Let's paint Meadows in Watercolors!

1. Introduction: Landscapes that combine skies and meadows often create visually striking and serene scenes. The sky provides the backdrop and mood of the landscape. The meadow adds color, texture, and a sense of intimacy to the landscape. Combining these elements in your artwork can create a compelling and harmonious that captures the beauty and interplay between the expansive sky and the meadow. And this is exactly the theme of today's class. Hi, everyone. I am Shalika, a watercolor artist, and a vivid landscape lover. I love painting dramatic skies and rich meadows, and I'm here to walk you through the process of painting one today. In this class, we will split the process into two, process of painting skies with multiple layers, then we will set to paint the meadow and final touches with birds and flowers. So gather all the materials discussed in the next section and hop on to the journey of painting these two beautiful landscapes. 2. Materials Required: Let's go through the materials that we need for this class. First is the paper. I have used Saunders Waterford brand of paper. I have this big block of 100% cotton, 300 GSM, which I've cut into eight by eight inch size paper for this class. You can use any brand of paper, but I would suggest to at least have 100% cotton and 300 GSM paper. Next for brushes, I have used five brushes. First is a silver velvet hake brush which I've used to apply water. Next is Brostro mop brush size four and silver velvet brush size six medium size brushes, these two, which I've used to apply my colors and paint skies and meadows. For detailing purpose, I've used the size two and size four Princeton brushes for details. For the colors, I'll be using different brands of artist create colors. You can start with any brand of colors that you have and for the details on the specific shades, you can watch the colors watching video. Next I have is a pencil, two jars of water. A palette to mix colors. I'm using this ceramic tray for the same. Next is this board, where I taped down the paper using the masking tape. And last is a tissue or cloth. Gather all the materials that you have and let's jump into painting the landscapes. 3. Landscape 1 - Colors: Let's start with the colors that we need for this class, especially for the landscape one. Starting with serine blue. This is from the brand Miglo Mission Gold. Next is Calilar yellow. This is from the brand Snelar. Next, I would be using yellow permanent deep, again from Mgilomiion. This is a shade between yellow and orange. Next is yellow orange, again from Mgilomion. Then we have Indian gold. This is from white Knights. Next is indigo from the brand cellar. Then we have bright clear violet from gilumi. Next is PWC leaf green from Shin hen watercolors. The other green shades are sap three from Mgilumion. Next is hookers green, again, from Mgilum. Then we have red brown from Mgilumon. If you don't have this color, you can mix indigo to burnt sienna. Next is neutral tint from Shinhan. A alternate color is paints gray. This is the hookers green shade that I had swatched, and the last that we need would be white quash or white gelpin. 4. Landscape 1 - Sketch : I have my paper here. Let's start with our first landscape. Let's tape down the paper on the board. I am using masking tape on all the four sides and making sure the paper is firmly taped down and there is no gap between the tape and the paper. For the sketch, somewhere around more than half of the page from top would be the Horizon line, drawing another line below this with some gap. Let's sketch the shed now. Highlighting the hill sort of shape touching the bottom of the shed. With the eraser, I'll just make the graphite marks lighter. Now, the sketch is ready. Let's move to the next section and paint the sky. 5. Landscape 1 - Sky: Let's paint the sky now. I have removed all the colors needed onto my palette. Using my Hake brush, I'll apply even coat of water onto the sky area. Try to avoid applying water to the shed section of the sky. Apply multiple layers of water to make sure your paper is wet throughout. Run your brush across the whole of the paper to avoid any water puddle on the paper. Now, let's start painting the sky. We will start with serlein blue. Apply very light strokes of blue, leaving white gaps in between, cover mostly the top section of the sky. Now, aching in yellow, apply strokes towards the bottom of the sky and in between the blue ones. Painting wet on wet, you just have to apply the strokes and let the water do its magic, adding in some denser yellow to the bottom of the sky. Now taking in violet, let's apply strokes from the top. This is like depicting the purplish clouds we see over the sky. Look at the intensity of the color strokes. Always start out painting with light strokes and build on the intensity slowly. In watercolors, it's easier to build the tone, but very difficult to bring down the tone of colors. Using denser intensity of yellow and detailed brush, add in the clouds like strokes. We will add them to the bottom of the sky and some places in the middle. Switching to my silver velvet medium size brush. It's easier for me to make clouds with this. You can continue with a detailed brush or switch to your medium size brush. Now, with yellow orange, I'll mix it with some yellow dab of excess water will build the sky. You can see the strokes are like C shaped and just adding them together like a cluster to give shape of a cloud. You can drag them little towards the end to depict the lines and tails of the clouds. At some white spaces between the blue sky, let's add the yellow orange shade clouds. The color tone of these would be slightly lighter than that of the billow ones. We will not add a lot of strokes to the blue sky because yellow mixed with blue will give us green shade and orange mixed with blue will give us muddy brown shade. Taking some Indian gold now and painting on top of the yellow orange clouds. This helps in building the depth in painting. Bit by bit, you can see we are building the tone or intensity of the shade. You can see the strokes are not very detailed. It's all scribbled. As it's wet on wet, the colors will flow and give a natural look to the clouds. Next, with darker shade of blue, we will paint in the blue clouds. The top of the sky will be mostly painted in blue and violet. Switching between the two shades to build the top of the sky. You can see I am more focused with blue and purple clouds at only the top section of the sky. The yellow from the bottom meets the blue clouds somewhere in the middle of the sky, where we have the mix of both the colours. Lifting of some colors to give a shadow effect. Basically, clean up your brush, dab off excess water, make sure your brush is dried, and then lift off colors. You will see the whiteness of the paper shining through where you have just lifted the colors. Building in more of yellow orange streaks in the bottom of the sky. For this, I'll switch to the detail brush to get those thin streaks of cloud. Now, my paper has started to dry and I want to build in more depth to the bottom sky. I will apply an even coat of water again on top of the sky and continue painting on it. Remember to just apply a very thin and soft layer of water without applying a lot of pressure. Now again, continuing with the sky, starting with yellow orange and building on the cloud tone or intensity. Uh Again, lifting up the color to let the blue shine through between the yellow streaks. The middle of the sky looks a little empty with the clouds blending out after we applied another layer of water. Let me just add in some clouds with yellow orange. Next, with Indian gold, we'll try to build the same. Oops, it has a lot of water. That's why my stroke is not coming clean and getting blurred. I am removing excess water and then we'll work on the strokes. Okay, so now I am done. I like the subtle sky at the top and the dense sunset effect in the bottom of the sky. Now, let's wait for this to dry before we start to work on the meadows. 6. Landscape 1 - Meadows Part 1: Now the paper has dried and let's paint the meadows. Use hake brush or any other large size brush and apply an even at of water to the bottom part, the meadow section of the paper. I am here leaving out the space near the horizon line. We'll add in the color strokes directly. Wipe off the excess part with the tissue. Using my medium size brush and yellow, we'll start to build the strokes for the meadows. Again, starting with very diluted version. Now using leaf green to build up on the color diversity. If you do not have this color, you can mix lemon yellow to your sap green and get the shade. Be very careful while painting near the horizon. These are all simple horizontal strokes. Apply sap cream and build the hill or the uneven bump like structure. Adding sap green to the grass near the horizon. Using leaf green, blend it out evenly with the background. Just play around in the meadow to give it some highs and lows. Use the yellow or leaf green shade to create a smooth blend of the darker green with the background. Adding in strokes with a slight dark green. Again, here I have added a tinge of blue to the sap cream. Blending it out using the leaf green. Using sap cream, making another pump at the flood. Okay. I think this has become too dark, blending this out with yellow and making this shade little lighter. Making this little more evident with another layer of saprene. Okay. So we're done with this. Let the base layer dry, and then we will work on building up the meadows. 7. Landscape 1 - Meadows Part 2: U so the base layer has not dried. Switching to the retail brush, mix the green with Indian gold or burn sienna to get olive green shade and using that, let's paint the distant bushes around the horizon. Add in a tinge of blue to make slight darker shade and add that to the bushes, as well. Painting different shades of green makes it look a little more natural. Just scribble uneven surface that looks like bush entries. Similarly, painting trees and bushes with different shades of green near the shed as well. Use sap green, olive green, dark green that is sap green mixed with indigo or blue to give different tones to the trees and the bushes. Using the burn Siena, add trunk like structure on the tree. Okay, so we are done with the bushes. Now using red brown or borne sienna, let's paint the shed. To get to darker shade, mix the base color with pains gray and apply it at the corner to give the effect of the shadow. Taking in the same color and applying it to the other side of the shed. Same process of applying the color and then adding dark shade to get the shadow effect. Okay, D. Now let's wait for this to dry before you paint the top of the shed. Okay, so this is now dried. Using a mix of indigo and sap green, a very dark mix. Let's paint the roof of the shed. So here I have mixed in the shades, dabbing of excess water, just painting the roof. This is going to be a very dark wash on the roof. Okay, we are done. Now while we wait for the roof to dry, we can start painting the meadow or the grass. Switch into my detail or small size brush with the dark green that I already have on my palette. You can again use hookers green or mix indigo or paint's gray with sap green. We will paint grass like strokes. They can vary in shape, size, and color tone as well. So don't worry if you use different shade of green because we will be working with different shades to give a natural effect. Continue making these strokes. Okay, so we are done with the first layer. We will continue painting this in the next section. 8. Landscape 1 - Meadows Part 3: Okay, so to continue painting the meadow using the detailed brush, we will add another tinge of pains gray or indigo to the previous dark shade and we'll add more grass strokes to bring some depth to the meadow. So basically, every layer, you can keep on adding a little more of pains gray or indigo and darken your green. Okay, I think these many grass strokes are enough for now. Using cadmium yellow, and Indian gold mix to get an opaque, yellow, orange shade, we will paint the flowers. Add these dot like strokes to depict flowers on the grass. Using the same shade, we will paint some flowers depecting far away from our eyes. We might not see the stems of these plants, but from distance, we can see bed of flowers with a yellow orange shade. Keep on adding a bunch of them in different places. Now, we'll add another layer of grass strokes with more dark green. You can see I have added more of ta and indigo to our existing mixture, and using detailed brush, I'm adding the strokes. Till now, we have gone dark bit by bit from our sap green. Now mixing in some white quash and sap green, we are going to go shade lighter and add these light green strokes. Now with watercolors, we could have just diluted sap green to get lighter shade. But as we are painting these strokes on top of already existing green and the darker green shades, the strokes with diluted green would not be visible. Hence, we mixed white uh to lighten the shade, as well as to get the opacity so that the strokes are visible on top of the previous green strokes. For the flowers as well, we will add in another shade. This time, we will just use cadmium yellow and brighten up our artwork. Okay. So now the flowers at the distance between those, we might see some stems. You know, the ones which do not have a flower. So just using green, adding some dots in between the yellows to depict those stems. The yellow and yellow orange had become little dominant with the yellow orange sky, grass, and the flowers. Let's add in some white flowers to bring in another color element. Add them to at some places only. Now cover up your sky wet tissue. We'll sprinkle some yellow and white from the brush. This will give some natural effect of different sizes of flowers in the meadow. I think that's all. We'll just need to add some finishing touches in the next section for our first landscape. 9. Landscape 1 - Final Touches: Okay, so for the final touches, let's start with the shed. Use white shell pen or white quash with detail brush to add in the highlights at some places. Okay, so the flowers are still wet because of which I am unable to add in these highlights. Let us meanwhile paint the words. Using detail brush and black color or paints gray, we will add in the birds. Work very slowly on this and paint as many as you want. I love painting birds, so I will add a lot of them. If you want to paint only few, please go ahead and paint them. It doesn't need to be in exact count and shape like mine. Okay, so I think these many are enough. Now again, using white her pin will continue with adding highlights to the shed. Let's add few highlights to the bigger words as well. Now, before we close on this project, I will just add slight darker layer of paints gray to the door of the shed. It looks very light. Okay, so the painting is now done. Let us remove the masking tape. Here is the final painting. This looks so serene and beautiful, isn't it? 10. Landscape 2 - Colors: For this class project, we would leverage most of the colors from the previous project itself. We'll just have an addition of quincridon permanent rose. You can also use crimson red as an alternate color to this. Gather all the materials and colors, and let's paint the second landscape. 11. Landscape 2 - Sky: U so the base layer has not dried. Switching to the retail brush, mix the green with Indian gold or burn sienna to get olive green shade and using that, let's paint the distant bushes around the horizon. Add in a tinge of blue to make slight darker shade and add that to the bushes, as well. Painting different shades of green makes it look a little more natural. Just scribble uneven surface that looks like bush entries. Similarly, painting trees and bushes with different shades of green near the shed as well. Use sap green, olive green, dark green that is sap green mixed with indigo or blue to give different tones to the trees and the bushes. Using the burn Siena, add trunk like structure on the tree. Okay, so we are done with the bushes. Now using red brown or borne sienna, let's paint the shed. To get to darker shade, mix the base color with pains gray and apply it at the corner to give the effect of the shadow. Taking in the same color and applying it to the other side of the shed. Same process of applying the color and then adding dark shade to get the shadow effect. Okay, D. Now let's wait for this to dry before you paint the top of the shed. Okay, so this is now dried. Using a mix of indigo and sap green, a very dark mix. Let's paint the roof of the shed. So here I have mixed in the shades, dabbing of excess water, just painting the roof. This is going to be a very dark wash on the roof. Okay, we are done. Now while we wait for the roof to dry, we can start painting the meadow or the grass. Switch into my detail or small size brush with the dark green that I already have on my palette. You can again use hookers green or mix indigo or paint's gray with sap green. We will paint grass like strokes. They can vary in shape, size, and color tone as well. So don't worry if you use different shade of green because we will be working with different shades to give a natural effect. Continue making these strokes. Okay, so we are done with the first layer. We will continue painting this in the next section. 12. Landscape 2 - Meadows: For the bushes at the horizon, we will apply sap green and mix of sap green plus pains green. This would be a simple wash of color with different shades of green. Just add in a tinge of darker green that is sap creen plus pains gray and drop that on the bottom of the bushes to blend it with the rest. Now we'll apply an even coat of water to the area below the horizon. I will use my hake brush for the same. You can use any brush that you have, but be very careful around the horizon. We have just painted the bushes. I am, in fact, as you can see, not applying any water over there. Now, using my medium size brush, we'll start painting the meadow. For the start, we will use sap tree. Being very careful near the horizon. Now you can leave little more white space than what I have here. Let us add now quin rose or crimson red. Quin and green when mixed gives muddy brown color, but this works as an advantage for us as it gives more earthy tone to our meadow. Now we'll add in green, a shade darker than sap green. You can add a tinge of paints gray or indigo to your sap green to get this shade. Here I have used Hooker's green from Mglo Mision gold. Okay, let's wait for this to dry slightly. We don't want the paper to dry completely. I will just wipe off the excess water from the corners to avoid getting the cauliflower effect. Now in this landscape, we will paint the grasses in two layers. One, wet on wet, which is what you can see. So take in your detail brush with sap green and add grass like strokes. Keep on adding them. The grass can vary in shape and size. You can also add grass with Hooker's green shade as well. I am adding lots of grass. You can stop if you feel it's getting a lot. So the second way of painting the grass will be when this layer has completely dried off, and then we add in these strokes. For the first layer, this looks good. We will add more in the next section. Mm. 13. Landscape 2 - Final Touches: Now, the first layer has dried. Using a tone darker than sap green, let's paint grass again. I have added a tinge of paint's gray or indigo to my hooker's green. You can add the same to sap green to get a shade darker than the one we already have. You can see I am adding a lot of grass strokes again. Keep on building the green layers by adding more of indigo or paint screen. I think these many are enough. Let's add flowers to these grass. Using quin rose or crimson red, I am adding the flowers. Add them in varied sizes. Now, we will cover the sky wet tissue and add splatters of quin rose. Now, the grass seems to have become too dark. What we will do is add white quash to sap green and get a lighter green opaque shade. This will be visible when we apply on top of the dark green grass that we have already painted. Adding the strokes in the similar way as before. You can add in broken lines covering up the dark green grass. Anything is fine. Now, for flowers too, we will add in a lighter version. Using white quash and quin rose or crimson red, we'll add in lighter flowers as well. Again, we'll cover the sky with tissue and splatter the color. Okay, so the spatters are not coming in. Let me just add little water, and this will make the splatters easily. So we are done with the meadow. Now using detailed brush and black color, we will paint the birds. Work very slowly on this and paint as many birds as you want. As you would have already known by now, I love birds, so I'll just add them a lot. Oh. Okay, so we are done with this painting. The painting has dried as well. Let's peel off the masking tape. This is the final look. Love how vibrant this one looks. That's the end of the class projects for this class. 14. Conclusion: So here we are at the end of this class. I hope you enjoyed painting these two landscapes and learn some techniques to paint skies and meadows. It would be great to see your projects, so please upload them into the project section. Also, do share your feedback about the class. It will help me to plan better. Till then, bye bye. Happy painting.