Make 3D Paper Art With Your Watercolor Paintings

1. Introduction: Hi, everyone. My name is Nia, and today, I'm going to take you through this class where I'll be making a simple three D paper artwork out of a watercolor painting. I'm going to create a simple scene based on my travels last year, and I will simplify the painting so we can section out the composition and turn them into three D paper artwork. When I was little, my aunt used to create a similar sort of art form, which is called paper tool, where she would take a repeated image and cut them into layers and stick them together to create something three dimensional. Sometimes she would use premade sets, and sometimes she would use things like wrapping paper where she has access to the same type of image that is repeated and start building it up layer by layer to create something beautiful. This is one of the artworks that she gifted our family a very long time ago. Her works are very intricate, as you can see, and she also used to add other things like little trinkets of beads or maybe glitter to enhance the detail. I want to combine this idea with my watercolor painting, so this is how I came up with this class. This idea has been in my head for several years now, but I haven't gotten around to it. So even though this technique is not anything new, I didn't create this art form. It was still quite experimental for me. Before we start creating, I will show you the references and show you examples of images which are a little bit easier to simplify into this art style. Then I will introduce you to my inspiration, which was from my travels, and, of course, I'll show you how I break it down into sections where we can turn them into separate layers. Once I've shown you the breakdown, I will take you through the steps and my thought process from the painting techniques and, of course, combining it all one layer at a time. Can use a completely different image to what I've shown you in this class, or you can paint along to what I'll be making. I'll be providing you with a template of the cutouts that you can trace onto your watercolor paper. So you don't have to measure each element. If you want, you can also do this from scratch by following the lessons, since I'll be breaking every step down, including how I estimate the size for each cutout. Project did take me quite a bit of time to complete due to the repetitive nature of certain elements. But I feel like I've simplified it enough that it's suited for all level crafters and painters. But there are parts of this artwork where things do get quite repetitive, especially for small detailed cutouts. So if you have a condition where you have pain in your joints and you can't do too many repetitive tasks with your hands, I maybe wouldn't recommend this class for you, but I'm sure you know your conditions better than I do. And most of all, please just take care and take breaks whenever you need to if you decide to follow along. Like a lot of my classes, I'll be skipping through parts of the painting or the steps where my hand is either inactive or off the camera just to get the class going. So if you've never taken any of my classes, I would recommend for you to just watch some of the lessons, skim through it to get an understanding of my usual format. And once you are ready to paint and craft along, you can pause in between each step. So you can take breaks in between, or you can also do things at your own pace without feeling rushed. This project turned out to be more enjoyable than I actually anticipated there were a lot of repetitive and therapeutic moments where I could enjoy my time crafting and painting slowly, which is why I decided to share this class with you today and hopes you'll find the same joy in creating your own. So this sounds like something you'd like to try out, let's move on to the lessons. 2. Supplies: Before we start everything, let me go over the supplies, and let's go over the paper that I'm going to use first. So I'll be using the paper from the brand, Oh, huh. You don't need to use this particular brand. You can use anything you have on hand. This one is cold pressed paper. You can also use hot press. I'll just have a slightly different texture as you paint. And this is also 300 GSM paper, so it's quite thick. For this because I'm using a frame, I've cut down the paper into small sizes to fit the frame, and inside of the frame is 17.5 by 12.5 millimeters. So this is around 1 millimeter smaller, so it fits easily into the frame, which comes to 17.4 by 12.4 millimeters. But if you're not going to use a frame, you don't have to worry about this small change. To paint, I'm going to use a cleaning jar for my water, and I'm also going to have tissue right next to me to take off the excess paint from my brush and also to lift the paint for creating things like the clouds. As for the brushes, I'll be using these two. The large one is by Vitech and its size 14, and the small one is by Princeton velvet touch, and it's a size five. Minus bit freight, it would be better if your small brush comes to a fine point. But for both of these brushes, it doesn't really matter what brand you use. Any round brush that is fairly large and a medium size that you have on hand would be fine. As for the palette, I'll be using this cheap plastic palette, the one that I usually use. This is from Diso and as for the color, I'll only be using these four colors. The first one is Quinn red by Daniel Smith. This is CoBot blue hue by Holbein, sap green by Holbein, and permanent yellow deep by Holbein. I'm also going to use acrylic markers to paint the flowers. I'll be using these yellow tones. I have a light yellow. I have white, mid tone yellow, orange, and a dark yellow. These are opaque markers, but you can also use squash for this. My markers are by me, and I have it from a set of 80 colors. Here are the color codes in case you have the same set on the right hand side. But in terms of the final painting later, you can switch the color of the flowers with other hues or even combine a few if you'd like. Draw, I'm, of course, going to need a pencil and an eraser. My pencil is bipentl sharplet the eraser is by Boxy. You, of course, need a ruler to measure your paper and scissors. You can also use a scalpel to cut the small parts of the painting later. But I don't have a scalpel, so I'm just going to use my small scissors here. This is very sharp, and you can see it has a pointy tip as well. And using a small but sharp scissor, I feel like it helps me maneuver the paper easily without it feeling too bulky. Be using a couple of different glues and tapes to stick down the elements. The first one I'm going to use is a white PVA glue. This is just a local brand, but you can use things like Elmers. For the tapes, I'll be using a masking tape. This is to put things in place so I know where to spread the glue, and another one I'm going to use is this foam tape. So you can see this is a little bit thicker, so I can create a little bit of height between the little bits of painting to make it look three D. This foam tape is still quite thin, but if you want more height, you can also use thicker foam tape like this. You can actually make this yourself. You just need a piece of foam, depending on the thickness that you want and use double sided tape for both sides. Also going to use a hot glue gun for smaller elements like the leaves and flowers, but you can also use hot glue gun to give more height to certain elements if you don't have foam tape. I like to also use this to stick some loose parts, especially between small areas. This makes the process very fast and easy. This here is actually a tool for book binding, but I'm going to use this to create some small scratches on my paper to add leaf textures. You can also paint it on, but this makes it much easier to do. You can also use any pointy but not sharp objects you have at home maybe like a toothpick or a dried up ballpoint pen. I'm also going to use tweezers for small elements like the leaves, stems and flowers. This makes it so much easier to place them without disturbing other areas. But you don't have to use this then tweezers. You can also use makeup tweezers and it'll still be as useful. Lastly, I'm also going to use a hair dryer, which makes the watercolor painting much quicker to dry off. And lastly, this is the written list. You can take a screenshot or also download it in the projects and resources section. 3. References: Before we start making the artwork, let's go over some references in case you want to create your own. I'll discuss the kinds of things I look out for, what sort of images are best suited for this three D painting. Generally, I like to search things like rolling hills because the composition is already full of layers. So as an example here, there are layers of hills, and then in front, you can separate these flower bushes into singular ones. And for the flowers, you can make them a separate element or paint it with the bushes depending on how simple or complex you want the three D layered painting to be. Now let's look at another one. Here you can separate the sky. There are a few layers for the mountains, the hills, and, of course, the water, which is similar to the final painting I'm going to be doing. And you can put these hills over the water and even add more flowers or other elements to close up the water source, which will look quite cool because now you have more depth. Now let's have a look at another one here. I feel like you can separate the clouds with the sky and for the trees to make them pop a little bit more, you can add a thicker glue or foam behind it, it looks more three dimensional. I like the fact that it also has shadows in front, you can make the flowers pop out more by creating individual ones. For this one, you can see at the back, there are many layers of mountains, and to create depth, you can make the layers very thin towards the back and also play with the color. And as the hills get closer towards us, the details, as well as the size would be much larger. So just have a scroll around to get inspiration and see what kind of references you can play with. Try to imagine how you would layer things or even use your own travel photos or follow along using the image that I'll be using in this class. 4. Framing Options: There are a few ways you can present your final art. So let's just do an example here. And this is in terms of framing. By the way, I'm going to take this image because it's very pretty. So I'm going to try to somewhat explain how I'm going to break down the layers in a very basic way. And this will depend on the type of framing you want to do. So there are a few ways you can go frameless and maybe even add a wooden panel behind it to make the painting more stable and more presentable when you want to display it at home. So paper doesn't bend and such. You can use a three D frame, which I'm going to do. I specifically bought it just for this project, or you can also use paper as part of the frame. Before you do that, though, I'm just going to show you how I sketch things out to break down and simplify the image. This way, we can organize the layers and have a better visualization of it. So after doing a simplified sketch, here I can break down the areas further and figure out which parts I want to separate even more. So I just number it down to separate the layers. Here I'm going to add that extra bush in front to give more depth, as I mentioned earlier, and also maybe some flowers. So if you want to go frameless or use a wooden frame, this means it won't be part of the paper. I'll just be creating the layers like this. So the first layer will be the clouds, but I want to paint a bit lower than where the mountains are going to be. So when I add the mountains later on, it'll cover it, then have a few layers for the mountains, and this is where the cutout will be. I will just cut the top area and we can align the bottom. And this gives a little bit of lift for the rest of the elements as well. Don't have to do this for every layer, but I'm just showing you an example here if you would like every other element to be lifted as it gets towards the front, then you would need to extend the cutout to the very bottom of the page. But I'm going to do a mix of this because I'm going to use a tall adhesive like a foam tape and also a hot glue gun. For some layers, I made it all the way to the bottom whereas some I just do small cutouts that I stick together. Now, if you want to create a paper frame, then this would require more cutting because each layer we're going to include the frame. So the sides won't be completely hollow if you twist the artwork. And this also means that each layer should be connected to the frame instead of having those separate cutouts that I mentioned earlier. Would require more planning and it's a bit more complex. I would recommend for you to use a scalpel as well instead of scissors, which is enough for this project because with this method, you do need to create a hollow space. As you can see, I would paint and then leave extra bit of paper as the frame. Then as you're doing the layers, you would cut out this area that I shaded here, which should be hollow and with that hollow area, you can see the layers behind it or in front of it. From here, you can imagine taking this piece and putting it on top of each other layer by layer and you would be able to see parts of the mountain at the back and more mountains in front, and then the hills and so on. With this type of painting, it doesn't matter how many layers you want to create because you don't have a limit, whereas if you use a three D wooden frame like I'm going to be using, there is a limit to the thickness, even though mine is actually very thick and I do have so much more space by the end of it. But with this, you can just keep layering and layering depending on how complex you want to be. I've seen people create really complex woodland sceneries with so many layers of little branches and leaves and very, very complex cutouts. But for this class, I'm going to make things very simple and approachable. 5. Rough Planning: So this is a video I took when I was on my travels to the Dolomites, and this is the reference that I'm going to be using for this artwork. In this lesson, I'm just going to draw a small sketch to roughly plan out the layers. This way, I can refer back to it and also have a better visualization. At this step, you can also create variations in case you want to play with the layout to see what fits best. Mine, I specifically skip the large tree because I feel like it's going to look too bulky to paint it as a single layer without adding additional cutouts. So I'm going to take it off completely for the layout. I'm also going to make the mountain a bit more pointy to simplify it and maybe add a bit more layers behind the mountains because those are easy additions. For the pine trees, I was trying to figure out how to divide it up. Should I keep it as a single layer or play with a few layers, I later decided to turn it into two layers with textured paintings for these layers. But drawing it out like this helped me visualize that having only two layers without additional painted trees would make it look a bit off and unnatural. Also played a little bit with how I should lay out the flow of the water, how much of the water I want covered and such. But notice how I'm sketching it out with very simple lines so you can draw as many of these as you would like in the planning stage. As I'm sketching, I also want to visualize the layers. This is why I'm also keeping it simple. And notice in the middle ground, I separate the land because I was thinking of dividing the middle ground into two layers on top of the water. And for the background, I'm also going to add some clouds. I'm just going to number the layers to visualize the separation. You can add adjustments along the way, though. This is not set in stone. This is just a step to help yourself plan things out, so you don't get too overwhelmed, making too many decisions later on as you execute this. I also group certain layers. Again, this is just to help my brain break down the image. At this stage, I wasn't sure if I wanted to separate the clouds or not to make it stand out a bit more, but later I decided there were going to be a few layers already, so I made it into one layer with the background. Here, I'm just drawing another one because I wanted to see what it would look like with flatter mountains. I also decided that I'm going to separate the middle ground with a bit more texture for the layer in front so it doesn't look too similar to the land at the back. This sketch, I also change the water direction to see which one I like more. And with these small changes, you can see I'm still keeping the sketch very quick and simple, so I basically brain dump really quickly to help me choose the one that I like most. At the end, I decided to erase it because I didn't like how the water ended up looking too distant. So I'm going to go back to the first layout before. I know I'm going back and forth here, but the step is not to confuse you, it's just to share my thought process as I go and the reasons why I make certain decisions. If you're already sure about yours, of course, you can skip this step altogether. But to me, even though this is a very quick step, it's very important because it really helps me visualize and organize things in my head before execution. Oh 6. Paper Fitting: In this lesson, I'll be cutting out the paper to fit the frame. If you're going frameless, of course, you can pick any size. Mine here is 17.5 centimeters by 12 centimeters for the inside of the frame, but it helps to cut a little bit smaller, so the paper glides into the frame easily. I've cut one out, and I'm going to use it as a template if it fits well in the frame. I can see this fits really well, and when I flip it over, it just slides out easily. Sometimes when we cut the paper, we may shift ever so slightly. And if that's the case, you could benefit from lessening the measurement by 1 millimeter, so it becomes 12.4 by 17.4 centimeters here. I was just using it as a template. But later when I cut the sheets out, you can see that it's a little bit stuck here. So I decided to just take off the excess and you can see now I can easily fit it all in. For this piece, I ended up only using four sheets of paper cut out because I ended up using the side scraps, but I wasn't sure in the beginning, so I made some extras. 7. Painting Cloud Background: In this lesson, I'm going to start painting the background. I decided I'm going to combine the clouds with the sky because when you paint, you can make soft diffuse edges. Whereas if you cut the cloud, the edges will be too sharp. So here I started by dampening the surface. And because I'm painting right to the very edge, I also decided to dampen the back of my paper, but just wetting my table. This makes the wet part of the paper stick to the table instead of warping during painting, which makes it a little bit easier to handle. And as for the sky, I'm just using a very thick consistency of cobalt blue hue. In painting around and leaving a random shape in the middle for the area of the cloud. I'm going to use a thinner consistency of the color to do light dabs with my brush randomly so the cloud isn't completely white. Once I'm done, I scrunched up a small bit of tissue to lift a bit of the color and design the shape of the cloud. I accidentally took off this area on the right, so I'm going to fill it back in. But at the end, I actually prefer to have a smaller cloud on the sides because the mountain is going to cover the bottom of the clouds, which loses a little bit of that extra detail. But as I paint the background, I do want to be mindful that I'm painting a little bit lower to make sure everything will be covered by the elements in front. And while the surface is still damp, you can keep lifting and adding paint, and designing the cloud and fixing the edges. Here I'm adding a bit more shadow on the right hand side, just using a very light consistency, using the same method by dabbing the tip of my brush, and this addition makes the cloud look a bit more puffy. Now for the edges, I'm also going to clean out any sharp edges like this one here, just moving the paint around to soften and create curves. Once I'm done, I'm going to dry it off with a hair dryer. And as I'm doing this, you'll notice that the paper will start warping because we didn't mask and stretch the paper. I just will start to lift because it will dry before the rest of the paper. And as this happens, I'm going to flip my paper and dry the back to help straighten the warping. I also want to make sure I don't have extra paint on my table. So when I flip my paper, the white part of the clod doesn't accidentally get tainted with extra blue paint. I'm going to go back and forth by flipping my paper until everything's completely dry. 8. Painting Mountains: Next, I'm going to paint the mountains. I'm going to paint the main one first, and I also have a new sheet of paper. I'm going to dampen the surface to make the texture of the mountain a bit easier to paint. And instead of using water, I'm going to use a bit of cobalt blue hue. This isn't really necessary, but I was just thinking this could work as a base to make the mountain look a bit more distant since the color will be closer to the sky. I said it's not necessary because I'm going to use a mix of copa blue hue and quin red anyway for the mountain. So either way, the color will still have the same tone of blue as the sky, which will have the same effect. But here, I'm just using a medium to thick consistency to paint the base of the mountain, using more of this blue going to purple. And while the surface is still damp, I'm going to lift a bit of that color off. And I'm creating lines by dabbing using a very small bit of tissue, then I'm going to dry it off. This will act as the snowy mountain tops, and then we're going to add the darker values on top once I dry it off completely. Once the paint is completely dry, I'm going to first outline the edge and then paint from the top downwards with medium consistency of the same color, following the lines that I've made by lifting the paint. I'm going to create some textures here. I've also switched to my smaller brush so I have a bit more control. Whenever you're painting all the layers, you do want to make sure you paint right to the very edge, so the edge will be nice and clean. The top looks a bit too pointy here, so I'm going to round it off. I'm also going to make the edges slightly textured. As I paint, I like to place the layer we're working on with the background. This way, I can see if I need any adjustments like the height and the color. But once I'm happy, I'm just going to cut the top off. I'm just using scissors for this whole class, but you can also use a scalpel if it's a bit easier for you to control. As I'm cutting, I want to make sure that the edges look more natural and uneven. So I like to make small curves and dents. So here, if I place white paper behind it, you can see that the edge isn't completely straight. Before sticking it on, you can slide the layer that you just painted to see how much of the cloud you're going to show. I also realized that the right side looks a bit empty, so I'm going to add a couple more layers for extra mountains at the back. 9. Adding Extra Mountains: Here I have the scrap from the top, and I feel like this is enough to add the mountains behind this one. I'm going to use the same color mixture from Cobalt blue hue and Quinn red. I'm going to see how this goes. If it's too similar, then I'm going to add a slightly different hue, but I'm not going to add much detail because we won't be able to see too much of this part of the mountain anyway. So I'm just doing a light wash. I tried to do a little bit of lifting, but I don't really want it to show as much as the main mountain. I don't think it was necessary, but once I'm done, I'm just going to dry it off completely from the front and the back. I decided that the color was a bit too similar. So here I ended up adding more cobalt blue hue. This time, I also added a little bit of sap green, and I'm just going to paint it lightly again. This is just to change the tone ever so slightly without making too drastic of a change. Once I'm done, I'm going to dry it off again. Because this is only going to be a small piece, I painted it before I'm going to cut the shape and from here, I made my decision and I'm just going to cut it freehand. But of course, you can also outline with pencil first before cutting it. Just like the previous layer, though, you can see that I'm making little curves when I'm cutting, so the edges are still natural and uneven. Let's try to put it behind the previous layer. I feel like I need to adjust the edge here to lower it, so I'm just going to take a little bit off. Sometimes you can make small layers like this, so you can make cuts and adjustments along the way if you just do a flat wash on a piece of paper. I think I quite like the uneven edges now, and I see a small cut out here, and I felt like this would look good to be placed in front of it behind the first mountain. And I quite like how this looks, so I'm just going to stick it all together. Before that, though, I'm just going to put it in front of the cloud so I can see what it's going to look like. Now, just stick these together. I'm going to use a masking tape to put the larger pieces together and just stick it in place first so I know where to spread my glue. Once I like the position, then I'm going to set it in place with the masking tape, and I'm going to slip in the smaller piece and stick it on since there's an awkward line from previous cutout. And to stick it, I'm just going to use white blue here. This extra line is sticking out, so I'm just going to again, set it in place or you can even cut off the excess. As for the larger piece, I'm going to trace a line at the back of the large layer so I know where to not apply the glue. Once it's glued, I'm just going to flip the paper again and I'm going to do a light press. You can take off the masking tape or keep it there. And just to check before this gets too thick, I'm going to try to put it in my frame to see how it fits. And now you have the mountain layer and you can slide it up and down to see how much of the sky you want to show. 10. Pine Trees: In this lesson, I'm going to be painting the pine trees, and I'm going to treat it similarly to how we created the mountains. But of course, this time, we're going to paint it differently. Here I'm just eyeballing where I want the outline of the pine trees to be in comparison to the mountains, and I'm going to try to imagine it here before I paint or cut it out. And I try to adjust and fix things along the way if I feel like it wouldn't really match the background. For the pine tree forest, I'm going to use a mixture of sap green with cobalt blue hue. I'm using a lot of cobalt blue hue here because I want the pine trees to still be part of the background, so the color will stay cohesive with the mountains and the sky still before coming forward and introducing more of the warmer colors. Here I'm just using a really consistency mixture and I'm doing this to also dampen the surface, stopping where I finish off the line. Then I switch to a smaller brush and I'm using a thicker consistency now to create points on the dry surface going into the damp surface. As you can see, the edges on the dry surface is very pointy, whereas once I reach the damp area, the color is going to spread. As you're doing this, the load on your brush will run out, so I like to reload it with a thicker consistency, if not the color will kind of fade out, whereas I want the contrast between the thick consistency and the really light base. So when the thick consistency paint spread out, the light value and the dark value will mingle with each other nicely. As I get towards the bottom, I'm going to follow more or less the same method. But this time, I'm only painting on the damp surface without creating those pointy bits. But because I'm painting with a thick consistency, you can see in between, you have the lighter values mingling with the darker values. Once I'm done here, I'm going to dry it off completely. Don't forget to dry the back as well to keep the warping at a minimum. Now, let's just put it against the mountains to see how it's going to look. I quite like it. So now I'm going to create the cut out. This one is a little bit tricky to cut because of the small points. I'm also using thick paper, so I have to cut these very carefully. This is why it also helps using small scissors with a sharp tip for more control. Again, some of these cuts might be easier to do with the scalpel, so if you have it on hand, you can choose to use it instead. After cutting around halfway through, I just want to make sure that the paper is not bent. So I like to stop and look back once in a while. Sometimes when you have thick scraps like this, it helps to cut it section by section. So use whatever method is easiest for you. By the way, I'm not speeding this up. I'm just showing you how slowly I go in real time. Okay, now that we have the first layer, I feel like I need to darken the tips because you can see quite a bit of the white from the thickness of the paper. So here I'm just going over it with a medium consistency. Then I'm switching to my small brush so it holds less water, and I'm going to soften the blend. I'm going to put it against the mountain and see how I like it. And once I like the position, I'm going to trace the tip of the paper, and I'm going to cut the extra paper at the bottom. When I place it against the mountain, I feel like I can add another layer behind this one. So I'm just going to use this extra cut out to create this extra layer. Picture of the shape. So I just lifted it behind the previous pine trees, and I'm going to outline where the extra pine trees are going to be, and I just extend it down. I know the right hand side isn't going to be shown anyway, so you don't really need to paint as much. This is just to give me the option of lifting this layer upward slightly if I want to. But if you're sure that you only want to show a little bit on the left hand side, then of course, you only need to paint the left hand side without painting right to the very edge. For this one, you can see I made the points much smaller because this is supposed to be more distant than the previous pine forest that we painted earlier. I also made the points closer together, so it just looks like an uneven edge. The wet on Wa technique also looks less textured. This way, the layer in front still has more detail. I think this looks pretty good together, so now I'm going to cut out the edges. Again, you don't need to cut right to the very edge like what I'm doing here. But since I already started there, I just kept going. I quite like the position here, so next, I'm going to tape it and place before gluing it together. Once I stick it together, there's still a little bit of space that is not stuck together yet, and I want to lift it ever so slightly, so I decided to use a hot glue gun. I also want to cut out the extra paper at the bottom here. 11. Painting Pine Tree Forest: After putting the layers together of the pine trees, I feel like I need to add definition to the texture. In this lesson, I'm going to paint more layers for the trees. For the first part, I'm painting straight on a dry surface, and I'm using my small brush to paint small points in a medium to thick consistency. Then I just soften the edges at the bottom, so they're a bit faded using a clean damp brush. At first, I paint a whole line following the initial movement of the placement. But as I go, I feel like I need to randomize the placement a bit more, so I add some behind and in front of the ones I've already painted. So this way, they don't look like straight rose only. For the first layer, I only use a mix of sap green and cobalt blue hue. But for this part, to darken some of the colors, you can see I've added a bit of quin red on my palette, and I take it little by little, alternating the ratio to create variation in color. As I get closer to the front, I want the color to be a bit more green. So more on the warm side compared to the cooler green in the background. So here you can see, I've added more sap green and a bit more quinn red in the ratio. Distant elements of a landscape are generally cooler in color because cooler colors recede. So as I paint closer to the middle ground and the foreground, I will add more warmth in the color mixtures. I feel like I've painted this low enough and there are some dark patches, and for that to make it look a bit hazy, I just take the axis off using my tissue, and you can see there are some random light spots there, but I quite like it looking this way, so it looks more like a background. Once I'm done, I'm going to stick everything together. The mountains and the pine trees. I'm going to tape it together to keep it in place. Then I want to separate the mountains and trees a bit more. I decided to stick the back with some foam tape instead of glue, which will give it a slight lift to the paper due to the thickness of the tape. I'm going to flip the paper over, make sure it's in the correct place before putting more pressure to make sure everything's stuck down correctly. 12. Combining The Background: Initially, I've kept the length of the paper for the mountains a little bit longer in case I want to add more space for the middle ground and the foreground, then just cut off the top of the sky. But after looking at the space that I have, I think there should be enough, and it'll be fine. So in this lesson, I'm going to combine everything with the sky background. Here, I like to slide things over to see how much of the cloud I want to show. I think it's actually better to show more of the cloud, but I don't want the foreground to be too short either, so I think this area is a good balance. Then looking at this composition, I felt like the right hand side looks a bit too empty. There's just too much blue without enough texture. I decided to lift a little bit of the paint. I use my clean damp brush to reactivate the paint and then dab off the excess paint with tissue. Now I'm just going to cut everything before combining it. And just like the previous layer, I'm going to use foam tape again. So there's a bit more separation and space between the mountain and the sky. Here I added a bit of foam tape since I didn't tape the mountain and the trees all the way to the top. But for the rest, I just use the same method. I tried to keep everything in place using a masking tape before using the foam tape. 13. Painting and Cutting the Middle Ground: Now onto the middle ground, I know this part looks a little bit complex, so we have to find a way to simplify it. I've decided to divide it up into two sections on each side, so there will be four sections. And for the foreground, I'm going to create something totally different. At the back, I want the land to look a bit more flat, and as I get towards the front, I'm going to add a little bit more bushiness and texture. Here, I just try to visualize and roughly sketch out the placement for the foreground as well. Water will be under all these, but I think it'll help to paint the land first, so I know where to end the painting for the water. Just like in the previous lessons, I'm going to work from back to front. So here, I'm just trying to lay out how I want the land to look like. And since the width of the paper is exactly the same, it's much easier for me to visualize the spacing. This is why I draw both the left side and the right side already because I can now see how narrow the start off the water in the horizon will be. Then after that, you can see, I've lightened the pencil marks with my eraser so I can start painting. I started by dampening the surface, and this time I've added a new color in my palette, and that's permanent yellow deep. As I mentioned before, I'm going to add a bit more warmth as I get towards the front. So now I'm using a lot of the permanent yellow deep with sap cream and also a little bit of quin red if I want the color to look darker and more muted. I'm also using a smaller brush here, so it's easier to apply the paint in small sections. You can see I've directed the movement of my brush to follow the curvature of the land. This is to give it a little bit more form, so it doesn't look flat. I also alternate between the dark green and the light green to help with this form. Where the land will touch the water, I'm going to add a bit of soil or mud. So for the edges, I've added a mix of sap green with quin red in a thick consistency to create a brown, and if I want the brown to look darker, then I would add some cobalt blue hue. I like to add a thick consistency of the dark brown around the edges. Here, I'm just going to use the same method to paint the line on the right hand side. To darken the green further, you can also add some cobalt blue hue into the mixture with the sap green and quin red, what I'm doing here while the surface is still damp, so the color still blends into each other really well. You can see it's basically the same color mixture as the brown, but by changing the ratio, you can create a totally different hue. Once I'm happy with how it looks, I'm going to dry it off completely. I'm just going to use a hair dryer to make the process quicker, and then I'm going to cut them individually. Just like when I was painting the mountains, I tried to make the edges look a bit uneven. So you can see the uneven edges that I painted with the watercolor here. I try to follow it ever so slightly so it doesn't look too straight and sharp. Okay, now that we have the pieces, I'm just going to place it to see how it looks. I quite like it, but I'm going to take a little bit off from the left side, and I think I'm going to add a small piece of land just like what I did with the mountains. So here I have a piece of scrap paper, and I'm just going to draw the little extension. Because it's just a small piece, I'm going to cut it off straight away. Then I'm going to paint it and see how it looks altogether. For this, I'm just going to do a light wash for the whole thing, and then I'm going to use a thicker consistency of other colors to.it in as different textures. Remember, you can still make adjustments along the way. So here I feel like the top needs to be darkened, so there's a bit more contrast with the layer at the back. But I decided to also increase the saturation. I added more yellow green. And while the surface is still damp, I'm also going to add that dark brown underneath. And of course, once I'm done, I'm going to make sure it's completely dry before we put it all together. 14. Painting Water and Combining Middle Ground: Now that we have the pieces for the sides, I can visualize how wide I want to paint the water, which I'm going to do in this lesson before we stick them on. I'm using my large brush here because I want to dampen the surface while using a light tint of a mixture between sap green and CBablue hue. I'm just dampening the area that I'm going to paint, and I'm going to make sure I paint a little bit whiter to make sure there won't be any white bit showing from the paper once I stick the pieces on. Once I've painted the base, I'm using a thicker consistency of the same mix, and this time, I'm painting horizontal lines to start creating some texture. Here I've switched to my smaller brush, so the edges of the lines can be a little bit thinner. I want the lines to be slightly thinner at the back and a bit thicker in front and this should help to create the illusion of distance and depth for the composition. I'm just going to check how this looks. I can see I need to build a bit more of the contrast in order for the color to be balanced with the surrounding area. I'm going to keep adding those lines with a thicker consistency and a darker value. This time, I've added a touch of quin red as well to deepen the blue. At the very bottom edge, I'm going to really darken the color and make sure it's very saturated. Make sure to paint right to the very bottom edge of the paper. And you can see there are several tones of blues here. This is because I just changed the ratio ever so slightly for the color mixtures. Again, I want the foreground to be a bit darker, so I decided to dab the excess paint off around the back at the middle area. Then I'm going to see how this looks together. Once I like the position, I'm going to stick the small piece first. And because this is just a small piece, I'm going to use my white blue. I'm also going to use the glue to stick the other pieces on, but I think this will also look nice if you add a bit of height by using the foam tape. When I stick this one on, I felt like the tips of the pieces were a bit close to each other. So I pulled them off to the sides slightly, and I'll just cut the excess off later. 15. Adding Texture to The Middle Ground: Now we're going to keep building the middle ground, but as we get closer to the foreground, I'm going to include a bit more texture to the vegetation. If we look at the reference here, you can see way more texture in this area. The leaves are also very big and rounded, which is why I'm making curved edges as I'm drawing the outline. In terms of the color, I'm just going to paint it using the same color mixtures. But instead of making lines to follow the curvature of the land, I'm going to make more texture by tapping and creating small curves with my brush as I apply the paint using a variation of these colors. Once I've covered the base color, and the surface is still damp, I'm going to add the darkest greens. I'm just applying it on and also creating little dots. Then I'm going to smudge the rest using a bit more pressure with the side of my brush. Sometimes I also like to draw curflines by dotting it, and this will look like there are some layers of vegetation. I can see that there's amount of rocks and soil lifting the vegetation above water. So just for fun, I'm going to separate these two sections. So at the bottom here, I'm just painting using a dark brown from sap green, quin red, and cobalt blue. And I'm going to play with a ratio in order to create variations in the tonality, just like the vegetation. Then once I'm done, I'm going to dry them off, then cut these two pieces and put it together. Now that we have both pieces, I'm going to stick it together, and I'm going to make sure the edges align. I'm also going to compare it to everything else to make sure that the size is okay. I decided to add a darker blue on the side here just to make sure if I slightly shift the placement that there won't be any light space. Here I'm just adding a bit of that hot glue since it was flappy, so I'm just keeping it in place. For this one, I used my white glue, but it'll actually look nice with a little bit of lift from the hot glue gun or by using the foam tape. Before I add any more layers, I'm going to cut the excess paper off on the sides so it doesn't get too thick. After adding the new addition, I felt like I need to darken the values of the brown areas on the pieces that I've stuck down earlier. So here I'm just painting the edges using a medium toothick consistency. Next, I'm going to draw and paint the left side. As you can see from the reference, I feel like the left side is a bit closer to the foreground. So I'm going to paint it bigger, and I'm going to use the same method as how I've painted the right hand side, but I'm going to keep this as one piece instead of separating the soil and the vegetation. You can separate it if you have a bit more space, but mine was looking a little bit tight, and I want to put the majority of the detail in the foreground. So I'm just going to stick to this one piece. Since I'm not separating the base soil or the rocky area, I'm going to add the dark brown here. Before I cut, I'm just going to see how it looks with everything else. I feel like I need to add a little bit more warmth around the edges, so here I'm adding a yellow green. I think I missed a few spots. There are some white spots here, so I'm just going to fill it in. And I'm also going to enhance the dark brown at the bottom because once it's dry, the color faded too much. Since we're getting close to the foreground, I want this to have a little bit more of a left, so I'm using my hot glue gun, or you can also use a foam tape to stick this one on. I think I smudge a little bit of the water since it was still a little bit damp before, so I'm just going to darken the bottom again, just doing a light layer while following the horizontal texture. I'm also going to add splatters on the bushes for extra texture. 16. Painting Foreground: Now, onto the most fun part, in my opinion, we're going to paint the foreground. Firstly, we want to create a base where we can put all the leaves and flowers later on. So for this, I'm just creating a simple shape, making sure that the bottom is straight following the paper, and I want to make it slightly textured, kind of like rocky. So I'm using a bit of brown. Then I'm going to add some green on top, so it doesn't contrast too much from the leaves that we're going to stick on top later. I'm mostly using a dark green mixture here because this is supposed to be covered by the extra leaf. I want to make sure everything's dark, but I want the tonality to help support the elements that I'm going to stick on. Since I have some extra paper on the right here, I'm going to draw on some leaves and the leaves are rounded and it has three sections, a large one in the middle and a couple of small ones on the sides. Then for the edges, I made them slightly frilly and uneven. Terms of the color, I want these fairly bright, so it'll stand out against the darker base. So I either use sacrene or a mixture of sacrene and permanent yellow deep. I'm going to make more here, and I'm also going to play with the size. Okay, after I painted all the leaves, I didn't really think of this before, so I wasn't ready. But instead of painting on the details of the leaves, I decided to use a pointy object to draw the mid ribs and the veins. This makes it so much faster and so much easier, and the lines will be more delicate, as well, especially when you don't have a small brush. The thing is the best way to draw this is while the paint is still a little bit damp, so when we put pressure and draw on the details, more paint will land and dry off on the dented area of the paper. So it'll dry darker. Can also create these lines before painting it on, so it'll dry the same way, but it's easier to see the colors develop into something darker if we draw it on the wet paint. For some of the leaves here, I decide to go over it again and then draw it on the damp surface. Here I'm using a tool to poke holes on paper for book binding, but it's not too sharp. You can also use other materials that you might find at home, which are thin and pointy, but again, not too sharp, so it'll easily damage your paper. Maybe you can look for something like a toothpick or even a dried apple point pen. 17. Leaf Cut Outs and Shaping Leaves: In this lesson, we're going to keep working on the foreground. This one takes a little bit longer to do because of the leaves. So I've divided the lesson in case you want to take a break in between, so it's easier to get back to it. Now, for this one, once I've painted everything, I'm going to cut them all out. Just going to see how it fits, and I'm going to stick this one on with my foam tape. You can also use the hot glue gun. Since this is the edge though, I just feel it's a bit easier to make sure this is stuck down properly with the foam tape. Next, I'm going to cut all of the leaves. This one is a little bit tricky. If you have a scalpel, maybe it's a bit easier to use a scalpel, but of course, it's doable with scissors, as I'm showing you here. It does get a bit tedious because of the little frills around the edges, which I'm trying to still keep with the cutouts because I feel like this adds extra detail and also makes the texture looks more natural. And once I'm done cutting all the leaves, I'm going to paint the back using basically the same color mixtures. Here I've skipped the cutting part because it did take a while to do, but it's a nice activity to do while chatting with a friend. So now I'm going to flip them all over and paint on the backside. For the back, I also want to create the details like the front, but I'm only going to do one line for the midrib instead of drawing on the veins as well. But if you want to also create the veins, that's totally fine. But for this one, I'm going to make sure I draw the lines as I paint the leaves one by one. Okay, once I've painted everything, next, I'm going to shape these, so it has more of a structure. I'm going to have the center where the mid ribs are, and I'm also going to do this to the mid ribs for the smaller leaves on the side. And I'm going to add some curves as well along the edges, either inwards or outwards. I like to use this tool as well to help me bend the paper because it's quite thick, but I feel like you can do this with your fingers as well. For the leaves, I think it would benefit if you use a slightly thinner paper. So maybe like a 200 GSM or 180 GSM instead of the 300 GSM, but I don't have any thin watercolor paper with me. I feel like it'll just be a little bit easier to cut and also to shape, but this is just to show that it's also possible to do this with only 300 GSM paper. You can see by bending them this way, they look less stiff or basically giving the leaves a little bit of movement. This part is optional, but I wanted to try to add stems to the leaf just for some finer details. I just have the strip of paper here and I cut it really thinly. Then I'm going to try to use a hot glue gun to put them in between the leaves. Just have it right next to me and then I'm going to try to design the placement of the leaves. Here I'm using a hot glue gun, so I can just put the glue right on the tip. And because of the thickness of the paper, this also helps to hold its structure well. But you can also help the leaves to sun a bit more by adding some hot glue behind these leaves. I'm just using my hands here to stick these on, and of course, it's possible. But if you have tweezers, this will be much easier to do. I think it'll be cute to add some leaves on the right hand side as well. So I stuck on two small ones. Here I tried to stick on the little stems, but I felt like it was a little bit difficult because they were so tiny. Maybe with tweezers, this would be a bit easier, but it was quite difficult for me to place it in the correct area with the hot glue drying so quickly. I mean, this part isn't really necessary. By the end of it, I stopped at four stems. And here's how it looks at the moment. I feel like it's getting there, it just needs a bit more color. 18. Painting Extra Textures: Before I add the flowers in front, I feel like I need to bring a bit of the colors to the back, as well. Here I have a light orange acrylic marker, and I'm going to create dots on the green areas at the back to suggest some smaller flowers. For this, you can also use squash, as well. Something opaque would have better saturation against the green background. After adding non lease dots, I felt like the orange tonal values but too similar to the green background. So I'm going to add some brightness by adding dots using this light yellow color. I'm not going to cover all of the orange dots, though. This is only supposed to enhance that color. Next I've switched to my white acrylic marker, and I'm going to add some highlights on the water, doing some lines and some dots in random spots, and I'm still following the horizontal movement. And just to strengthen the leaves, I'm going to wedge the top of the leave slightly with my hot glue. Y. 19. Shaping and Sticking Flowers: Now, we're going to finish off the composition by adding the flowers in the foreground. I'm going to treat this like the leaves in front. I'm going to turn these into three dimensional flowers. But for the colors, instead of painting the flowers one by one, I'm using this scrap bit of paper and I'm going to use a yellow acrylic marker this time, and I'm just going to paint this square then draw on the flowers on top. I painted the front and the back of this paper and the reason why I'm using this marker instead of watercolors is because I want the flowers to have very strong colors against the strong greens in the surrounding area. Once the front and back is fully covered without any white spots, I want to make sure the paint is completely dry before drawing on the flowers. I'm going to create simple flowers with four petals, but you can of course do different shapes as well. I made my petals pointy, but you can make yours rounded. You can also make a few layers, but this will, of course, take a bit more time and it's a bit harder to cut the smaller flowers. As I'm drawing them, I'm going to play with the sietog, but in general, I try to not make the flowers too big compared to the leaves. I try to fit in as many flowers as I can in this small piece of paper. Then once I'm done for the center of the flowers, I'm going to use a darker yellow, creating a dot here. I think Maron would also look nice against the yellow. And I'm going to cut them all out. It helps to separate them to individual pieces first before cutting the shapes one by one. Again, if it's easier to use a scalpel, of course, you can cut the flowers with it instead. And actually, if you're into paper crafting and you have an array of paper punches, if you have flower paper punch, you can definitely use those if the size suits your artwork. When you're cutting the flowers, it helps to rotate the flowers with your left hand instead of twisting the direction of your scissors. But anyway, once I'm done, I'm going to show you what I'll do to shape these flowers just like the leaves. For the flowers, I want to bring all the petals together. Then I want to curve out each petal so the flower closes at the bottom and it opens on top. I like to use my tool again to help curve the edges, but just like the leaves, since the flowers are quite small, you can also use your fingers. And this is what it's going to look like more or less. So now I'm going to cut the rest of the flowers, and I'm speeding up the video here because, again, it did take a while to do. You can enjoy this while watching or listening to something in the background. Then once I'm done cutting them, I'm going to shape all of the flowers before putting them all together in the composition. For some of these, I shape them with my fingers, and of course, it won't look as smooth, but it helps in this case that the paper is quite thick and small, so you won't accidentally make very sharp folds on the petals. Once I'm done shaping all the flowers, I'm going to stick them on using my hot glue because the pieces are smaller than the leaves, it does help a lot to use tweezers, especially if you want to spread all of them first to see how it looks before sticking them in. After sticking these, I wanted to see where I should put the rest of the flower so I don't accidentally bunch them together in one spot, and it's definitely much easier to see it with the tweezers because you can also pick up the small flowers without accidentally moving the other flowers you've placed. Lastly, I want to add small flowers to the bush behind the three D foreground, and instead of dots, I'm shaping them as actual flowers. So there's a progression of depth from the three D flowers in the foreground to the drawn flowers and the distant flowers painted as dots. And this is the completed piece. 20. Closing and Class Project: Congratulations for completing this class. I hope you enjoyed watching the process of how I completed this artwork. Here is what the piece looks like, framed. I'm sorry if the glass is a little bit reflective, but you can basically display this however you'd like. For the class project, I would love for you to create your own. If you're a beginner, you can follow along to the class and even use the template for the cutouts that I've shown you. You can create your own measurements for each section and make some small changes, maybe change the color of the flowers, even the shapes, or even the placement of the mountains or other elements. Or if you feel like you're really comfortable with this technique, then you can also use your own maybe travel image, something that is a bit more personal to you or use a different reference altogether. Once you're done with the projects, please don't forget to post it in the project section. Way you can share with me as well as other students, you can add notes, and we can comment and give each other like. This art style was also fairly new to me, so I'm curious of your interpretation, so I'm really excited to see it posted in the project section. If you enjoyed this class or found it useful, I would really appreciate it if you leave a review. This could help encourage other people to also take this class and also encouragement for me to make more classes that you will enjoy in the future. I mentioned earlier, this technique was quite experimental for me, and I feel like I would be able to bring this technique across other mediums as well as other subject matters. So if this class is well accepted and a lot of you enjoyed it, I think this is something that I can turn into a series in the future. So we'll see how this goes. If you would like to see more tutorials by me, you can follow me on my other social media platforms. I have a YouTube channel called Nianiani where I post weekly watercolor tutorials. Or if you would like to see more art by me, you can also follow me on my Instagram and my TikTok account. My Instagram handle is at IG Underscore Nanai and my TikTok is at Nianiani Art. This is the end of this class. Thank you so much if you're still here for staying right to the very end. I hope the best for your projects, and I can't wait to see it posted. I'll hopefully see you again in the next class. Bye.