Misty Pines Landscape using Watercolors

1. Misty Pines Landscape: Welcome to our artistic journey of painting a mesmerizing Misty Pine Forest landscape using watercolors. Hello, I'm Shannon Subhan watercolorist from Bangalor India. You can check out my works on Instagram. I go by the handle Watercolors. You'll see a variety of landscape paintings on my feed, and I'm sure you'll love it. In this class, I'll guide you through step by step techniques to create your own stunning masterpiece. First, we'll explore the essential art supplies. You will need to get started. Next, I'll walk you through beginner friendly techniques for painting pine trees and crafting a misty atmosphere that draws viewers in will cover how to paint seamless backgrounds, layering for depth, and creating a sense of distance to add realism to your painting. Throughout the class, I'll be guide, providing clear instructions and demonstrations to help you achieve the desired effects in your painting. By the end of our session, we'll have created a captivating misty pine forest. Let's gather our supplies and get ready to capture the essence of nature's beauty on our canvas. 2. Art supplies: Welcome to the class. In this chapter. I'll walk you through all the art supplies that I have used in this class. First off, let's talk about the papers. I'm using Saunders 300 GSM, 100% cotton coal press paper. This has a mild texture in it, and then we would need clipboard or a backing board to place the paper and paint on it. This will help us to work with gravity and resistance with watercolors. Next, let us talk about colors. I'm using artist grad watercolors. It is poured on plastic palette. It has these wells, which helps me to mix the colors on the go. You can have a palette or a plate to mix the colors. The colors that I would mainly be using for this class is green, orange, paints gray, and ultramarine blue. And we would need two jars of water. One is to clean dirty pins of the brushes. Another one is to take clean water for the washes. Now, let us talk about the brushes. I have these mini brushes. First is three quarter inch mop brush and size six and four mob brush by Princeton Neptune, silver velvet, size eight and size two. These are the brushes that I will be using in this class. You can go with the sizes that you already have. Next, we would need a napkin or tissue papers to wipe off the paint and a hair dryer to speed up the drying process and a masking tape to tape down the paper on all the sides. That's about the supplies. You can use any alternative supplies that you already have 3. Pine trees: Okay. Let us practice painting some pine trees. You can use indigo or black or any darker color. This is just for practice purpose. Okay. So one easy way is first, add the line. Just have that imaginary shape and then you can apply some zigzaggy brush strokes within this area. You'll have a pine, nice pine tree shape. Then have defined boundary triangular shape in mind. Then within this area, you're going to apply the page. You could either start with the first half like this. And then move onto the other side. The problem with this is the middle area looks empty. You're going to apply some criss cross brush strokes again so that it looks fuller. Again, have a triangular shape in mind. That will be much easier. Here we're not drawing any line, simple shape, and then at the end, we'll be adding the main trunk. Okay. Okay. And then the main skeleton to just define the overall shape of the tree. This is the shape. Again, it comes within this triangular shape. Then I'll add some smaller lines. Now I can go back and add the foliage part of the trees. Okay. I have to just fill in each and every branch that you have added in the painting. This can be done for a smaller tree as well. My go to style for painting pine tree is just draw a line and then Zia a rat strokes and we're done. When you have to paint group of pine trees, you just place the lines next to each other, overlap some brush ropes and then apply water to blend it together. This makes it appear very organic. You could also use some splattering to fill in the empty spaces. 4. Background techniques: In this chapter, let us talk about the tonal values, and we'll also discuss the techniques used to paint the background and the foreground elements. Okay. Okay. So let us talk about tonal values. We are using different tonal values of a color to achieve a sense of variation and to set a mood or a vibe in a painting. Let me show you an example. I'm taking this indigo color in a thicker consistency. Now, this is the darkest tone of a color. If I add some water to it, it will appear slightly less pigmented. So we will keep adding water to the paints until it reaches its diluted watery state. Here, we have reached the lightest tone with different tonal values of a color, we can easily manipulate the mood of the painting. I'll show you with an example. Let's say I want to paint some pine trees. If I want to create the lighter version, I'll use a very diluted tone. This will in turn create a misty vibe in the painting. Now here, I'm using darkest tonal value. This is how you can vary the color and manipulate the mood in the painting. Some trees appear lighter and covered with mist, whereas some trees appear. That's how you can control the tonal values using water or more colors. In our class project, we are going to use the diluted tonal values to create a sense of atmospheric perspective in the distant area. So with the help of diluted and mid tone colors, I'll be painting the distant background misty forest. First, you can wet the area. Let's say this is the background area of the painting. Now, we'll add the background trees. I'm using Mon color here and diluting it with water. Using the tip of the brush, I'll paint some vertical lines suggesting the trees. Then we will blend it into the background white color, trying to create a smooer transition using a clean brush. Once you're done with this, you'll be adding some trees with some details. Adding a few trees here and there will make the painting appear realistic. Now, you can use some color in order to add some variation. It will also manipulate the mood appearing as though some areas are not covered with mist. Again, you have to blend this with the background. That is it. This is how we paint the distant background area. Okay. 5. Foreground techniques - 1: In this chapter, I'm going to show you how to paint the foreground elements. The foreground is divided into two parts. First is the soft base wash, and then we will add the detailed part of the foreground. For the base wash, I'm going to wet the area using clean water. Now, on this wet layer, I'm going to apply some paints. This will create a very diffused in the midground area. Between the background and the foreground, we will leave some wide gap to suggest the misty part. Now, once we have this base wash, we'll be painting some trees using a mid tone or slightly darker tone consistency. Slightly darker color, and we'll paint some trees with that. After drying, this is going to create a diffused look. Okay. Adding some filler elements by applying some vertical lines and also some splatters. Now we will allow it to dry and then come back and add all the details. 6. Foreground techniques - 2: All right, the paints have completely dried. Now let us move on to the second segment of the foreground part where we will be painting the detailed trees. I'm going to use wet on dry technique for this. Let's take a darker color. I'll start by drawing a straight line and then applying some zigzag brarokes creating pine tree shape. Around that I'll be adding some smaller trees. Okay. Okay. So the first method was the zigzag method. Now for the second big tree, I'll be painting the skeleton of the tree and then adding the foliage part. I would recommend you to practice these exercises on a small piece of paper so that you get familiar with the techniques that is going into the main landscape. Okay. 7. Thumbnail: Okay. In this chapter, we are going to paint a small thumbnail artwork to understand the composition of the painting. We will mark the distant rail line first. This is the forest in the background area. We'll be painting this with a lighter color. In the bottom part, we will be painting the foreground area. This is the composition of the painting. First, let us wet the paper. I'm going to use paints gray for the distant tree line and background trees. Next, you can add some darker tone to create a sense of variation in the background. I'm adding these vertical lines. Add few trees here and there just to suggest some details. For the foreground area, we will be using some brownish green color. In the middle. This will act as the misty area in the landscape. I'll also be painting some trees. Use slightly concentrated colors. Let us allow this layer to completely dry and then we'll come back and add all the details. All right. The paper has dried. Next, we we'll add the details on the dry paper. We'll use some darker and thicker paint. This will be wet on dry technique. I'm applying wet paint on a dry layer. You can add as many trees you want. Feel free to paint the pine trees in your own style. Also, I'm adding some bar trees. You can splatter some paints as well. At the end, you can add some birds. There you go. We just completed the thumbnail painting. This is to give you an idea about the steps that we are going to follow in the main painting. Okay. 8. Class project - part 1: Before we start the landscape, let us seal the paper down using masking tape. We are applying masking tape, so that the paper remains secure throughout the painting process. We'll be dealing with lots of watering layer wet on wet techniques. That's why it is important in watercolor paintings to have the paper secured. If you're using watercolor block or, you know, the paper that is glued on all the sites, you don't have to use masking tape. However, if you want a nice border to your painting, you can still go ahead and add the masking tape. All right. So I'm using this clip board and taping the paper down. The reason behind using a clip board like this is to move my paper around for tilting process. I apply water and then move my board around so that I get a nice flowy effect in my watercolor paintings. Now, I'll be using this two inch masking tape under this board, something like this, and I'll be applying the water. Whatever extra water is there, it will flow down because of the gravity gravitational force. Let's wet the water. You could either use a larger brush or a spray bottle. So I have this mob brush. Okay. And apply generous amount of water on the paper. This brush is by Dyer row three quarter inch mop round brush. This is the quality of this brush is just fine. It leaves a lot of bristles. The hair keeps coming off just like you saw here. But it's fine as long as you are just using it to wet the paper because it holds a lot of water in it. I'm making sure my paper absorbs really good amount of water in it so that I can work on multiple layers. Now, I'll use Princeton Neptune. This is size four mob brush. It is very bigger brush, so it has the capacity to hold lots of paints and water. I'm going to use ultramarine glue in diluted consistency. This will be the sky in our painting. You could leave some white gaps in between to suggest the white clouds in the sky. Okay and some angular brushes. Next, I'll take paints gray and ultramarine blue. We'll add some darker clouds. Okay. Since I'm keeping this paper in a tateed position, the pains are flowing downwards due to the gravitational force. If I want to resist the flow, I can turn the board around in different direction. Whichever direction you want the pains to flow. You can change in that direction. This way, we will achieve very seamless cloudy effect in the sky. Also, I'll remove the masking tape that I had placed earlier. I don't want the sky colors to flow any further. That's why, remove the tilt. Next, let us paint the distant misty trees. I'll use paints gray in a slightly medium consistency. Load the paints in a bigger brush. I'll apply this yard like this. This is down down motion. I'm creating a sort of wavy effect here. It's not straight. You have to constantly move your brush. Then we will add some vertical lines depicting the tip of the tree. Now, clean your brush and also have a napkin handy wipe off the extra water. Here I am trying to blend all the colors into the white background. I'll create this graded effect here so that it appears like a misty forest in the background. Let's place the masking tape again. Now you can tilt your board and allow the paints to flow down. I'm applying some more water here so that it creates a nice flowy effect. You can take a fine liner brush or a smaller sized brush and makes a mid tone consistency of paints gray dab off the extra paints and we'll paint some pine tree shapes here. When we add these partial details here and there in the painting, it gives a sort realistic vibe to the whole painting. The paper here is damp at this stage. So that's why we are able to create a very soft effect in the background trees. If the paper tends to become more dry, then we will get some sharp lines. At that point, we will stop adding these trees. And also creating some trees inside this area. Use a slightly darker paints gray. Okay. Here, I notice that the paper has started to dry, so I have to be very careful. You can either stop here and if your paper is still damp in some areas, you can use a slightly mid consistency and add some trees. This will create a nice variation in the distant trees. Okay. And if your trees appear something like this, you can lift off the paints. You can use slightly diluted paints to blend it with the background. Otherwise, it is going to appear very sharp and hard edged, right. So we have to soften it out using a diluted paint. This is the background layer. We have painted the sky and you've added the background trees. Next, we will be painting the foreground elements. So before we paint the foreground, we need to dry the background here. I'm using a head dryer. Okay. All right, my paper has dried. At this point, there are chances that the masking tape might, you know, lift off from the sites. So you can secure it by pressing it over the tape. Okay. Okay. Now, for the next layers, we are going to apply water with the spray. I would recommend using a spray bottle because the water will be applied on the top and it won't pick any pains. In case you don't have spray bottle, you could use a larger brush and gently apply water over it. I'll show you how you can do it load your brush with lots of water, something like this. And with least amount of pressure, you're going to apply water. I'll wet rest of the area using the spray bottle. Moving on, we will paint the foreground area to paint the foreground area, we'll mix the colors. I'm using S green and burn Sienna. I'll mix the two colors in equal proportion. We will get a brownish green color. Now, load your brush with this paint and apply it on the lower part. This is a base for the ground area. Leave some white part. Clean your brush, take new water, clean water and blend the colors into the background area. You could also use a water spray bottle to blend it with the background. Towards the bottom in the lower part, we can have darker colors. But towards the center, we'll try to keep it as light as possible, creating a nice so transition. Again, we'll try this layer. Okay. Whenever you're using a head dryer, move it around in all directions so that the pains are equally uniformly distributed. 9. Class project - part 2: Okay. So this layer has dried and this is how the painting looks like. No, we'll apply another layer of water. So I'm taking my larger brush and applying water to out the paper very gently. There are chances you might pick up the paint. This has picked up some paint. I would recommend you to use spray bottle, but I'm showing just in case if you don't have, then you should not be discouraged. That's why I've used this. Now I'll switch to my eighth round brush. Take the same color in a consistency. Burnana and San green. Okay. Some concentrated pigments and apply it on the bottom area. With this thicker pins, we are going to paint some mid ground trees. Apply like this on one side and another on the other side or you could apply Zigzagbra strokes. Okay. This is the partial tree that's only visible half. Now I'll draw slightly bigger tree. You could also paint a tree like this, starting from one side and then going to the other side. Whichever is comfortable for you. You can follow that step. Here, I'm simply adding some filler elements by adding some vertical lines. Okay. You can paint as many trees you want. There's no restriction in that. The paper has started drying. So now if I paint, it will look something like this. I'll still add the tip of the tree so that it appears and the bottom part appears slightly foggy or, you know, covered with mist. Okay, so we'll try this area again. Okay. All right. Now let's take green and burn timber, slightly darker brown color, and some paints gray. You could also take black. Here, all we want is to have a darker green color, which is closer to b. I'm mixing this darker green color, which is for the brown trees. First, let's start by painting the trunk of the tree. So I'm going to add the basic skeleton first. This will be a guideline to paint the tree. Again, I'll be adding some smaller branches. And focus it in the next step. Okay. Once you have added all the branches, you can start adding the foliage, by randomly applying some brush strokes. Paint the foliage in a very irregular manner. Let's try not to paint symmetrical shapes. Just apply some random brushes, trying to fill in the empty spaces in between. You could also flatter some paints. The paints are accidentally splattered on the sky part as well. We can cover the upper part. Otherwise, that is what happens when you don't cover and splatter the pains. Let's paint another tree somewhere here. So for this cell just apply some zag brass. And then try to fill in the empty spaces between the branches. And then I'll add some bad trees. Some smaller trees. There is no fixed number as such on the number of trees that you can add. It's up to you. You can add as many trees you want. I'll cover this upper area this time so that it doesn't splatter the paints on the upper parts. Now, let's add some birds. I'll use black for this. You could also take brown and paints gray. You can paint the birds using very simple shapes like shape or inverted V shape. That is my trick most of the times. Also, I have an old class on Skillshare, which is specialized on painting birds. You can check that out. I'll also add some birds with bluish color to suggest that they are at a distant area. All right, so we are done with this painting. Now, let us remove the masking tape. We have to gently peel it off on the other opposite direction in about 45 to 60 degrees. This is how the painting looks like once it is done. I hope you enjoyed painting this with me. Do share your projects and reviews under the project scaly. I'm really looking forward to see yours. Thank you.