Loose Watercolor Essentials: Atmospheric Trees and River Landscape

1. Introduction: Hi and welcome. In this class we'll be painting an atmospheric river landscape using a variety of wet in wet techniques and wet and dry techniques. Creating a soft and hazy look with a sense of depth can be tricky when you're learning watercolor. Painting, wet, wet is often associated with a loss of control and without the right knowledge can definitely create a mess. What I'm going to show you today is the importance of timing when painting wet-on-wet. I'm going to show you how to gain control layer effectively to create some soft and atmospheric landscapes. It's easier than you think wet on wet techniques brings out the natural strengths of watercolor is essential for your watercolor journey. Creating fine sharp details. What is crucial in an atmospheric landscapes creates contrast and interest. But understanding when to add the mean is crucial. Something that we'll cover together. Before we start with the painting, I'll show you how to simplify shapes and sketch in large shapes, such as sky, trees, grass, Atlanta. Getting in those large components accurately beforehand is essential for your painting to make sense. So join me in this class. I'm looking forward to showing you the secrets of natural landscape painting 2. Materials Required: Before we get started in the class, I want to show you and go through a few materials to help you decide which ones you need and which are best. So I'm using a bit of 100% cotton watercolor paper. And it's medium texture. As long as it's got some texture on it, medium or rough texture, you're going to be completely fine. Really recommend that because that's allows you to get in these nice soft clouds and these wet and wet effects, especially with these type of natural landscapes, when you're painting on paper that's really, really flat. So hot press paper can be difficult to get in these background areas and these areas of softness here, the paint just drives more inconsistently and sharper on that paper. So you can also get textured paper in cellulose. Cellulose is that it tends to lift off the previous layers when you go over that second layer. So if you can get yourself some cotton watercolor paper, here are some brushes that I use. Watercolor, mop brushes are really important. You use these to get in areas like the sky, these large areas of the bag, even some of the trees and this one here use that these mop brushes, different sizes obviously depends on what you're painting. Painting something smaller, use a smaller brush like this. If you're using trying to get in that air sky and the background, probably larger one like this one or this one would be better. The great thing about brushes is that they have a small tip, allows you to cut around different shapes easily. Got a little round brush here and also a little flat brush. And these are really good at creating small details. So if you're looking at getting you in a bit of water or branches mainly is what I use these for. You can get those in very easily with the smaller brushes. They don't hold much paint. But I think that's a good thing, So that just doesn't create a mess. So apart from that, I've got a few other specialty brushes here. This is a little fan brush and you can see here I use that to get in textures with the grass. I've got this brushy, which is a rigger brush, and I use that to get in the trees in the background. Smaller branches here just gets you into a point where you're able to detail there is a larger round brush would just create two to wide branches. So this brush, this brush is a filbert brush. Filbert brushes for blending. So it's got a funny sort of tip. It's almost like a flat brush with the edges cut off. And here I use it to get rid of some hard edges like here, here, the backgrounds bit of lifting here in the shadows as well. I've used the filbert brush, can use a round brush for this. I just find the filbert brush to be a lot easier to do that scrubbing motion. That's about it for brushes. Let's talk a bit about painting. You can see here I've got my palette not cleaned up, just finished the painting. And I use really large wells. It makes it easier to, especially when you're getting enlarged areas of this yellow in the background, the sky, want to make sure that I'm not having to continually go back and having to mix up paints over and over again because I find it's very difficult watercolors to get that same consistency of paint. So if I know I'm going to paint in large area in, I'll make sure that I mix up enough paint for that main colors that I'm using. Quinacridone, yellow here. And this is like a golden yellow. And if you've got this other color, this is hansa yellow. It's also good if you want to get in a little bit more contrast, more vibrancy with that yellow. I've also got this stuff here, which is yellow ocher. Yellow ocher is subdued. Yellow are not as saturated as these two yellows, but at the end of the day, you can use that to also get in and nice. I'm golden color in the ground. Few other colors that I'm using for the trees. I've got a bit of burnt sienna, also got a bit of burnt umber. And just basically my browns earthen colors use some of that in the background as well too, with some of these background trees, you can see some of it also here in these, these Teresa left. The darker colors are basically just a bit of black, black, black here. I've also got a bit of neutral tint, which is a pre-mixed gray, so you can mix up your darks anyway, if you've got a red, blue, and green, and mix those together in equal proportions. Me a little bit more blue and you can get a very dark color, which is basically you're black. You've noticed the little scratches and things like that here, these little highlights, I've actually used a small blade to scratch off these bits of paint and you can actually use a card as well. So credit card or anything sharp has a small edge at the end. You can actually scrape off paint and create little highlights. And another way you can create highlights is through using gouache. So I've got a bit of this white quash, haven't used any of it here in this painting, but it's just something that you might want to hold onto, especially near the end. We want to bring out some extra little details 3. Drawing: We're gonna get started with the scene and really liked this one because you've got a nice little creek or river running through the center. Lots of contrasts with the trees. And the quality of light is something that I really love as well, just as golden light that seems to be coming. And I'm just filling the entire scene, the grass as well. And you've also got some darker contrast in the background. I think this will be good because we can also practice getting in some clouds. And the clouds are, there's some that are softer, some that are slightly, I have some slightly sharper edges. I think I might simplify them down and just make them all wet into wet in the background. But yeah, let's firstly getting the drink. And what I wanna do first is again, look at where the trees rod at the back. So basically where the sky connects with the ground. And if we have a look very closely, we can see it's certainly not in the center, but little bit below the center point. So if we say that's the center point there of the page, I'd say it's around about here. Maybe. I'll just draw a line running across the scene and a very, very loose line as well. Okay, I actually tend to draw a bit darker on, on camera so that it makes it a little easier for you to see what's going on. However, normally speaking, I do tend to go lighter. Just running across the page. Like that. It's roughly where the trees end off in the distance. Now, probably the next thing I wanna do is get in this stream and we know that the stream comes in. You can see just the edge of the page. So it comes in and then finishes off roughly around the one-third mark of the page here. And of course it is, gets in the way of a few bits and pieces. Let's just start drawing it like this. Okay, Just a general indication of it. We can see it sort of finishes off here as well. So just center right of the center part of the scene. So there's all these like clumps of bits and pieces here. So just draw that in pretty loosely. But we just want to have that indication of that creek in there so that we're not getting confused at where it is, a little bit lighter. You can see here there's actually quite a large tree. Well, a bunch of trees, and there's no leaves on them really. There's just a couple of these branches running up like this and I'll indicate them quickly. I'm not going to really draw much of it in. I'm going to wait until later once we have some watercolors to start getting that in. Main thing you want to do here is you want to look at placement, the placement of shapes. And it's more of a planning technique that I like to use. Here in the background you can see there is a sort of a large tree line and some of them that stick up along the back. So see how I'm just penciling reading roughly where they are. You can see also here there's a lot of treeline goes higher off into the background like that. And the other, really the only other two objects that we need to put in here, I would say is this larger tree coming in from the side. And this one is interesting as well because you've got a lot of light on that tree. The branches which just go off into the edges of the scene. Some of them branch over. And I think the great thing about these branches as well as they form a connection between the different sides of the scene. The natural kind of connection. And then you can see just some of these branches and things like that coming through. And just try my best to get in a simplified version of this, you can see some of the branches gets cut off at the edges like that. There's lots of these branches and we will detail them in much more later on. But I just want to penciling roughly where they are located. Here. There's actually a bunch of, that's like a rock or something like that. You can see a series of little rocks. And I'm trying to just make sure that they are basically a bit more randomized. A case some of the shadows of those rocks, some rocks and things here in the water as well. So this is also a good chance to just indicate some of these kind of like a warm colored rock and the water is quite dark and some areas as well, and has taken on more of a murky type of color. You can see a bit of the reflected blue here on the side as well. So just take note of these Little observations I think is important. So there's another rock there. But the big thing here is just this tree. And this tree is quite important its forms. I think anyway, the main subject of this entire scene. So I can see the treatise comes over from that. Shimon, call it right-hand side there is this sum shadow and it just goes all across the water. Like this shadow a lot. It again just sort of connects the scene together from left to right. It's quite a sharp shadows, so we'll have to get that in probably a bit lighter and kinda comes up here like that. See the angle of that shadow just change a bit. As the terrain goes upwards, the shadow starts to shift on an upward angle as well. Okay. Roughly where the trees there is some kind of like rock or a mound of something there as well. So I'm just going to indicate it like that simplified down. Of course, there's another tree here, which we've indicated roundabout there anyway, but I'm going to just put that in a bit further. So we get this tree going up. Let's see what we can do. I like the shape of it and we can kind of get it up like this is the main trunk, I suppose. And it goes all the way off out into the back at the top of the scene. We just want to connect this up like that. Here's a branchial or something that's limb that's been broken off. And look at these amazing details. All these little branches. I want to get everything in, but we just want to make sure that we've got in the basics. We don't want to spend too much time on this drawing, but I do think with something like this tree which I'm focusing on as a subject and my chosen main subject in this area of interest. Anyway, I want to make sure that I've confident enough with the detail that I've got in there. So that when I go in with the brushwork, I'm not worried. Thinking too much. These large branch you can see kinda goes upwards and it comes down. Hold the pencil like I am just at the end. And this creates a natural flow with the, during some natural variations in your marks that resemble the natural variations in the tree limbs. So there we go, just they're the bits and pieces connected onto the tree. I will add some larger limbs in, smaller limbs in afterwards. You've got this one that just comes all the way out. The seen this, so many of these little limbs that just branch out everywhere can be quite tricky to get in all the details for this really. But I want to I want to make sure that I've got enough in here. Okay. Another one coming enormous from the top area like that. There, that there, there's the branch coming in, then coming downwards like this. Like that. They're actually extend out some of those branches at the back there. We'll see. I think this is good to go for the drawing 4. First Wash: So one of the first things we wanna do is getting all the light areas of the scene. And that basically for me, means areas of the sky and also areas of the tree which we want to get in in a more warmer color. So this is gonna be a tricky one because the colors in the background, as you can see in the sky, very, very cool. Hints of purple in the clouds, which I quite like. What I'm gonna do first is wet this area a little bit over in the background. I'm just picking up bit of water and I've got a watercolor mop brush. I'm also just being careful not to go over too much of the tree because I want to get into some yellow, yellowy colors in the treaty. And left side also, we want to preserve some of those yellows in there. But I think the background is really important. Just getting in some of those blues. So I'm just wetting that paper a little bit. Now, let's pick up some colors. I've got some cerulean strapping a bit of cerulean blue up here. At the top. I'm gonna go a bit darker. Drop in a bit of that. Of course, here's that trig and I'm just cutting around it to hold that brush at the end. And that way you just get more looser, broader sort of brushstrokes. I think it looks more natural that way. So there we go. Just move this, this cerulean downwards. Cerulean blue is my go-to sky color for these type of these types of scenes. It's pretty subdued. And just a nice sky blue color. Do have a touch of purple. Where's it here? I've got a bit of purple. I'm thinking maybe I should add in. Just try putting a little bit of that purple just to soft and purple further down, like this, even in here, I will actually add some more in a moment. But I want to add some variation in the sky. Notice how, how quickly I'm doing this as well. There's no fussing about just getting in that color in the sky. Further down, you can see how it just gets lot more lighter as well. I have actually funny, funny thing, a bit of titanium white. So don't use often. But I'm going to put it in just at the base. And hopefully this will help. Just sort of soft in that area up like that nicely and more that you're going to be to that cerulean. I can just drop in here to the left. Like that. It's a bit too dark, but doesn't matter. Notice how I'm leaving in a lot of that. The tree there. Okay, Let's have a look and I think we can go ahead and maybe pick up some of this darker. This is just a bit of darker purple and I'm dropping in some little clouds. And the way to do this is just pick up that paint and drop it in while the paper is still wet, as you can see. And from that, you can just drag around these little cloud-like effects running into the background. If you do find that there are bits that are too dark or that kind of thing. You can just soften the mountain, move that paint around a touch. All I want is just some softer clouds running into the background. I don't want too much detracting from the sky. As you move down, you can add some smaller clouds. So again, another perspective thing where you want to make sure that there's decreasing size as you move down through the page. So here's a smaller cloud that's a smaller one. And another one here, they're just little bits and pieces like that, not fussing around too much. But a lot of this, you can only really do all the papers wet, so you have to make the most of it while you've got the time. And you will notice also at the bottom of the clouds that there might be a little bit of extra darkness at the bottom that's too dark and pick up that pain again. But this is what I mean, sort of at the bottom of the clouds. Like that. Often you just get a slight contrast of darkness here. So I'm just detailing really with these clouds wet into wet, subtle detailing and just want to soften it off a bit. And here we go. There's all the bits of clouds and things. Often the background look a bit like clouds back there. I think I'll leave that and continue on. Let's put in all the yellows and bits and pieces in here. Now, I have a colleague here which has a bit of quinacridone in it. So it's called the Australian red gold. Let's try this Okay. Kinda like a bit of a yellowy color. As you can see, it's quite a vibrant yellowy color, but it's got a golden tinge to it, which is why I'm using it. Because this I think amazing. Just tint of gold in there. And I'm using that on the tree. Of course, like sometimes you can leave in a bit of that white as well. Don't color the whole thing in, but as you can see here, I'm just using this golden color to go over the edge of the tree and some of it may go into the sky, it may bleed into the sky slightly. Don't worry too much about that. Just look at that. Just kidding it in because afterwards I'm actually going to drop in some more, little bit more brown and K, but it's important to just have some of these golden highlights in here for later on. Because then you can cut around them with some other, sort of some other double sort of color. So important thing to do anyway. These are just highlights essentially that will help you later on. Let's get some more. And especially on this left-hand side, I think we're missing some of these and the paper is starting to dry there as well, which makes it tricky because we want it in a way to blend on with the sky, slightly just melt into the sky. So I'm just adding in little bits and pieces of that so that it comes through and even leaving a bit of white in there for some incidental highlights. If I move downwards through the page, you can see rant about here is where the all the little shrubs and things start. And over here as well off in the distance and bits of yellow. It's really just a lot of yellowy, warm colors in here. And just I don't need to fuss around too much with this, just getting a few bits and pieces. And if you can skip over parts of the paper as well, That's good. So then you can aromas creates these incidental rocks and things. Anyhow that you're going to put in there. Just like that, see how there's little bits and pieces. I've not gone over, just leave it. Okay. Can use any type of yellow for this. I've just used your Kronecker. Don't base yellow for the golden effect. Okay. There we go. Looking good. I won't mix in a little bit of buff titanium in areas because it just looks a bit too saturated parts. The buff titanium and even like a bit of titanium white can just help to create some slight variations in here. Make it more interesting in my opinion. Some more here. Drop that in nicely. Like that. Now I'm going to get into some of the water and I will pick up clean off my brush quite well. In fact, I'm probably pick up another brush because it's just tricky to, when you're using blues that they don't mix in any of the other colors. It's very, very, very hard. Especially cerulean blue has the tendency to just turn green if you're not careful. So look at that. I'm just dropping it in. Try to put in a few little brush strokes like that. I'll carry it downwards more like to say around here, maybe a bit here as well. But the water is actually quite murky color. There's not a whole lot of whole lot of blue in there. And so that's why I'm going to mix up some, perhaps some brownie, greenie color which I already have anyway on the palette. But I'll add in extra Brown bit of burnt sienna in here. And you just get that to blend a bit on with the with the water and some of the land as well. But look at how I am just, at that point, just leaving bits of those white highlights on the page helps. But this soft joining on to the water I think is quite important. It makes it look more natural. And getting that through this is kind of more of a brownie color, but there are some greens also mixed in here. We're good. We've got the basic wash of colors in the background or the light colors, so to speak. And the next step I think, is to build on that detail a little more. And I start to pick up some brushes that something like a flat brush, angled flat brush, a little little brush like this one as well. This brush here is basically a fan brush allows me to just get in small details. So what I wanna do is just go up into this area here. And I'll also use a spray bottle. Sometimes a spray bottle helps so that you can just re-wet parts of the paper like this just to get more softer effects. Because at the moment that's what I'm aiming to do, just getting some softer effects. And the tree you can see has a kind of a brownie color. But I'm mixing it into the quinacridone yellow to just create more warmth from there. I want to exaggerate that warmth, but still have extra brown in there. So you can see that tree, just the general edges of that tree in there like that. So it does have a yellowy color to it. Okay. But you can see there in the background, you've got a bit here as well. Okay. I mean, it doesn't mix around with that purple slightly the background. And that's all it takes. Just getting these kinda like the rays of light that are hitting the leaves and areas like that here as well. Okay. They're using these quinacridone yellows. I find they work a bit better with the cooler colors as well. They just don't really turn so much into green when you use them. Now why? But it's just the thing. Look, I mean, we've gotten most of this detail. Let's think about what else we could potentially put in here. I'm thinking maybe a bit of green or something like a bit of this color, like some brownie green shrubs or something just running through here. These are just little bits of little bits of details through this section so that it doesn't look too yellow and has a bit of texture to it, even here, especially in the foreground, you'll notice there are some texture, browns and things like that in there. Okay. That they're their bit of that brown area here and there as well. Here's a bit of the trees and things in the background. Again, just sort of pointing up towards the sky. A lot of these trees are actually in a bit of a sharp color and dark tone as well and background. So I wanted to leave that to later on. Good. Okay. Alright. So we'll let this dry off slightly 5. Second Wash: Paper is mostly dry now and this is where we can really start to get into the details and all the darkness and sharper bits and pieces in here. And it's kinda tricky to pick a place to start, but I'm going to go straight into the tree, this tree on the right hand side. I mean, so because it just seems like the most natural place really for me to start and I don't want to overthink it. So I'm just dropping in a bit of brown here over the left-hand side of the tree. And I'm just having a look at it as well to see and compare, making sure that we've got some softness in here as well. I'm just looking at that reference picture as well, comparing it and adjusting where necessary. There may be areas where you want to indicate some sharpness of light and things like that. It's up to you. That's mostly just dark darkness in there so I can just get that in like that. Okay. These are just some browns and I'm using I'm using a flat brush and see how it just goes down page. Put some darker brown as well. But if darker brown and some of this other brown there, there we go, Just coming down the page like that. The link that you can get some of the sharpest contrast in there. As you can see. I will work on softening that down in a moment, but you leaving a bit of highlight on the right-hand side of the tree? Yeah. And I'm exaggerating this more than you can see in that reference. But it's something I wanna do so that it creates an extra, an extra sense of dimensionality and strengthens that light source as well. And you can see how that gold and yellow ecologist comes through in the background. Quite easily. This has to be fairly dark as well. So i'm, I'm using fair bit of paint here. It's mostly maybe about 60 to 70 per cent paint. The rest of it being water. Go on and going on here as well. Notice what I'm doing is I'm getting in the larger branches. I'm not worried about the smaller ones. I'm gonna do those smaller ones later. But this allows me to just getting some of these main limbs before we put in the bigger ones and more interesting ones. Interesting ones but detailed ones later. Okay? Because that just coming down like that, there is another one branch kind of sticking out from the right-hand side of that tree like that. Just want to soften that off that branch slightly like that. And look at that. There's just some another one here. There as well. It's interesting because it helps to build a bit of detail on that tree and create this sense of there's the contrast between light and dark on that right-hand side. Because what this sharper sort of branch sticking out that sits right next to the yellow. What I'm doing here is that I've just dried off my brush and I'm just feathering the dry brush through that era of the right-hand side of the tree in this, for me, creates a little bit of texture, tiny bit of texture in there. You can even see you can do this same technique and even getting these little shrubs and things here in the background. Tiny bits of detail from this end, I use the little fan brush as well for this bit of that rock. Okay. Some more of this brown and what have you, I'm going to just work a bit on this tree, some of these trees here and flesh out bits, bits of them. Okay? And I'm looking at that reference, but again, I'm keeping it fairly loose and I'm not trying to replicate it. The reference exactly, just taking some ideas from it in terms of the directions of the branches that are moving around. Because of these branches are quite close as well. You can go darker Notice how I'm skipping over the paper a bit as well so that I'm just creating a bit of broken lines and the broken lines help. You can see here. So just another thing I'm doing, a pickup bit of black. And this black, I'm dropping into this left side of the tree to create much dark contrasts. Running through the brown because the brown is still wet. So if I can get some softer transitions running through, I think that would be better. Okay. That's pretty dark branch there, but I wanted to leave more of a highlight and the right-hand side of it, you can see, look at how it just nicely kind of blends in. And that's what happens when you're painting wet into wet. You can get these amazing blends of color that you just can't get if you're doing everything wet on dry. And of course time is of the essence with this sort of thing. That tree still working on the other one here, take your time. And again, I'm trying to do this thing where I'm outlining the left-hand side of some of these branches. These largest branches exaggerating the more of course than what they appear in the reference. But here's one e.g. just the left-hand side of that golden color. Maybe another one just coming through like that, that left-hand side. Here's another, another branch, like in front like that. Another one here. That that bit of shrubs and dry brush here at the base. Look at that. It's a bit of feathering. This little fan brush around to create some small details. Always trying to be careful to just make sure I'm varying loose brush strokes a bit as well so that they don't look all the same. I really liked this tree to the left and even this one here on the right, how it just allows you to join up both areas, the left and right-hand side of the scene together. And lovely contrasts, amazing little contrasts. More darkness as you can see on just some parts of the, the trees. They might even get really dark branch like this one that cuts through every now and then. So that's important as well. Having some really dark areas that join up, okay, there's even one that's sort of comes out there and disappears off the even the left-hand side there. Okay. Good. Bit on the base and sharper lines on the base, but other than that, not really much. They're looking good. I'm going to just pick up the green, the green, and then also a bit of black, maybe brown or whatever mixed together to create this extra sharpness. And over here I'm just going to go and cut around. Firstly, I'm actually going to wet, wet this area, touch so that it blends better. But I'm just trying to get in a little bit of this background. And at the same time create a just some of this negatively painted levy area, I guess. The more black in that area just to make it darker. That's kinda black, brown and green in that area. I don't know exactly what color it is, but I'm just trying to make sure that I've got a nice blend in. I'm leaving in also some of that previous wash in the background to this. Soften that off a bit more, that you're leaving in some of the yellow on the top of those trees, it's tricky Necessary here. Actually, I've gone a bit too dark. This is the shrub that's in front of everything there. And can actually just lift off a bit sometimes when you make a mistake or if you go too far into a region that you don't want to go into? That. Some more this brown? Yeah. There there we go. Darker. I'm just gonna go significantly darker at the base as well. Try to increase the contrast and the, just exaggerate that effect. There we are. Okay. Nice granulation hopefully from this, once it dries, here's some more little bit of darkness in the background of this region and am actually mixing in a touch of purple in there as well. Because I find the purple has a nice sort of trust with all these yellows. I don't want to go too dark, not as dark as this tree anyway. That's tricky thing because you wanna, you wanna make sure the tree comes forward. And if I make the background too dark around this area that the tree is going to just look funny and more towards the foreground or background. So here again, it's another shrub or something around this region. And I'm actually going to darken a little bit in the background. There's a bit of this brownie color that I've got. I can just chop that in here. As you can see, creating some extra contrast on the tree as well. But I wanted to leave again just leaving some of that yellowy color in there. But the tree off in the background or just soften that off there. Just soften that. I want to make these trees a little softer than the, than the reference photo. Actually. Just a touch of that. Maybe a bit of green in there too like that. Okay. Fantastic. And you can see just this sort of come down. Now, there's actually some shadows running across the ground. I'm going to use a bit of this purply gray color and just work on a few lines, a few simple lines maybe running through here. I can just missed that area quickly as two quick little midst of color like that water amine. And just bring some of these lines across the scene. Soft and lines, of course, there's not really too much color in there, but just soft because we've got the the water we've just put some water in there as well. Just so that you've got a bit of this kind of a strange way. It also helps to connect up the scene. I can talk about connection a lot, but it is very important to join on the left and the right side portions of your scene. There we go in these like some trees and things in there as well, which I will get getting in just a moment. I just want to get in the bank of the river or something running through in here. A few sharper bits and pieces. I think a crucial, There's another one, Here's another something as well. Perhaps. It's kinda tricky, we cutting around and just indicating the lights on here. In this section, I can pick up something like a small rigger brush. And getting details for the tree. Just picking up with a black or some neutral tint. That's going to work fine. And over here, you've actually got a branch that comes up, a little branch there. Are these rigger brushes are fantastic for this. They just hold them at the end and you do this kind of thing and can really imply details without much thought at all. Okay. But yeah, all I'm trying to do is just implied that there's a tree that's forming in this section so that it makes sense with all the yellow back there. Okay, There's react and that's probably part of the brand, the leaves of that tree. Okay. It's all wet in this area, which certainly helps a lot. And here's what we've got, another one we're gonna do the exact same thing. You want to make sure that the paint that you're putting on your brush is pretty thick. It's 100, almost 100% paint in here. And I'm drawing that brush off as well. At the same time on a bit of tau on the side. And that helps me to control how how much paint goes actually onto the page. Okay. So this is some of those back there. I think those look pretty decent, subtle, and they have a blend between sharp and soft edges. It's not some of the melt and some of them don't really hear as well. This is where we really just picking up darker colors. It doesn't matter what color it is. I'm just picking up bit of neutral tint and a bit of black. Mix that with a touch of water to activate it because it's too thick. But e.g. we've got we might have some of the limbs that we can just slowly start to flesh out. Okay. I want to just darken off perhaps some areas as well that just the darker limb here. Something. And some of them just even coming from the age of the scene from a tree that's out of the another area. And because using this brush pretty dry, you drawing off that brush and a bit of tau. Notice how you get this kind of broken edges for these, for these tiny little branches. And that's what you want. You don't want a lot of really, really dark lines going through the whole thing. You want to make sure that it blends in. And it looks like these smaller branches are also catching a touch of light in there. I'm just mixing a bit of brown in there as well. Okay, So this actually if you look here, there's another branch or something and that forms another branch. You can go on really forever with this thing, with this type of thing in the sky is the limit. But at some point you gotta look at it and say to yourself, Hey, I'm happy with how that looks. But I'm gonna keep just playing around with it and you're adding these tiny little branches coming off and splintering off. And the way these branches work as well, they go off and then they join. They create these tiny little secondary branches. So you get one line and then that splits into two lines, or could split the 33 lines even. So that's the main thing. I mean, if you look at a tree, really the branches are just smaller versions of the actual tree trunk. And sometimes I just like to just flip that brush around so that I'm not overly precious on how I draw every single one of these bits and pieces in. Okay, let's try a bit more here on the left that this many, many tiny little branches and you can actually hold the brush closer down to the tip as well. If you want finer details and just a little bit more control, then they just all join up in the center almost. He is just some I want to get some vertical vertical stuff happening here. More darkness on that left-hand side of the tree. And really dark areas here in the rocks. Really dark contrasts. I'll get some of that in later. I'm just getting some of this tree or something here in the background like that. I don't think there's really much going on in here. Maybe I can just draw a few little, little lines like that that will hopefully just break up. Make it look like there S and trees or something off there in the distance. Just want to create an extra sense of detail. Often the back. And again, we're just playing around with these little branches. Storing the mean should be, puts them all in here. Let's try just a little bit like that. Very tricky when you get to these little ones to start getting the easing as well as when you want to hold the brush closer to the actual top. That's how you detail. You can see. I'm going to add in another bit of darkness here like another branch coming off. Something that you realize you have to do at times is in the reference photo, it's so easy to spot contrasts, but when you're actually painting because you're reducing that level of detail and that level of complexity. You often need to add in extra detail because on areas on certain parts. Anyway, because he's taking away detail from other areas. Area looking good. Maybe just create more of a branch there as well. That another one coming down when other one going up like that. Just want some larger, larger branches in this spot. Too many little ones. It's, it's funny because it's sometimes it's hard to tell. Um, in terms of the balance. You sort of get a feel for it. It's very hard to explain, but I'm looking at the scene and just deciding T-cell Hey, I've got that looks too much. We've got too many little branches. Let's put in some larger branches and get a bit of an intuition for that sort of thing. So those are looking pretty decent. I'm just going to now work a bit on the grass and stuff like that. I'll spray spray it down a touch as well. So yeah, just so that it's not too sharp 6. Finishing Touches: Gonna be using a small flat brush. And also some of the years, some of these detailing brush here, which you may call it fan brush. I'm just trying to get into that shadow here in the background. I'm not getting rid of all of the course, the, the light there, but just kidding in a bit of shadow like that. Because we know there's actually a shadow on the right-hand side that just runs across the scene like that. So I want to get in some of that like that. Getting more little brush strokes like this. You can also use the fan brush and do the same thing. Just flicking a few bits like this. Here. Little bits of grass growing around the place. More brown. I always try to vary the colors I'm using in here. But at the same time, I'm going back to that same sort of pattern of colors, the combination of colors. This is interesting. We've got the shadow running across there as well, which I'm going to have to do at some stage. But before I do that, I just want to get in some darker shadow like this, the foreground. For just another, I guess there's something out on that right-hand side casting the shadow. A bit of darkness in there like that. Probably have to go darker, actually moves slightly darker. That I'm good. Now this shadow I'm going to keep in kind of a purply, verbally sort of darker color. Pretty dark. But it is actually slightly lighter than the actual tree itself. So I have to be careful not going too dark here. Like that. I'm altering that level of water and that's how you change how dark the shadow is. Bring that across. Okay, you can just see, and that's why that sketch is so important because you allow yourself the ability to focus on getting in that shadow rather than thinking too much to yourself. What is it in the right place upon a thing? It's, you know, it's there because he just drew it there at the beginning. Bring that across. This is about where it hits the bank, roughly here. Let's just bring that across like that. Good. Now get this angle, we're going to get this angle right, like this. Like that. Excellent. And this just kinda disappears off, doesn't it? Even a bit of a little bit of yellow showing through is okay. There we are. Going to add in extra, little bit of extra darkness in the water to blend things together a bit more of that brown and blue, that green mixed together in here. Okay. Martin, dark in that shadow a bit. We'll see how we go. You'll notice in the center here there's actually a sunlit spot of rocks and things there as well. That's a nice little opportunity for me to pick up some color and do this sort of thing where it just kinda just indicating details in this mix. Few little splotches of paint like that. And I'm not intending to get anywhere near what it looks like in the reference because there's so much in there, so many details in their main thing. I want to just make sure I've gotten right as the level of darkness in this region like that and preserving that light as well, It's very tricky. But we're cutting around bits and pieces and I'm noticing that I'm just leaving the yellow A bit of a yellow. Here, you've got a bit of this sharpness kinda running through here. So I'm just going to get some of that in blue, That's sharper color like that. And this is just sort of draws out the riverbank in this section like that. Don't want to go too dark. That bring some of this across as well. Just little ripples that you can see on the surface of the water. Maybe a bit more darkness near the banks that you can just get some of that in like that. I always start with a lot of bits and then later it's just apply the dark computes wet into wet so that it looks a bit more natural. Suppose the shadow is started to disappear a bit and I need to bring it back to life, just make it darker than the actual air in the reverse. So this is what I'm doing. I'm just going over the top of it. Once again. To strengthen it. Strengthen that shadow more. I'm good. That should dry off. Nicely. Interesting as well. I think this part of the shadow is merges a bit there as well. I'm just going to soften it off like that. Soft and parts of the shadow off just where it looks too sharp. I think I can make it look better if I do that. Models. So find parts of the painting of started dry and you can scratch out little highlights like this. At the base of it. The tree and the grass and stuff here. And this starts looking like little blades of grass catching some of the sunlight. Which is really important to have some of that going on in here. Varying, varying it as well so that it just looks a bit different than in spots. So it's not all the same. Line work running through. This is just a little pocket knife that I've got. You can also use things like gay, like a credit card, like a bit of cutoff credit card. Do it. I do this same technique near the edges as well of the of the river. And that creates some almost like a boundary, makes it look a bit more like there's something going on in there and separating the river. Notice how I'm also going over the top of this shadow. That helps to blend. It helps to blend it a little bit more as well. Just some more here. There is stuff going through the foreground. Sharper ones even scratched downwards as well. You can do that. This bit is a little bit too wet to actually to get in so effectively, but I have to make do just scratching out to be this painting. This is starting to look a bit like texture. You can see. It's amazing how much detail that you can really bring out by doing this. Even on branches, e.g. this branch here I might want to scratch off a highlight. Some of them may be too late to do with already dry, but like that I can just scratch off a bit of light on that side of the side of that tree, connected onto the branch. And I find that looks much better than actually doing it with some gouache later if you can get some of these highlights going already by just scratching out. And it's not as obvious as using the gouache. And I think that's why it succeeds as well, because it's just more subtle. You're always balancing. It's a fine line that you just balancing the sharp and the soft details to make sure you've got enough sharpness in there, but at the same time there's enough details to indicate what's going on. I'm going to pick up a bit of brown paint, a bit of this burnt sienna. And I'm using a lot of water on my fan brush. What I'm going to try to do is flick through a few little variations of grass or something in here. Because I just think there's fuel just looks a bit to bear. Needs to be some more variation Again in some, some indication of details of the grasses and stuff like that as well. But keep it very light. Again, don't try to go in there and to gung-ho because you can potentially get rid of the light which you need. I love the scene just due to the quality of this beautiful golden light in there. Got some, maybe some darker be slightly darker be it's running through that. Maybe some darker ones here. So we look, it's just a balancing act really, even in this section, you might want to go a bit darker in some of them. No, Why not? Going to combination of sharper and that sort of darker and lighter blades of grass and things as well. Some more here and the bank. Not all over the place, but in certain spots I think is useful. These forgot to get in there. The rocks of the shadows on these rocks and bit more of the detailing on them. So I'm gonna go over just try to do them now. Moving more brown actually in there. It's a bit too cool. This is what I was talking about when leaving in some of those highlights. The yellow from before. And that will allow you to create a sharper looking shadow, I suppose in some of these rocks. Now you can pick off bits and pieces that I know there's actually a tree, sometimes some trees running upwards from there. So just connect them on actually to the connect them all nicely to those back ones that I got another one here. Now, I find that there's a bit of a void of detail on the left-hand side because there's a lot of focus on that right-hand side. And interestingly, I feel the need now to just put in a few bits and pieces in here to balance it out. It's again, it's one of those things I was mentioning before where you just tend to notice at times whether something is balanced. But I'm sure we can see here it's quite detailed and there's a lot of things in there, but I want maybe some more branches and branches might be good for this section. And just running through like that. Maybe another tree we could just imagine like a tree like that there or here just going upwards. Like that. That's better. Look at that shadow. How does that shadow look? Alright. I don't want to soft and you got to just soften off a bit of it. Like here. Soft enough that area. Sometimes sometimes it just works better when you've got soft parts of it. Shadow, even through the water, I could just soften off a bit of that here. That could be just a disturbance in the water or something like that. You're just picking off bits and pieces. You can even do it to say here on the tree, just rub off a bit of paint there. Okay, then see what it does here, e.g. as well, there's some type of like bark or whatever on the tree that's lighter. So I can just kinda Often offer a bit of that. This is a filbert brush, but you can use any type of brush for this filbert brushes just to make it easier to blend them to soften bits in pieces. I always use this as a bit of a finishing. Finishing techniques, especially at the end of the painting when all this paint has already dried. So you're just lifting out a touch of paint, but you've got all the necessary details and things in there already. Sometimes you might think he's a bit of light on and bring back a little bit of light and backgrounds. So just dropping a bit of water and lift off with the filbert brush. And you get this nice soft effect in the distance. Okay? Lightens that tree up slightly here as well. Okay. Fix up this, treats a couple of these little trees here. Maybe you want to just draw in a bit more detail over the top. Looks didn't mean to do that. Bit of white gouache. I just drop in a bit of that white gouache here. Some spots, soft and off that area a bit at the back. It also can create some misty like a fixed sum, even if you pick up some titanium white or something and just drop that in in some spots out the back and just soften that offered the filbert brush. You can yeah, you can get in this sense of atmosphere and missed this tree at the back, but I don't want to overdo it just with that brush and lift off. Slightly like this. Okay. Subtle variations really make a difference with watercolors. Know how to explain it, but that just brings the painting together. Let's just soften some of these edges as well. The trees like that. More of this paint running through there. She in the foreground, I want to flip through a bit of this paint to get it to connect up. Connect up with everything. Okay? Just about done here. Really at this stage you want to look for any finishing touches that you think might be worthwhile putting in. E.g. if you want to put in some tiny little branches or little details that you think will help bring out the bring out the scene and just emphasize what's happening with the branches. You can go ahead and do that. Again, it's not super necessary. It's just really what you want out of the painting. I'm just having fun doing these branches. And so I'm thinking I'll keep adding some more in until get bored of doing that. But I'm holding the brush further down. A bit of a contrast from what we were doing before where I was holding the brush quite far up. And by holding it further down, I can get in more details in these tiny little branches. As you can see, the little branches and create detail. Look. Some branches maybe here, just want to cover up some of that sky, but much of it. Let me go a bit more darkness in some sports. And I'll call that one finished