is dry, you could do it with a pencil as well. Then of course, my, I have to make it fancy. Some little flourishes. I've done this so many times I could do this in my sleep. There we go. Just pad it a little bit so it doesn't stand out too, too much. There we go. I like that better. Alright, we've made it this far. Now it's time for the most satisfying part of all, the removal of the tape. Are you ready? Now, the one thing I want to caution you about with this part is be very gentle. You don't want to tear the paper. So just as eager as I am to see that nice white border, I'm going to take my time and go very slow and pull away from the painting. Look at that. All right. Got one side done. I looked for where the tape is overlapping so I can pull off the top layer of tape first. Top looks good. Next, ery slow and gentle. Tear your paper at this stage that would be tragic. One more to go. I always hold my breath during this part. That's not a good thing to teach you bill, that you should, you should breathe. Breathing is good. 18. Closing Thoughts: Alright, nice work everyone. It has been so much fun painting with you through this series of lessons. I have absolutely loved it and I hope you have too. I hope you learned some new techniques. I really, really hope that you will continue painting. This is just the starting point for you. You can use watercolor to paint just about anything that you want. And I really hope that you will continue if you enjoyed this course, I hope you'll write me a review and follow me and take some more of my classes because I absolutely love knowing that there's so many of you out there making art right along with me. Keep painting, keep being creative. And I'll see you next time. Bye everyone.