Transcripts
1. Introduction: Hi, everyone.
Welcome. I'm Sucheta. You instructor for this class. I want to talk a bit about
the idea behind this class. A few years ago when I started
my watercolor journey, it was quite difficult to
understand the medium. All the projects that I tried
were complete failures. Then I use some
simple techniques which helped me a
lot to get better. Today in this class, I will explain one such
simple technique to you. This class has three projects. All of them are beginner
friendly landscapes. Each of them can be
completed within 10 minutes, and I will be guiding you
throughout every step. If you're curious
and interested, I will see you in the class.
2. Materials Required: Okay. In this section, I'll take you through
all the materials required for this class. For the paper, amusing Saunders, waterfood
watercolor paper. It is 100% cotton,
cold pressed paper. But for this class, you don't need to have 100% cotton paper. Any watercolor paper will do. I'm using three different
brushes in this class. One is a big brush. It is a round brush
from Winsora Newton. This is of size 14. This one, I'm using
for initial washes. And next I'm using silver black velvet
brush of size eight. This is the main brush
I use in my paintings. Next, I'm using silver black
velvet brush of size four. It's a small brush. This I usually use
for detailing. Amusing colors from
different brands such as Windsor and Newton, White Knights, and also
from Daniel Smith. I'll talk about the colors in detail in the beginning
of every project. I'm using a palette
to mix the colors. It's a ceramic palette. Then we need a jar of water
for mixing the colors, for cleaning the
brush, et cetera. I'm using a cloth towel to
wipe off the excess water. You can also use a
paper towel here. I'm using a small cardboard
to stick my watercolor paper. This cardboard is a back cover of some watercolor
paper block I had. I'm using a masking tape to attach my paper
to the cardboard. And also, I'm using a pair of scissors for
cutting the tape. That's all we need
for our class. Get your supplies ready, and let's start with
our class project.
3. Project 1 : Background: Okay, let's start with
our first project. We are using three colors for this painting that
is permanent red, Indian gold, and paints gray. I already have all these colors on my palette, so let's begin. As the first step, I'm
wetting the paper. I'm using a big round
brush from Windsor and Newton and picking
the clean water. As my paper is 100% cotton, it's very thirsty and asking
for more for this class, we need our paper to have
slightly more water, as this will help
the color to flow, but make sure that the water is evenly distributed
without any puddles. I'm picking the first color, which is Indian gold, loading my brush with
nice and juicy mixture of this yellow shade and applying it to the
bottom of the paper. We want that strokes to
be loose and vertical. So I'm holding my brush like in the middle and making
vertical strokes. This Indian gold
shade that I have taken has a bit of an
orange tint in it. I like that, so I
chose this color. You can use just
yellow color here. Or if you want to have
this orange yellow shade, then add tiny amount of red. I have applied the first color. Let's add the second color now. Second color I'm using is red. Same like before,
I'm holding my brush loosely and I'm making
these vertical strokes. I'm using the brightest
shade of red I have. It is okay if the red
overlaps the yellow. We don't need to have separation between those two colors. Now for the third color, I'm picking Pains gray
and adding it to the top. To keep the ia as
dark as possible, take a lot of pigment
and less water and apply it to the top
because as you know, watercolur dries lighter and we want our top region
to be the darkest. I'm going over it one more time and adding some
more paints gray. Before going further, I'll remove the water which
is on the masking tape. Take your time to do
this every now and then. Otherwise, this could spoil our painting by creating blooms. Now, the next step is we need to lift the board and
let our colors flow. This is the most
interesting part. Our paper had a lot of water and we are
letting it flow down. I have lifted the board, and now I'm removing the extra water that has been
collected at the bottom. Remember, we have
to do it all the time because the water will
keep collecting there. And when we lay our board flat, the water will flow back
and disturb other colors. Do you see the way the
colors are moving down? I'll not touch anything
at this point. I don't want to disturb those
delicate lines forming. I have done this
few times before and never managed to
have similar results. All the time, those
patterns are different. I think this is good. We don't want the red to cover
the yellow completely. So I'm keeping it flat. Now we have to wait for it
to dry and once it dries, let's add some more
details to this.
4. Project 1 : Adding Details: Okay, I waited for it to dry, and now it's time
to add details. I'm picking the paints gray, and let's add some pine trees. These pine trees are
quite simple to paint. I usually start with
a vertical line, and then with a tip of my brush, I make quick uneven strokes, smaller ones at the top, and as I go down, I'll
add bigger strokes. The main thing here is to
keep these strokes uneven. We don't want to
have a tree with exact number of
branches on both sides. I'm adding a small tree here, and I'm stopping at the middle. And then I will add a
bigger one in the front. This creates depth
in our painting. It doesn't look really good if all the trees are in the
same row side by side. The size of each tree as well, makes some smaller
and some larger. You can add any
kind of pine trees. We are not concentrating
on these details. Our main focus is
on the background. So when I add the details, I'm making sure
that it is not too prominent and it doesn't
cover the whole background. For example, if I had a big tree which covers
the whole painting, then our highlight would be the tree and not the background. So in a painting, we should think what
is our focus point. Also, I'm making sure that all the three colors we
have add are visible here. Keep adding bigger
and smaller trees. When it comes to adding
details like this, I use thicker
consistency of paint because I don't want to add
extra water to the dry paper, which would create blooms. Oh, I love the sky. It has this fiery look with
all the red and yellow. A little story time now. The other day, I sat outside and I was painting some wildflowers. And there was this
little girl who came to me and she was very curious, and she asked me what I'm
painting. I explained her. Soon she went back to
her place and brought her painting supplies and
started painting with me. It was such a happy moment, you know, I made a cool friend. These art and craft hobbies, they just spread joy everywhere. We are mostly done
with a painting. That was very quick, right? It didn't take too long. Okay, let's remove
the masking tape now. Carefully remove the tape with an angle so that the painting
will not get disturbed. This is the final
look of our painting. I wanted to show you the
similar paintings I did before. I've used the same
technique in all these. But if you see the patterns
that have been created, are different in each
of the painting. There is no way that we can
have two exact paintings. It all depends on the
way the water flows, which is something that
we cannot control. Okay, see you in the next class to start with our
second project.
5. Project 2 : Background: Okay, let's start with
our second class project. I'm using four colors here. We need new gamboge, pains gray, Taoblue
and also indigo. I have already squeezed the
colours into my palette, NugamboTeo blue, indigo,
and paints gray. As our first step, I'm
wetting the paper, picking the clean
water and applying it. I let the paper absorb the water by moving
the brush up and down. Give enough water
to the paper so that the paint we
apply can flow easily. Okay, my paper looks right. Let's start with
our first color, which is new gumbos. I'm picking the yellow with
my silver black velvet brush of size eight and making
vertical strokes. This is similar to what we
did in our first project. Observe that we start with the lighter color first and
then go for darker shade. Otherwise, the lighter
shade will not be visible. I have covered the
bottom part with a nice and thick yellow color. I'm adding the teal blue as my second color on
top of the yellow. When the blue touches yellow, it will give a new
color which is green. It's right in our case. When I started with watercolor, these kind of simple
projects help me a lot to
understand my colors. Which color can go
well with other color, which will create unwanted
color, et cetera. For example, I wouldn't use blue and yellow directly if I'm painting a sunset scene
because by doing such mixing, I know that yellow and blue
will create green color. Now I'm taking the indigo as my next color and applying
it to the top region. I'm doing the same
loose vertical strokes. Picking the thicker
consistency of indigo with almost no water and
applying it to the top. The next step is very simple. Let's just lift it and
let the colors flow. Here you can clearly see
the colors have come down. I'm removing the
extra water that got collected at the
bottom of the paper. See the green colour
that has been created due to the mixing
of blue and yellow. I wanted the same effect
on the right side as well. There, the colours
are not moving much, but I'm not going to
do anything more. We have to wait
for it to dry and let's add some details
in the next section.
6. Project 2 : Adding Details: This has right now. Let's go
ahead and add some details. I have taken a smaller brush, silver black velvet brush of size four for
adding the details, picking the paints gray, and I'm adding a small slope towards the right bottom side. I'm stopping at this place where the blue has mixed with
yellow and created green. I don't want to cover that
part with lot of details. Now, I'm adding pine trees, but different kind of pine trees compared to what we did
in our first project. Again, I'm starting
with a vertical line. But this time, I'm
starting from the bottom, and I'm adding the foliages
with a tip of my brush. Making these uneven strokes, larger ones at the bottom, and as I go up, they
become smaller. And these foliages
are pointing upwards. You can add any type
of details here, pine trees, small bushes, mountains, et cetera, or just a simple patch that
depicts the ground will do. I would suggest you to try
different details every time, maybe a small house, a lone tree, power lines,
a windmill, anything. This will help you to be
better at such details, and this knowledge can be applied when you attempt
advanced landscapes. I will add few more
smaller and larger trees, but one thing I
want to make sure is not to completely cover the yellow color and also the
green color that is formed. Those are the background details that we want to highlight. Making the bottom region
more dense and dark, and for the top part,
I'm adding less details. I'll be adding more
trees and adjusting the shape of each for the
next couple of minutes. Bear with me while I
add these tiny details. You know, I have tried so
many color combinations. When I don't have
anything in my mind, but still want to paint, I randomly add colors
on a small sheet of paper and see how they
look with each other. Or if I have some leftover
colors on my palette, I just mix them on the paper. This might seem like it is
taking me nowhere, you know? But now after so
many such exercises, I have a deeper
understanding of my colors. We can also add some
saplings, as well. I'm adding some small trees
here towards the left. Maybe I'll add one
in the background. I don't want to
get caught up with the details here, but, you know, it's very easy to
get lost in details, and then our painting
feels overworked. I don't want to do that.
I'm done with the details. Let's remove the masking tape. Be gentle while removing
the masking tape. Always remove the
tape with an angle. Okay. The last one now. This is our second painting.
Hope you like this. I have tried a similar painting before with the exact colors. But again, the pattern it had formed turned out to
be very different. This is something that
we cannot control. Okay, we have successfully
completed our second project, and let's move on
to the next one.
7. Project 3 : Background: Welcome again. Let's talk about the colors
required for this class. Amusing Hooker's green light. This is from Winsora Newton. Then we need Indigo. This is from White Knights. Then it is Buff Titanium. This color is from Daniel Smith. And then the fourth
color is paints gray. This is from White Knights. Before starting with
a class project, I wanted to swatch
the Buff Titanium. This is kind of a special color and not everyone might have it. So let's see how it looks. You see, it's a kind of
off white or beige color. It has a tint of yellow in it. Now the question is, when
you don't have this color, what can you mix to get a similar color? I'll
show you that now. We need Chinese white, as well as umber and also
a tiny bit of yellow. To get this off white color, we add very small amount of umber to the white,
really small amount. Our main color in the
mixture is white itself. Now we shall add a pinch
of yellow to this. I'm taking u gamboge, and with the tip of my brush, I'll just touch the yellow
and add it to the mixture. Now let's watch. See, we
have got very similar color. So you can get this shade
by mixing white with any brownish black shade
and very little yellow. Now we shall start our
painting by wetting the paper. I'm using my big round brush here and picking
the clean water. We have to wet the
paper well enough so that the colors we add
will have the time to flow. I'm making sure that the
paper is uniformly wet, especially around the edges. That's because the edges tend to dry faster compared
to the center. My paper looks glossy. I can see the reflection
of light. This is good. Our base color is buff titanium, so I'm activating the
buff titanium color with little water and applying
it to the whole paper. We have to aim for even
distribution of the color here. Picking some more color. I'm moving my brush from top to bottom and going over
it again and again. This is to ensure that I
haven't left any area white. If you see the
color is too light and it's easy to
miss some parts. So I will move my brush in all directions to make sure that the color is
evenly distributed. I should have taken
the bigger brush here. With this smaller brush, it is taking so long to
cover the entire paper, but we are almost done
now, so it's okay. While applying the color, I'm concentrating more towards
the top region as well as the middle part and kind
of ignoring the lower part. That's because we will add some details there
in the later stage. Now we shall take
the second color, which is hooker's green. As it is too bright, I don't
want to use it directly. Instead, I'm mixing it with
paint's gray to mute it down. Now we have a darker green, and I'll apply it
to the top region. If you see, I'm holding my
brush almost at the top, so that I get these
loose strokes. I'm applying this dark green
mixture multiple times. That is because when we lift the board and
let the colors flow, the pigment will move down and this area will
become lighter. So to have a saturated look, I'll add multiple
layers of darker green. And now we shall lift the board so that the
color will flow down. The flow of the color, it always depends on how much water is
present on the paper. If the paper is already dry,
we cannot achieve this. So it is important
to wet the paper well enough so that
our colors can move. We can see the tiny
strings that are formed due to the
green moving down. I'll remove the extra water that is collected at the bottom. Now this is good enough. I'll wait until it dries, and then we can add some
details in the next section.
8. Project 3 : Adding Details: It is time to add
some details now. I'm taking my silver black
velvet brush of size four. That's a smaller brush, and I'm picking some green. But as it is too bright, we will mute it down by
adding a bit of gray. For the details, I'll add some meadow and maybe
some small pine trees. I'll take lighter consistency of this black and green
mixture with lots of water and add a small slope
from right towards left. It's really light in color. I'm adding more water to the
mixture and applying it. Now I'm taking the
indigo and mixing it with hooker's green to
have a darker mixture. Add more indigo here because we want to have
a really dark green. I'll apply it to the
front from left to right. Here we don't need to wait for the underlying layer to dry. It's okay if both the colors
bleed into each other. I'm adding some more
indigo to the green, picking thick and
creamy mixture, and applying it
from left to right. Same like before, so that we get saturated look now I'm using some paint gray to
add small pine frees. You can go for any color here, either indigo gray or the
dark green mixture we have. I'm going for thicker
consistency of gray and painting small pine trees. I'll keep it minimal
with very few details. I suggest you to add these trees when the
meadow part is still wet because then the bottom of the trees will
blend into the meadow. I'll add few small
trees in the middle. I think that is all to this. Now I'll go ahead and
remove the masking tape. This is our third and
last class project. Quite simple, isn't it? I hope you enjoyed this class and give all these
projects a try. This is the final
look of our painting. I had done a similar
painting before. But here, I tried to
control the flow a bit. That is why you can
see the brush strokes. It's not very smooth. But in here, I just
let this flow. That's why there are
tiny hairs formed. Both are fine. It's just
a matter of preference. You can try different colors and combinations and see
how they work together. Thank you so much for watching. Please do upload
your creations in the project section
and leave a review. Thanks again. I see
you in the next class.
Suchetha KN, Watercolour Artist
