Loose & Expressive Spring Watercolor Landscapes: Master Moisture Control in 5 Days

1. Introduction: About Class : Have you ever stared at a blank sheet of paper wanting to paint but feeling too afraid to begin? Maybe you have struggled with muddy colors, unexpected blooms, overworked paintings or the pressure to make every watercolor piece look perfect from the very first stroke. If that sounds familiar, this class is just for you. Hey, guys. Hi. I'm Nilam Roy, a watercolor artist based out of Belgium, but originally from India. Over the years, my work has been selected for international watercolor exhibitions and recognized by art communities around the world. But honestly, my journey with watercolor began with frustration, self doubt, and the constant fear of making mistakes. What truly changed everything for me was in learning how to paint perfectly. It was learning how to let go of perfection. Spring has always reminded me that growth never happens all at once. Flowers bloom slowly, organically, imperfectly, and watercolor works the same way, too. In this class, we will celebrate the season of renewal through a relaxing five day watercolor challenge where we will paint five expressive spring inspired projects together, followed by a bonus lesson on day six for extra creative practice. But this class isn't about chasing tiny details or perfect outcomes. It's about understanding the heart of watercolor, learning how moisture control between your paper, paint and brush can completely transform the way you paint with freedom and confidence. Together, we will explore a loose expressive approach where less becomes more and where you will learn to simplify what you see instead of copying every detail from a reference picture. This class is designed mainly for intermediate artist, but beginners are absolutely welcome too. I'll guide you step by step through every project, including color palettes. And if you are completely new to watercolor, I would recommend starting with my class Atmospheric Spring Landscapes, where I have covered foundational watercolor techniques, tonal values, and atmospheric perspective in depth. By the end of this challenge, my goal isn't just for you to create beautiful paintings. It's for you to feel excited to return to watercolors again and again with more confidence, curiosity, and creative freedom. So grab your brushes, embrace the imperfect magic of watercolor, and let's welcome Spring together. 2. Essential Supplies Needed : Thank you for joining in. Let's quickly take a look at the list of supplies we will need to complete our class projects. Let's start with the most important supply. That is our paper. The paper that I am using here is from the Honeymles watercolor collection. Specifically, I'm here going for the rough texture. You can clearly see how beautiful and pronounced the texture of this paper is. Contrast, the coal pressed grain fine texture in the honeymles watercolor collection is rather finer and isn't as textured as one might expect from a true coal press surface. So if you are using a different artistic brand of paper, just stick to the standard coal pressed grain fine, 100% cotton and 300 eaum as is weight. Now the size of the paper that I'm using here measures 21 into five centimeter into 28.5, which is roughly an A four size paper. However, if you are a beginner, feel free to use smaller sizes like an A five or A six as long as you feel comfortable painting on it without feeling overwhelmed. Instead of the loose sheets, you could also use a sketchbook of your preferred size. However, ensure that whatever sketchbook you are using, it is 100% cotton and is at least 250 Joasm as its paper weight. Though I recommend that beginners should work with 300 Joasm so that they are not frustrated with the drying of the paper. Apart from a sketchbook, you could also use 100% cotton gummed paper block pad. Additionally, keep some rough cutouts of your paper handy to swatch out your colors or practice techniques before diving into the final projects. Now, if you're using loose sheets like I am, you will need a non absorbent surface to tape down your paper and then paint. The surface that I am using here is a waterproof PVC foam board, which is very handy and lightweight for moving around while creating texture and patterns on your paper. Alternatively, you could also use plexiglass boards or thick acrylic glass sheets. Now, to tape down the loose sheets of paper onto your board, you would need masking tape. I am here using 1 " tape here, but feel free to use any size of masking tape that you have got instead of this, you could also go ahead and use your washi tapes. Let's move on to our next supply, which is our watercolors. I will be using Shenhan Arts PWC extra fine watercolor tubes, which are their premium professional grade paints. Now, if you have watched my previous classes on Skillshare, you will know how much I love this brand of colors. They are absolutely worth starting with as a beginner or even as an intermediate artist given their rich pigment load and the vibrancy that they offer even after the painting has dried. Along with PWC paints, I will also use a few colors from Izaro, Belgian handmade watercolor brand, which I have recently grown very fond of. Don't worry about the specific colors. I have included a separate lesson at the beginning of every project, detailing the colors we will be using. If you don't have watercolor tubes, you can also go ahead and use your watercolor pants that are available with colors that I have used for the projects are all basic shades included in every artist cred set of 12 or 24 watercolor pans or tubes. So feel free to use whatever you have. You can always upgrade your color palette later. The next supply that you would be needing is a mixing palate. The one that I'm using here is a Shinhan Rs 35 weld palette, which is a polycarbonate palate and is stain resistant, and I love it. Instead of the weld palates, you could also go ahead and use a very normal ceramic palette or even a plastic mixing palette works. Use whatever that is available with you. Then we will also need two jars of clean water, one for rinsing soiled brushes, and the other as a fresh source of water. Now let's discuss about the most important supply after paper is brushes. I will be using brushes mostly from silver Bush Limited. Let me walk you through them one by one. The first brush that you see is a hag brush from Attlee series. It is a very soft made from goat hair and can be used for laying flat washes or covering larger surfaces in one go. Next is this rounded mop brush. This is from the atelier squirrel series. It is of size 30. It holds a lot of moisture and paint owing to its big fat belly. I use also another type of smaller sized goat hair mop brush, which is of size 20 from the aer series. This is the silver Ater blending quill, size 20, as you can see. The bristles are very soft and I love using this brush for anything and everything. It's very versatile. Apart from the natural hair brushes, I also use synthetic brushes to maintain precise control over the water and paint ratio. Here I have the ultra round size six from silver silk 88 series. Even though they are synthetic, the bristles are incredibly soft with a nice spring bag. The next is this bright brush size six from silver belle aqua series. This synthetic bristles mimic the feel of red sb. It is very wise to keep a small flat or bright brush like this, as it allows you to create block shapes easily in one single stroke. Instead of any speciality brush, I use this size 00 squirrel imitation mob brush. You can see how I can manipulate the damp bristles, which retain their shape pretty nicely. Another advantage of natural hair bristles is the responsiveness and the way they hold their shape. I also keep handy this size two synthetic soft bristle liner brushes and another mini liner brush to create delicate shapes or strokes. Alternatively, you can also have a size two bright brush for detail. Now, in case if you don't own natural hair brushes or mop brushes, don't worry. You can go ahead and use your soft hair synthetic bristle round brushes. But go ahead with a bigger size that is of size eight or ten to substitute what I'll be showing you with my mob brushes. And then you can also alternatively have some smaller round brushes of sizes four to six. Silver black velvet is a good choice or just paint with any soft synthetic watercolor brushes that you have got. Basic sketching purposes in the class, you would need a pencil. I am here using a three edge pencil from Shinhan art, or you could also off for any mechanical pencils that you have got a kneading eraser and a ruler. Apart from this, I also have a spray or misting bottle to rewet the paper or to create some special effects along with some tissue towels or napkins. That's all for this lesson. Use what you have and remember that you can always upgrade your supplies later. Have collected my own supplies over the years, but it is always important to start with a good hundred percent cotton watercolor paper. It is truly the backbone of your watercolor painting. 3. Stages of Paper Moisture: Okay, before we dive into our projects, let's first understand the levels of moisture on your paper so that it is easy to follow along during the class projects. Generally, the first step with watercolors is to wet the paper and then load the paint. Here, we will focus specifically on wetting the paper first. So for this, I dip the brush in a container of fresh water. You can observe that the belly of the brush is pollen with water and the tip is dripping of water. When you use this watery brush to coat your dry paper, you will notice excess water moving across the surface. You can observe here how the belly and the tip of the brush is pollen with water. You can see the beading of water, and now as you pull the water down on your paper, you still feel that there is too much of water and you can see the water moving across the paper. This state of moisture on your paper is known as soaking wet or also known as wet paper, which is characterized by a very reflective sheen, and very soon you will start noticing paper is buckling. Let's look at the next state. I repeat the process of dipping the brush in water, but this time, I squeeze out the excess water from the belly of the brush against the side rim of the glass and then absorb the remaining water on tissue paper. I will now coat the paper again. From this angle, the difference might seem almost invisible. But when I change the angle, you can clearly see the contrast. From this angle, you can clearly see that the first state was very wet with a shiny surface and buckling. Was this second state is uniformly moist with very little swelling and very minimal reflective shine. This state of moisture on your paper is known as the damp state of your paper. Finally, there is the dry surface, where the paper is not coated with water at all. To wrap up, mastering these three moisture levels, soaking wet, damp and dry gives you precise control over your watercolor flow. 4. Brush Moisture Levels: In this lesson, let's understand the state of moisture levels in our brushes. Here I'm showing you an example with two natural hair mob brushes. One is fluffy dry and the other is damp. Here you can see that I can easily bring the damp brush back into shape, which would not be possible with a wet brush unless we squeeze out all that excess water. Let's begin the demonstration. I will first start by dipping the brush in water. You will clearly see that the belly and the tip of this natural hair brush are swollen with water because these brushes have a high capacity for holding both paint and water. Using this fully saturated brush, I will reactivate my dry paint on the palette. Here I am reactivating my dry paint on the palette. Observe the resulting runny mixture. When coated on dry paper, it creates a very runny fluid wash. Notice how the paint on the water is gliding unevenly on the paper surface. Here, the brush still holds a significant amount of water even after application. You can clearly make out how watery that paint is because it has started flowing onto the other side of the palette. Let's now move to the next level of moisture. I use a tissue to absorb all of that excess water until the brush is damp and dry. To verify the dampness of your brush, use your index finger to gently roll the tip and toe of the bristles. If no water droplets are visible and the brush retains its shape, it is in a damp dry state. When using this brush to reactivate the paint, you will achieve a buttery mixture. However, when applied to dry paper, you will observe broken edges on the watch, requiring several layers to obtain a clean uniform result. I will show you here another example. If I tilt my palette to remove the runny paint, leaving only the paint blob and load the brush from this, the brush appears almost distorted, indicating negligible moisture. When applied, it leaves dry brush marks, and even when laid, the swatch remains textured. Look how the brush looks frayed. The tip especially looks distorted. This indicates that the tip of the brush has now zero moisture. These two conditions represent the dam dry state, where in both the paint and the brush, the water is controlled. My paint mix and the palette is exhausted, so I will squeeze out more paint, and now I will rinse the brush thoroughly in water and dab it dry on a towel until the moisture is almost negligible. My brush tip here feels damp dry, so I dip the tip on the surface of the water and reactivate the paint immediately because I wanted to create a very creamy mix for which I needed a little bit more moisture in the tip of my brush. Observe that this creates a smooth, creamy mixture, and you can feel this difference while mixing. Applied to dry paper, the brush glides easily, creating a much more intense and uniform spots. We use this specific moisture level primarily for wet on wet techniques. Now it is your turn to carry out the same exercise with synthetic and natural hair mop brushes to observe the differences for yourself. You may also wish to review my Skillshare class, the ultimate guide to paint skies, which includes a specific lesson on water control techniques for natural versus synthetic brushes. This content will prove useful as you conduct the current exercises. I will meet you at the next lesson where we will discuss about the paint consistency. 5. Relationship of Paint Consistency on Paper Moisture: In this lesson, we will discuss paint consistency in relation to different paper moisture levels. Watercolor paints, whether in the form of tubes or in palettes, start in a dry, sticky form that requires water activation. The amount of water that you apply to your paints and in your mixture significantly impacts the final result. Let's first talk about the buttery paint consistency. Now, whenever you squeeze out fresh paint from a tube, you will notice that it has a very smooth and thick, sticky buttery consistency with no added moisture. Now, here I grab a very dry brush. You can see there is absolutely no moisture. The brush is absolutely dry. Now, when you use this dry brush to load this buttery creamy paint and apply it on soaking wet paper surface, here you can see me preparing the paper surface with loads of water on it. Now on applying this thick paint with a dry brush will result in moderate sprayed with soft diffused edges. Here, we have controlled the water in the brush and the paint. However, the existing water on the paper disperses the pigment unevenly, causing beading at the corners with highly saturated pigment. Now let's look at the next scenario where I'm loading my damp dry brush with this thick sticky buttery paint. You can see how it is offering resistance to the brush. It's not very smooth. I'm loading the brush properly, and now I'm going to apply the same thick paint on a dry textured surface, and you can see that it creates this textured broken patterns due to the lack of moisture in the paint in the brush, as well as on the paper. Next, we will apply the thick buttery paint on a damp paper surface. Notice that I first prepared the paper with a damp mop brush, spreading the water uniformly. The surface should have a smooth, satin like glow that is even but not highly reflective. Now when you start applying the paint, observe the smooth, soft application with very minimal spread, which offers us high control. Now let's look at the next scenario where I'm applying the same thick, buttery paint with a damp dry brush on a very wet paper. You will observe the same behavior as applying thick paint with a dry brush on very wet paper, the first instance that we saw. Here, too, we have controlled the water in the brush and the paint. However, the existing water on the paper disperses the pigment unevenly causing uneven spreads. Now let's move on to the next consistency, which is a creamy paint consistency. To achieve a creamy consistency, we will add water to the thick buttery paint until it feels intense yet smooth. It should resemble milk cream, thick, luscious, and opaque enough that you cannot see the white of the palette during mixing, but you should feel the smoothness while mixing with your brush. Here is a closer view, a different point of view for you to observe better how soft and creamy your paint consistency is. Now let's get started with different moisture levels on our paper. First is our very wet paper. And on applying this creamy paint, you would observe that the paint disperses with blurred edges with a moderate spread. Now let's look at the next scenario where we will apply the paint on our damp paper. Let's now apply this creamy paint onto our damp paper, and you will observe soft edges with low spread, allowing for a controlled uniform wash. Here, you will feel that your brush is simply gliding on paper very smoothly. Moving on to the next scenario where I'll apply the creamy paint with a rinsed damp dry brush on dry paper. Now, when you apply this creamy paint consistency on dry paper, you observe the heavy bands with dry textured marks and no spread. I hope you are following along and grasping these crucial moisture levels in your paper, brush and paint consistency, as mastering them will make your watercolor journey significantly more comfortable. Now let's look at the other scenarios of paint consistency. Now we will create the milky consistency by adding water with a damp brush to the creamy mixture. The result should resemble literal milk that is translucent, allowing you to see the palette white, but still possessing good pigment concentration. Now, we will apply this milky consistency of paint on very wet paper, and you can see that it instantly starts spreading with reduced paint intensity and soft heavy spread. Observe pigment pulling in random corners. Prepping my next paper surface, that is my damp paper. You can observe the soft satin glow. Now we start applying the paint onto our damp paper, and you can observe that the spread is much controlled than our first instance. Here it is controlled with soft edges, though the paint intensity remains reduced because of more water content in our paint mix. On dry paper, you will observe sharp distinct edges at the top, followed by gradual appearance of dry marks as the water is exhausted from the brush. This effect is particularly noticeable when applying the paint to a textured paper surface. We now move on to the next paint consistency, that is our watery paint, where I add more water to the milky consistency until the paint becomes very runny and diluted with the palette clearly visible through the mixture. We will now apply watery paint over the wet paper surface, and you can expect heavy uncontrollable spread with very low control and pigment density. Moving on to applying our watery paint over damp paper surface, and you can expect that the paint spreads rapidly, offering slightly better control than that of the very wet paper. Next, when you use your damp dry brush to load this watery paint mix and apply it on dry paper, you will notice that you get rough textured edges. It is because you have controlled the amount of water on your paint brush, which was dry. I hope this lesson has provided you the clarity required to master the relationship between paint consistency and paper moisture because it empowers us the artists to anticipate and manage the flow of pigment, effectively resolving tricky situations that may arise mid painting session. By understanding how water behaves within our tools and on various surfaces, we gain the control necessary to execute both spontaneous washers and precise details with confidence. 6. Day 1: Color Swatches: In this lesson, let's take a closer look at the colours that we will need for our palette. First, we start with our permanent rose. Now, instead of permanent rose, you could also go ahead and use any other bright, cool reds or magendas you might have on your hand. Next, we will be swatching out our lavender. Now, this lavender is a very beautiful pastel blue violet. You can always mix your lavenders by mixing a little bit of your blue PB 28 with your violet pigment PB 15 with some of that white gouache or your white watercolor paint, and you would have your lavender. When you mix the rose and the lavender together, you get a pastel mauve or purple gray, which serves as an excellent transition color for your layers. For the horizon, I will be using naples yellow, a pastel yellow, which as a neutral bias, if you layer the naples yellow with lavender, you will get a gray mix rather than a green. However, if you want to have the horizon to have a little bit of that golden warm hues of a breaking dawn or a sunset, you can mix a little bit of rose into your naples yellow or add in a touch of yellow orange to bring more of that orangy yellow tones to the mix. For the topmost part of the sky, I'm using permanent violet to bring out contrast at the very top and above the horizon where I have the yellow, while transition using analogous colors in between. The next color that I'm spotching out is a sap green, which is a very common color present in all watercolor palettes, whether student grade or artistic grade. Here is how the limited palette works. When I mix sap green with violet, I form a muted earthy brown, which is not present in my palette, maybe. So instead of going ahead and getting the colors, if you learn to mix and know your colors well, you can automatically create this muted browns and grays that you would like to include in your painting. You can see how beautiful and muted that brown we have formed, right? Similarly, when I mix permanent rose with that of sap green, I create a very rich and natural organic green that we can use for our foreground. By wearing the intensity of these colors, you can always adjust the tonal ratio or the saturation of these colors. Now the next color that I'll be needing is a pains gray or a neutral tint, or you can go ahead with any black to create the silhouette of the tree and the birds. Lastly, to bring out those wildflowers, we will need some white quash, and with that, that's the end of this lesson. 7. Day 1: Misty Sunrise Meadows Part 1: Okay. Let's begin by securing our paper with masking tape. Once fixed with the masking tape, observe your reference and sketch the horizon line. I'm placing the first horizon line at two thirds up the page to define the misty foreground, then adding a second line slightly higher to create the illusion of receding distance. Next, I'll connect the major foreground shapes to the sky horizon line. We will avoid creating a detailed outline sketch. I'm not going to go ahead and create the slaloutte of the tree yet as we plan to use loose brushstrokes to build layers and bring this painting to life. I always prefer minimal sketching. This allows me to make adjustments if things don't go according to plan. But if you do want to sketch the slalouette of the tree, please feel free to do so. The next step is to reactivate my paints using a misting or a spray bottle. Misting allows you to rehydrate the paint without flooding it with too much of water. Once the paints are moistened, apply a flat wash of water to the sky area. We will paint the sky using wet on wet technique to create a smooth, seamless transition between contrasting colors. Ensure the paper is coated with an even uniform layer of water, avoiding any pooled or stranded water. You can check the wetness by tilting the board. You should see a smooth reflective shen across the paper against the light. Now I will switch to my fluffy silver tiler size 30 mob brush and give it a good swirl in water. Dab the excess moisture on my paper towel. With this damp brush, I will create a creamy mix of naples yellow with a teeny amount of permanent rose and set it aside. I will create a second pool of pure naples yellow mix. I will now start by applying the creamy naples yellow at the base of the horizon line and gradually feeding the intensity upwards, halfway across while retaining the white space on the left. Observe, as I move upwards, I lighten my grip and pressure on the brush to create those smooth light strokes. Next, I'll quickly mix an intense bright golden orange by combining permanent rose with my naples yellow, or you could use your opera pink also to do so. Let this intense yellow orange hue over the naples yellow base using soft pressure so as to not lift the base layer of naples yellow. While my paper is still wet at the top, I will quickly create a medium creamy mix or permanent rose and start layering it from the top left, blending it into the yellow orange mix at the base, being careful not to cover the light yellow areas on the right, which will serve as a glowing part of the sky. This layer acts as an analogous transition. I will quickly rinse my brush, dab it dry on my tissue towel, and start preparing a pool of creamy consistency or permanent violet mix. I will now quickly layer a creamy consistency or permanent violet from the top left, covering the pink hues to create the contrast while our paper is still sufficiently wet. Ensure this is done in a single pass without going back and forth to avoid creating muddy mixes with the orange. Observe my brush strokes. The moment I touch the base of the horizon, I do not drag the brush all the way up to the top, but stop at the horizon. Next, using a clean damp brush loaded with a milky consistency of naples yellow. I will brighten the yellow areas by dragging the brush from right to left to lift the purples. Once I lift the purples, I clean the tip of the brush. I repeat this step every time I lift, making sure the yellow areas are clean and bright. You can still see that the paper is wet. You can see that reflective sheen. If you feel the paper has started to dry, wait for it to dry completely before re wetting the areas and starting the process again. My paper currently is damp, but it is not soaking wet, so I have squeezed out all that extra water from the mob brush, and you can see I'm mixing colors, which replicates to that of the horizon line. This is the perfect time to go ahead and create the blurred distant background. Brush tip was too dry, resulting in streaky lines for the misty background. To correct this, I use the misting technique to damp just the tip of my brush and remix the colors to achieve this creamy consistency. Now you can see that the brush moves more smoothly across the paper. It is crucial to understand the wetness level of three key elements here, your paper, the brush, and your paint mix. If there is too much of water in any of these three, you will notice uncontrollable bleeding, which can ruin your perfect sky which you already have created. Now just underneath the background foliage that we created, I will quickly go ahead and apply a watery mix of the same muted palette of my yellow orange, permanent rose and permanent violet. I'm now working here with wet on dry technique with a little watery consistency of my paint and dragging this to the left side of the foreground, creating this base layer. Now, this base layer that we created will create a misty effect between the distant background foliage and the foreground. Now here I'm just quickly going over the background foliage and layering a milky consistency of my permanent violet mix just to increase its intensity. Next, I will start preparing my foreground mix. For that, I have switched to my size 20 goat hair mop brush. Now here I'm combining my permanent violet, a little bit of yellow orange and sap green to form a muted creamy, greenish brown mix. The paint mix is already loaded on the tip of my mop brush, and using the same damp tip of the mop brush, I create this horizontal pattern here, leaving a gap between the background foliage that we created. I quickly grab my second damp mob brush to smoothen and lift the base color between the layers to enhance that misty effect. Now I will be building the depth and contrast by reapplying the muted greenish brown mix over the initial layer, filling the left foreground with slanted strokes using the same brush tip. Here, the advantage of using this goat hair mob brush is that I can manipulate the bristles of the brush to my advantage and create these vertical grass patterns using the same damp dry tip of my brush. Now, instead of doing it with a mob brush, you can also go ahead and use your synthetic fan brush and do it along the sides to create these vertical grass patterns or use a speciality comb brush to do the grass pattern structures. Now switching to a synthetic rigor brush, I will suggest the tips of the grass with loose strokes wearing the consistency of the paint mix. You need to add darker strokes to ensure visibility against the background, suggesting the depth and contrast you want to bring out in the foreground. But make sure that your paint mixes are creamy, it shouldn't be too milky or watery. Okay The next step is to cover the sky with a rough sheet of paper to save the sky from unnecessary blooms because I'll be using the splattering technique in the foreground to create wild blooms. I'm using here the rigor brush to splatter water, though you can also use a white creamy consistency of gouache for the same. Eventually, I decide to splatter some white quash, but be careful. A stray splatter on the sky would be noticeable if the sky is still drying up or is wet. This is why it is necessary to cover your sky with the paper to prevent unwanted blooms. Now, one important thing that you must remember here, your splatters are going to be soft and blurred only when the grass foreground is still wet, so you need to be a little quick over here. Once you are done with the splattering, you can go back with a muted darker green to sharpen the grass blades in the foreground, with this step, we complete the entire process of the left foreground and we will move on the next part of the process. 8. Day 1: The Meadow Part 2: Okay, let's begin by creating the water body. I will mix a milky consistency of naples yellow and start applying short horizontal half strokes using the tip of my mop brush. Because we are replicating the colors of the horizon in our water body, I will now go ahead and layer over this naples yellow mixture a little of my yellow orange mix with the same tip of my brush with short horizontal strokes. To smoothen out this textured dry pattern marks that we have got, I will now blend them in with the damp tip of my brush loaded with the tip of naples yellow. Here I'm employing the wet on dry technique which provides control over the paper's moisture, allowing for soft yet defined strokes. Once the water body is complete, the next step is to suggest the reflection of the foliage in the water. For this, I have switched to a size 00 damp dry mop brush and loaded it with a creamy mix of my muted warm green, the same mixture that we used for the foreground. I will now quickly work as the water layer is drying, if I wait, the reflections will form dark and hard outlines rather than the desired soft blur defect which we want to achieve. I recommend watching the entire process first and then painting along so that you are prepared for the next steps. This reflection, I directly went in with a medium darker value of my muted grain mix because I wanted to do it in a single layer to avoid overworking the reflection. Here, all you need is a natural damp brush with a tip that can be flattened or slightly frayed to easily create the strokes. Now, if you feel that your edges of the reflection look too sharp, you can use a damp right tip of your mob brush and smoothen them out by gently dragging them towards your right. At this point in the foreground, I noticed that the previous layer had faded, so I quickly used the same foreground colour mix, and with the damp dry flattened tip of my brush, I created short vertical lines to suggest the grass patterns. Now I move on to creating the base layer for the foreground on the right, using a milky consistency of transparent raw sienna. Over this, I will use the same technique to create the grass patterns as we did on the left foreground. With one key difference, I will intentionally leave gaps in the staggered layering method to enhance the sense of depth and light in between the grass patterns. Keep watching my brush strokes and the control of water that I have on my brush in my paint, as well as on the paper. Uh, using the same repetitive brush strokes, I will now begin at the bottom edge of the paper with medium values building to darker ones. Walking with wet on dry technique, you can see the dry marks at the bottom right. I will now leave the ***. Then I will load my damp dry brush with a mix of sap green, and violet to create a more darker mix so that there are sharper and thin grass blades without covering the dry patterns of the paper. I will now use long and fleaking strokes at the bottom half of this paper to create variation in the blades of the grass. Now switching to a size to synthetic rigor brush, I will now employ darker values to create wiggly patterns, introducing varied foliage to break the monotony of the grassy patterns. I will now apply this sparingly, just a few strokes at the bottom edge. Remember, this painting does not need to be an exact replica of the reference that we have chosen. Remember that the primary goal of this painting is to break free from that perfectionist mindset and embrace spontaneity and looseness in your work. We aim to capture the mood and atmosphere of the scene rather than getting caught up in perfecting every detail. With that being said, we cannot ignore certain fundamentals, for example, as the base layers dry and begin to fade, I will now add darker tones at the bottom to create a sense of depth. It is this contrast that brings character to our paintings without the need for excessive detailing. Here at this part, to create additional textures, I use the dry brushing technique using just the dry tip of my mob brush loaded with that creamy dark mix. I go ahead with softer strokes, few places here and there. And now it's time to go ahead and start creating artrsilut. Here I have the mix of my neutral tint ready. I have switched to a size six silver silk synthetic round brush to paint the tree slave. Since the paper has already dried, I'm using here a creamy to semi milky consistency of paint. I vary the pressure on the brush dip to create organic thick and thin lines with curves that follow the natural shape of the tree. Relax your wrist and adjust your pressure to achieve these varied lines. For super delicate thin branches, consider switching to a size two synthetic rigor brush or any size two synthetic round brush with a pointed tip. Using the rigor brush, I am trying to connect the thin branches to the thicker ones, creating continuity and harmony throughout this tree sloute. As you near completion, gently fed out the bottom of the tree using the damp tip of your brush. This prevents the tree from looking artificially placed, helping it to blend naturally into the setting. I will now use a spray bottle to miss the right foreground, adding whitequhplatters to represent the white flowers in the meadow. Although this could have been done earlier, the meadow had already begun to dry, so I waited for this specific area to dry completely before re misting it. I covered the sky with a sheet of paper just like we did before, and then applied the white splatters. Wetting the background creates a blurred suggestion of the wildflowers in the foreground, which do not interfere with the focal elements of the tree and the sky. Here I'll cover the left side of the meadow and change the direction of my splatters just to suggest that the flowers are growing in all the directions of the meadow. You can totally skip this step if you are satisfied with your foreground. Now, once you are done with your foreground, it's time to peel off our tapes, but make sure that your paper has dried completely flat before you go ahead and peel off the tapes. With that, we conclude our day one project. I'll see you again on Day two. 9. Day 2: Color Swatches: Okay, let's grab a sheet of rough paper. We are about to swatch out our colors for our D two project. First, we will swatch out our cobalt blue. Now, if you do not have this blue with you, you can always go ahead and use your ultramarine blue or cerulean blue, which will work well as alternatives. Now for creating shadows in the clouds, we will create a gray by mixing cobalt blue with burned Sienna. Feel free to adjust the ratios to achieve a lighter or darker value as needed. Next, let's move on to the mountain range. We will need a warm yellow green. In my case, my yellow green is a granulating yellow green, but if you do not own this pre made yellow green, you can mix your any warm yellow with your green and create this color. Now, if you add a touch of your cobalt blue into your yellow green mix, you will create a very soft and muted yellow green, which is very similar to the lines of olive green. Now, to create even more darker muted greens for the shadow areas on the mountains, I will first need sap green, which is available in most of the professional 12 color palettes and then mix in a little bit of dark blue indigo to create a very muted green. We are going to use this muted green, which is very dark for our shadow areas here at the foreground of the mountain. For the floral blooms, I have selected a bright cool yellow. In my case, this cool yellow is a semi opaque pigment, but in your case, you can also use lemon yellow, which will be available in your 12 color professional set. To create a textured muted gray brown, we will mix cobalt blue with a small amount of white quash, neutral tint, and burnt sienna. And by adjusting the ratios of each pigment, you can refine the gray brown to your liking. Finally, we will swatch out our burnt sienna, which is a very earthy mineral pigment. And with that, we are done with swatching out our colors for day two projects, so get your colors ready and meet me in the lesson. 10. Day 2: Spring Up the Hill- Part 1: Okay, my paper is already taped down, and I'm quickly moving on to the sketch. As you may notice, the reference image is in a horizontal scale while I'm working in a vertical format. Therefore, I will crop the composition to focus on the main subject, the mountain range, and allocate only the top third of the paper to the sky, leaving the remaining two thirds for the mountains. I suggest you watch the entire sketching process first, as I may return to make some alterations, feel free to pause the screen once the finished outline is ready so that you can begin your own sketch. Once your sketch is complete, the next step is to prepare the sky using the wet on wet technique. I will generously wet the sky area with a large mop brush. Here I'm using my silver ata size number 30 mop brush, taking care to ensure that the water does not seep into the mountain ranges. We are going to wet only the sky area. Allow some time for your paper to absorb the water between your washes to keep it wet for a longer period of time. I'm currently using cobalt blue for the sky, though you could also choose ultramarine blue. As you observe, I use the damp dry tip of the brush loaded with a creamy mix of this blue and start with slanted strokes, leaving some white spaces in between. As I progress with the sky, observe how I vary the pressure on the tip and the belly of my brush and hold the brush in a way that makes my wrist flexible. As I begin in the bottom right of the sky, I notice the area has dried. I will quickly adjust by creating a milky consistency for my blue mix by slightly dipping the tip in water and then filling the area softly. I may lighten the tone further by rinsing the brush and lightly dabbing it on a tissue towel and connecting the strokes to ensure that there are no hard edges. Once this section is complete, I will then switch to a smaller more brush. As I switched to my smaller mob brush, I noticed that the brush had residues of yellow, which is quite a staining pigment, so make sure that you rinse your brush properly to have no residues in them, because here we are going ahead with some lifting technique to create the shape of the clouds. Now, you could also use your tip of your tissue paper to go ahead and lift some colors. I'm going ahead with another layer of cobalt blue mix in a milky consistency, just to brighten the top part of the sky and refine the shapes of the clouds in some specific areas. My paper is still wet, so I'm able to do this step. But if you feel that your paper has dried out, skip this step altogether. Next, I'll be preparing a gray mix for which I am adding a little bit of burnt sienna to cobalt blue, and I will start filling in the bottom white spaces with the light tonal values. Observe the wetness of my brush. It is very damp and dry, as you can see that I'm trying to create this fluffy cloud shapes to soften the dark clouds, I will use the damp, clean right tip of the brush to fade out the edges at the top. This technique creates a smooth, voluminous finish for the clouds. You can always find many such useful tips and tricks in my class ultimate guide to pain skies here on Skillshare. Once you have completed the sky, avoid retouching it repeatedly. The paper's moisture level is critical. Beginners often struggle to gauge this leading to blotchy edges. Stop retouching and overworking the area to maintain a clean finish. Now I have switched to a smaller natural mop hair brush and loaded it with a pre mixed gray to paint the distant mountains in the background. This creates the atmospheric perspective. Walk relatively quickly here as the bottom right of the sky may have dried by now. Adjust your paint consistency accordingly. If the paper is drying, use a milky consistency of paint, and if the paper is still wet, a light creamy mix will create a softer and blurred atmospheric effect. Let's begin with the mountain ranges. I have switched to a smaller mop brush loaded with a creamy consistency of greenish yellow. This is a very warm and granulating greenish yellow that I'm using. Alternatively, you can also use a light cool yellow, such as your lemon yellow or cadmium yellow light to create a flat wash of light first. Then layer a light value of sap green in select areas to establish the effect of light and shadow. Start with this step only when you feel that your sky has completely dried out. If you start doing this step when your sky is still wet, there might be chances that your green start bleeding towards the blues of the sky, and that can create a mess. To work more quickly, you can lay down a flat wash of water using your bigger mob brush. And then apply your light yellow tones, add creamy values of sap green towards the bottom, leaving the lighter yellow tones visible in between to create the depth. Please note that I may deviate from the reference at this stage as I'm not strictly following it. If you wish to adhere more closely to the reference, you might skip the darker Sab green values here on the left foreground. Instead, try blending lighter tones of your sap green with yellow. Then gradually darken the color as you move towards the shadow area in the right foreground. I recommend watching the entire process first to decide on your plan of action. I As I reach the lower section of the mountain, I'm adding darker values of green. You can create a deeper mix by adding a dark blue such as indigo or dothron blue to the green. We will now cover the foreground using the wet on dry technique. You may notice some scratchy marks appearing on the paper. Please leave them as they are as they will add texture later. Now using the same dark mix, I will sharpen the edges of the mountain range to create a contrast with the lighter areas. Please watch the next steps closely as I progress with the painting. I notice that the green is bleeding into the sky, so to correct this, I will use a soft synthetic angle shader brush to lift the excess paint defining the mountain shape while blending and sharpening its edges. We will continue with the next steps in the next part of the process. 11. Day 2: Up the Hill- Part 2 : Welcome back. We will start with the foreground by misting the bottom area and then add splats with bright lemon yellow. Using a round brush of size four or six or a smaller mob brush like I am using here will help you create splatters of varying sizes by changing your tapping motion and direction of your splatters. Once you are done with the splatters, the next step would be to add some greens in slanted vertical strokes at the bottom to mimic the grass. We are here using the controlled method of wet on wet. Adding the green slanted vertical strokes for the grass here I'm using sap green, and alternatively, I will add darker tones in between and at the bottom to bring out the depth and contrast and make the grass feel more organic. Try to move quickly here. You can also add thin strokes with the tip of a pointed brush to create long blades of grass in a few random areas at the bottom to create a more organic feel. As my paper is drying, I will quickly use the misting technique again, which will also help in creating blooms softly dispersed. You can add more of the yellow blooms with the pointed synthetic tip of the brush. I very carefully and lightly missed the top section of the mountain just once, and now using my damp brush, I will gently lift those darker greens to make the area lighter. To bring out contrast, I will add more darker tones at the bottom of the painting. I had to rework this area to balance the lights and shadows, but thanks to using good quality 100% cotton honeymles watercolor collection paper, it stayed moist for a longer period, and I was able to save the painting and not ruin it. A I had to re splatter the blooms because the new layers of darker paint hit the previous ones, ensure that you cover the top section with some rough paper to avoid yellow splatters in the sky. You can also use salt technique here to create the blooms, but salt can be messy if you're reworking. Hence, I have avoided here. I recommend watching the entire process first and then paint along so that you know the next steps as there was some reworking involved in this painting due to which I am repeating the steps again. Hence, I would recommend you that you watch the entire process first and then paint along. Smoothing out certain areas here with a dam control tip of my brush. Ensure that your brush is not too watery. Now switching to a synthetic rigger brush, and I'll add few strokes of thin vertical grass blades. Now it's time to get started with the right side of the mountain range. And for that, I'm preparing a mix of burnt sienna, cobalt blue, and a little bit of white quash. You can also add in a little bit of neutral tint to create this mellow tone of muted brown. Using this brown, I will add some dry strokes, leaving white caps in between and also outline the margins of the narrow pathway. All right. Now, in between those brown strokes, I will add a milky consistency of my premixed green lightly with the tip of my brush, overlapping the browns, not fully covering them. Here we are working with controlled wet on dry technique. Similarly, I will do the same on the bottom right as well. I will start with a milky consistency of light yellow green and quickly add varying tones of green in between, leaving some spaces for the light green to show through. Even though we are working wet on dry, we use a milky watery consistency of paint to achieve the softness while controlling the wetness of our paper. Trying to refine the top edge of the mountain here, and I'll use damp dry brush to create certain textures using very light dark color over here. Now, I will switch to the brown mix. We created earlier to create some horizontal dry marks following the slant of the pathway. Try to notice the tip of my brush which is little frayed at the tip because the brush is damp and dry. I will refix the background mountain by going over it with a light color of cobalt blue to hide the green. For the bottom foliage of the grass, we can use the scratching technique. However, doing this step when your paper is very wet will not allow you to disperse the paint properly. So we will wait for the paper to little dry up. And in the meantime, I observe that my blooms have faded since my paper is still wet. I can add some more of those big or small blooms with a smaller bright brush. Skip this step if you feel that your paper has already started drying up and move to the scratching step instead. Every time you scratch, make sure you clean the edge of your object that you are using to scratch. And for scratching, you can use any sharp edge of a credit card, a plastic card, or a palette knife, or even the edge of a ruler like I'm using here. Finally, if you notice here at the distant background sky, there are some yellow splatters. I will try covering them up by adding a few wrds to take the viewer's eye away from that area. As you see in this project, even if we keep things loose, not everything works according to our initial plan. We improvise to ensure that we do not ruin the painting. And with this step, we are done with our painting. Once your painting has completely dried off, we will peel off the tapes one by one. I hope you enjoyed this lesson and learned to trust the process and move forward with confidence. Do not shy away from making mistakes, for it is precisely through the imperfections that we progress with watercolors and truly fall in love with this medium. 12. Day 3: Color Swatches: Okay, so I have my swat sheet ready. Let's begin swatching the colors for day three. The first color that I'll be using is cobilt blue. Now, it is a very warm blue, but you can alternatively use any other warmer blue of your choice, such as ultramarine blue, halo blue, and so on. Or even you could opt for cooler shades of blue such as your cerulean blue, azure blue or light blue gray for the sky. The blue that you see me swatching out here is a cool blue derivative obtained by mixing cerulean blue with some white, watercolor or guash. To create those dark clouds, I will now swatch out my neutral tint. Alternatively, you can mix your own gray by combining your cobalt blue with burnt sienna and little bit of Payne's gray or neutral tint. I will be using the lighter tonal range of this neutral gray. Now moving on to the meadows for which I'm going to use first yellow ocher, which consists of PY 42 acid pigment. It's a very warm, muted opaque yellow. Next, I'm going to swatch out my greenish yellow, which is granulating. Now, many of you may not have this color in your basic 12 color palette, but you can also create a similar looking color by mixing two or three parts of yellow ochre with your green. The next color that I'm going to spotch out is my sap green. I really love the richness of this color, and it is one of my favorites from PWC Range. Now for the blooms, we are going to start with a bright lemon yellow, or you could also use your cadmium light yellow, a cool yellow preferably. Next, I'm going to spotch out my red, a bright and beautiful red for the poppies. Here I'm using vermilion from Shinhan PWC range, which leans slightly towards orange as it has orange pigment to it. Now for the house roof, I'm not going to mix any additional color, rather form a color by mixing my vermilion with green, and by wearing the ratios of red to green, you will obtain a muted brown. This demonstrates that even with a limited color palette and knowing the color theory allows you to easily create the colors that you need for your project. And there we have our brown, add in a little bit more of vermilion, and you would get the perfect Burnsiena shade. That's all for this lesson. Get your colors ready and mit me in the next lesson. 13. Day 3: Poppy Fields in Tuscany - Part 1 : Hello, and welcome to Day three. We will begin by taping down a paper using masking tape. Now that the paper is secured, let's begin sketching. I will allocate the top one third of the paper for the sky, leaving the remaining two thirds for the foreground. I'm sketching an inclined slope at the one third mark with a few light lines below to indicate the slope of the foreground. I have outlined the houses at the top of the slope as well, and for the foreground, I will not sketch the flowers in detail as I plan to paint them loosely. Now it's time to wet the sky. I will first begin by applying even coat of water onto the sky area. Now here, you need to be careful. If you apply a very watery layer, ensure you remove the excess moisture by going over the wet areas with your damp dry hack brush. Bristles will absorb the excess water and will help spread the water uniformly, enabling your paper to be damp from very wet conditions. Now I will prepare a muted blue by mixing cobalt blue with a little bit of burnt sienna. You can also add in a little tinge of your neutral tint to turn the blue mix into a very muted and dull grayish blue. Observe my paint mixture here. It should be somewhere between creamy and a milky consistency. And now using the tip of the brush loaded with this mix, I will create light strokes for the sky. Since this area is closer to the horizon, I'm keeping it lighter for now, allowing us to add darker values later if required. Repeat this process at the top, leaving a small gap between the layers. I will now add a touch of pure cobalt blue at the very top to brighten the color. Now with a rinsed damp brush, I will create cloud shapes using the lifting technique. Each time that you lift, clean the tip of the brush and dab it on a tissue. Now, I'll be going in with darker clouds. For that, I'm mixing a little bit of neutral tint and burnt sienna into my cobalt blue. To create a milky mixture. You can also use pains gray instead of neutral tint. Load your dam trip brush with this milky mixture and create sali dark clouds over the blue lays, but be careful not to completely cover the whites or the underlying blues. I would recommend you to watch this process first before you start painting along your sky. Now, if you observe here, notice how I'm building the intensity of the dark clouds by adding more concentrated tones of neutral tint. Notice how my mixture ranges from milky to creamy as I build depth and value. All this while I was working with medium tonal values for the dark clouds, and now I'm topping it over with a little bit more intense tones of neutral tint, but making sure that I am not covering it entirely. I'm pretty happy with how dramatic the dark clouds are looking right now, but I think the blues have faded out a bit. Now, I have rinsed my brush on a tissue, and now I'm loading it with a little bit of cobalt blue to brighten the light sky areas underneath the dark clouds. Apply this only to select few areas, fading it into the darker sections with a damp clean brush. With the help of my clean damp brush, I will use the lifting technique to brighten the whites. Observe here that I'm using very light gentle pressure with the tip of my brush to lift the color. Using a natural mop brush at this stage aids this process of creating fluffy cloud texture. As the soft bristles are very gentle on the paper, you may not be able to achieve the same level of softness if you are using a stiff synthetic brush at this tip. With this last step, the sky is almost complete. I'm now carefully cleaning up any blue pigment that has heaped into the house outlines. With that, we are done with our sky. Now it's time to begin the foreground. I will start by wetting the area at the base of the house, tapering down towards the slope. Ensure your brush is damp but not soaking wet. Make sure to leave a small gap between the wet foreground and the sky to prevent the water from bleeding into the dry sky area. Now I start to coat the area with a creamy layer of yellow ochre, moving the damp brush along the direction of the slope. This serves as our base layer before I start applying the greenish yellow color. Notice I'm leaving certain spaces of white to capture the light between the yellow tones. Now it is time to add the greenish yellow color. If you do not have a similar pre mixed color, you can create one by mixing a very warm yellow orange using pigments like PY 110, PY 150 or PY 83 with a bright blue or a halo green. Essentially, mix any green that has a blue undertone with your warm yellow to achieve a color similar to this color. My greenish yellow here is a slightly granulating color and contains the pigment PY 129, which produces a very beautiful, earthy green gold tone. Now I will use a little creamy to milky consistency of sap green underneath those greenish yellow layers, leaving the yellows to show through to create that organic field of varying green and yellows in the meadow. Here, I will rinse and squeeze out my brush, making it damp dry, load the tip with a little bit of yellow ochre and blend it with the green at the top. Now, using the same tip of the brush, I will load it with a little bit more of green and start layering it at the bottom. I will switch to a damp synthetic natural hair, smaller bright brush. Instead of bright brush, you could also go ahead with a smaller flat brush to create small marks with sap green. If you observe distant meadows, you will notice that these patterns mimic the natural growth of the grass. Now I will start with the bottom foreground for which I will use the wet on dry technique, starting with a watery base layer of yellow ochre that I will blend towards the top and drag it down to the bottom of the beeper. I will now alternate between greens and yellows to create a warm and cool contrast in the grass, but only on the right half section, I am keeping the remaining space free to create the blooms on the left. Now using more warm colors in the foreground will push the sky, which serves as a background further into the distance, creating the perfect atmospheric effect we want to achieve. Now, I'll cover the sky and prepare for the next step. 14. Poppy Fields in Tuscany- Part 2: So our paper is still damp here, making this a perfect moment to splatter water droplets on the left side to create soft and diffuse plumes. Once the splatters are in place, you can begin adding cool, vibrant yellow or lemon yellow tones. Regulate the size of the drops using a mix of small and large ones. I'm currently using a synthetic rigor brush to control the water and paint splatters. D once done with the splatters, I will switch to a size six silver black velvet round brush and loaded with an orangey red vermilion. If your vermilion lacks orange tones, mix in a little yellow to achieve the desired result. Use this to create the impression of the poppies in the wide spaces that we left. We will not paint the poppies in detail, instead, keep them very loose and soft. I'm going with various shapes and sizes of the poppies. You do not have to make it very detailed. You can just use the tip of your brush to create some round sevely strokes to create the illusion of the poppies. Using the tip of my round brush loaded with creamy values of my neutral tint, I will fill the center of the poppies. Since my paper is still damp, you can see the neutral tint blending smoothly into the reds. However, because I used a creamy mix, I was able to control the spread. If you observe poppies in the wild, you will notice them growing along with many other wildflowers. So I'm trying to replicate the same, creating the blooms with a splattering technique. Now we will introduce the greens to create the stems, starting from the bottom of the poppies. Begin with green grass foliage at the bottom left. I have noticed that the paper is starting to dry, so I will lightly mist it with a fine misting bottle from a distance to avoid disturbing the red paint. Now I will start adding the grass patterns very loosely, ensuring that I do not cover the yellow areas. With the help of my damp dry brush loaded with my creamy mix of sap green, I'm going ahead and creating these varying strokes of grass blades. Here I'm using a damp brush loaded with my bright yellow colour to soften the dry patches. You may mix a little red into your green to create a muted, muddy tone, which you can use sparingly at the bottom to create a contrast between the warm and the cool greens. H. I load my size 00 mob brush with more vermilion and begin splattering again. Since the background is damp, this will create soft, diffused and controlled blooms. I refrained from using salt at this step, but you may choose to splatter some salt between the red splatters if you wish to achieve a different effect. Experimentation is always encouraged, so do not be afraid to experiment. To create a balanced look, and also if you have observed the previous blooms that we created with yellow has all faded into the damp background. So I'm going ahead and adding few more of smaller yellow splatters. I'm quite pleased with how expressive and loose the meadow is turning out to be. So now I will switch to a synthetic rigor brush, load it with a creamy sap green and create thin grass blades with swift movements. I want to keep the strokes soft while the paper is still damp. I'm adding a few more water splatters as the earlier ones have blended into the colors. We will now move on to painting the houses at the top of the meadow using a round size number six brush. I have loaded it with a light wash of raw sienna. You can now create your own raw sienna by mixing a little bit of burnt sienna into your yellow ochre to obtain a similar yellow brown tone. I am here adjusting and sharpening the edges and filling out the rest of the white areas. I think here I have applied too much of paint, so I will lighten the color by using a damp brush and moving the colors around to the corners. We are done with a base layer of the house. Now it's time to create a muted mix for the shadows. So I have added to my yellow a little bit of blue, brown and a little bit of neutral tint to create this shadow color. Now, in case if you think you went in too strong with the shadow color, then here is a suggestion. Use the same damp dry tip of your brush and lighten it by removing the colors a little bit and then blending it out into the yellow. In the shadow mix that we use the blue, instead of blue, you can also add in a little bit of violet to your yellow, and you will already have a muted shadow color. To create the roof of the house, I will mix red and green together to form a very bright brown red. I have switched to a smaller flat brush to exercise better control while filling the roof. If you are nimble with your large round brush or a flat brush, you can complete this step in one stroke. Similarly, I will fill the smaller house with a light reddish brown mix and go ahead with the roof with a little darker shade of my brown red. Once you are done filling in the roofs, it's time to add the doors and windows. I'm using here my smaller size flat brush to create the impression of the doors and windows. It's easier with one stroke. I'm adding in a little small fence here near the bigger house. It's not compulsory. You may skip it if you want. And also, if you want to bring in more variation to the landscape, you can also add small animals like goats into the sloping meadows or sheeps. That's totally up to your imagination. I'm not adding them, and with that, our painting is finished. We'll let it dry completely. Here comes the most satisfying part of peeling our tapes. This is an oddly satisfying part after your painting is finished, but make sure that you have let your paper completely dry flat before you do this. Otherwise, you run the chance of ripping out the sides. As an optional step, I have decided to brighten up the poppies by going over the areas with a brush loaded with my same red orange mix, sharpening the edges of the petals. You can skip this step if you are satisfied with your mido. 15. Day 4: Color Swatches: Welcome back to Day four. I'll begin by swatching out my naples yellow. Naples yellow that I'm using here is from Shinhan PWC, which is a cool toned range. Please follow the on screen instructions for mixing your colors. The next color that I'm spatching out is my Juan brilliant number two from Shinhan PWC, which is a very soft, peachy pastel orange. I find it easier to mix this with naples yellow to create a balanced tone. Follow on screen instructions to mix your own Jean brilliant number two. To transition the sky into a pitchy pink, I use permanent rose. You may choose any bright warm pink such as quinacrodon coral or permanent rose. Alternatively, adding a touch of yellow orange to lyserin crimson may also create a beautiful warm pink. Other alternative pink is Opera, a bright neon pink, and when it is mixed with naples yellow, it creates a soft, peachy pink sunset hue, which I love using the most. The next color that I'm going to spotch out is lavender, which you can prepare by mixing PB 28, that is your cobalt blue with a little bit of violet PV 15 and with white quash PW six. My blue gray is also a cool pastel light blue obtained by mixing cool blue. That is PB 15, along with a little bit of white quash. For the dramatic dark clouds, I will combine both of this lavender and blue gray, along with indigo to create varying tones of light, grayish, violet, and more intense shades to create the dramatic feel. You may also choose to use permanent violet mixed with a little bit of lavender or blue gray along with indigo to create the dramatic shades of the dark clouds. Next, I will be swatching out my ody yellow ochre for the foreground, which will be the base layer, along with my raw sienna, which is also a very eardy brown to create warm tones which we'll be using in the midground. Next, to paint the foreground foliage, along with the trees, we will be using sap green. Now when you mix sap green, along with indigo, you create darker tones of your green. For the wildflowers in the meadow, we will use a dash of lemon yellow, along with varying tones of pinks and purples to create a contrast in the foreground, which will beautify this entire project. With that, we conclude the color palette lessons, see you at the next lesson. 16. Day 4: Spring by the Lake- Part 1: My paper is taped and ready. Let's begin our basic pencil sketch. Using my pencil, I will measure two thirds of the paper to mark the horizon line. I will then sketch the elements of the midground and a small portion of the foreground to define where the land sits, creating our main guideline. Remember, the goal is not to copy the reference exactly. I recommend watching the entire process first and then pausing the screen when I finish the outline so that you can begin your own sketch. Our outline is now complete. Feel free to pause the screen and trace your sketch using my outline as a guide. Now let's start with a sky. As always, I prefer a soft smooth finish, so I will use a wet on wet technique. The trick is to moisten the paper so it is not overly wet with pooling water at the corners. Instead, evenly coat the paper with a damp brush until you see the soft satin glow of the paper. For the sky, I always recommend coating the paper with a damp brush multiple times and letting it soak in between to keep it wet for a longer time. Next, I switch to a dam size 20 goat hair brush from silver ata. I will create a creamy mixture of naples yellow, ensuring the paint on the brush has a thick but creamy consistency. Now I will start at the horizon. I will apply the color and lighten my pressure as I move upward, allowing the yellow to fade out. I will not cover the entire left side just as we did in our first project. Next, I quickly rinse my brush and use a tissue to soak up all that excess water and mix permanent rose into the remaining naples yellow to create that peachy pink orange shade. Now with this same damp brush loaded with creamy peachy paint, I will layer it over the yellow using gentle strokes, leaving small gaps of yellow to show through the pitch pink areas. And it's time to create a lavender gray mix. So using a rinsed damp brush, I will mix blue gray with lavender and a touch of that peach pink. Now, I will lead the strokes upward to create direction and momentum in the sky. Observe my tonal value of this paint mix. I went with a very light tonal value of my lavender gray. Now I will try to intensify the saturation of the colors. I'm going with another layer of this lavender gray. Observe carefully how I blend and lay the colors without disturbing the peach pink underneath. Now with the same damp brush loaded with lavender gray, I will form loose, fluffy cloud patterns at the transition areas between the peach pink and the yellows. It's now time to create the darker cloud values. I will mix violet and a little bit of dark brown. Instead of dark brown, you can go ahead with a little bit of neutral tint into the same lavender blue mix. Using the damp tip and the toe of the brush, I will now start creating wispy clouds. Adding a little bit of indigo into this mix will intensify the color more, which I will use to layer over the base, ensuring I do not completely cover the lighter areas. Using the very same tip of the brush and light pressure, I will build clouds at the bottom and at the top before the paper starts to dry. Here, I'll reload another of my damp brush with a blue gray and peach pink mix to fill any remaining areas at the top while using the other brush to continue with the intense tones of the muted lavender gray. This way, I save time when I run the risk of my paper starting to get dry. I will now here walk quickly to cover the remaining areas with the cloud patterns with this damp dry brush loaded with my creamy paint mix. Once you are satisfied with the top part of the sky, move to the bottom, but first check if the paper is still damp. If your paper has started to dry, stop here and let your paper dry completely flat. Then remiss the entire sky area before you start with the bottom clouds. If you start when the top is drying and the bottom is unevenly drying, you will create hard uneven patchy cloud edges. Time to get started with a midground. For this, I have switched to a size 00 natural hair mob brush, and I will create at the horizon a sillouette of a distant mountain. For this background, mountain Silauett, I am going to create a mix of my indigo and blue gray until I have a muted, dark, creamy mix. Now, using this damp creamy paint, I will create this background silhouette of a mountain. Because we have controlled the moisture in both the paint and the brush, the color will not spread into the sky, even if the paper is slightly damp. This is the beauty of moisture control. Once you master this trick, watercolors become much more fun and easier. We are now done with our mountain lout. Now it's time to rinse our brush. But while rinsing my brush, I'll be careful as splashing water can ruin our perfectly drying sky with no way to fix it. So be careful while rinsing. Using my rinsed damp brush, I will now load it with yellow ochre and lay it at the base of the mountain ilauet that we just painted. Watch my angle strokes as these add depth and perspective. With the same brush, I will then start from the right and fill that side. The right should be lighter than the left because we are using the same tip of the brush. We have not reloaded our brush. The point being the right being a little further into the distance should be lighter in color as per the atmospheric perspective rule. At the connecting slants between the two areas, I will load the tip of my brush with a little muted bluish green mix to softly demarcate the section. Now using the same muted blue green, I will add smaller random trees and foliage on the sloping area. You can create this blue green mix by mixing your indigo with sap green. Since these elements are far into the distance, they do not need to be detailed. Focus on simple shapes rather than fine details. And once you are finished, we will move on to the next part of the painting. 17. Day 4: Spring Sunset By the Lake -Part 2: Now I will create a creamy mixture of sap green using my damp brush. I will then use slanted strokes to connect the eardy yellow foreground. If your yellow layer has dried, you can use a damp brush to blend the yellow and the green softly. Then using a little more green, I will outline the base of this foreground. Next, we will move to the right side of the foreground. For this, I will start preparing a creamy base layer of yellow ochre, and we will start with the wet on dry technique, applying the creamy base of yellow ochre here at this foreground. I will now connect this to the distant midground by painting a tree. I will first use a light vase of yellow ochre, though you can mix a little bit of white wash or lemon yellow to mask any darker color impressions underneath. Then I will add varying tonal values of green, especially near the base, go with darker tones of green. As you can observe here, I have added touches of lemon yellow, which is of creamy consistency between the greens to mask the underlying colors and brighten the tree. You can also add darker and lighter greens to create now depth, especially at the bottom of the tree. Using a milky consistency of green, I will now fill over the yellow with vertical dabbing strokes, extending this to the rest of the foreground and adding darker green tones at the base. Once the foreground is done, we will paint the water reflections. I will switch to a size 20 goat hair mop brush and will dampen the area of the water. And this is exactly why we chose the wet on dry technique for the foreground. Otherwise, all the colors would have started to flow the moment you would have started wetting your water body. With the same damp mob brush loaded with my creamy consistency of naples yellow, I will start creating the reflections using vertical strokes. Once the base layer of naples yellow is complete, I will then layer it with peach pink using the same vertical strokes, but without covering the entire yellow. The main idea of painting the reflections in the water body is to reflect the sky colors, that is our beautiful sunset colors into the water body. Hence we will go layer by layer just like how we painted our sky. Next, I will mix a milky lavender with peach pink and apply this with horizontal strokes, moving from the left corner to the right, leaving the center part bright yellow. Here, notice that we are carefully controlling the moisture in paint, brush, and paper, so there is no risk of the colours running or bleeding unevenly and creating muddy tones with the yellow. The damp paper allows the strokes to appear soft and perfectly blended with the yellow. Now I will use a damp brush to soften the hard lines which is formed at the bottom of the foreground and dampen the remaining foreground area with the same brush. The next step is to create a earthy green mixture for our foreground. I have mixed my raw sienna into the sap green to create these earthy tones of green, starting with a broad vertical layer. I have used the toe of my brush to spread it on the wet foreground. Then I will use the fine tip of the brush to create these long slender strokes of the grass. Once we finish this, we move to the water body. Using my lavender gray mix and a damp dry brush, I will create light horizontal strokes to form soft, streaky patterns. My paper is still moist, which enables this soft diffused finish. For you, the texture might be a little more pronounced if your paper has dried. In that case, use a very soft natural hair brush at this tip to achieve the desired effect. I have now returned back to the grass, and I'm going to use a little bit more of earthy tones to elongate it. Using the frayed tip of my damp brush, I will apply now varying tonal values of green. Being careful not to cover the earthy greens underneath. I believe you have become quite proficient at this, as we have already created many types of grass patterns in almost all the three projects. Observe how using the freighted tip of my damp dry brush loaded with a creamy sap green mix, I can create varying strokes of the grass plades all at once. This is the advantage of using a natural hair brush, which allows you to manipulate a shape with different effects. Notice my brush movements here where I'm slowly flicking the brush to create these varying shapes and sizes of the grasses and using the pinpointed tip of the brush, I'm creating these very thin narrow blades of the grass as well. Changing to a smaller mob brush, and I will create the same sweeping strokes in between the green blades just to highlight more of those the tones of the dry grasses. It's time to create the blooms, cover your sky and water with another piece of paper to protect them. Then sprinkle some water. If your paper is still damp, you can go ahead and sprinkle salt to create beautiful diffused patterns. Oh. Now, using my synthetic rigor brush, I will splatter some more purple. I have mixed my permanent rose into violet to create this lovely shade. By wearing the pressure while tapping the brush, I create both small and large splatters. I will repeat this exact same process using a bright, cool yellow to add more contrast to the meadow. I have switched my size 00 dam troy mob brush, and I will add darker tones of green to the bottom of the foreground. You can skip this step if you are happy with your foreground, but finally, with my rigor brush loaded with some more of that purple mix, I will create small dots and patterns to form blooms within the long grass. This adds significant organic depth to the meadow. The varying sizes of the grasses combined with these blooms helped create that realistic illusion. Now we return to the foreground near the water body where it looks lifeless. Using the damp dry spread out tip of the brush loaded with sap green. I will create grass patterns along the edges and fill in the base layer with short strokes. Oh Here I'm mixing my indigo with my sap green to create darker tones of my dark green and layering it over the lighter tones of grasses. Adding the minute grass details to the right foreground has transformed the painting, giving it so much more depth and realism. Sometimes it is precisely the small touches that bind the entire landscapes together. And with that, our painting is complete. We will wait for the paper to dry completely before removing our tapes. There you have it, our finished painting. I really love how everything came together, and I hope you also enjoyed the process. 18. Day 5: Color Swatches : Hello, and welcome back to Day five. We are ready to wind down our five day challenge. So let's begin with watches. The first color that I'm going to spatch is our naples yellow. Now, in our previous projects, we have already discussed how to mix a similar shade if you do not have this specific color with you. But nevertheless, let me refresh your memory. So in a warm yellow, when you mix a little bit of white quash, you can obtain a similar color which almost resembles to naples yellow. Next color that I'll be watching is a beautiful warm Indian yellow. Now, instead of this specific color, you can choose any warm yellow like gamboge that is available with you. The next color that I'm swatching out is my burned sienna, which is a very warm, bright and eddy brown. In our project, we are going to mix our warm yellow with burned sienna to create that golden glowing lavender. The next color that I'll be swatching out is my cool blue from Izaro watercolors. Here I'm swatching out my yellow blue. This I'm going to use as the base layer for our lavender field, followed by my permanent violet to create those lavender blooms. Last but not the least, we will need a little bit of sap green to paint the stalks of the lavender, and with that, we wrap up our colors watches section. And now let's move on to our project. 19. Day 5: Sunlit Lavender Meadow- Part 1: Okay, we are all set to begin our day five project, which is going to be a fascinating play of water and paint. Let's start by taping down our paper. Now, once our paper is secured, we will examine the reference and sketch a horizon line placed at the one third mark. I have positioned it this way to give more prominence to the lavender field than to the sky. We will not sketch the individual lavender stocks here. Instead, we will paint them loosely. Before we begin painting, I will use a misting bottle to mist my paints. It's now time to tackle the sky using wet on wet technique. I will use wet hig brush to coat the paper. I noticed that there was too much of water, so I controlled it by soaking up all that excess moisture with my tissue and spreading the remaining water evenly with this damn dry brush. While my paper is soaking up a little bit of that moisture, I will now prepare my paint mix where I'm combining naples yellow with Indian yellow. Alternatively, you can also add a little of white guash to your warm golden yellow that is available with you to achieve a similar looking color like me. Starting at the horizon line, I will move upwards with short left to right strokes, lightening my pressure as I go while keeping the center white. I will repeat this on the right side as well, leaving the center white to present that glowing sun. Now, I will create the orangish golden tones. I will mix my born Siena with permanent rose to form a brick red color. I will apply this with short strokes starting from the base and then moving upwards, ensuring the yellows remain visible. To create the impression of dark clouds at the top for contrast, I will now layer permanent violet over this red orange layer. Since violet and orange are complimentary colors, they will create a muted murky brown. Now using my damp brush, I will lift some of the colour to reveal that sun's glow. I will now employ here a cool technique. Using my wet brush, I will use it to push the colour downward, creating a beautiful blurred effect while my paper is still wet. I observed that the top layer has faded out a bit, so I will go and add another layer of violet at the top, bringing it down carefully without completely covering the base yellow. Now, here we start the fern part. I will be using my fine misting bottle to spray the bottom of the paper, moving upwards to the horizon line. Soon you will see the colors are moving downwards. I will tilt the paper to assist the process, and using my damp dry hake brush, I will spread the paint evenly while tilting the board towards the gravity with my left hand. On this wet damp paper, I will start sprinkling my thalo blue angling carefully to create maximum splatters at the bottom and minimal splatters at the top. I am now using my mop brush to create vertical slanted strokes, starting from bottom and moving upwards, leaving small pockets of white. This will be important in the coming steps. As you can observe, I wanted to lift some of the splatters from the sky but creating a messy, patchy look. But since the paper is wet, I will incline it vertically to let the paint run down. We will not touch the upper area for now. We will concentrate on the bottom part. I will add splatters of water here. I'm adding the splatters in such a way that they are angling to match my brush strokes. While I'm being careful not to splash the sky, exercise control over the water in your brush during this step. Now we will add intense violet tones over the blue but not covering the blue entirely. As you move upwards, use thinner strokes using just the tip of your brush. Make sure that your brush is not too watery at this step. When we reach the warmest part of the meadow, I will switch to a muted pastel purple. It is just for an experiment purpose. I'm trying out your colors. If you want to go ahead with it, you can just mix your cool red with a little bit of pink and a little bit of violet along with white quash to create this pastel muted pink. Now use very little of this color and then fade it out. Observe my brush movement. I will then add warmer tones of yellow in between the gaps that are there within the violets. Now, after splattering the water droplets, I realize that the muted purples have receded back into the background, and it's not bringing that contrast. So after I'm done with splattering the water droplets, I will add intense tones of violet once more. Now let the fun begin. I will tilt the bow to the left and using the misting bottle to spray the intense violet tones at a matching angle to my brush stroke. You can see the paint water moving towards the gravity. I will keep tilting the board further to the left so that all of that excess paint water runs off at the side, placing tissue at the bottom to soak off the runoff. While the boat remains tilted, I will keep adding some brush strokes with permanent violet to create background impression of lavender. The purpose of the day five project is to show that you do not always need to strictly control the water in watercolors. Instead, the goal is to learn how to manipulate moisture to suit your style and create dreamy effects. Here, we have explored everything from watery paints that drip down to controlled strokes. Understanding this balance is the very essence of the learning experience I wanted you to gain with this lesson. Now using my same damp mop brush loaded with my buttery violet, I will now make bold slanted strokes of varying sizes. I have now switched to a smaller synthetic flat brush to create the impression of the lavender spike. Later in the lesson, I will also demonstrate how to achieve the same effect using the pointed tip of a round brush. Observe my strokes closely here. I'm using the side tip of the brush loaded with violet to form the spikes. Using a similar technique, I will create the shape of the spikes on the broad forms we established earlier. Finally, I switched to an ultra round size number six brush. Now instead of ultra round size, you can also go ahead with any round brush of sizes one or two to create this effect using just the tip and toe, create the triangular shape of the spikes of lavender, just as you would paint an abstract pine cone. Once this is complete, we will move to the next step and the following lesson. O 20. Day 5: The Final Details: He Okay, so now let's start with the warm areas near the horizon quickly. We need to work fast while the background is still damp. I will start creating the lavender spikes using a mixture of burnt sienna and Indian yellow. Before applying, I will soak up all that excess moisture from the belly of the brush. We will fill these warm areas with the same color spikes, but make sure to create smaller spikes as we are receding far into the distance, keeping in mind the concept of atmospheric perspective and go with random shapes, but keep the orientation slanted to the right just as we did at the bottom. The next few minutes are all about creating lavender spikes on a damp background, alternating between warm yellow tones and violets to introduce the contrast into the painting. The lavender spikes which are closest to the sun will be golden at the corners, but the fronts will be in shadow. So for these shadowed areas, I will apply a light tonal value violet over the base yellow sienna. I will now start filling the surrounding areas with lavender spikes on the damp background to ensure that they blur softly into the distance. As discussed earlier, I will now start adding the shadowy areas of my lavender front. I would now recommend you to keep observing and closely follow my brush movements. Now I will start to fill up the center and the sides of the lavender field over here. I'll be going ahead with my violet mix. Here, at this point, you may go ahead and add more layers of violet over the initial layer of bottom lavender spikes, provided your paper is still damp. H My center and the left side of the paper has started to dry up already. So I think I will need to mist the entire lavender field once again. Otherwise, we are going to have hard edges. Here, I'll be using my fine misting spray bottle to lightly miss the area from a distance. I will now continue with the same repetitive step of creating lavenders with alternating warm and cool tones. I will now quickly introduce a few green lavender stalks using a script liner brush loaded with my sap green. Once the stalks are in place, we will need to fill them in. You could use a splattering technique here, but it might be a little messier since we are working very close to the sky and the horizon areas. Since the stalks are pointed towards the lightest areas, we will start filling them in with the lightest color that is our Siena and yellow mix. Armido is already looking so pretty, and I can't wait to see the entire final result. Now, here at the horizon line, this center part became a little muddy with the yellow and the violet mix. So I will damp this area, moisten the area with a damp brush, and then with the help of my tissue, I'll dab it lightly to lift off the murky yellow paint. Now to pronounce the blooming or the dreamy effect, I'll splatter some more water because my paper is still damp. This is an optional step provided your paper is still damp. Skip this if your paper has dried. Once your paper has dried flat, now it's time to peel off our tapes. We have successfully completed our day five project, wrapping up our challenge of learning to exercise moisture control. I hope you enjoyed this final project. It's a bit tricky, but it is certainly worth a shot. See you soon again with the bonus project. The bonus project will be posted by next week until then keep practicing. 21. Bonus Project: Color Swatches: Welcome to the bonus lesson. Let's begin by taking a look at the color palette we will be using for this project. For the sky, I'll be using a cool light blue called the blue gray from Shinhan. In the color swatches section of the earlier projects, I have explained how you can easily mix your own blue gray if you do not have this exact shade, so refer to them. Great alternative to blue gray is cobalt blue. Now, if you do not have blue gray, you can also go ahead and use cobalt blue for your sky. For the sea, I'll be using marine blue, which is a beautiful cool blue. Now for the meadow, we will be needing the following colors. First, I'll be watching out my yellow ochre, followed by raw sienna. Instead of raw sienna, you can also go ahead and use your burnt sienna. For creating the grasses, we will be using sap green. Or mixing sap green with raw sienna creates this warm earthy yellow green that is perfect for painting natural grasses and sunlit meadows. Next, Elvis watching out this beautiful rich brown, which is a very earthy tone that you can see. Now, by mixing your green with brown and a little touch of indigo, you can create a deep muted green that are ideal for adding depth and contrast and dimension to the grassy meadow areas. For the shadows along the pathway, we will use a combination of permanent violet and neutral tint, which creates beautiful, cool shadow tones without appearing too harsh. Now, to fill for the centers of the daisies, we will use a mixture of yellow and brown to achieve a warm, natural look. Alternatively, you could also use lemon yellow mixed with your brown to create the center of the daisies. And finally, we will need some white quash to paint the delicate wildflowers and to create some highlights throughout the landscape. With the colors ready, let's move on to the painting process. 22. Bonus Project- Spring by the Sea: Part 1: Welcome back to this bonus lesson. As always, we will begin by teeping down a paper. Looking at the reference, I roughly place the horizon line around top one third of the paper. Then about the two thirds mark, I will draw another line to separate the ocean from a foreground. The next step would be to outline our meadow pathway. I recommend watching the entire sketching process first as I may erase a few lines and make minor adjustments once the main composition is in place. I'm also adding a series of poles along the right side of the meadow following the curve of the pathway. Here we are applying the rule of perspective. Notice how the poles appear shorter in the distance and gradually becomes taller as they come closer to us. Here, I'm lightly sketching out the curve line of our grassy meadow, which will be to our left. This is just our basic guiding line so that we don't miss this curve when we have started to paint. With that, our basic sketch is ready. Let's begin with the sky using the wet on wet technique. For the sky, I chose to work with a wet on wet technique. However, you can also use the wet on dry approach as an alternative. Since we are working with a relatively small area and only aiming for a simple gradient blend for the sky, a watery paint mixture can be easily used to cover the dry surface of the paper smoothly and evenly. Just make sure to maintain enough moisture in your brush and work swiftly to avoid hard edges. Both techniques will give you a beautiful result, so feel free to choose the approach you are most comfortable. You're an absolute beginner and wondering what a gradient blend is, I highly recommend watching my class, the ultimate guide to painting watercolor skies. In that class, I cover gradient blending and several other foundational watercolor techniques in detail, helping you understand not just the process, but also when and why to use each technique for the best results. Are almost done with the sky. Next, we will be moving ahead with painting our ocean body. For the ocean, I choose to work wet on wet, but you can also achieve a beautiful result using a wet on dry graten blending technique with a watery consistency of paint and a moisture control brush. Okay, the first wash of our sea is done with water. Now next step is to prepare a cool blue mixture for the sea. Here I'm using my marine blue. That is PB 15 is three as my pigment for the sea. You could also use alternative cool blue colors that you have available with you. And you can add a touch of red or indigo if you would like to darken the value of your marine blue. Here, too, I'm using the gradient blend techniques, starting at the top with our darker values and fading it as we come down at the bottom. You may notice a distant bleeding along the distant horizon line, which I'll soften by gently lifting the paint with my damp dry brush. Next, I'll switch to a synthetic rigor brush. Here I'm adding a few subtle wave details. Adding the small ripples and waves introduces a sense of movement to the water body, making the scene feel more alive and dynamic. This subtle details create a visual rhythm that guides the viewer's eye through the painting and helps harmonize the entire composition, bringing all the elements together naturally. Oh I will stop right there creating movement in the water. I will not overboard the details. Next, we will move on to the left foreground. Here I'm starting with wet on dry technique. First, I will create the vertical strokes using raw sienna and then fill the lower portion with a warm green mixture, made from sap green and burnt sienna. Observe closely how I'm using the damp pointed tip of my mop brush to create fluid, organic strokes that mimic grass swaying in the wind. Once this section is complete, we will then define the meto pathway. And for the meto pathway, I have mixed a brown tone, which I have already discussed in the color palette section. For the pathway, we are going with wet and dry approach, but with a milky consistency of paint mixture, observe how my brush is controlled with water, enabling me to have this nice sharp pointy tip, which I'm using to create the narrower and broader strokes of the pathway. After establishing the pathway, we will return to the grassy meadow, starting from the area where we last left off. Keep observing the process carefully. Since we have been painting meadow since day one, this project is more about revisiting familiar techniques while exploring a slightly different approach. I'll switch to my synthetic rica brush and create a mixture of a little darker value of my green by mixing my indigo along with my sag green. Now, you can see, using the flicking motion of my brush, I'm trying to create here some pattern and foliage streaks which mimic the grass meadow. The lower portion of the meadow is now filled. At this stage, you can sprinkle a little water to create beautiful blooms and texture. Next step is to lightly miss the remaining meadow area with my spray bottle and use a damp mop brush to spread the moisture evenly. As the surface becomes wet, you will notice the Siana base layer beginning to spread naturally. Use this to advantage to create a very light tonal value base layer. Here I begin filling the inner edge of the pathway using a moisture controlled brush loaded with muted green and softly blending it into the existing grass patterns. Using the frayed tip of my damp mob brush loaded with sienna, I will create additional grass textures over the wet surface. With the same brush, I will then continue adjusting the values into using darker greens wherever needed. From this point onwards, it's all about moisture control both in your brush and in your paint consistency. So be sure to follow the next steps closely. Observe how I'm using the damp frayed tip of my brush loaded with a yellowish green mixture to create short expressive strokes near the shoreline and around the lighter areas of the meadow. As I fill the sections, I am intentionally leaving small gaps between the strokes to preserve a sense of light and texture. Notice how these broken marks help create a natural grassy appearance, and you can already see that the meadow is beginning to take shape beautifully. I will go in and add few more darker tones along the inner corners of the pathway just because the initial layer has faded out. I really love how our meadow has started to take shape and is looking beautiful. Now it's time to add some delicate wildflowers while the background is still damp. I'm going to use whiteqh for the flower petals and add yellow centers. We will continue building this floral details in the next part of the lesson. 23. Bonus Lesson- Spring by the Sea: Part 2: Let's continue working on the wild flowers in the mendow. For this, I'm using my synthetic rigor brush to create very loose flower shapes. Since the area is still damp, the blooms will appear soft with beautifully blurred edges. Tours of foreground using just the tip of my rigor brush, I splatter a few drops of whitequah and then add a few loose daisy shapes. And next, I covered the sky with a piece of paper and begin splattering white wash loaded onto the tip of my rigor brush. This helps fill the mido with impression of tiny flowers and bids. If you wish, you can introduce bright complimentary colors into the meadow to create a more vibrant and dynamic composition. To create a control spread of splatters, make sure you are using a slightly damp brush loaded with a creamy consistency of white wash. This will help you achieve fine, delicate splatters across the meadow. If you add more water to your brush or paint mixture, the splatters will become larger and spread more widely on the paper. Adjust the moisture level, depending on the effect, you create. Now, to create the impression of the daisies more realistically, I started to add the center of the daisies using yellow and brown. Notice how the simple detail instantly changes the impression of the flowers scattered throughout the meadow. Adding some more of these daisy shaped flowers here at the top part of the meadow, but keep in mind about the perspective. Here, when you create the daisies, go ahead and create a little smaller variation of the daisies than you have done at the foreground. Now, using the fray tip of my damp dry brush loaded with a warm green mix, I create grass strokes between the white flowers to add the movement and depth. Next, we will move on to the meadow in the right foreground. I begin by uniformly wetting the entire area, ensuring the paper remains damp while we work. This allows us to achieve soft transitions and blends within the meadow. I start with a base layer of raw sienna in a milky consistency, observe the direction of my strokes. They are slightly angled, which helps create a sense of perspective following the initial pencil guidelines. Also observe how I loosely fill the meadow while intentionally leaving a few white caps. The next step is to add grassy foliage using the frayed damp dry tip of the brush. I particularly enjoy using this technique with a natural hair mop brush because it allows me to paint grasses in a very loose and expressive manner. From this point onwards, it's all about building depth and contrast. I alternate between raw sienna as my light base layer and then add it with layers of green, allowing the warm sienna undertones to remain visible throughout the meadow. Keep observing my brush movements and how I build the depth and contrast into this meadow. Oh Once you're satisfied with the grassy foliage, splatter white wash across the meadow. Since the surface is still damp, the splatters will bloom beautifully, creating soft and feathered edges. I also will add a few larger and smaller flower shapes to echo the meadow on the lift side. You can here refine the grassy foliage further by introducing darker tones between the lighter grasses and adding a few more scattered white wash platters throughout the meadow. The centers of the daisies will also be painted with yellow ochre and raw sienna. This next step is totally optional, so feel free to skip it if you're already happy with your sky and the sea. I have reutted the sea area using my bigger sized mob brush, and I have applied a milky consistency of marine blue to slightly deepen the horizon line, fading it out towards our foreground. While my sea area dries, I will prepare a shadow mixture by combining permanent violet with a touch of indigo to create a creamy consistency of the shadow mix. I will load this mixture onto my size six ultra round brush from silver silk series and start painting the shadow of the grassy foliage on the pathway. If you would like stronger shadows, you can also add a little bit more of indigo or neutral tint into your shadow mix. However, be mindful not to make the mixture excessively dark as we still want the shadows to appear harmonious within the scene. Once the shadows are complete, we will then move on to the fences. I will begin with a milky consistency of raw sienna as the base layer and then add the darker shadow mixture to define their form. And then for highlights, you can also add a touch of burnt sienna with white quash and apply it selectively on certain areas of the fences. Towards the foreground, I return to achose the length of the fence post that closer to us helping us reinforce the perspective and depth within the composition. Next, we create the connecting wires between the fence post. For this, I'm using white quash and my synthetic rigor brush, which gives me better control over these fine details. Alternatively, a pointed round brush will also work equally well if that's what you have available with you. With that, our painting is essentially complete. The only final adjustment that I had made here is refining the slightly wobbly horizon line of the sea. To fix that wobbly line, here, I went with wet on dry process carefully repainting the sea and sky boundary to create smooth, clean horizon line. It's time to peel off the masking tapes from all the four sides. And, Viola, we have our finished painting. I hope you have enjoyed this bonus lesson and had fun painting along with me. Thank you for joining me, and I'll see you again in a new class soon.