Learn to Paint Simple and Calming Winter Scenes with Only 2 Colours

1. Introduction: Hi, everyone. My name is Nia, and I'm so excited to share this class with you today, where I'll be painting four simple winter landscapes using only two colors with the addition of white, if you would like, and I'll also include a fun special watercolor effect for one of them. We'll be using the full potential of watercolors and the free and diverse nature of this medium. This class is suited for all levels, including beginners, and I will be painting from the simplest composition to the more complex respectively. But if you ever feel inclined to add any more or adjust things along the way, you're very welcome to do so. Before we begin to paint, I'm going to do a quick rundown of the supplies, including things like swatching the colors, what kind of colors you can create with only these two. And then I'm going to take you to a quick run through of the techniques, which is the wet on wet and the wet on dry techniques, which we'll be using for all of these paintings. But if you're a true beginner and you would like to get a better grasp of these two techniques, I do have a dedicated class on this, which is linked in the description, by the way, it's called watercolor basics predict the flow of watercolors. You can take this beforehand if you want to get a better grasp of the techniques before moving on to this class. But of course, this class is designed to take as is as well, which is why I've added this quick run through of the techniques as well. With these types of loose paintings, it does require a few different brushes for you to use, and sometimes it can be a little bit complex to understand if you're new to this. So I have a dedicated lesson in this class where I'll go through why I've chosen certain brushes for specific usage. In this class, I've included four landscape compositions. Feel free to paint along to this side by side or even create your own compositions together using the techniques that I've shared with you today. Now, as for the final composition, I will be tackling it a little bit differently. I will be sketching the outline as guide because the composition is a little bit more complex. But if you feel comfortable painting freehand after watching the demonstration, you can do that. Or if you don't want to draw at all, but you the outline, I'll have it available for download in the projects and resources section, so you can trace it straight onto your watercolor paper without having to bother with the spacing and things like that. Lastly, as a disclaimer, I tend to cut through parts of the footage if my hand is either inactive or off the camera. Sometimes I like to also speed things along if it's just for a quick demonstration purposes without having you to paint with me side by side. So I would recommend for all students to just understand the pacing of my videos first by just watching a quick run through of it. And when you are ready to paint along, please pause in between each step, and you can move it along once you're ready to move on to the next step. This way, you can paint at your own speeds without ever feeling rushed. I guess that's it for the disclaimer, if this sounds like a class you'd be interested in taking. I'll see you in the next lesson, and let's begin. 2. Supplies: In this lesson, I'm going to go through all the supplies that you need for this class. Now, let's start with the paper I'm going to use. I'll be using loose sheets of paper, but it came from this sketchbook. This is by Arches, and it's a cold press 300 GSM and the size is 23 centimeters by 31 centimeters. For the final painting, I'm going to divide it up into four sections, and it's just cut up vertically and horizontally. So it comes down to this size and for one single sheet, I can make four separate paintings. For demonstration purposes, I've cut mine out, but you can also paint it like this. I just use washi tape to separate the paintings and mask off the edges. Also going to use some scrap paper. You can just use a single sheet, but since I had cutouts, I'm just going to use these cutouts. This is for trials if you want to try out certain techniques, I just used it to show you my brush and the type of textures I can create with the brushes and also the techniques. If you're advanced enough and you don't need to do this, you don't need the scrap bit of paper. But if you want to practice, please use the same type of paper, so it will react the same way to your paintings. Next for the colors, I'm only going to use two main colors. Here I have indigo by Schminka and also burnt umber by Holbein, and I'm also going to use my ble proof white by doctor Pig Martins for extra snowfall. As for the palette, you can see I'm going to use my old palette that I got from die, so it's just a cheap plastic palette for basically $1 or 100 yen. And you can see it's discolored, it's already yellow. It was originally white, but I've used it so much that it has so many micro scratches that you can't really see. This makes loading on my brush so much easier because the paint no longer beads on top of the plastics, so I don't accidentally load my brush with too much paint. If beating is a problem for you, you can also use porcelain palettes. You'll, of course, also need a jar to hold your clean water. I'm personally just going to use one, but you can also use two. And if you prefer to use two, one, the large one generally would be to clean your brush, and the other one would be to reload your brush. So one jar would have mostly the dirty water, and the second jar would be a bit cleaner. Personally, I always just use one jar, though, and I just change my water whenever I need to. Next, you'll need some tissue. This is as important as all the other supplies I would not paint if I don't have a paper towel or tissue next to me because I would not be able to control the load on my brush otherwise. It's super important to sometimes dry your brush or take excess load off. Here are the brushes that I'm going to use. I'm going to use a few of them, but I'll just list them at the end of this video because I have a separate lesson just to go over the different textures you can create with these brushes. For this last painting, I'm going to create an outline because it's a little bit more complex in terms of the composition. And for the pencil, I'm going to use this. This is by Pentl Sharplet, and I generally use the hardness of HB or two B. And, of course, you also need an eraser in case you make any mistakes. And my favorite eraser here that I use is B Boxy. Now, depending on how you want to go about your painting, I'm going to personally paint them one by one. Instead of taping it down and masking the sides on my table, I'm going to use this cutting board or cutting mat, I should say. And by doing this, it's much easier to move my painting around. And I can also tilt my paper if I want to direct the paint at a certain direction. As for the tape, I'm just using a regular masking tape for the sides, or you can also use washi tape. For one of the compositions, I'm going to use salt to create this effect. So here I just have a little bit of salt, and this is fine grain sea salt. Lastly, I'm going to use a hair dryer. Usually, I would say hair dryer is optional because you can wait for the paint to dry, but because the paintings I'm going to do in this class is more simple, and I like to mix a lot between the wet on wet and the wet on dry. I prefer to have hair dryer next to me, and I used a lot of it in order to make the process a little bit quicker. And that's it for the supplies. Here I'll have the whole list that you can screenshot or even download in the projects and resources sections. So it's a bit easier to get everything ready. 3. Colours: Let's start by going over the colors I'm going to use. I'm only going to use these two. The first one is indigo. It's a dark muted blue. It's very versatile. This one is burnt umber. This is a very common color that you'll find in sets. And with these two colors, we can create different shades. Just going to show you what the indigo looks like by itself. You can see it's a very dark color, but I love really dark pigmented colors because once you add water, you can create different tints of blue. So I'm just going to spread it here and you can see a bit more clearly what the actual tone of blue looks like when it's slighter. I'm also going to swatch the burnt umber the exact same way, starting with a very thick consistency. This is also fairly dark, but because it's a warm reddish, dark brown, you can see that it's a little bit more vibrant. It doesn't look as black, per se, in terms of value. And as I spread it, you can see this has a lot of warmth. Now I'm going to start adding indigo to the burnt umber going little by little, so you can see the different shades that I can create. Starting with a little bit of indigo to the burnt umber, you can see that this becomes a darker, more muted brown that is almost similar to CPA. After spreading it with a bit of water, I'm just going to clean my brush. Then I'm going to re dampen it with water to pull the paint further to show you a really consistency. Let's move along and keep adding more indigo. I'm going to add more burnt umber as well because at this point, I was running out of pigment. You can see that the brown becomes even darker and even more muted. It no longer has that warmth. Now it's a cool tone brown. In a thick consistency, it almost looks black, which is great for adding details like branches and fences. But as I pull the paint outwards with the lighter consistency, you can still see that it's a very muted, dark, cool brown this time. Let's add more of that cool temperature from indigo. Now, it looks like more of a grayish tone, I would say, a cool gray, starting with a very thick consistency. I'm going to clean and re dampen my brush so I can pull the colors outwards with a lighter consistency. Now this cool gray tone becomes a little bit clearer to see. I'm just going to make one last mixture with a bit more indigo, and you'll see that the color will be a bit more rich this time, bit cooler, less of a gray this time, but a little bit more blue. And finally, I'm just going to do straight up Indigo. So here are the color variations that you can create. Obviously, you'll have the different colors in between these ones, but I feel like this is a clear representations of the different tones you can create. So feel free to adjust to the ratio that you're looking for, depending on your composition and landscape. I feel like this is a great exercise to see the different tones you can create between two colors. Here are mine, but if you have more patience or curiosity, you can create even more colors if you're more sensitive to the ratio compared to what I did here. Let's talk about the colors and the application it has on the paintings. You can see that the spurnt umber is quite warm, so I don't think I'm going to use it by itself. Instead, I want to keep the cool temperature and the cold atmosphere of the paintings. So I'm going to stick to this bottom row. Even with this color, I don't think I'm going to use too much of it because it's quite warm, and I feel like the atmosphere would be in between autumn to winter instead of, like, a winter landscape, which is still doable if that's what you're looking for. Personally, though, I like to use probably like these three colors. And let me just show you an example. This is the last painting that I'll do. Maybe you can even take it up to these four colors. But you can see that I'm going to use mostly indigo in the ratio compared to burnt umber. Personally, I only use the burnt umber to add a little bit of warmth. So as an example here, I like to break up the trees just so they don't look like a giant big clump. But if you only want to use one color, I would suggest for you to play with the values more to separate elements instead. No, because we have a limited palette, one thing that you need to consider is the value, which means how dark or light the color you're going to use is. You can see that there are some really dark areas in my paintings, but also really light parts like on the snow. This is why I've chosen these two colors because they're quite dark. And also one is warm and the other is cold, so I can also play with the temperature as well as have a wide spectrum of values. This way, we can take advantage of the darker and lighter colors. So as an example here in each painting, you can see really light and dark areas. So technically, you can even paint with just one color by changing the value. Is something that is done by adding more water or using less water to paint ratio. Now, this is also the reason why I've chosen really dark colors because now we have a wide spectrum from dark to light versus if we use or start with a mid tone color, then I can't push it as dark as the colors that I've chosen to use today. 4. Wet on Dry: In this class, I'm going to do two main techniques, which is the wet on dry and the wet on wet effect. In this lesson, we're just going to focus on the wet on dry. It's just a quick run through in case you're new to water colors. But I'm not going to go into too much depth since what we're going to do in this class as a whole isn't too complicated. Essentially, wet on dry means you're painting on a completely dry surface. So if you're creating line on a dry surface, like what I'm doing here, that's basically a wet on dry. You can also use a light consistency as I'm applying here. Initially, the paper itself was completely dry. This is called the wet on dry and what you can see here are really sharp edges because the paper of choice for today's class is cold press, which means it's slightly textured paper. You can see that if the load of my brush is getting light or maybe I am initially just using a light load, the edges would have a nice dry brush effect. Or can also be applied on a painted surface. So as an example here, I'm painting on a background, then I'm going to dry it off completely. I'm just going to use a hair dryer until everything is completely dry to the touch, meaning there aren't any cold spots. It's bone dry, just like I'm painting on fresh paper. You can see it doesn't smudge as well. And with this, if I paint the trees on top of the painted background, you can see that the paint stays where they are and the edges stay nice and sharp. You can also paint things like tree trunks or tree branches. I'm using a light consistency here, so it looks like the branches or the tree trunks are in a far distance. And we can also use a really thick consistency of any chosen color. Here I'm using the mixture that is almost black to paint fences, and because the load on my brush is almost dry, it's very light. You can see that dry brush effect that I was showing you earlier, but this time with a thick consistency. So with the wet on dry technique, you can paint details or any elements that you want to be well defined. This can also be distant elements like the branches I painted earlier with a thinner consistency, you can see a bit of depth in this composition. This will just mean that it's not a hazy atmosphere, since we can see everything clearly. Now in the next lesson, though, I will do a quick run through of the wet on wet technique for more of a hazy mood. 5. Wet on Wet: Now, in this lesson, we're going to do the wet on wet technique as the name says, and we're going to paint on a wet or damp surface. Just like in the previous lesson, I'm going to start by painting a background very quickly here. This time, I'm not going to use a hair dryer or even wait for it to dry. And I'm just going to apply a thick consistency of indigo. You can see that the paint starts to burst out and spread a general rule of thumb is, I like to use a thicker consistency compared to the concentration of pigment versus water in the background because if we're using the same concentration, the paint and the water has the same density and the paint will just blend into the background instead of creating this wet on wet effect. Now, in front, I did a wet on dry. You can see that the edges are very crisp compared to the background. While the surface is still damp, you can also tilt your paper to help the paint move in a certain direction if the paint is still very wet. With a wet on wet technique, you can also create something like a water reflection. I'm just going to paint an area here where there is frosty water, and I'm just going to apply the same technique on this damp surface using the same color, but basically painting it upside down this time. While the surface is still damp, you can also use your brush to help the paint move around or even absorb excess pigment or water with a dry brush. Now, let's mix this with the wet on dry. I'm going to dry everything off, and I'm going to paint some branches on the hazy trees in the background. Now that everything is completely dry, can feel it. I'm going to paint on the branches. I like to use my dagger brush when I'm painting branches because of the unintentional weight shift of the strokes, which makes it a bit more versatile, in my opinion, but you can also use a liner brush or size zero brush for this. Sometimes I also like to use them interchangeably as well. I would like to mention that wet on wet doesn't necessarily mean painting on a background only. As an example, what I did with the water reflection. And if I'm painting on the ground with a wet on dry, then certain areas might still be damp while I add different color. This will just make a slight color shift, and the colors will also mingle with each other. And I would say this is a mix between the wet on wet and the wet on dry technique. But what you need to know is that paint will always travel on a damp surface, and if it's more wet and puddling, the paint will become more uncontrollable, so be mindful of how damp your paper is. 6. Salt Effect: This is just an extra video, but I want to include a fun effect that I'm going to apply to one of the paintings later in the lessons. And this involves salt. I'm using sea salt here. So salt absorbs water. So in this case, the watercolors. And this creates a really nice, kind of like a frosty effect where the salt absorbs the extra paint, and the paint gathers into the salt, which creates these white spots that looks very frosty and light. Process takes a while because you do have to wait until the salt absorbs as much paint as it can. But you can start to see all the white spots that's creating. You can create trees or even just add texture on top of random spots even in the sky, and it's just such a fun effect that goes really well with winter landscapes. Is a fairly well known special effect in watercolors. But if you've never tried this before, feel free to try it on a scrap piece of paper because I've tried it with different types of salt and sometimes it doesn't absorb it properly. So it's up to you if you want to include this in one of your paintings or not, but I would recommend for you to do an experiment on a scrap piece of paper before applying it onto your final painting. 7. Brushes: In this lesson, I'll be going over the brushes that I'm going to use, and I'm going to try to show you the application as well. I understand though these are very specific brushes. However, I feel like this class is still doable as long as you have a large brush, medium brush, and a very small ones for details. Going to go over this from the largest to the smallest. So this is my largest brush. This is by Rafael is soft aqua, and it's a flat brush. It has fairly soft bristles, which can absorb a lot of water. I like to use this to paint on backgrounds or to even just dampen a large surface area. In this class, I'm going to use both soft bristle brushes and snappier synthetic brushes. Generally, the softer bristles just absorb a little bit more water as it traps more inside of these bristles, so you can have a much larger load in your brush. Okay, but going back to this large one, I like to use it to spread across in the background because of its large size, it just takes much less time to do, and I can cover it and evenly distribute the water fairly easily. So I'm just going to show you here with a really light tint of color. You can see how much it covers already, and I can help the paint move and absorb the excess. And you can see it's very simple and quick. With this set though, of course, you can use a large round brush, but because of the smaller tip, it'll just take a little bit longer to cover a large surface area. Okay, next is a round soft brush. This is bi Holbein. And again, because this has soft bristles, it can hold a lot of water. I can also squeeze the tip, as you can see, I can twist it around and find the sharpest area, so I can control the weight fairly easily. Because of these soft bristles, though, it is a little bit more floppy and you would need to be a bit more sensitive with how much pressure you use. I like to use floppier brushes when it comes to creating random edges when painting bushes and such. Because of the floppy nature, you can create really randomized textures for the edges. And this is something that's a little bit more difficult to do with harder, snappier brushes. I like to also use this brush to paint backgrounds. This is still a little bit damp, as you can see. And because this brush holds a lot of water and paint, I can cover quite a large area fairly quickly. I also use this brush to paint on textures of the snow on the ground. I find that because this covers a large area, if I use even a light consistency, I can create these really nice jagged edges. Of course, this is also in combination with the cold press paper that is already textured, and I like to use my brush by dragging it following the slopes that I want to create with the snow and you can see that it has so much character from the dry brush edges. And this one here is by hobein. It's a size six and it's a black resable brush. Moving along, this is a synthetic brush, and it's fairly small. This is a size four, and this one is by Georgiorn. This is probably the more common brush that you can find. It's just a very basic round synthetic brush, super, super snappy, and a more common brand for this would be reefs or ra. I'm using a brush by Georgiorn, but they're more or less the same. Because of the harder bristles, this holds a bit less water or paint, so you have a lighter load on your brush. The lines that I can create with this brush is very uniform. And I have to mention that this can take on a lot more pressure. It's much easier to control because you can put more pressure, and it still creates fairly uniform lines. Here you can see the edges are getting dried because it doesn't hold too much load. As with softer bristles, it's able to hold so much more. So you can paint a bit longer and you can distribute more paint without having to reload as often. The upside to not having a lot of water within the bristles means that you can still control the paint flow a little bit better. Let's exaggerate the thought process. So if you have little plastic pipes and you pour water down the pipes, it will just run down, and not much would be captured between those pipes. And let's compare this with a brush where it has finer hairs, and you pour water down those hairs because the finer hairs can be pushed a little bit closer together and therefore trap more water inside. Because the snappier brushes don't hold as much water. I personally like to use it with the consistency paint. I feel like I can use it a bit more efficiently, whereas with softer bristles, because I have to load so much within the bristles. I I don't end up using all of the paint that I floated in a thick consistency, which means it has a lot of paint compared to water, then I need to reload my brush with a different color. I'll just end up wasting and cleaning off the extra paint that I floated on the brush. I mentioned this before that the brushstrokes I create with a snappier bristle would be a bit more uniform, personally, I find it a little bit more difficult to create natural edges when it comes to painting things like bushes because the bristles just doesn't flop as randomly as I'd like it to. Instead, it tends to come to a fine tip most of the time. So the edges are just thin lines, whereas you can see from the previous demonstration, some lines may be a little bit more thick, whereas others are thinner and you can also make the overall look a bit more rounder and organic. So just have a look at this area. Most of the lines there are fairly thin. Moving along to the small brushes, firstly, I'm going to use this one. I've had this brush for a long time that the writing disappeared already. This is by Windsor Newton scepter gold and it's a size zero. This is also a round brush. So again, the lines are very uniform when I paint with this and I can have a lot of control when painting small details. Like to use this brush to paint things like branches or anything that needs a bit more control, like maybe painting fences. You can see the weight of the line here is more or less uniform. It doesn't have any weird jagged edges. It just really depends on how stable your hand is. And if I put a bit more pressure, I can also paint thicker lines, and you can see the bristles are also quite short, which means it won't really flop in random places because it's such a small size and it's also quite short. It doesn't hold a lot of water. So when you're using this, you would need to reload constantly. Let's start to paint some branches with this. You can see I can control the pressure quite easily. So when I put a bit more pressure at the bottom of the tree trunk, the line can be a little bit thicker and as I take off more weight, the ends are a little bit thinner, but I do have to move my hands quite a bit in order to create some of the jagged textures to make the branches look more natural. You see, as I'm doing this, I have a lot of control. This includes controlling the line weight where I can make the lines a bit thicker at the bottom and lighter at the top as I take off more pressure. But you can also go back and go over it again with this brush to make it a little bit thicker or even use a larger brush like this snappy brush that I used earlier. Moving along, next, I'll be showing you my dagger striper brush. This is optional, but I like to use it to paint branches probably more than this small Windsor Newton brush because of its long bristles and a very pointy tip, I can create really randomized natural looking branches. You can see there's a flat side to this, and on the other side, there's a flat side on the right hand side, and on the left, there's a diagonal curve going to the tip. So this also holds a lot of water from the bottom of the bristles. Personally, I just like using the tip of this brush. I use it specifically to paint branches because I feel like I can paint really quickly with this, and the tip is so fine that it's even smaller than the tip of my size zero brush here. With this brush, I feel like I don't need to move my hands as much. I can just control the tip ever so slightly in order to create really nice lines with character because of the different line weight when it comes to painting branches. And this is because of the width and flatness of this brush. It makes the lines look a bit more uneven and it looks natural. And also the length, making it a little bit more floppy, and therefore, I can create more natural looking branches. Let me just paint with it so you can see the different line quality that it gives. First of all, I feel like I can just constantly paint on lines because it holds so much water and I can do it fairly quickly because of the long bristles. If I just angle my wrist ever so slightly, you can see the differences in the line weight. So it doesn't really take much. I don't have to move my hand around too much in order for me to create those differences in weight. I also like to paint just using this if there's a body of water and before it touches land, maybe there are some muddy areas. But just look at the difference in the weight and the sort of textures it can create without having to put too much effort. Now let's try to paint on some branches with this brush. I like to use the very tip. You can see the lines are very, very fine, especially if I take off pressure towards the end. And if I move it ever so slightly, you can see there's some weight differences which makes the branch look more natural. The downside to this is the first time this brush touch paper, it will always be a sharp tip because of the shape of the bristles. And because of this, I like to pair this up with a round brush to paint the bottom of the tree trunk. Take notice of the edges and the difference in line weight. You can see how easily I did this. It was so much quicker compared to how I was moving my lines little by little using my small Windsor Newton brush compared to this decker brush. Now, let's compare it to the one I painted before. You can see the lines are quite uniform compared to the lines that I've created with a Decker striper. This is the velvet touch series by Princeton, and it's a quarter size tiger striper. This is probably one of my favorite brushes, even though I don't use it too often. I only again, use it when I'm painting edges or when I'm painting little details like branches. But of course, it's still doable to paint the smaller details and branches or little edges using a smaller round brush. So again, these are just the specific brushes that I prefer to use. But if you don't have these specific ones, as long as you have a large brush, medium size, and a couple of small ones, it should be enough for these paintings. 8. Set Up: In this lesson, I'm going to show you how I've set up my paper. Here I have four pieces of paper that I'm going to use for the paintings. These are cut from a larger sheet of watercolor paper. This is by arches, and one sheet is 11.5 by 15.5 centimeters. This is fairly small. What I'm going to do is tape it down on this cutting board. The reason why I prefer to stick it on this board is so I can tilt my board if I want my paint to flow a certain way so I can pick it up and move it around if that situation ever arise when I'm painting. It's just a bit more flexible compared to sticking it on the table. Here I have an A four size board. You can also use a wooden board, by the way, any board that you have. And if you can fit taping more pieces of paper down, you can do it all at once. However, for filming purposes, I'd like to fit my palette as well as my water in the frame so you can see the process a little bit better. I'm only going to tape one at a time. Just using ordinary masking tape here. You can also use washi tape. I like to measure the length and the width with my tape and cut a little bit extra so the tape can grip around the edges. I'm just eyeballing the width of my frame here. If you want yours to be a little bit thicker, if you have a larger piece of paper, feel free to take it in, but I feel like this is enough for me. 9. Trials & Practices: In the next lesson, I'm going to show you my setup for the painting and how I mask my paper. You can follow along straightaway and jump straight to the next lesson. But here I'm just showing you that if you're ever unsure of certain techniques and you want to practice somewhat on wet or wet on dry techniques or even the extra sprinkling with salt, you can do little thumbnail paintings and your scrap paper to get used to the movement of the paint on damp surface and things like that. I've made two tiny paintings as little trials, but you can do as many of these before or during the final paintings whenever you're unsure, or you want to practice some brush strokes before applying them on. Just as a disclaimer for these tiny trials, I'm using my brushes a bit differently because the dimension of these trials are very small. You might see me using smaller brushes instead of my larger ones, if you want your finals to be larger than what I've made mine to be, feel free to just the brush sizes as well. I've sped up this process a bit because I just want to show you really quickly how I create small trials. Of course, this step is optional depending on how comfortable you are with these techniques and brushes. So I'm not going to explain too much here. You can go ahead and watch the rest of the trials or you can move ahead to the next lesson. This is also a great way to try out different compositions really quickly if you ever want to create your own compositions and not follow mine using the same techniques I've shown in this class. I'm going to add a little bit of snow for the first one with my bleat proof white just to see how it looks. And that's basically it. Let's move on to the next lesson. 10. Painting 1: Frosty Trees: Let's go to the first painting now. I'm going to do the simplest one, and I'm going to be using the special effects with salt. I'm starting with a large soft flat brush here so I can distribute the water to dampen the surface evenly. I realized that this brush is a little bit contaminated with paint from my previous painting, but it doesn't really matter. I'm just going to dampen the surface and I'm going to use quite a dark color anyway for the background. It's just going to cover this grayish tone. You see, I've left out a little bit of space at the bottom because I want a separation from the snow and the background. Then I'm just going to use indigo painting vertical lines from the sides and I want the center or the middle of this part to be a little bit lighter. I didn't pick up enough paint, so I'm going to take a little bit more, and I want to let you know when you pick up paint, please distribute the paint evenly on your brush. If you just take it straight from the pan, parts of your bristles might not touch enough paint. Whereas if you add water and paint, and then you try to distribute it evenly on the palette, you'll have an even distribution on your bristles. And it just makes application so much easier this way. Now I'm going to switch to a smaller brush because it was getting a little bit difficult to control, and this way, I can correct the edges for the snow. I'm also going to place even more pigment along the sides. With a smaller brush, I can also pick a thicker consistency compared to my large brush because I am painting on a smaller area. And just like before, I'm going to create vertical lines. If you haven't noticed, these lines represent trees and I want the taller ones to be on the sides which are closer to us. As I get towards the middle, where the color is a little bit lighter, I made the lines a little bit shorter so it looks like there's a bit of depth and we're looking at more distant trees. Before everything dries, I'm going to sprinkle some salt, and as I applied the paint, I want more salt around the sides and I'm going to apply it from the top to the bottom whereas towards the center, I'm going to sprinkle the salt at a lower position. The salt takes a while to react. This is why I'm doing this first before I paint any other areas. And you'll start to see as the salt dissolves, the paint will disperse, leaving the area where I've placed the salt white. I'm using fine grain sea salt here, so I want to be very careful as I'm sprinkling down. I try to evenly distribute the sprinkle of salt grains instead of getting large clumps together. I feel like these smaller grains work best because it has enough time for the full grain to dissolve into the watercolor paint, which makes them react a bit faster as well. So I've left this for a while. You can see the smaller grains have dissolved and it created really nice textures, whereas the clumpy areas still has that paint because the paint just end up plumping into the salt. Let me just show you an example of what I did last night. I didn't wait enough time for this to dry. Instead, I used the hair dryer, so it didn't have enough time for the salt to react yet and it hasn't absorbed enough paint. Be very mindful of this when you're trying to create this effect. I'm already happy with how this looks. I feel like it's distinct enough. So I'm going to set everything by drying it off with a hair dryer. And if there are any excess salt which hasn't dissolved, I'm just going to try to take it off the paper. I like to just use my finger very gently to push it over, making sure that everything is dry, though, because you don't want the grains of salt to damage the paper, especially when it's still damp. I want the snow to look light, but just leaving it white like this makes it look very flat. I'm going to add some dimension to it by using a really, really light consistency of just indigo for now. When I'm painting the snow sometimes I'm just doing it randomly, but I do want the corners or the edges of my paper to have a little bit of color. So when I take off the masking tape, the frame would be clear. So I'm starting with the edges and I'm bringing it inward and I'm making sure that my brush strokes go in a certain direction. So there's a leading path for our eyes to focus on. You can just use indigo for the whole painting, but I want to introduce a little bit of warmth. So here, I've mixed in some of that burnt umber, still using a very thin consistency, though, because I don't want the snow to look too dark. Again, I'm just enhancing some of the areas that I've already painted and smudging some parts if I feel like the edges look a little bit too sharp. I want to enhance the slope on the right hand side, so I'm using a slightly thicker consistency of the indigo, but then I'm going to smudge some of the edges. So the pathway is a bit clearer now. Here I'm just cleaning out my edges, making sure I don't miss any spots because I want to have a clean frame as I take off the masking tape later on. I'm fairly happy with the value, so I'm just going to dry it off completely. This is just going to be a very simple and clean design. Next, I'm going to add on the finer details, making sure that the surface is completely dry because I want to create really crisp edges, especially for the small details like the fine branches. I'm starting with my small synthetic brush here. And I'm painting on the main branches. Generally, I like to use my dagger brush to paint some really fine lines. But since I feel like these trees look fairly big, the tree trunk has to be thick enough, which is why I've chosen to use this brush. I'm just using a really thick consistency mix of indigo. This has mostly indigo with just a little bit of burnt umber because at this point, I'm quite enjoying the frosty feel and I feel like the blue really helps to enhance that cold feeling and the frosty textures from the salt. Now here I've switched to my dagger brush to paint the finer details for the smaller branches that is attached to the main ones that I initially painted. You can see I can move a little bit more freely with my dagger brush, and the lines become much finer, and I can also play with a little bit of the weight, which I find makes the branches look a bit more natural when I'm painting the smaller ones. Sometimes I like to add the branches in between the white parts. So the frosty parts of the trees sometimes are covering some of these branches, and this just makes it look a bit more believable. Next I'm going to add a little bit more tree trunks at the back, but I'm using a lighter consistency this time. This will just make the trees that I'm painting right now look like it's further back in the composition, and by doing this small change in consistency, we're adding depth into the composition. For some of the trees which are closer to the sides, I'm going to darken them slightly. And as the trees are getting more further towards the back, I'm going to make sure the tree trunks are gradually lighter. That I've added the details for the trees, I feel like I need to add a bit more depth as well to the foreground and the middle ground. Here I'm again going to darken some parts to enhance the area for the path. But this time I'm only painting a small portion, so I don't end up covering everything and flattening it out again. I want to also include some dry brush marks, which is by using a lighter load on my brush. When I apply the paint and doesn't have enough water to smudge these lines, instead, it has those really nice uneven edges that I'm looking for. Once I'm done, I'm going to make sure everything's completely dry so I can work on a completely dry surface. Just one final touch to this composition. I'm going to add some twigs sticking out from the snow. This is optional. You can also add other elements if you would like, like fences or bushes in the foreground, but I'm just going to stick to really tiny little twigs because it's quite easy for me to paint using my dagger brush. So I'm just going to keep the first one as simple as possible. I feel like I have enough here, so I'm just going to go ahead and unmask the sides. And this is the completed first painting. 11. Painting 2: Snowy Fence: O. Let's move along to the second painting. I'm going to start out by again painting the portion of the sky, just dampening the surface with water, and I'm going to bring it down to around two thirds of the way. I'm going to take a really thin consistency of indigo, making sure that it's evenly spread all throughout my bristles. And I'm just looking for a light spread, especially around the corners. I only want the sky to have a very light tone. This is again to create a clear frame once I take off the masking tape. Now I'm going to go straight in with a thick consistency to paint on some trees. I've switched to my synthetic brush here. The bristles are very snappy and it doesn't soak in as much water as my softer brushes, so I can easily absorb a thick consistency of paint without having too much paint in the bristles. As I'm painting the trees, I want to alternate from thinner consistency to a thick consistency to create depth. In the background, I like to use mostly color tones with predominantly indigo in the ratio, and then I'll start to add more burnt umber into the trees closer towards us in a thick consistency. Notice how I'm using quite a lot of pressure on my bristles as I'm painting the trees. I'm also directing the brush downwards or according to where the little comes off leaves within the tree is going to face. For the trees with a thicker consistency, though, because I'm painting smaller ones and I have a lot of pigment, which will spread on the damp surface. I try to put less pressure, so the brushstrokes that I'm painting will be smaller and more controllable. I like to play with the height of the trees and also alternating the placement to create a natural feel. As I get closer to the front, I'm increasing the value. Here I'm using the mixture from both the colors, but I still like to play with the consistency. Some are a little bit thicker whereas others are a bit lighter. As I'm painting this, I feel like the top feels a bit empty and everything is completely dry, so I decided to re dampen it very lightly, so I have a damp surface to work with again. I'm just going to use the thin consistency of indigo to increase the height for some of the trees in the background. For some areas, which I feel is a bit dense, you can also add a small sprinkling of salt. But I don't want that to be the main feature of this painting, so I'm just using it to break up certain areas. I like to also take advantage of the damp surface to increase the height for some of the trees in order to rebalance the composition with the taller trees in the background. Let's move on to paint the snow. I'm just using a very thin consistency of the two colors with most of the indigo in the ratio, and I'm moving my brush in the direction where I feel the snow would be going. I'd like to make it mostly horizontal or diagonal sometimes with slopes and this way, when you've left out a bit of white space in between, the brush strokes will suggest the flatness or the slopiness of the ground. This is why I would avoid painting vertically except maybe to clean little tiny edges. While the surface is still damp, I'm going to enhance the gentle slopes for this, I've just added a little bit of burnt umber into the mix. The color is very subtle, but after I dry it completely, it will also fade and become even lighter. Now I'm going to paint on the dry surface using a thin consistency of indigo, and I'm going to try to create some dry brush textures. So you can see how quickly I'm sweeping through that area of the painting in order to get sharp thinning edges. It's going to dry everything off, so I can paint on the finer details. You can also start to see where the salt have dissolved. I just like to use it to break up those dense areas to give it a little bit of breathing space, I guess. But next, I've picked up my small size zero brush to paint on some dormant trees. I like to use this brush, or if I want the lines to look a little bit thicker, I would use my larger synthetic brush to paint the main tree trunk or stems and also some of the larger branches, then you can switch to a smaller brush or the dagger brush to paint the smaller little details. Just like the trees, I'm going to play with the consistency as well as the color to paint these dormant trees as well. Uh Okay, I'm going to switch to my dagger brush this time because I don't need to paint the thicker tree trunks at the center, since I'm painting the trees at the back. I feel like I can move so much quicker with a dagger brush, but notice how I'm holding my brush. I'm using my pinky as a stabilizer underneath, and I'm almost holding it upright. So the very tip of the bristles are making contact with the paper. Now, I'm going to paint the tree chunk and the smaller branches in between the trees that we can still see. At the bottom, if I want to just use my dagger brush to thicken the tree trunks, I would just go over it a few times until it creates thicker lines. However, it is a little bit harder to control because of these very long bristles. There's quite a bit of space on the bottom right corner, so I decide to paint on a bush using a light consistency of a muted brown, but I'm going to also vary the color. So there's a little bit more interest since it's quite large in front in the foreground. I know the bush is still a little bit damp, but I'm going to go in with quite a thick consistency and my dagger brush since the tip is very small. Even when the paint kind of smudges into the damp background, it's not going to travel too much. Once I'm done, I'm going to dry this off and paint more on the dry surface. The final element that I want to include in this composition are fences, which will help guide Rs to a certain direction in the composition. For this, I've switched to my size zero brush. Since the bristles are fairly short, it's easier to control, and I'm using a really thick consistency of a muted dark brown. As the fence get further in the distance, the lines for the fence will be smaller and also lighter in weight, and so are the horizontal lines. Just a final touch here. Looking back at the composition, I feel like the bush kind of looks like it's floating, so I'm just going to add a thin consistency of this dark brown. Then I'm going to dry it off and take off the masking tape on the sides. That's it for the second painting. 12. Painting 3: Frozen Reflective Water: Onto the third painting, again, I'm going to start by dampening the surface for the background, and this time I'm only going to paint a small portion, probably around one third of the paper. For the sky, I first mixed in a really, really thin consistency of a mixture between indigo and burnt umber. So it's a grayish base. With this, I'm just going to spread it down. Then I'm going to take a bit more indigo, but still in a fairly light consistency to paint on some diagonal lines for the sky. I'm going to make sure I get the corners. Then for the lines, I'm just directing my bristles or the flat side of my bristles, where I want to angle the wispy clouds in the background. I just want the sky to be very light and subtle. Then I'm going to dry it off so I can paint on a dry surface. I want to paint some distant mountains, so I've switched to my soft brush using a mix of the two colors, but mostly indigo. So it's just more of a muted dark blue. And I'm just roughly creating the shape or the outline of the mountains, trying to create something that looks kind of natural and uneven. And I'm just going to grab more water so I can drag the rest of the paint downwards. I'm just going to clean out some of the lines if the paint is gathering in a certain spot. And now we have a damp surface to work on. I'm going to use a thick consistency of both the colors and also some mixtures, varying the colors and painting it on the damp surface, doing little dots with the tip of my brush to suggest some trees in the background. Because the surface is quite damp, you can see how much my paint is traveling upwards. This is why I want to make sure that I'm only slightly tapping my brush. I'm also going to help direct where the paint is going. You can always pick up your board and tilt it in a certain way. And because the dark colors are quite strong, I also sprinkled a little bit of salt to break some of the dense areas. I'm going to map out an area for frozen water, which links to the end or the horizon line. Here I'm just using a thin consistency of the indigo mixture that I used for the mountain and I'm directing my brush horizontally so I don't lose the flatness of the ground. Now taking advantage of this damp surface, I'm going to paint the reflection from the background just so it doesn't look too flat. I'm adding a little bit of color at the end of the water, but I'm just going to spread it horizontally. This is generally the movement that I want to do with my brush to create a flat surface. Now, for the trees, I'm going to use stronger colors. I'm using a fairly thick consistency here, but I realize I didn't use enough indigo in the mix. However, I'm just going to leave it as is because I don't want to disrupt the wet on wet process for now and I'm just going to move on to paint the other tree reflections as well. So if you've noticed here for the reflection, I'm basically just treating it the same way, but it's kind of upside down compared to how I painted the trees under the mountains. Once the paint has settled a little bit, I'm going to switch to my synthetic brush and pull some of the colors horizontally to again suggest that flat surface. Now, around the edges of the snow where it's touching the water, I'm using a little bit of muted brown here because maybe there are just some muddy spots near or right underneath the water. I felt like I used too thick of a consistency for some of the trees in the background. So just like how we sprinkled some salt before, I'm going to try to take off some paint using a clean dry brush, just a little bit though, because I don't want to disrupt in the surface. Then I'm going to move on to paint the snowy ground. Just like the water, I want to paint horizontally, but this time I'm creating some random slopes as well. Now, I'm going to go back with a thicker consistency and a darker value of a muted brown to paint the edges again, enhancing the muddy areas that I've painted earlier. I'm going to strengthen the color, especially around the bottom corner on the right hand side here, but I want to be very careful since I'm painting quickly to not cover up the previous layer that I've already painted earlier. I felt like this area in the background cut off a little bit too cleanly, so I just made some lines, smudging it and some dry brush textures just to create some unevenness so it doesn't look unnaturally clean. I'm going to set everything first because I'm going to fix the reflection on the frozen water later on. I think it's bothering me a little bit that the color of the tree on the left is different to the actual tree in front of the mountain. So here I'm just using a clean damp brush to just lightly dampen that area. You don't have to get to all of the edges. Then using a muted dark brown, but in a lighter consistency this time, I'm just starting it right at the edge here and making the paint come down naturally without having to play with it too much. I just want to create a soft transition between those two colors. It's okay if a little bit of the base color is still showing as long as it still has that muted quality, which helps to match the reflection to the actual tree. I'm quite happy with the reflection now, so I'm just going to dry it ever so slightly so it's not overly wet. But I'm going to add on saturation on the sides a little bit more using a thick consistency between the two colors. I don't really mind too much if some paint runs down to the reflection as long as it's not traveling too much. I feel like I have enough here, so I'm going to make sure everything set before adding on the finer details. Okay, once everything's dry, I'm going to add the small branches, the trees, and such for the composition, and then I'm going to do final adjustments to make sure everything's balanced. I felt like the foreground was very empty, so I decided to add some branches in front. And here I just stuck to my dagger brush since I was already using it. But you can see that it's actually quite difficult to create a thicker line weight due to the shape of the bristles. The line weight becomes very uneven and due to the pointy nature of it, the tip will always be thinner, so you can either fill it in. But it's also quite uncontrollable, which is why I always recommend for you to use a round brush to get an even brush stroke before adding on the finer natural ones with the dagger brush. B Don't forget to also add these details to the reflection. As I'm painting them on though, I make sure I use a slightly lighter consistency because I don't want the reflection to look as distinct as the actual elements. I think that's enough detail. I'm just going to dry everything off and try to balance out the colors that I have in the composition so far. I decided to add a small bush here to cover up the large blue tree at the back. I'm going to do a couple or a few of these to just break up I guess the large mass by covering the front with other objects. I thought that I was done here, so I took off the masking fluid, but as I looked at this again, I felt like the small bit of land at the top looks a bit too light and flat. I'm just going to darken the middle ground ever so slightly using a thin consistency, and I'm just going to add some dry brush textures. I feel like I have given enough information for this painting, so I'm going to call this one done. 13. Painting 4: Snowy Bridge Pt 1: Now let's move on to the final painting. I feel like this one is the most complex one, and I used a reference image, which is this one on the left. Since this one has a main focus point, which is the bridge, I decided to sketch it out this way as I paint later, I don't have to figure out the exact placing in order for it to interact with other elements in the composition. Was actually my second attempt of this painting. For the first one, I've miscalculated the height of the bridge. I already painted the snow, and I didn't realize I needed to elevate the slope near the ends of the bridge in order for the height to make sense. This is why I feel this time drawing out an outline would be beneficial when you have an actual composition in mind or if you're using a reference image. With the sketch, I just want to make sure I place more or less the main elements like the water, the bridge, and where the snow ends. But I'm not going to sketch out all the other details like the trees and such. Instead, I'm going to treat them like how I treated the previous paintings and personalize some of these elements in order to support the main element of this painting. In the reference, the water have seemed to disappear. Maybe it could be in between the taller slopes, but I'm not sure if I can paint that convincingly. So I decided to just add a connected body of water that is directed to the background. In the reference, the bridge has some little pillars underneath. Instead, I'm just going to cover it with snow so I'm not going to paint it on specifically. I think I'm fairly happy with the sketch. I have enough information here. Next, I'm going to start by dampening the background with a really light tint of indigo. I'm using my large brush here just to make the process a little bit quicker. Try to make the damp surface as even as possible and take off any excess puddles. I can see some tall trees or hills in the background. So I'm going to use a medium consistency of indigo. Again, I'm directing my brush strokes upwards and downwards mostly vertically in order to create a tall background, and this will also separate it from the flatter foreground and middle ground. I like to make the lines a little bit taller on the left and right to create a frame, and the lines or the hills a little bit shorter in the middle. Now, working with a darker value, I've added a bit more burnt umber and using a slightly thicker consistency to paint on top of the background, still on the damp surface, creating something similar, but again, still playing with the height to make sure that the composition looks organic and natural. I'm going to layer this even further with a thicker consistency this time using my synthetic brush since I can pick up a bit more pigment and I'm just going to apply it the same way, but I'm making these ones shorter. I felt like adding a nice salt tree on the left would look nice in this composition. So I just sprinkled a little bit. Then I'm just going to wait for the salt to react. While I wait, I'm going to move on to paint the snow and try to figure out how the slopes are going to work for it to interact with the bridge. I'm going to be very careful as I'm painting around the bridge, as well, because there are some spots where I can actually see the snow between the railings. Technically, you can just paint over it, but at this point, I wasn't thinking of including bleedproof white for the snow on top of the bridge. Instead, I was going to leave out some negative space. But the area ended up being too small, so feel free to actually just paint over it. Just don't forget where the lines are once you're ready to paint in the bridge later on. Now I'm going to paint the water. This time, I'm going to paint it full with indigo, but I'm going to follow the same method as before, which is to paint horizontally, but I'm trying to be a bit more careful as I'm painting the edges. Again, you can also paint over the bridge except for the walkway, but I was trying to avoid the railing still because like I mentioned before, I was thinking of leaving white negative spaces on top of the railings. While the surface is still damp, I'm going to use a little bit more indigo for the left corner just so it doesn't look overly flat. I'm also going to add shadows directly underneath the bridge, as well as a really thick consistency for the sides. Like for the previous painting, I was thinking of things that might be under that you can see through the water. I feel like this also enhances the pile of snow on the edges. I'm also painting some horizontal lines here to depict the texture of the flowing water. Once I'm done with the water, I'm going to add the shadows on the snow under the bridge as well, making sure that it's a little bit lighter compared to the edges, so it still looks separate to the water. Keep this just with the indigo, but I personally want to include a little bit of brown in the composition still to add some warmth, but I still want the dominant color to be indigo, so it still looks nice and cold. I tried to use the tip of my brush to create textures. Then I smudge the edges with a clean damp brush to make the edges look a bit more textured. Again, since there wasn't much happening on the bottom right corner, I added a small sprinkle of salt. Here I've darkened the shadow on the water underneath the bridge and then I'm going to dry everything. Going back to the edges, I'm going to add extra texture with uneven lines using my dagger brush. I'm using a really light load, so as I'm dragging the tip of my brush, you can see a light dry brush texture. This last painting takes a bit longer to complete, so I decided to divide this in half. In the next lesson, we'll start to paint the details like the bridge and such once you're done with the background, the base of the snow and the water. 14. Painting 4: Snowy Bridge Pt 2: Okay. Moving along, feel like I have enough detail for the water and the edges. Next, I'm going to work on the bridge. I want a lot of control to paint this, so I'm switching to my round brush I'm using a mix of indigo with burnt umber to create almost a black color. Using a thick consistency, and this is my attempt on leaving some white space as the snow on top of the walkway. I decided to ditch this idea after I tried painting the rest of it and not seeing results. So don't worry about leaving any space instead just paint it with the color that you want. Then for the snowfall on top, I'm just going to use bleedproof white to paint it on directly. The only space that I'm going to leave, though, is the top part of the walkway, because I'm going to paint using a light consistency of the blue and umber. So at this point, I'm just focusing on painting the railings on the side as well as the bottom side of the bridge that you can see. Okay, next, I'm going to paint the snowy boardwalk. I've just used a little bit of paint in a medium to thin consistency. Notice how I'm directing my brush strokes following the direction of how these wooden boards or wooden planks have been placed on the bridge. I'm fairly happy with how the bridge looks for now. Next, I'm going to paint on the details like the dormant trees on either side as well as the background to fill up this composition. I want the lines to be a bit more dominant for the dormant tree on the left, and I want them to be a little bit thicker, which is why I started with my smaller round brush. Then for the background, I'm going to paint on the tinier, more fine branches with my dagger brush, as well as the areas in between the sprinkling of salt that I've added earlier. I'm just going to use a thin consistency of a muted light brown, and this is just to add a base for a bush that I want to add into the composition. My intention here is to create more contrast between the snow that I'm going to put on top of the railings and the background. Here I'm just going to fill up some of the empty spaces with some twigs and dried up grass. I can see a weird slant on the top left corner. So here I'm just going to add a really thin consistency of paint. At first, I was thinking of adding some leaves, but then I realized it doesn't make sense, so I ended up just smudging it into the background to soften the slope edge. Then I just added a little sprinkling of salt to break up those edges even more. Now I'm ready to take out my bleed proof white. I'm using a thick consistency of bleedproof white here and my small size zero brush to add the snow on top of the railings. I'm intentionally slightly wiggling my brush here, so the edges of the snow doesn't look completely straight. I like to also add a little bit more height next to the corners. I know it's really small, but I realize the snow would probably collect in those areas a little bit more. Here I'm just adding more dried up tall grass, and I'm also going to paint the branches on the dried brom bush. Turns out some parts were still a little bit damp, so I used the hair dryer to make sure it's dry first. And I'm going to go back to paint on more of those branches. Now, here comes the fun part, which is to splatter on some snow. I'm using quite a liquid consistency of bleedproof white, but generally bleedproof white is quite opaque, so it just makes it a bit easier to splatter. The splatters are quite small, though, so I'm going to also add some snowfall manually and I'm directing these lines a little bit more diagonally to add movement as if the snow is being blown by slight wind. I'm just going to darken this tiny little spot, and I think I'm done with the final one. I'm just going to unmask the edges to reveal the painting. And that's it. The fourth and final painting. To 15. Closing & Class Project: Congratulations for completing this class. For the class project, I would like to invite you to paint along to the four winter scenes that I've shared in this class. However, if you're in the mood, you can also experiment a little bit more with different brushes or different special effects. You can even add on to the colors that I've shared in this class after you're done experimenting with these two. Once you're done with your paintings, please don't forget to post it in the project section at the bottom of this video. Just like the descriptions and things like that, you'll see a tab at the bottom. This is where you can share your projects with me as well as other students where we can sign each other comments and likes to support each other. It always excites me to see all the different styles that you create with different hands, even if they're painting the same composition. It just brings such joy. I'd also like to ask a favor from you if you found this class worthwhile or useful. I would really appreciate it if you write a review. It really encourages me to keep creating new classes that you enjoy. And I feel this also encourages other people to take this class as well. If you enjoyed painting along with me and you would like to see more tutorials by me, I do have a YouTube channel where I post weekly watercolor tutorials. My channel is Nianiani. And if you would like to see more art by me, I also have an Instagram and a TikTok account. My Instagram handle is at IG Underscore Nianiani and my TikTok is at Nianiani art. That's it for this class. I hope you enjoyed watching it. I can't wait to see your work in the project section. All the best for them, and I'll hopefully see you again in the next class soon. Bye.