Transcripts
1. Intro: Hi, I'm Amy storing. I'm a writer and an artist and I love to travel. I always take a sketchbook with me and I draw and paint from life, whether I'm in the city or out in the countryside. In this class, we're going to talk about the countryside. I think the challenge with landscapes is to find a way to really make them your own. You know, there's no reason to create a perfectly faithful reproduction of rolling hills and trees and mountains off in the distance. I mean, you have a camera, right? If you're just trying to record what a place actually looks like, nothing easier than pulling out your phone and snapping a picture. So the drawing or painting that you create has to be something more than that. It has to be something that's unique to you that only you could have created. And I think that a really fun and easy way to do that is to use mixed media. Because that way you can bring in different tools and you can make different marks and textures that are uniquely yours. So that's what we're going to do. You can take this class with either watercolor or wash or both. And I'll give examples of each. And then bring in whatever other art supplies you have that could be colored pencil, markers, paint, spins, ink. With tools like these, you can make really quick, playful scribbles and add layers of texture, bring in highlights and shadows and just make something that's really fun and has some spirit and some personality to it. I'm going to show you how to make choices about what to leave in and what to leave out. Even the decision about where to place the horizon line is a choice and you as an artist get to make that choice. We're going to look at how to differentiate between the foreground, middle ground, and background, because that's what gives a landscape a sense of depth. And we're going to take a very simple approach to skies in this class, because this time we're going to let the land be the star of the show. And I'm also going to show you my trick for getting over that fear of messing up a perfect blank page. Because the first thing we're gonna do is we're going to mess it up and then we can get on with our painting. So, you know, I really believe that when you're out drawing and painting, the reason you're there is not to create an award-winning work of art. It's to make a record of the time that you spent in that place, closely observing the world around you. It's a unique moment. Nobody is sitting right where you are at that moment. Whether those art supplies, whatever marks you make on the paper, are your response to the act of closely observing the world around you. And that's the real reward of keeping a sketchbook, right? Let's get started.
2. Project & Paint Supplies: For your project, I'm going to give you my photos to work from if you'd like to do that. But I also hope that you'll find her own photographs or even better, go out into the landscape and paint from life. But whatever you decide to do, I would love it if you'd post some of these in the project area. Just let me see what you're working on. Feel free to ask me any questions or if you're running into any kind of challenges that I can help out with, I'd be happy to do that. And also I want to know what kind of art supplies you use because we're going to have a lot of options for this class. And if you'd tell us a little bit about what you used and what you liked, what you didn't like. It would be, it would be really fun to see that. So now let's talk about art supplies, and I want to start by talking about the paints. You've got a couple options in this class. You can do it in watercolor, you can do it in washer, you could do both. So let me just say a little bit about each. And I also want to talk about how I do this when I'm at home working from photographs versus when I'm out in the world. So you're gonna see me for the Guassian, you're gonna see me use this palette which is usually got a lot of dried Guassian it. You can re-weight this and use it somewhat, but it's gonna be a lot thinner and more transparent than guage right out of the tube. But still I tend to fill these up in, you know, leave it in here and dip into it a little bit here and there. And then once in a while I'll come through and clean the whole thing out and start over again. But this is where I keep just a range of basic colors. And then I use just a dish or white dish as a palette. You can go to the thrift store and just by a little white dish for a dollar if you don't have one dinner plates, something like that works fine. The nice thing is these cleanup really perfectly and you end up with this nice white surface. So that's great for when you're working at home. Also, in terms of paper in the studio, make sure you get something that says watercolor paper because we're gonna be putting a lot of water on it. So these are nice, these spiral bound watercolor sketch books, they're very affordable. Kansan is the brand. I use these a lot. I feel like it's not too fancy. And so I'm not afraid to just go in and make mistakes and experiment. So those are fine. They come in a lot of sizes. You can use a watercolor block like this. This is hot press, which means it's smooth, smoother texture. I like that for Guassian mixed media. But if you have cold press with a little bit rougher texture, it's totally fine, but just make sure it says watercolor. But now let's talk about what happens when you're out in the field. Painting from life. So this is the kinda sketchbook that I generally carry with me. It's a mole skin sketchbook and it has watercolor paper. And I travel with this very small watercolor palette. I'll put a link in the supply list. It's called, I think it's called an art tool kit. And I just clip it onto my book so that I can stand and pain. And I've got, you know, I have one hand holding it and on the other hand, Frieda work. I usually have a shoulder bag on with the art supplies that I'm using right at that moment sticking out of the front pocket so I can just reach in and grab him and my waters right there as well. The nice thing about this approach is that I don't have my art supplies scattered all over a table are all over the ground. I don't have to worry about losing anything and if I need to move out of the way quickly for some reason I can just walk. I have everything on me. So that's how I like to work. But when I'm doing watercolor at home or like I'm gonna do for this class. This is a travel palate, it's just a bigger one. And this is what I'm going to use in that class. I like to use my travel palate also when I'm at home so that it feels very familiar. So when I'm out in the world working, my supplies aren't all of a sudden just unfamiliar and strange to me. Okay. So that's the deal with the pallet. Now, let me talk a little bit about paints in particular, and then I'll show you what I'm using for brushes. The thing I want to mention specifically about painting is range of blues and a range of greens. And we're about to walk through some exercises with this. But let me just tell you what you might want to get for the class. On one hand, I want to tell you, use whatever you have and just have fun. On the other hand, I want to say if you are in the mood to run off and treat yourself with art supply store, here's what you could get. So none of these are absolutely necessary, but I just want to give you a range of options. And these are guage tubes, but the same would be true for watercolor. For blues with landscapes you are doing a lot of sky. And generally, artists tend to develop kinda their signature color with skies. Even those guys look different all over the world. Wherever you go, different times of day still we tend to reach for the same colors over and over again. Cobalt turquoise is obviously a very turquoise sky that would lean towards green. Cobalt blue is, this is a really good one, and I use cobalt blue a lot. I think it's a very true blue that's good for skies. Ultra marine. Very often artists will mix some ultramarine in. It's a, it's super blue at almost the end, Stuart's purple. It's rarely used for a daytime sky all by itself, but sometimes people use it as I'm mixing color and then civilian blue. And I'll demonstrate, Sir William Blue quite a bit as well because it's another goto color that artists use for skies. There is one other blue that I think is really helpful in the landscape, not in the sky, but in, in with the greens and maybe in with reflections on water, and that's Prussian blue. Prussian Blue is a very, very dark blue that's got a little tiny bit of green in it. And it's good for the shadow areas in the landscape. So I use it a lot as kind of a mixing color. Another good color for well, either watercolor or hogwash is black. You can mix black in with your very dark greens to get an even darker shadow color. And you'll see when I do the watercolor demonstration, I use daniel Smith's neutral tent, which is basically it's black, but it pushes it takes any color and makes it darker version of it. So okay, having a few options with blues can be a good thing, but ultimately you'll develop kinda your signature blue and you'll probably just use that a lot with skies, with the landscape. There's also a lot of greens. So for greens, I think it's really important to have a Sap Green. This is Guassian, I think this one's called olive green, but it's quite similar to sap green. It's real dark, earthy green. That's great for things like trees. It's also good to have a really light yellow green. You can mix this like a ton of yellow with a little tiny bit of blue or green dropped in will accomplish this as well. But this one's called Leaf Green or just yellow green. That is, that's very useful to have in the landscape. I also like to have this tube is called medium green, but it's like a failover green or an emerald green, which is what I would describe as a flaky green. So it's like it's, it seems very artificial like something that couldn't quite even occur in nature. Like US traffic light type of green or neon or a candy colored green. But that's surprisingly useful in nature, so that kinda green. And then finally something that pushes towards blue. So an example of that would be like a turquoise green. So those are rangers will be working with. But if you're not wanting to go out and buy a bunch of new colors right now, work with what you have. And the last thing I'm gonna do is mention brushes. So any type of watercolor brush is fine. I use synthetic brushes. They're really good for Guassian, they're great for watercolors. Well, you're going to see me use a round brush. This is ten. And I'll also use a tiny version of this, like a one or a two for getting in some little details. And in landscapes, these film hertz are nice as well. They're flat, but they have a rounded tip on them and it's great for some botanical shapes. So this one is a ten, And I have smaller sizes than that too. And for traveling, I like to use these these water brushes. They have a water reservoir in them. I generally don't use the water that's in here unless I'm just in a pinch because it's kinda hard to control the flow of it as your painting. But I do like this fine pointed tip, so I use these a lot. And then the other thing that is great for traveling are these travel brushes where there's a cap so it protects it protects your brush. And these are getting easier and easier to find an art supply stores. But again, I will put a link in the supply list if you're interested in one of these.
3. Mixed Media Supplies: Let's look also at the mixed media supplies that you can use in this class and, and use out in the landscape as well. You know, when I'm traveling and I'm carrying my art supplies with me, I'm all about traveling light. So I'm probably not going to take out a giant handful of colored pencils with me are a whole bunch of markers or, you know, all of the above. But I might take a few carefully chosen things. And of course, if you're, let's say you're going on a vacation, you're going to be around a bunch of beautiful landscapes that you want to sketch. If you're going in the car, then by all means, just throw all your art supplies and car. If I was travelling far, if I was going on a sketching trip to Italy and I was really concerned about traveling light. I probably would be more thoughtful about bringing a few things with me, but you know, they have art supplies in Italy as well. And I'm always tempted to walk into an art supply store when I'm traveling and buy, buy more things that I can just sort of keep in the hotel room and pull from my stash when I go out and about. So. But we're gonna be working most of us, I'm sure at home, and I'm going to be teaching this class at home and my own studio. So I have everything and let me show you what everything can include. These are drawing pins, these are micron pigment liners. They're the same drawing pens that you might just have in black that you use to draw with, but they come in colors as well. So you can get these in greens and reds and oranges and browns. And it can be really fun to be able to put in these fine lines in different colors in a landscape. So these are really cool to use in terms of markers. These are brush tip markers, these are Faber Castile markers. They have a nice brush tip. They come in a lot of different colors and they're great for adding definition and really fine lines. So those are good. I also just happened to have a set of Tambo markers. These are water-soluble. So if you put water on top of these, the colors going to run, I am using them at the end of the process, so it's not a concern, but just know that you can use it both ways. It has a brush tip on one end and then it has a little just drawing tip on the other end. So those are good. And colored pencils. There's so many different options for colored pencils. If you're not somebody who's into colored pencils, I would suggest, you know, if this sounds like fun to you, go down to the art supply store, try out a bunch of their different options and maybe just choose a few, select colors in different types to bring home with you and try out. But what I wanted to mention is some of them are water soluble. So this is a HDR went watercolor. So that means that this color is just going to melt when you add water to it. And I'm going to demonstrate these so you can see what happens and see if you like it. But most colored pencils are not water-soluble, which means that you can paint on top of them and they'd stay right where they are. Now I mostly using colored pencils at the end of the process, but you are going to see me do some things at the beginning of the process too. So it's good to know which ones you have. I am sorry, there's no brand name on these, but I tend to prefer colored pencils that are, have a very waxy, soft kinda texture. I don't like the very chalky ones. So this is, this is very much a matter of personal preference. Go and find the ones you like and choose a few that work for you. Fortunately, they only cost a dollar or two, so it's a fun little thing to experiment with. Finally, I use these paint pens at the end to add little extra bits of detail. And it's very helpful to have a white or cream colored ivory paint pan wether you doing watercolor or hogwash. These are pasta paint pins. And they're terrific. And I do travel with these because I like him so much. And then I've also got some other colors and this is a different brand, bullet mulatto brand. It's just what they happened to have at the art supply store. So I have a few in different colors as well, but definitely a white or off-white can be very helpful. But use anything you have if what you have is a bucket of your kids crayons, steal those and use them. Any art supplies for layering and putting on top are fine. Just play around with what you've got.
4. Blues: I want to talk about blues because of course you're going to use blues in the landscape, particularly in skies. And I encourage you to do this along with me, just with whatever colors of blue you happen to have. You can't see my palette here, sorry about that, but it doesn't matter. What matters is that you see what's going down on the paper. The colors that I have out here are cobalt, turquoise, turquoise blue, which are actually quite similar. I've got civilian blue. I have ultra marine and Prussian blue, which is a really nice dark blue. And what I'm doing first is I'm just putting it down without mixing anything with it. And tried to get a pretty good thick mixture. Being really careful to clean my brush in between each one so that they don't mix with one another. And just getting a sample of these down, you know, we go out and we buy colors. Maybe you buy em for a class or you, they come with a set. And very often we don't take the time to kinda swatch him out and really understand the differences between them. But once you know this, you'll have your go-to colors pretty well worked out. The next thing I'm doing is I'm, I'm mixing these were the white and it's a lot of white and a tiny, tiny bit of the color, the, the smallest amount of coal or you can possibly get in with that white is going to be right. Light colors for guage, light colors tend to dry a little darker on the paper. So these are going to, these are going to be darker than I intend and I'm always fighting this. I'm always I'm always realizing that I put too much color in and I wish that I had made it a big pile of white with literally just the tiniest drop of color possible. So here's what they look like mixed with white and you can see the differences. And you can see probably what makes more sense as a sky color or not. Obviously, it depends on the sky. It depends on where you are and the time of day and all of that. But it's also true that artists tend to develop their preferred sky colors and kinda stick with them. And it's one of the things that makes one person's paintings look like their own. So I'm just kind of randomly picking colors to mix together and seeing how they work together. So like what happens if I take cobalt turquoise and mix it with ultramarine? What happens if I take this, this civilian Blue and mix it with the Prussian blue? I'm just making a little notes so that I can remember later what it is that I did here. But this is really just playing around and whatever colors you have, you'll just get in there and do these kind of experiments and just see what you like. So this is really in blue plus ultra marine and this is something people pretty commonly do. This is a real common one for artists is to use to really infer their skies and maybe work some ultramarine in. So just a couple more of these. So if I take the turquoise blue, which again is pretty similar to my to my cobol turquoise and mix ultra marine unit. Then you can see what I get with that. And so just by doing these, let him dry, really get a sense of what they look like. And it's helpful to have these, you know, it's great to have a sketchbook where you've basically just gone and kinda swapped out some colors just to, just to see what they look like and to kind of have it to refer to, you know, after a while you'll get so comfortable with your go-to colors that you won't refer to something like this, but it's a real good thing to do anytime you get a new color of paint or just when you're starting out and you're just trying to figure out kind of what you've got. So here I'm taking some of these mixes and I'm mixing white with them. And I'm looking at how they sort of blend together on the page. What, what happens when there's a little water? Because, you know, Guassian can have that transparent effect like watercolor does. So you add more water and kind of swish it around and you can get some different effects. And in so many way just really, really play around with this and really sort of do these exercises like here's so really in an ultramarine kind of blending into one another. So maybe it's, the sky is more ultramarine at the top and it gets to be more civilian down by the bottom. Another thing that happens with skies is they tend to be quite light down along the horizon. So you can see I'm bringing in some white down low and letting it get, the colors get more intense and more vivid as they go up into the sky. And like I say, every sky is different. So you'll definitely be looking at what's in front of you and also trying to figure out ways to have some really nice contrast between the different colors in your painting. So like we're gonna do an ocean scene and the ocean is going to be quite turquoise. And I'm going to want to push the sky more towards a blue. I don't want to turquoise look in Sky With my turquoise water. It doesn't matter if the sky in real life looks pretty turquoise to me, I'd still want to push that contrast as much as possible. So just knowing like where these colors land on this scale of blue, moving towards green will let you make these kinds of choices.
5. Greens: Now let's take a look at greens. And here again, you know, in a landscape it really helps if you can have a high degree of contrast between the different kinds of greens you see out there. So here's just some greens that I happen to have. I have all of green which is quite similar to Sap Green, a medium Green, which I call a bright fake green. And you're going to see why in a minute. A color called Leaf Green and then turquoise green. And I'm going to be mixing these with a white. I'm also gonna mix them with a lemon yellow and a yellow ochre. So there's my olive green and you can see that this just looks like plants for sure. I know there's a lot of glare on this medium green, but as it dries, you'll see that it looks like this impossibly bright fate green that you would never see in nature. But it's really helpful to have something like that on your palette actually. And then leave Green is a yellowish green and turquoise green is obviously turquoise. So those are four pretty different greens. You may have different variety of greens, but again, this is just like guilting you have and play around with it and see what you get. So if I mix white with that olive green, I get this kind of Sage green color, which I think is really helpful to have. And that medium Green turns like a, I would call that a sharper green or emit green color. Also really different and quite useful. The Leaf Green honestly just gets a little bit lighter. It does get a little bit more pastel, but it's still very much that yellowish green. And of course, the turquoise green just goes to a nice light, very Caribbean kind of past Elly Keller, but you do see this color and the plant world. So it's very useful to have that. Now look what happens when I start mixing lemon yellow, like that. Lemon yellow and all of green mixed together looks kinda like Leaf Green right out of the tube. And there's a reason for that. All of these greens are blends of different pigments. Many of them are pigments that you probably already have. But the reason art is buy them as a blend like this is that it's already blended together. The mixtures kinda perfect right out of the tube you can get right to work. So you can see that medium green produces this incredibly bright vivid green when you mix it with that lemon yellow. And even though you might think that's not a color you actually see in nature, you really kinda do depending on the light. So I'm just continuing to work through these mixes. And boy, that yellow ochre with the olive green, gorgeous. And just see what I can, what do I, what do I really get out of this? And you can see just how many greens I actually have. That medium green when you mix it with yellow ochre. That's actually a pretty good botanical, kinda green. And I love what happens with the yellow ochre in the Leaf Green come together. That's a really interesting combination. So working with all these, you can see that right now you just have a ton of choices, probably, hopefully more options than you realized. We haven't even mixed anything with our blues. So, I mean, there's a whole other direction to go. You can take your greens and mix them with yellow, but you can also reach to the other side of the color spectrum and mix them with blue, like this, dark, dark, this is all of green mixed with Prussian blue. So that's about as, as dark a color you can get in the green range. And that's really useful to have because that's where you can get your shadow colors, which you'll definitely need. So here I'm going to just play around again. I'm just sort of like what random color combinations seem interesting to me when I think about mixing blues and greens together. And let me just see what I get. So like here's this medium green mixed with ultramarine. And again, it'll take a second for this to dry for you to really be able to see what color that you get there. But you get a very interesting Green. That leaf green, when I mix it with some trillion, is a nice medium green. So that's useful to know that that's something I can quickly mix if I wanted something that looked a little bit different. And let me see, I'm going to take one more with the turquoise. I think I'll try mixing it with pressure and just see what I get. And this one's kind of interesting because turquoise green mixed with Prussian is actually very similar to that. Turquoise blue. So again, a lot of the colors that you can mix on the palette, you can also buy them pre-mixed and a tube. There's a lot of different ways to get at the same color.
6. Florence pencil sketch: Some of you are going to do this class in watercolor. Some of you will do wash, some might do both. But I wanna start with watercolor sketch. And the reason is, if you're out in nature, if you're out in the landscape with your art supplies, probably you're gonna take your smallest and most portable supplies with you, which is probably a little watercolor palette. So let's start out by looking at how you might do this if you're out and about when you're traveling. So this is a picture that I took actually out of a train window, is I was on a train to Florence in Italy. And the way I'm going to start here and I'll do them all of this ways. I'll start by doing a little pencil sketch. And I'm beginning with the horizon line at the top because I do want to make sure that I put them rise in line in the right place so that I have the right ratio of sky and land. And this is definitely one where the sky is not the point and definitely the landscape as the points. So this horizon line is quite high because there's just going to be a little bit of sky. And then, and then mostly the focal point is the land. So I'm just sort of measuring that. But when you're out in the field, you don't have a photograph to measure again. So you're just sort of making a decision about where to put that horizon line. As for the different shapes and different colors that you see in the landscape, you know, they do form these kinda obvious shapes. So I'm, I'm getting in the little areas over here to the left, for instance, where you see these trees and you see a little bit of that kind of yellow field coming in. But then there's these sloping green, their vineyards, actually these sloping green vineyards. And I want to make sure then I'm leaving the right amount of space for those in the contours. Makes sense for the contours of the land. And the other thing is, I can see a little road coming down and I'm going to exaggerate that road. I love it when there's a road that invite you into the drawing. So I'm gonna make that a little bit bigger and more obvious than it is. And I'm also giving that part of the terrain a little more space in the drawing than what you see in the photograph. Remember again, when you're out and about in nature doing this, not copying a photograph, you're gonna be making choices about what's gonna take up real estate on your page and what isn't. So okay, I've just made some little indications of where I see these changes in the shapes in the landscape. And I'm just kind of indicating with my pencil just the broad outlines of where the trees are. And that's the pencil sketch.
7. Florence colored pencils: When you're out in the landscape drawing, you might not have a ton of extra art supplies with you, like colored pencils, other mixed media type stuff. But I do want to go ahead and show you this part for a couple of reasons. One is, I love this idea of kinda messing up the page with colored pencils first because it can get you past that intimidation of the blank white sheet. So that's one good reason to do that. The other thing is I do want to demonstrate for the watercolour artists who are watching this, how these watercolor pencils work. So watercolor pencil is water-soluble, which means that these markings are gonna kinda dissolve into your paint when you start painting. Some of the marks in my good left behind, but most of them won't. And you'll, you'll see that happened in a minute. So what I'm doing here is I'm looking at the colors. I see him, I photograph. And I'm thinking this is a great way to kind of think on the page. I like, I can see, oh, that green is a little bit lighter right there. It's not quite so dark. And I can just sort of make some preliminary decisions about what colors I'm going to be putting down when I start to paint. And so it's just a really good way of kinda talking to yourself, right? When you're getting ready to start sketching, like I'm putting in that path with a little bit of yellow is really just a way of reminding me like I am going to emphasize this path more than what I see in the photograph by making these lines with a little bit of a darker green pencil. I'm just sort of telling myself like, right there's contours to this hill. And I want to really have a sense of that, of the movement of those lines and make that a part of this. But you don't see that everywhere. So on this other little slope, I've decided I'm just gonna make some kinda scribbling marks because the contours are not quite as obvious. But then as you go back, this is a little bit of a darker slope. And here you definitely see the lines of the vineyard. And so I'm putting those lines in. So in every case I'm sort of thinking in terms of color, but also, you know, direction. What kind of marks I want to make, light and shadow. Here I've got a dark green colored pencil and I'm just marking the shadow areas in the trees. So the lower part of every tree where you see those kind of darker shadow areas. And I'm remembering to mark out that little bit of white or yellow landscape that peaks in from over there on the side. I really liked the way that looks and the kind of lighter green on the tops of the trees. I'm just marking those in a little bit, but you can see these very childlike scribbles like already. It's much less intimidating if you're intimidated by a white page, a blank page, then at this point you'd probably be feeling a lot less intimidated because you've basically come in and in a really free, loose way, just made a bunch of marks and kind of made some decisions about this, knowing that you're going to put other layers on top and you haven't made the final say, everything can be changed. And so I think this is a nice, playful way to start and to get you ready to paint.
8. Florence watercolor first pass: Alright, now let's get to painting. I'm going to start with the sky. With landscapes. I always, always start with the sky. My brushes clean, my waters clean, hopefully my paints palette or reasonably clean. And I've gone with cobalt blue here. Cobalt blue isn't really good, just dumb, easy out of the tube sky color. It's useful for some other things too. So I'm putting down this water glaze. This is just clean, clean water. And once I get that down, I'm going to start dropping in a very rich mixture of cobalt blue and letting it move, you know, the, the, the water is allowing the pigment to move around a little bit. I'm leaving some whitespaces to just suggest clouds. I'm not gonna get fancy about clouds here, but this technique, because it's the pink goes down kind of uneven and it moves around a lot. You can just leave the suggestion of clouds. I'm using my dry brush and picking up a little bit of pigment here and there to further encouraged that idea of clouds without getting too crazy with it. And again, that's something you can do while the paint is still wet. And now I am deciding I want the sky a little bit darker up at the top. Skies tend to be darker as you go up and lighter towards the horizon. So I'm dropping in more along the top there. And there's obviously a lot of water on this paper. It's gonna take a little while to dry. I'm sort of just putting it down, picking it back up while I still can knowing that once it starts to dry a little bit, it's going to be pretty well set up. But now I need to stay away from that sky area for a while because I don't want other colors running into it. And that's another reason I do this guy first is it's kinda like get that down and let that start drawing and move well away from it and go to work on some other part of the painting. So I have new gamble. Is that beautiful, kind of orangey yellow quinacridone. Gold would also be a good choice there. I'm putting down some plain water, but you can see how it's turning yellow because that colored pencil is water soluble and it's already starting to kinda wash out. So that's what that looks like. But I did do this water glaze again first because I decided it would be fun in the foreground to also have this very loose kind of organic feeling, transitions in color. Now I'm going to dip into the Naples Yellow and put that more often, the distance, it's not much of a distance, but as you get a little bit further away, it looks to me like the field is a little less saturated. The colors are a little less saturated and they're lighter. I'm putting it down and pick it back up with my dry brush again just to kind of play around with that. And wow, I can, while the paint is wet, I can drop in some little hints of more saturated colour and just let that move around on the. Paper and I'm just trying to get at this. In the foreground there, there's this very dry kinda grassy straw stuff and there are some pretty intense oranges and Brown's there in the foreground. So these are just some yellow ochre. The new game BOJ. Again, I'm really just kinda going back and forth with those. I'm going to reach into my pyrrole orange a little bit. So here I'm pushing the color, I'm exaggerating what I see and really adding to it. No, I know that if I don't like this, I can pick some of it up with my brush again because again, the paper's still pretty wet. But, but I really do like it. And in part I like it because landscapes tend to have a lot of green and blue in him. So anytime I have a chance to work in some oranges are reds. I'm always really happy to do that. And I really want this to be very vibrant and colorful. You know, watercolor can sometimes look sort of faded and washed out. So I'm really pushing the vibrancy and I love the way this looks. So it'll be interesting to see how it dries that this kind of technique is so hard to control that you really don't know what you're gonna get. And it's always, Honestly, it's kind of a surprise for me so, so far I really love the way it looks, but it could have just as easily gone the other way. So now I've got this is payroll yellow but any kind of just light bright yellow and some Sap green. I'm just gonna real quick go over and do that other field. I want it to be yellow, but not the same yellows what's in the foreground. So I just drop that in. But now I'm really working on the Sap Green and mixing it in with some of these yellows. I do need, I'm getting ten ton of green and yellow. You can see me doing this here. I'm so bad about that. But I do want kind of a yellowish feeling in that in that green. So I'm just dropping that in. I'm putting it in, as you can see right over that, that watercolor pencil that I put down. And you can still see some of those lines through the watercolor. Like I didn't if I really sort of scrubbed added, I probably could have picked a lot more of that up, but I don't really need to. Now I'm doing a more yellowish mixture over here. So, you know, you can look at these different areas of these Greenfield's and see them as really looking pretty similar. But I, again, I really want to exaggerate some differences between them. So I just went in and grabbed a little fallow Green and I'm just dropping it in and literally just mixing it on the page to make it more of a bright, saturated green that's different from the green of the hill behind it. I want that kinda contrast. And then I'm just going back and forth between the yellow and the failure of green and a tiny bit of Sap Green. And doing this little bit, there's just this little area kind of right there in the foreground that's a different color than the rest of the hill behind it. And I just wanted to start to get that in. And now I'm going back to more Sap Green. I'm looking for a really rich, kinda dark mixture there. And I wanted to be a little bit earthy. So I'm adding in and I'm just kinda play in back and forth. I'm adding in a little bit more yellow, dipping into the failover green because I do like this idea, a variety of different greens. And I think I've kinda pulled that off here. I mean, it'll look different as it dries, but these greens do have some differences to them in spite of the fact that the landscape is pretty coherent, you know, there's not a lot of variety in that photo, but nonetheless, if I can suggest some differences, I think it just makes for a more interesting painting. So I'm happy that that came out that way. And I've managed to keep these areas of color a little bit separate from one another. So they're not running into one another. And that's another really important thing. You know, when you're doing a landscape like this, you really want to kinda keep your eye on what's dry and what's not drying. So I'm, I'm mixing up some different colors. This is a little failed experimental going to wipe it off. I want to do those hills in the background. And at first I thought maybe I can mix up and interesting purple with what I had there, but I wasn't thrilled with it. So I'm going with Prussian blue, which I think is a beautiful blue that's got a tiny bit of green in it. And so it's good for those distant mountains. You gotta keep it really light because remember, colors get more faint as they go back so they're more subdued. So I'm not looking for a super, super dark color. I'm touching the paper to make sure it's dry. It should be should feel dry to the touch and also not cool to the touch. And I like this. I think this, you know, this is just Prussian Blue, kinda right out of the tube. I didn't really mix it with anything. I'm not putting it down evenly. I'm deliberately leaving some little whitespaces. Really, anytime you accidentally leave a little whitespace on the paper, just leave it there. It. Watercolour artists called this sparkles that it makes, it makes for interesting sparkles and they tend to turn up in random places, but that's a good thing. All right, we need to let this dry for just a second before we come back and add in these trees.
9. Florence Watercolor second pass: Ok, I've given this just a second to dry. And you know, when I'm out in the landscape doing something like this, I will take this opportunity to get up and stretch, maybe take a picture of the subject that I'm painting in case I want to work on it later. Move my art supplies around a little bit, whatever, it only takes a second. But once this is dry, we can really add some pretty sharp details. I've moved down to a smaller brush. This is a Filburn, which is the type with a little bit of a rounded It's flat but it has a little bit of a rounded tip on it and I think it's a size six. And then I'll also have a tiny little round brush that's just a one or a two that I'm gonna do a little bit more detail work with. So I've mixed some sap green with some Prussian blue. Another good thing to do here is Sap Green along with Daniel Smith, neutral tint, which is essentially a black. That doesn't really change the color temperature very much, but just makes it darker. So it's a great way to work in those darks. And what I'm doing here is I'm just painting the shadow part of the tree first. Now, I could have flipped this around the other way. I could have done the whole tree and a lighter green and then come over on top of it and dropped in the shadows. The reason I'm doing it this way is that, well, there's not really a good reason either way you have to wait for one thing to dry before you do the next thing. But rather than put the whole tree in, in a lighter green and then wait for them all to dry before I come back in and do these dark shadows, I decided I would do these first and then come in and drop the rest of the trees in on top. And know that if they blend together a little bit because they're not completely dried, that's actually okay. It's probably a good thing. So all right. I'm just moving along this hillside trying not to get carried away, trying to remember that I'm only doing the shadow part. So I don't want to paint the whole tree. I just want to get little parts of it. And also I should mention, I am ignoring. There's like a little a little house, a little something up in the corner there. And I'm ignoring that. I've decided to leave that out just for expediency sake. You know one thing, when you're, when you're out and about painting, you're always going to have to make decisions about what to leave in and what to leave out. And asking yourself, well, what's really the goal of this? What's really the point of this drawing or painting? So just like I chose to exaggerate that path because I love the idea of a path that people can move across. This is another little thing where I just decided, you know, I don't want to spend time on that. It's just as easy to fill in this whole area with trees. It's kinda all the same to me. So okay. So I've got that now. That needs to dry a little bit, so I'm gonna move on now. I need to find something else to do besides the trees. And so I'll just show you how you could take the tip of your brush. This is the Filburn and I'm just making some marks in these vineyards off in the distance just to show you how these kinda details don't have to be added with mixed media. You can do it with paint and you can get some pretty sharp lines. They're a little bit thick with that particular brush, but I wanna demonstrate different things all on one painting. So probably I'm gonna do a lot more different things to this then I would do if I was just doing this for myself. But it's more so you can see how many different options you have. Alright, so now I'm going to let that dry for a little bit and come back in and mix a lighter green but not super, super light. It's still sort of kind of just have medium. Medium Green. And this is going in on top of the shadow areas where those trees are. I'm obviously not interested in getting any level of detail with these trees. It's just sort of a, you know, a vaguely tree-like shape. But having the two different colors for the light area in the shadow area does help convey a sense of light moving across the landscape and keeps it from looking flat. And it helps these trees to look rounded like they have a light side and a dark side. And that's really useful. I also want to point out that I can go the mountains in the background. I can paint right on top of those because those mountains are lighter in color. I mean lighter in value than, than the trees. And so thinking about value, thinking about light and dark as well is super helpful. And if you have trouble with this when you're out painting from life, just dig out your phone and take a picture and convert that picture to black and white. And really look at the scene as a black and white picture for a second. And it'll become immediately obvious to you which things are darker than other things. And knowing that is so important, especially with something like this where you're trying to layer one transparent color over another and you can put a dark color on top of a white color, but you really can't go the other way. Okay. So I'm mixing up some Naples Yellow with just a little bit of yellow ochre and just one brush stroke like that's it. That is that path. I really don't have to fuss with that or make it anything more than than what it is. So I'm just check it on these trees and seeing if there's areas where I wanted to try to blend the light and shadow a little bit. I definitely don't have to get too caught up in that. But as these things start to dry, we can look at those details again. So now I've got this round brush that's just, It's just a one or a two. And I'm going to just show you how you can add fine little details. You don't need a marker or pencil. You can take the principles of what we're gonna do in this class about using markers and pencils. And you can draw very fine little lines. So those first lines I drew in that vineyard work quite thick. I'd put some better ones downstream and see what that looks like. Here again, these are very light and very interesting tree and not too careful, right? You can see I'm just moving my brush kinda quick and making these little lines to suggest the slope. It's very informal and obviously it looks very hand-drawn. But I like that. I actually think that looks really cool. So that's something I could have done with a marker, but, but I'm doing it with a very fine little brush instead. And also there's a little bit of kind of some sort of little brush right there in that, in that light green area. And so I can also do that with a brush because it's a darker color going on top of a lighter color. So that's one option about how to do that, but I'm not gonna do it all because I want to show you also other ways to do this using mixed media. So let's get to that now.
10. Florence mixed media: I want to point out that so far I've spent about 20 minutes on this and, you know, that's really probably about as long as I normally spend if I was out and about sketching. I'm always a little bit slower when I'm being filmed for some reason, but, you know, that's probably about 20 minutes. What I'm gonna do now is show you a bunch of different things you could add at this stage. Now, if this were me outside and buy myself drawing, I would do one of these things or two of these things, but probably not all of them. So this part is going to take a little bit longer because I'm just going to try to show you sort of every trick in the book that I can think of. So I'm using these same pencils, which are these water-soluble colored pencils. And I'm doing a little marks in the foreground to suggest that grassy that's sort of stubble, but I, I'm not putting it everywhere. You have a choice about this. You can just sort of put it in a few places and know that you've suggested it and the I will fill it in or you can really cover the whole thing, but I don't want to, I don't want to dominate this landscape with these scratching marks in the foreground. I want there to be some kind of balance and harmony between every part of it. I am just taking some green and kind of just coloring over this field to give it some texture. So it's not just one even wash. In every case, I've always just make it a choice about how much more do I really want to do here? And I also want to emphasize that, you know, the point of this mixed media is not to correct errors, so it's not so much, oh, I need to cover up this thing I did wrong in watercolor. But it's really to add this very personal touch that, that feels very hand-drawn. It's very clearly the hand of the artist at work. And, and that gives a different kind of texture that you just don't achieve from my brush. These kind of smaller, scratchy or more scribbly marks or else a very sharp line. Those kind of things. But think about it as adding more information or more ideas. Think of it as adding more ideas to your drawing and not so much covering up mistakes. Anyway, you can see I'm just kinda going around with these colored pencils and trying different approaches to line work. I work some more on that hill and the background adding rows to the vineyard using pencil instead. Now I have a little pin, a little pigment liner in Brown. And I'm doing some of these scratchy little marks to suggest grass only I'm doing them with pen instead and I get a little bit sharper and more visible lines. And I'll try that along this little rho as well. I kind of like it suggests there's it could be a little ditch with weeds or it could just be a little line where some other kind of plant is allowed to grow. And because it's near the foreground, it's sort of nice to have that level of detail. So those are the kinds of things that you can just play around with. And you know, the nice thing also with mixed media as you can make one or two marks and realize it's not the right thing and you're fine. You haven't ruined the drawing, you've just put a line or two down. I'm coming in now with a marker and just adding maybe the smallest hint of a slightly different type of green color to these trees. Again, this isn't really necessary. This is a lot of fussing around. Moreso than I would normally do, but it is kinda fun. Coming here with a very dark green and just sharpening up some of the lines where the trees meet the landscape. And also playing around with this idea of lines on that hill. I've put so many different, but so many different kinds of rows on that vineyard in the background that it's looking kinda crazy, but I don't know, I sort of like it. So again, this is just to point out that there are so many different ways to do this. But the nice thing about coming in with markers at this point is you get a different kind of control. Holding it with your hand. You have a nice sharp little point on these brush markers. So they're fun to play around with in that way. Now I'll come in and do some of the same kind of line work, but do it with acrylic paint pens. These are a lot of fun because they cover pretty well. So if you want to put a light color on top of a dark color, that will generally work pretty well. It kinda depends on the color and the type of paint Penn I've found. I have a bunch of different ones and sometimes it works better than others, but it's nice to have these along. At the very least, I always carry a white one with me that you can see like here's this yellow one and I'm making these little brushy marks in the more orange part of the foreground. And it's kinda cool to have that lighter colour against the darker colour. Or in taking this ivory color and just sharpening up a few edges along the path and they're in the foreground just to give a little bit more of a, a definite edge here and there. So there's a lot of things you can do there. You can sort of drop in some wider highlights, stuff like that. I'm remembering I wanted some lines over in this field, so I'm just using a marker that's kind of a dark yellow color. And I like that too. It's a slightly different look than the other lines I've put in. So there's a nice little bit of contrast, but it's very light. It doesn't call attention to itself too much. You know, the thing with a landscape is I want to keep everything in harmony. I don't want anything to be way more detailed than anything else or look overworked. I wanted to all feel like it's a piece. I'm going to try. The hills in the background here do have some variation to them. There's darker parts and lighter parts. There's some fields that are probably just these kind of yellow grassy fields that are obviously out there. So there's different ways you can emphasize that. Like I'm just gonna see what it's like to come in with a yellow color. And just to suggest, and yellow are greenish yellow fields off in the background or just some shadows because there will be shadows falling in these mountains. So sometimes it's just a matter of putting some darker bluer colors kind of at an angle to suggest the slope of the mountains off in the distance. It just gives it a little something extra. But again, without calling too much attention to itself. And this port, this port vineyard over here, which is so overworked at this point, I'm coming in with white. Or this is probably the ivory paint pan once again and just, just showing again how you can kind of add more of a sense of light hitting it. And also, I'm trying to kind of make the lines all look a little bit more uniform now that I've tried every single art supply I own on this one hill, trying to give them all a little bit of uniformity. I mean, I like the way that books, it's totally fine, but definitely I would not have done it five different ways if I'm if I'm doing it not for a demonstration. So these are just some of the ways that you can go back and forth coming in with a little marker and just darkening app a few spots that I think could still really use it. This is all way more than it really needs this yellow paint pen to just suggest a real difference in color between that field and the one behind it. Again, some even just sort of play around with making little scratchy scribbling marks to make it just a little bit different from everything else that's there. And I think I will come back one more time with that. This is that pigment liner. So in other words, a very fine little drawing pen. And I'm just sort of dark getting up the base of that area and making some darker marks to suggest that little bit of stably grass in the foreground. That little areas probably kind of overworked at this point too about I'm just I'm just showing you all the options. This is a brush tip, Little pretty fine, Brown marker that's making these much, much darker. You can see there, you can see in a minute kinda what I'm doing there. So lots of options. And really the idea is to make this personal to you and do, do as much or as little on these. Is this fun for you? I did go back and add in even a little bit more stably in the foreground and a little more white paint pin here in there. So just, just have fun with these and really just make them your own.
11. Countryside Pencil : We're going to start by doing a pencil sketch. I've marked out a five by seven rectangle on my paper, and I just want to get in the major shapes. So I'm starting with the horizon line. And remember if you're sitting and looking at a landscape in person, you're going to have to make a decision about where your horizon line goes. In my case, I'm looking at a photograph and I can just see how far down the horizon is in this particular rectangle. And work with that, I'm going to ignore the lines of trees and kinda pretend they're not there for a minute and try to just get these other shapes in. So there's the horizon line and then there's this almost pinkish color slope of wedge of land that comes down. And then there's this field, there's actually sunflowers in this field. It comes kinda straight across there, but it's this very kind of muted green. And then there's this really bright green in the foreground, some trees in front of it. So I'm just going to very loosely sketch in those trees, so I remember where they go. But the main object at this point is just to very quickly get those big shapes in place and make sure you're comfortable with how they all fit together. And that's really all we need to do with the pencil sketch at this point. I'm not going to include there's a little tiny bit of a house in the foreground. And there's a little house out in the background. I'm not going to bother including those because I really want to focus on landscape and you can't even really see it. I am going to draw in now these rows of trees and where they come sort of in front of the, of the fields that they're surrounding. And noticing the changes in height that you get there. They start off lower on one end and end up higher on the other end. And kind of the opposite thing happens with this furthest away row of trees. They start off, they kinda come just above the horizon line, but then they start to dip below the horizon line as the land slopes down. But not completely because there's sort of another little ridge of trees there. But just get this in and then we'll move on to the next step.
12. Countryside Colored Pencil: This step is definitely not required. But I think it's kinda fun. I've just gotten out a big handful of colored pencils and some of the colors that I think I see here. And I'm just gonna kinda scribble in where these colors go. Now a lot of this is gonna get covered up because I'm painting and goulash, if you're doing this or watercolor, these pencil lines will show through, which is, I think it's can be a very cool look, but it's something for you to play around with. If you were to use watercolor pencils are water-soluble pencils than these colors would kind of melt in with your paint when you put it down. But these are not water-soluble, so these colors are gonna stay. But what I like about doing this is, first of all, it's, it's almost like a preliminary sketch that's happening on your actual on your actual paper. So you're sort of feeling your way in going to what colors do I really see here? Like there is this interesting little bit of orangey red in these trees. Like, you know, maybe it's just about to be fall. And so it's fun to kind of closely observe these colors. It's almost like you're making a little plan for what's going to happen next when you paint. But the other thing I like about doing this is that it's a way of kind of spoiling the paper. So basically, you have this pristine white paper. You've spent some time getting an accurate drawing down and it can be kind of intimidating to go up. Now I have to start putting paint down. I'm going to What if I ruin it? And so if you feel that way, if you're sort of intimidated by the blank white page, mess up the blank white page. And once it's messed up and you'll be happy to paint on top of it. So that's kinda what I'm doing is I'm starting in the foreground and I'm like what these trees, there's parts of the trees are really, really dark. Where the, there in shadow parts are really light. Where we're there in more light. We don't have direct sunlight in this, in this picture, but you still get a lot of variations in color. There's those little bits of red. And now I'm going to just keep moving up. So I'm going to look at this field that I see just beyond it. And it's this bright vivid green. And I really want to, I'm just going to actually fill in. I'm gonna pretend that that little house is not there down in the corner that little street just fill it in with some green. So I'm just taking really brighter, brighter than what I see in the photograph for sure. Really brain yellowish green for this field that's closest to us. Just to remind myself that this is really the crazy green that I really want to have pop. And then the next field there's sunflowers and some kind of other white flour that's blooming in this field. And there's definitely rows. You get a sense of those rows. And so I'm making these lines to just suggest the rows. I love it in a landscape. When you have something that shows direction and also something that shows the slope, like these lines are headed slightly upward towards the right because they're on a slope. And so I'm just using some kind of greens and blues there. Now there's a little hetero that divides the first field from the second field. And there's like some dried vegetation along it. And so I'm exaggerating that dried brownish vegetation by using orange and then just coming in with a little green colored pencil and kinda just very lightly sketching in that little. A row of shrubbery along the, along the fence line there. So once I've got that in, the next thing is this other row of trees back here. And it's very dark along the ground, either in really deep shadow. So I'm actually using a deep blue right here. It's kinda to remind myself that there's gonna be a lot of Prussian blue, like I'm sort of making these decisions as I'm putting down this colored pencil. So there's a real dark color and then a fairly uniform green beyond that. And so I'm just again, very lightly, very loosely, casually sketching that in. And I do see some yellow. Some of these tree tops are slightly yellowish Again, I think maybe I don't remember when I what time of year it was when I took this picture but maybe they're headed slightly towards fall, i don't know. And then the field beyond it, it's such an interesting color. You know, probably it would be very easy to just do this with like a yellow ochre and call it good, but I see some pink in this field, and so I'm actually taking pink colored pencil. And I can also see some lines where the shows the direction the field has been plowed. And it also helps to show the contours, the slope. So it's great when you can draw on these lines, but sort of show how the slope is working. And I'm doing that with pink, which is brighter than what I see. But this is all about exaggerating the color that I see. And I'm going to work a little yellow in because it's like it's a color that's somewhere I think between pink and yellow. So I'll just lay a little both of those down. So now I'm going to come up and do a similar thing with this other row of trees. Again, there is a darker and darker color down towards the base of them. And also, as we go back in the landscape, as you get further away, things get bluer because they're under the influence of the atmosphere that you're seeing them through, Which is essentially blue sky. And even though the sky in this picture is not very blue, the influence of the air means that colors get blue as they recede. And you want to exaggerate that. It's a little trick that will help make things in the distant seem further away. So I'm really wanting to push that. It's bluer and also a little bit lighter. So a shadow that's far off in the distance isn't going to be as dark as a shadow that's in the foreground. And that's something else that you really want to exaggerate. Like as long as you know it, you can really play around with that. And it'll help give you that atmospheric sense of distance as things are just moving away from you. So there's a little bit of difference in the trees over on this side. And I just want to be able to capture that. I'm just going to come in and make a few little marks in there and then way off in the distance. This furthest area is definitely blue. It's almost a purplish blue. And I'm just going to color that in. I don't see a lot of detail, so I just color that in. And this has colleague a little color sketch that we can now paint right on top of.
13. Countryside First Paint Layer: For this first layer of paint we put down, it'll be exactly the same whether you're doing this in wash or you're doing it in watercolor. I'm going to start with the sky. I always start with the sky first because I want clean water, clean brush, clean palette. And looking at my little color chart, I've decided to go with a surreal Ian sky. I'm mixing it with a fair amount of white. I'm not going to bother with the clouds, but I see in the picture I'm just gonna, I'm really just going to drop in kind of a generic looking blue sky. And I want to remind you that I kinda wanna remind myself as I'm painting this, that light colors with guage like colors tend to dry darker. So the secret to a good light sky is basically to make it white with the tiniest little drop of blue in it, whatever color you are trying to work into it. This is going to dry and be a little bit darker than what I intended. So just keep that in mind. Start with the lightest possible, just just white with a tiny little dab and go from there. Anyway. So I always start with the sky when I'm doing landscapes so that it's good and clear and my brush is clean and all that. Now I'm going to come in at the horizon line, add just a little bit more white just because it tends to be lighter at the horizon line. Again, I'm not really working from the photograph at all. The photograph has this cloudy, dark sky. And what I'm trying to do is just put in a quick wash of a real light blue sky and just move on. So, so now that I've got that done and it's drying, this is especially important in watercolor, but also with wash. I'm going to move down to the bottom of their painting now and kind of kind of work my way around so that I don't have wet paint touching wet paint and have those running together. That's especially important with the sky because you wouldn't want a green color blending into your sky. It's real hard to clean that up. So what I'm gonna do now is take that leaf, that leaf green and some lemon yellow and a little bit of that bright, crazy medium green. I'm really looking for a brighter color than what you've seen the photograph. And you can see how I'm going right over my trees in the foreground. It's fine to do that because the trees are a darker color. And so it's going to be easy to cover that up. Especially if you're working in watercolor. You can't really put a light color on top of a dark color, but you can put a dark color on top of a light color. I'm going back to my green color chart here and really considering that field and that bluish color. So just looking at those mixtures and thinking about, alright, what's going to really work? It's definitely, it's like a it's like a past stele, blue-green color and I don't know if there's a lot of sage brush in that field or what it is that's making it that color. But I'm taking some taking some white. I'm mixing it with that medium green, which is my, my fake E green color. And as soon as I put it down, I say, whoa, that's a little too Pass Delhi for me. So right away, I'll, I'll get some more white in there. And mixing just a tiny bit of, I'm just region for a blue that I already had on my palette. This is another thing about doing the sky first is that a lot of times you want to take that sky color and start working it into the rest of your landscapes. So I'm just working a little blue in, but I'm definitely this again is like it's a brighter version of what I see in the photograph. Like I'm playing around with some really bright blues and greens and mixing them with white, which is almost like an illustrator style of color as opposed to worrying about being too perfectly realistic. And I like what I've come up with here. I think it's going to be really, I think it's going to be really interesting when we get that flowers in on top of it. So I'm just sort of working over with the mixture that I'm happy with here. And now I'm looking at this next field and I really want to exaggerate this kind of orange pink color. So I'm taking some white and I'm mixing it in. What I have is cadmium free orange, so that's what I'm using, but really any orange here would be good. And maybe putting a little yellow ochre in it and some more white and just sort of going back and forth. I don't want it to be too candy colored, but, but I do want it to be brighter than necessarily what's exactly in the photograph. And I'm just trying to do big bold brushstrokes and follow the contour of the land a little bit. And this is another case where I don't have to worry about leaving space for the trees because the trees are going to come in darker. So whether you're doing Galatia watercolor, you can paint right over where those trees go. Just big sweeps of color is really the way to go. And so the next thing is that little bit of land that you can see off in the distance, like they're very furthest horizon line. So I'm taken out my blues and that ultramarine mixed with white. It's got this kind of purplish feel to it. So this is ultramarine with white. And I didn't mix in a tiny little bit of Alizarin to just make it a bit more purple. I went to exaggerate the sense of purple hills off in the distance. It's a bit of a cliche, but it's a cliche for a reason. Things really do go kind of purplish off in the distance. And now I've just taken my brush and making this slyly irregular line out there so that you get a sense that there's, there's trees. You know, that there is something actually happening out there on the horizon line. And that's just something that I'm doing with the, with the edge of my brush. And it's really subtle, but this kind of finishes off this first layer.
14. Countryside Second Paint Layer: Now that it's dried, will start to work in these trees in the foreground. And remember, even if the whole thing hasn't dried, were sort of skipping around like we we finished up that last section with the ridge of purple off in the distance up at the top and now we're moving back down. So that's one thing that I always do is try to figure out how can I keep moving around so that if something needs to dry, I can give it time. So this is that mixture of olive green, which is similar to a Sap Green, mixed with Prussian blue. And so it's super dark. And I'm really looking at how much shadow, sort of dark shadow there is in the foreground with these trees. But also, it's interesting. Having this kind of dark bold area in the foreground just sort of draws the eye in. So it's, it's just a good aesthetic design choice as well. And I always love it when there's something that's real obviously in the foreground, in a landscape because you do get that sense of depth. And that's the whole deal with landscapes is it's about being able to really see that we're looking off into the distance. Digital cameras do us a disservice here, I want to warn you that any picture you take with your digital camera, all those things you see way off in the distance. They're not going to be light enough and they're not going to be blue enough. They're gonna come in pretty sharp and clear and dark and bold as if they're right in front of you. It's just something that happens when we take pictures with our phones. So you want to sort of compensate for that. Remind yourself that that's not really how the eye sees things. And so you want your darker colors, bolder colors in the foreground. So I'm looking at these medium greens from my little chart of greens and thinking about what I want to use for the trees. Now that I've finished with depression, I've got that leaf green, which is kind of a yellowish green, and I'm just mixing it with some of my civilian sky colors. It's again, it's a great thing about doing the sky first is you have some nice blues that you can mix into and just going to kind of come in. So this is lighter. And that's just an important thing to point out. It's a, it's a little bit further away and it's just a different kind of plant. It's not a big tree, it's some kind of little shrub along the fence there. And I'm just gonna keep kinda working back and forth with the blues and greens I have, I decided I wanted, yeah, that's better. It's a little bit more olive green in it. So I went ahead and I'll go I'll go back and kind of add that in. So I'm moving from one section to the next, to the next so that one thing has time to dry before I come back to it, I'm kind of skipping around in that way. And that's especially important for watercolor. Guage tends to dry just a little bit faster, but in any case, it's a useful thing to be able to do. Now with that little row of, that little kind of there's like a fence there and there's little short row of some kind of shrubbery. There's that dead vegetation or dried vegetation that I did in colored pencil, I did a pretty bold and orange and I like that contrasts like I want to inject a lot of color into this landscape. And you see how I go straight across with that line. The reason is that usually the hillside or whatever gives a straight contour so that along the bottom of these hedgerows, you get a straight line and the top of the hedge rows where you get the tops of the plants. It's uneven and I like being able to see those things in those places where I can put in a pretty straight line. So I just dropped in a little bit of that orange and it, my blend a little with the green, which is actually good. That's a, would be a totally fine thing. So alright, that one's done. And so moving on. What I'm gonna do here. Again, I want that, I want that straight line. And this is that dark. It's that Prussian blue mixed with the olive green again, and a pretty good even line. This is a nice trick with these kinds of landscapes is knowing when you've got a real uneven shape, but when you have something that's almost like a straight line. And so again, I'm just painting the shadowy part of these trees, not the tops of them. So I'm basically just doing like the bottom of the treeline here and waiting to come back and do the, do the top. Okay, same thing for this next row of trees. That's the one furthest out. I took my Prussian blue and my olive green mixture and I added a little white to it to push it back to make it seem a little further away. And of course, if you're doing this in, in watercolor, what that really means for you as a, as a, as a more watery mixture, not, not such intense colors you might have put in the foreground. But here again, I'm just kinda go in for the, I'm still going for the lower parts of those trees and I'll come in with a, with another lighter color for the tops of the trees in just a minute. Ok, now for getting into kinda the tops of these trees, I'm gonna get my little chart out again. And I like these kind of olive colored, you know, mixtures that I was getting with the with the olive green and also mixing in some of the lemon yellow or yellow ochre or even that leaf grains. So like I said, there's a lot of different ways to get at these colors, but basically, we want to start focusing on the tops of the trees more and getting in some greens that work well with what we've already put down for the shadow colors. So it'll look like it's all, you know, kinda the same thing. So I'm coming in with the trees in the foreground. And they, there definitely are turning a color. So this definitely has kind of an odd and feel to it. They are not the bright green of something that's just leafing out. And I'm just sort of following my, I, I really like using these Filburn brushes which have a rounded tip to them. They're nice for leaves and landscapes because they've got sort of a soft edge. But you can also turn him on the side and get an interesting kind of. More of a line, but kind of a nice curving line that I think sort of makes sense for these. Another thing that I want you to remember, this is something that I always kind of, I struggle with because I sort of forget this is that this isn't the end. Like we're going to do mixed media on top of this, which means we're going to be coming back in with pencil or with markers or ink or all of the above. So you don't have to finish the tree. You can just sort of put another layer down and move on to something else. And remember that you're gonna get to come in and drop in some really cool details with more mixed media type effects later on. So you don't have to perfect everything with paint. And I always forget that my, I always want to make everything finished and perfect on the first pass and I just sort of don't leave myself as much fun stuff to do on the next pass. So I'm going to try to remember that this time. Alright, so this is a little bit of that orange and yellow ochre and I'm just mixing it in with some of the green and just trying to come up with a way to drop in some of these orangey or colors that I see in the tree tops. And just get something that looks natural and doesn't look too two out of place. I don't want it to look forced and I'm just gonna kinda play back and forth with this. And you know, one of the nice things about, gosh, it's so forgiving if you put down a color that you don't like, you're going to be able to more or less covered up. Like I decided that was a little too dark. And so I'm coming back to mix in a little more yellow ochre and just lighten it up a little bit before I before I go make another attempted this. Yeah, that's better. This feels more like the like what this tree is actually doing. So I'm just gonna go around and find some opportunities to drop this in. Just looking at the photograph and looking at the places where I see more of a of a yellowish orangey color, um, and being just being kind of casual about about where I drop it in. I think this is another thing like this is why it's so helpful to do all that colored pencil at first because you've been very loose and free already about just dropping the color down where you see it. And that's all this has to be as well. So keep it really relaxed. And while it's good, especially in the foreground, to be able to show more of a variety of color. As we go further back, you can't distinguish color as much. So it's kinda nice to have something that's a little more detailed in the foreground because you're going to lose all that as you disappear off into the distance. All right. I'm just going to come in and continue to sort of mess around with what's down along the bottom. There are some areas where I've got light coming straight through the trees which is cool looking. But I want to, I want to sort of dial some of that back a little bit and get a few more little shadow areas back in here. But remembering also the shadow areas, that's something else that I can do with markers and other things later on. So if I lost some of those as I was painting these trees, I can come back and get him back in. In other ways, it doesn't just have to be paint and I don't want to overwork these. I kinda feel like I am overworking them just a little. But I'm just, I'm trying to get the height right. Like I'm looking at the height of these trees as compared to that next row and making sure that they're tall enough so that they kind of line up with the rest of the landscape the way that the way to photograph does. And now I'm coming in with a little bit of a darker color on this next row so that you get a sense of some light and shadow. And there's also like little, these are just little shrubs or something, but some are taller than others. So I'm trying to get some of that variety and to suggest that these are different plants sorta doing different things, even though it's obviously just one tiny little line of paint. I think that's useful. And now I'm doing the same thing with this next row. I've got this kind of olivine mixture where I've mixed up some of this olive green with some yellow ochre and also little bit of leaf green or lemon yellow. And I'm just coming along as we go off into the distance, there's less detail because you cannot, you just can't see it. And I just want to blend it a little bit so that you do get a sense that this is the underneath part of those trees. And now there's a little bit of a light reflecting on it, but you'll be able to see in a minute more how this looks. And there are some places where you can sort of get a sense that you can see a complete tree that's a slightly different color. So I did bring in just, just a little bit of variety in just how those trees are kind of situated. So now taking this olive green, I am mixing it more with blue. The further back you go, the more blue you're going to want for sure. And this more similar, that blue mixture is too whatever you did with your sky the better because that is what's happening is that you're looking at the landscape through basically a bunch of sky. So I'm just mixing some white and some blue in with this green mixture so that and what we see off in the distance is different from what we see in the foreground. And just kinda filling this in and again here also being mindful of the fact that we can do more later with mixed media. You don't have to feel like this is really complete. Now, that middle area is this. This is where and again, it's such a small area. I know it's probably something I shouldn't even really bother with, but there is this kind of lighter stand of trees that's on, I think it's all a different hillside that you can't quite see and I just like it. So I'm kind of obsessed with getting it, getting it exactly right and figuring out a way to have that look different so that you just have this sense of something different going on. And I don't want it to be bright, bright yellow because of this influence of blue light that should be coming in back there. So I'm just working in some blue and trying to keep a kinda light. I mean, that's pretty close to what I see out there. And then there's one last row are one last little ridge of trees, but it's kind of in-between that lighter one. And then the purple ish mountains beyond. And so I just kinda want to drop that in. That looks pretty good. Just a few little touch ups here and there. But really we've done a lot like this already has a sense of depth and you can see where things are sloping and it's looking pretty good. But there's still more to come.
15. Countryside Mixed Media Colored Pencil: Ok, now the fun really starts because now we're going to start coming out with some other types of media. And I'm gonna do colored pencil first. Now remember, you don't have to do everything. Like I have literally gotten out all the art supplies I own for this. So I have colored pencil, I have markers, I have Pain Pens, I have colored ink. And I'm going to show you all of it because my way to see how they all work. But you might just do one, like you might just do colored pencil and that's it, or just do marker and that's it. It's up to you. Also. It's a little bit hard on camera to see some of these marks there. Kinda subtle. So I apologize for that, but I think you'll get a sense as you play around with these. I'm starting with some dark greens and I'm making this a little scribbly lines that can suggest leaves or, or branches are just more texture so that these trees aren't just blobs. I can bring in some, some darker areas if I feel like there's places where it needs to be a little darker. And I can also use these kinda darker green pencils to just make more transitions between the darker and the lighter areas. I mean, this is all stuff that you can do with paint, of course, but by adding this extra stuff in, I think it gives it a really cool texture. And it really gives you this sense of the artist's hand at work, which I really like, like you really get a sense of like, Oh, the person who did this really went to town and drew and painted and colored all over this. And so I think that's really fun. Now, just as I did in the very beginning, I'm kinda reaching for some of these same colors and just sort of emphasizing some of the lines. And the other thing that's great with this sort of mixed media is that you can use it to really sharpen up an edge where you want a really sharp edge. So that's what I was doing right there. And also different colored pencils will have a different effect. Like I've said before, when you're, when you're going on top of paint, some of them make more of a mark than others. So I'm just sort of making some little scribbling lines in here. So you do get a sense that this is sort of scrubbing little vegetation with the field that's in the foreground here, depending on what kinda pencils you have and what color paint you put down exactly. You might be able to add some either lighter or darker lines. I want a sense of these lines moving from left to right. So because I love it when there's fields and you can see rows like that. So I'm trying to make somewhat of an obvious effort at that. And also I wanted to be a little bit darker and the foreground here and a little bit lighter in the background. So I'm just coming in and adding that tiny little extra bit of color in the foreground. But that right there gives it some texture. Which makes it seem more like grass and less like just this wash of a block of color. Now this, this field is so interesting to me. I mean, I honestly don't know what plant is growing in here that makes it this such this knocked back kinda colour. But I'm just coming in and suggesting these lines that I really can't see in the photograph. I'm keeping him kinda light. I don't want them to dominate. I wanted it to be kind of a subtle thing that's in the background. And I am going to be putting in those flowers. So that can also suggest the direction, but I like being able to suggest the direction of the slope. And you can be kinda obvious about that. I'm just gonna make a little bit more of a transition here between the edge of the field and those trees just by sort of coloring that in just a bit. I like the, I like the look of pencil and the fact that the texture is so different from what you get with paint, that's just a nice contrast and it kinda gives her eyes somewhere to go. So now I'm taking my pink, my pink pencil again and just going over this orange, oranges slope in the background and making some pink marks that suggests that direction. A little bit. And go and back. I've got these trees off in the distance that I thought were slightly different color. But I've kind of decided that maybe they're a bit much and that maybe I should make them more unified with the trees around them. So I'm, I'm just experimenting with the colors that I have and seeing if I can make those a little more unified. And then finally, these purple mountains off in the distance, there is a little bit of variation in it. I mean, if you look closely at the photograph, you can see that there are some ridges and some changes in topography. And so by just coming in with this blue and just making a few little marks, I can make it seem less like just one purple blob and make it seem more like there. I'm aware that there's a bunch of different things going off in the distance there. So let's see where else with these trees that are way off in the distance, I'm just kind of coming in and trying to integrate the tops of the tops of the trees which are lighter with the bottom of the trees which are darker. And maybe having a little bit more of a transition there. But also just by making these little squiggly lines, it does add an element of line work in there, which I like, and I'll do a little bit of that in here as well. Let me just see. There might be some places where I really wanted to differentiate between the different Because you can't see the complete shapes of some of these trees. And so it can be kinda nice to pull a few of those out so it doesn't just look like this uneven line, but you get a sense of these individual trees. And also again, that transition between the shadowy underside of it and then the lighter top. Some of this, some of these pencils, you get a little bit of reflection from the, from the lights here. So it does help you to at least see a little bit more of what I'm doing. But in normal light, it won't, it won't look quite as shiny. That's just something that happens with a more waxy kind of colored pencil and making some little scribbling marks like this again, just sort of suggest trees that have a lot going on, you know, that have branches and leaves and like their stuff there. So I'm just trying to kind of give a little bit of that sense. And I can't leave this area in the back alone. I feel kind of unsatisfied with how I how I carried this off. So I'm bringing in some darker colors. This is one of those things you can fiddle endlessly with something I should probably let it go, but let's move on and try some other tools.
16. Countryside Markers: Now we're going to come in with some markers and acrylic paint pens. And I'm gonna go back to wash a couple of times to touch things up so don't put your pain away just yet. I've I've I've tried a lot of different markers are basically I'm just using the markers that I already had around the house, which they're all a little bit different in terms of how easily they go over, go wash. And I'll, we'll, uh, you know, that some of them will kinda pick up a little bit of paint on the tip of the marker. So if these are markers that you're feeling very particular about, then you should just know that you might be picking up little paint just as you're putting down ink with the marker. I'm just coming in with a darker kind of green marker here to go over some of that Prussian blue paint in the foreground and make it a little bit greener. I thought it was a little too blue. The thing about markers is that you can get really fine tips. So I'm not trying with these to get a lot of detail and foliage for instance, or to show a lot of little branches. But markers are obviously the place where you can do that. So you can get very fine lines and that's a really fun thing about using them in something like this. Also remember that if you're using markers that are water soluble, then if you put more pain down on top, the colors might run a little bit, and that might not be such a bad thing at this stage, that might be perfectly okay. So I'm just going around my marker now and making some little shapes where I felt like I wanted to reemphasize some of those shadows. A lot of the things that I did with colored pencil in terms of just making little transitions and blending. I could do that with markers to if I had the right colors. So it's kinda the same process and you can use them for similar things. But I like markers for these really fine. Like I wanted to put, I'm back here in this next row. I wanted to put more of a transition down or more of just all, yeah. Just a little bit of a sense of kind of a shadowy area and a sharper line. And I like the way that kinda sharpens up that line and really emphasizes it. And that's just a, a light brown marker that I used for that. And I'm taking that same Les Brown and just seeing if I like it in here. One thing I'll say about playing around with all these different art supplies is that I make a lot of mistakes. You know, I'll just sort of puts up down ago up. No, I don't really like that. I'm not doing that again. And I just started keep going. So actually, you know, these types of landscapes are very often will have lots of little experiments embedded. Here. I'm going back up to that row of trees that's driving me crazy that I never feel like I quite got right. And this is a this is a nice compromise color that is lighter than than what's in the in front of it, but but not quite as light as what I put down. So. Maybe I'll be satisfied with that. Maybe I can finally leave that little section alone. And looking again at the I'm bringing in a pin here and this is a brown pigment liner pen and I'm just creating some little grass like shapes. These are such tiny details are going to be hard for you to see on camera. But I like the sense of bringing a little texture in and some fine lines as a contrast to the story of rounder, gloppy or shapes of paint. And I'm even suggesting tree branches in these trees, which show up just a little bit. It's just that little extra bit of contrast that makes, gives this kind of a multi-layered feel. Obviously, if this were the fall and you could really see bear branches, I'd be way more into doing a lot of those really kinda fine lines with branches and saving that, not doing it with pain, but knowing that I can come in with a really fine pen like this and get those wonderful sharp lines in at this stage is that would be a great use for one of these pens. I'm also and this is way more playing around that I would normally do if I were just sitting outside doing this, I would have been done a long time ago, but I'm trying to show you like all your options. So I'm even coming in here in the foreground and suggesting a few little branches. Now I have my yellow paint pen, and this is a field of sunflowers. It's like sunflowers and some other white flour. And so I'm dropping in this yellow with the paint pan. And what I'm finding is that the yellow is a little too dark and it's just kinda getting lost. Also remember with guage that watercolor, either one, that it really wet. So if you put something went down, it will blend with the layer that's below it and so that when it comes out of this pen is wet, it's wet pain. And so it is blending a little with that turquoise color underneath it and it's just not quite right. I think it's an partway there, but not all the way there. I'm also dropping in some little dots for these white flowers wherever they are. And notice that I'm not putting them everywhere. I'm not even trying to reproduce exactly what's in the photo. I like how their mass together in certain places but not others. And I'm trying to suggest that and trying to resist the temptation to just like evenly cover this whole thing with, with identical little dots. I want them to be different sizes and shapes. I'm experimenting with bringing in some pink. I have got a pink paint pen, but it's also not showing up or unwell. So now I'm going back to paint and I've got a very fine tip brush. And it's clean, it's perfectly clean. And I'm dipping it straight into the white paint so that I'm getting really good, clear color. If you ever are doing this and you just need that one last little accent, you can actually just open up your tube of wash and dip your paint brush right into the tube. You don't have to squeeze it out onto a palette. Maybe you just need the tiniest little bit. Just make sure that your paint brushes very, very clean when you do that because you don't want to pollute your nice tube of White paint, which I've done before. You can probably guess I'm telling you this from experience. So I'm also getting a lighter mixture of yellow. So I am just taking some of my lemon yellow mixed with white and dropping in some more yellow in the foreground and some kind of bigger shapes as well, so that it feels like these colors mass together. And even though these are sunflowers, I am in no way trying to actually suggest real sunflowers with the, with the dark centers or any of that. I just want these shapes that tell you that there are flowers in this field, but I don't want it to dominate the painting or be too distracting. It kinda needs to just fit in with everything else that's there. And then for this hillside off in the distance where I definitely do see these rows, the first thing I'm showing you is how I would do this just with whitewash. So I'm just coming in with a very fine brush and some white paint and trying that as a way to suggest the rows and also the kinda nice curvature, the sort of angle so that you get a sense of the slope. I could also do darker lines. So I'm trying a mixture of red and I decided right away that is a little to read, so I'm going to knock that back. Yeah, mix that in with the OR1 site could also be suggesting a little bit of darker lines rather than lighter or doing both. I mean, at this point, it kinda doesn't matter so much what's in the photograph. It matters what works for the drawing. You know, at a certain point you can forget exactly, but you can sort of let go of the photograph that started it all and focus on what makes for an interesting drawing. So I'm coming in with a paint pen and an ivory color and doing the same idea. But I'm just showing you how it looks to do it in and paint pin. So there's really too much happening on this hillside because I'm showing you every different possible way that you could do it. You would probably only do one or the other of these depending on what art supplies you have and what you enjoy doing. This is a yellow marker in kind of a yellow ochre color, and I think that's sort of the wrong color. I don't think that's quite right. But fortunately, I have wash. And I have paint pins and I can come in and cover up if I do something that's a little too crazy. So here I come with my orange paint pin and I can just sort of cover that up. So yeah, I'm just I'm playing around with how about if I make these lines with this orange pen instead, that's just one more way to do it. And at some point if you feel that you got just a little too carried away and and there's way too much going on and it just does not look right with the rest of your drawing. It seems to really stand out. Then you can come in and cover some of it up. This looks really bright as I'm putting it down, but it's actually just a mixture of orange and white. And once the reflections of the light I have over my desk, once it dries a little bit, you won't see those reflections and it looks a lot more natural. So you can, you can just about cover up what you've done. But I would encourage you don't go back and forth nearly as much as I'm doing for this demonstration, you know, put a few little fund marks down that kind of suggests what you're getting at and move on. Definitely. Alright, so I have moved on. I've taken my own advice. There's a little fence down here. And I've decided one cool thing you can do. I like putting in little structures like fences. So I just put in some tiny little white lines which are the fence posts where they're being hit by light just a bit. And I'm back with my brown pen to put in some lines for the horizontal parts defense, and also just along those fence posts so that there's like a light half of it and a dark half. And it's kinda suite to have this one little human-made detail of this fence in this landscape that's otherwise doesn't have any real signs of, well, apart from the fact that it's farmland doesn't have any real signs of human habitation. This is some yellow ochre just kinda mixed with our Brown. And what I'm doing is I'm just dropping in tree trunks and they're very subtle. But again, this is just another way to sort of say, well how can I add a little bit of texture or some fine lines here and there? And you really do see these tree trunks just barely standing out back there. So I'm not putting them in everywhere. You definitely don't want them to be like evenly spaced and super rigid. It's just something to play around with. And while I have this yellow ochre out, I'm deciding that I want to differentiate. Some of these trees are different types of trees from the others. And so they have a little bit of a different color to him. So I am just dropping some of that in to get some a little bit of variety in here, in there. All of this stuff is way more fiddling around then I would probably do if I were really sitting out in a landscape doing it. But again, it's just about showing you like the full range of options. And here again, I've mixed up a lighter in slightly bluer version of the screen. It looks like I'm putting bright white down, but that's just the reflection of the lights over my desk. So that'll settle down in just a second. And it's just about kind of pushing that off into the distance and making sure that it's not too dark and then it really looks like it's fading away. And here's that little section that I can't leave alone, but we're almost done. So I'm going to have to leave it alone. It's fine. It leaves totally fine. It makes complete sense within the context of the picture. That all looks good. And here at last is our mixed media landscape.
17. Beach Pencil Sketch: Now we're gonna do a beach scene. And I want to remind you is we start with this pencil sketch that you have a choice as the artist about where you put the horizon. So we did the English countryside and the horizon line was very, very high. So we saw mostly land and very little sky. For this beach scene, it's going to be mostly sky and not as much land. So that's a choice that you have to make. I mean, because I'm giving you a photograph to work from that choice has been made for you. But when you're out and about drawing from life, you get to decide where that horizon line goes and what's most aesthetically pleasing. And I just think for a beach, this sense of this beautiful strip of sand, but then this kind of endless SKY to me that sort of fits. The other thing I like about this scene in particular is that we're not looking straight out at the ocean. There's ocean in that picture. But we're looking down the coastline. And I think that is really useful. The trick with that, of course, is that you gotta get the angles in there, right? So you can see I've got these couple of triangles with the and horizon line and then where the shoreline comes in. Also, of course, what I love about this one is that there are these palm trees that are in the foreground. So, so here again we have foreground and then we've got kinda the middle distance and then what's off in the far distance. And that helps so much with landscapes to make it feel inviting and like it's something you can really step into. For the pencil drawing. I don't need to do a lot of detail, certainly with these palm trees, I'm just making some general kind of marks to remind myself where the fronds go and where they don't go because they're not perfectly spaced around this tree. And I want to observe that and make sure that I kinda get that right. But there's really not much that I need to do here. This is, this is basically all there is to this drawing. There's a little sense of some kind of vegetation that these palm trees are sitting on, which I definitely want to get because again, it's a foreground element, but that's all we have to do here. And we can move on to the next stage.
18. Beach Colored Pencil: Now we're going to do this colored pencil layer again. And like I said before, this is definitely optional, but I love doing it. I love it because it's just very playful. It's does not take itself seriously and all it does, let me start to think about what colors I'm seeing, which is really helpful. So I'm kind of already thinking about what I'm going to need to do in paint and it messes up the paper. So papers already messed up. Whatever else I do next didn't really matter. And I don't always have the exact right colors. Like i don't actually seem to have a great turquoise colored pencil. And so that's going on my list for next time I go to the art supply store. So I did a little mixture of kind of a pastel green and blue out in the ocean there. But like we even just working on that little mound that's in front of the palm trees. Lets me think, right, there's like some yellow in there and some green. I'm seeing this little spit of land. There's a little bit of light green over there. I want to be sure and get that. I like that there's this sort of darker green shrub that's not exactly in the foreground, but not way off in the distance either. So I like having that kind of middle ground area. And then of course, far off in the distance here, I really want it to be quite blue and quite pushed back. And I did decide to make this little spit of land a little bit bigger than it is in the photograph. I just like being able to see a little bit more of that and get a sense that you're in some kind of a harbor or a cove, maybe just a little line around the edge to suggest the blue sky. And that's all I need. I definitely don't need to color in that sky. And if you're using like watercolor or even just a transparent wash of wash, you wouldn't want a lot of marks in the sky anyway. So now I'm coming in. It's kinda good to do this because this palm tree, it's a little bit brown. You want to make the trunk Brown, but there's actually a lot of gray and there's kind of some blue light coming up on that on the trunk of the palm tree. So I'm trying to note that with my colored pencil with the fronds, I guess their fronds, I hope I haven't had it right. I'm trying to make a note of which ones are dark green? Which ones are light green and which ones are kinda this brownish orange color. One of the things I love about palm trees is that they seem to always be sort of falling apart. Who seems to always be part of them that are turning yellow and falling off. And so what that means is that you get these really great colors. So anytime I can really exaggerate that kind of orange brown color, I want to, especially in a beach scene where everything is, you know, kind of blue and green. So I'm just sort of marking like where are the lighter areas of the palm tree? Because that's really important because you want that sense of, of light and dark happening on there. And also there's, there's like a little area in the middle where usually there's kind of this dark brown area right in the middle. I want to make sure I get that. And I'm just sort of, this is very playful. I'm making some little lines just to kind of think about that to myself. Like, how much can you even see those little lines? But that's, I think we're ready to go.
19. Beach First Paint Layer: You know, one thing I love about doing landscapes is that I never have to wonder where to start. I'm always going to start with the sky. And the reason I always start with the Sky is that my brush is clean, my waters clean, my palette is clean, and I can get a nice clear color up there. Sky is one place where you don't need to think about blending it with other colors so you can gray it down or neutralize it. You know, There's nothing neutral about sky. So I've decided to go with civilian and white for this, the photograph that you're looking at has been obviously been manipulated a little bit to exaggerate the ultramarine colors in the sky. And if you like the way this looks, do it. And the way that I recommend that you do it is that you take ultramarine and mix it with white and then drop in a tiny bit of civilian because that ultramarine mixed with white can lean a little bit towards lilac and you don't want that and work with that blend. I decided not to do this, that this time I decided to go with more of a civilian color, which is probably what the sky really looked like that day. But the nice thing about this, the way the photograph is, is that there's a real contrast with the turquoise water and the way I'm doing it, there's not gonna be quite as much of that contrast. So that's just a choice. You can do it either way. You can see how the sky definitely gets lighter towards the horizon and it's darker as it goes up towards the top of the painting. So that's something to try to work in. And also notice how I'm painting right over my palm trees that I drew. This again would be a reason to not use water soluble pencil because they would, the colors would run. But I don't have to worry about that here. So I'm just kind of just going over at my mixture wasn't quite wet enough the first times I had to keep wedding it down. It must just be really dry in the room I'm in right now because it feels like I'm constantly having to add water to get this to flow very smoothly. But there it goes, it's nice and light. It is going to darken as it dries because that's what guage does. So I could have gone considerably lighter than this. I also could have gone considerably more towards ultramarine, but here we are. I'm not going to get real fancy about those clouds. By the way, this is meant to be something that's kind of quick and informal. And once you get the palm trees and all the other stuff going on, like no one's going to know until even going to look at the sky that much. So in some ways I think you can sometimes get so caught up in trying to do accurate little clouds that it contenders store to overtake the drawing and you miss out on what was so great about it, which is all the other stuff. The sky is really kind of just this neutral background that's happening. So, ok, great thing about landscapes. Always just get the sky in first. The other nice thing about that is you can be letting that dry while you work on other things because you don't want any colors running into the landscape. That ultramarine and white mixture that I was talking about. I do see a little of that at the horizon and I like it there. So you can see how there's this kind of darker color at the horizon. It's really interesting. And then there's streaks of more of an ultramarine blue mixed with more of a turquoise. And that is what I am playing around with here. Lot of white. Because if you're doing wash, lots of white because needed to be very light. There's that beautiful turquoise green mixed with white. It's just such a great kind of caribbean color. If you're doing this in watercolor, you just want to be very, literally very watery like put down a clear water glaze and then just let this colour move across it as a really wonderful way to work it. I'm bringing in some of my sky color because of course the sky is going to be reflected into the water. So I'm using my sky color to get some of that streakiness, but this is very casual At this point. I mean, we're not going for hyper realism here. And there's so much more that we can come back and do this is just about getting that first layer down. So that's all I'm really thinking about. And I am going to get into the beach color next. So I'm just putting down a little bit of white and just a little bit of white and yellow ochre is a pretty good place to start with a, with a beach color, just a very basic color. The interesting thing about sand in most parts of the world, this is true that sand is, it goes a little pink because there are shells that have kind of a reddish pink color to them. So you'll see that. You'll see some pink and purple colors if you really, really look at sand. And the great thing about that is that it's a nice contrast with the water. So it's moving in the opposite direction on the color spectrum. Okay, so getting back to this beach color, a little bit of yellow ochre and a whole lot of white is perfect. And I'm going right over my palm tree again. The nice thing about doing it this way is you don't have to then be super careful about cutting in around the shape of the palm tree to get your sky and your ocean just right. So it's fine if i kinda lose sight of the lines I put down because I've already got it in mind and I know where I'm going with this. So this is just our basic first layer.
20. Beach Second Paint Layer: Okay, so these initial sweeps of color are down and they're dry. And I really do want you to think of them as sweeps of color. Just make big bold gestures with a pretty good size brush. And recognize the major shapes and the landscape. And obviously in this one, the major shapes at a beach would be the sky, the ocean, and the beach. Alright, so now I'm just working on some of this foliage. So in the background here we've got this little spit of land, or it's the other side of the Harbor or something like that. And remember, we want this to look sort of blue. So I'm taking my greens, but I'm mixing it in with some blue and some white, like some Prussian blue and some white to push it off in the background like that. This other little shrub or tree or whatever it is is closer to us so I can make it look more green. It didn't have to quite be so blue. And I'm not concerned with really making it look like much of anything. I think it'll be understandable that it's just some kind of a, of a tree or a shrub that's in the foreground. And obviously it's a little darker underneath and, you know, lighter on top. And that's really about all we have to do. So I've taken my Leaf Green and just come in along the top out here, I've decided that I want to really push it back and I'm I'm just using a wet brush and blending those together too, to try to get a sense of it being really far out there. It's kinda hard to tell so small, but I did work a little bit of blue in it to push it back some more. And here's that same leaf green or else you could use to start lemon yellow mixed with an olive green of some kind to just do those little patches of grass which I do like, and I see some of that same color in this little bit of greenery at the base of the palm trees. So I'll put that in there. And then I was just getting ready to think about some clouds and I decided at the sky it really did dry, darker than I wanted it to, which is this thing that happens with wash it. You've got a nice light mixture on your palate and you put it down and it does dry kinda darker. So I'm just coming in with a mixture of white and the tiniest bit of blue. I am using the ultramarine. I definitely don't need anything more turquoise easy here. So if I'm bringing in more color, it's going to be a layer that's a bit more of an ultramarine. But mostly I'm just trying to force it to be a little bit lighter so that, that the way the spit of land off in the distance looks makes a little more sense. And also so the clouds will, I think the clouds will fit in a little bit better. I should also say that this is the kinda do over that you can do in guage to a certain extent. I mean too much and it just starts to look overworked and really chalky. But, but in watercolor, of course, the trick with skies is to put down a very wet glaze of just put down clear water and then you drop your sky color, your ultramarine or your civilian into it, and you get a really lovely kind of watery washed out effect. If anything, I think skies are the one place where or not the one place. There's a lot of reasons why I like watercolor better than wash for a lot of things, but, but certainly skies and water look absolutely beautiful in watercolour. It's kinda what they're made for. I'm being very casual with these clouds. I'm starting with the white. And I'm just looking at, you know, well, where are they exactly in relation to the land? They do come down and sort of where the land meets the sky there. That's where they are. There's a few of them that are floating around. I'm not trying to exactly reproduce what's what's in front of me, what's in the photograph. I'm mixing some ultra Marine with some white to do the underneath part. These are not heavy rain clouds, but they do have a darker side underneath and a lighter side on top. So you always got to get a little bit of that and we're not going to get too technical with clouds here. But if you look at even just the clouds in this photograph, you can see that there are different colors in there. And so you can't just have pure white blobs because they just won't make sense. Just think about where I want my highlights, where are they brightest? And that way the darker parts will look darker. And then the other secret about clouds is there's always a little bit of a golden yellow color in clouds. And so that's kind of the third color. It's sort of like there's the bright white, there's the blue, or sometimes it's obviously a very heavy gray color depending on the type of cloud. But then there's also these warm bits where the sun's hitting them. And so by just dropping in a little tiny bit of yellow ochre without white, I get, I get more of a three-dimensional sense with those clouds and I actually kinda like that. So Alright, I'm back in dealing with My, dealing with my foliage. Ooh, that was a nice break for clouds in sky. Just working in some, some yellow ochre into the foliage around the base of this. And always remember, we are coming in and doing some mixed media stuff afterwards too. So once again, you don't have to do everything. I could have left this just one blob of color and not worried about it and done the rest. And mixed media would have been fun. So this is, I've got some ultramarine. I have some Alizarin And I'm mixing in a little yellow ochre just to kind of gray it down and plenty of water. So I've decided that the tree trunk, I'm going to do in kind of this light purpley shade on the shadow side. Because obviously there's going to be a light side and a dark side. And so on the dark side, the shadow side. I'm gonna really have fun with these shadows. Looking at the photograph, they look quite purple, kind of a beautiful lilac lavender color. And I'm going to just go with that. By the way, I didn't quite explain this, but you can see why I stopped and did the clouds when I did because the trees in front of it, and I don't want to be trying to cut in those clouds around the tree trunk. I want it to look like the trees in front of the clouds, which means that the clouds have to be done. And then I come in and I, and I work on the trees. So this establishes the shadow side or the dark side of those tree trunks. And I'm gonna just leave that to dry before I think about the lighter side. And I'm going to come in and start working on this green. And I got out my water brush, which has a nice little fine point to it. And I'm trying to just lay down some of the darker, more like the olive green or Sap Green. Where you can mix it with a little bit of Prussian to get something really dark. But even that little brush I think is a little too thick. So I'm coming in with an even finer tip. This is probably a one or a two, it's very fine tip. And I am going in and suggesting some of these palm fronds, fronds. Just to show you how you can do it in paint. But this would be a great thing to do and marker as well. So depending on what art supplies you have with you and what you're using, you can totally get those kinda little details in. If you want them with a, with a very fine paintbrush, but marker or even a little pen would be a great thing to try with this as well. So I'm, I'm again, I'm trying to be mindful of the fact that there's really three colors in these palm trees. There's the dark green. There's the light green, which is like this light acid green, and then there's these orange and brown areas. So don't do, don't get carried away into the whole thing. Like remember you have to save some for these other colors. And I'm trying to be mindful of the shape. The last thing I want is for these two trees to have the exact same shape. I mean, they have weird gaps in them and, you know, the these palm fronds are not easily evenly spaced. So I really want to recognize that as well. And also there's this particular curvature to them and this particular way that the foliage kind of droops down. So just really, just really look at it very closely and make sure you're really observing how it actually falls. One of the things that we tend to forget is we put in the trunk and then we tend to forget that there will be things that come down in front of the trunk. So like as I'm getting into these brown brown bits, they come down and kind of cover up the trunk because this is around a spherical thing and it goes all the way around the tree, which means that it gets, kinda gets in the way right there. The other thing about palm trees, as long as I'm talking about palm trees, is that these little fronds or whatever they're called, the little things that stick out from the central stem. I don't know why. I don't know this word. Stick out on both sides. So also remember that you don't want them to be to one-dimensional. So now taking this kind of golden yellow color and working that in because you definitely see this hit of kind of a bright gold, orangey yellow. And if you don't have a colour like this, just mix some yellow and some orange together and get something. Because already if you kind of can stand back and look at that painting as a whole, having that bit of orange and yellow and brown is so nice because everything else is so very much on the green and blue side. So I love having that. Now I'm going into my, My Leaf Green with some yellow. I want this to be really bright. And just, I mean, this painting is all about the Sunshine, Right? So we really need the sense of the sun hitting it. And I'm just trying to look closely, observe what I see and put these hits of bright, bright, yellowish-green where I actually see them. And remember it, it remembering to try to save something for mixing media. That'll be, you can just put these in as these hits of color and separate out some finer details later with markers, which is something that is so easy to forget. You feel like, you know, you've got this paintbrush in your hand and you need to finish and you need to do everything. But do you see how I'm just kind of dropping in these big brush strokes because I know I can come in later and dropped some finer details in on top Once this is dry. And it's one of the, one of the fun things about doing this as being able to kinda work in stages like that. So I want to leave these feeling just a little incomplete so that I do come back to them. I'm looking again at will wear these darker areas in the center. I really want that sense of the mass, the mass of the tree right there in the center. It's just, it's a real specific thing with palm trees that I want to be able to get that they're on this really spindly long truck. And then there's what seems like a lot of a lot of weight and a lot of heft right there. Okay, so now again with my very small brush, and by the way, if you're sort of like nervous about doing this with such a small brush and you would rather do it with a white paint pin, you could. I'm not doing it with a white paint Penn. I'm doing with a paintbrush, but I'm coming in now and doing the other side of the tree trunk where the light is hitting it. And I'm wanting this to be very, very thin and have it kind of blend with the shadow side and, but also just be kinda looking because there's going to be areas where there's more shadow and less sun like it's not going to be uniform, going all the way down the trunk of the tree. But like already that just makes it pop and you get this sense of where the light is. So that really helps. While I have some white out, the ocean is dry. And I can look, I wish I'd done this before I put the tree trunks and you can see how I'm having to be kind of careful and cut in around those tree trunks. It's exactly the kind of thing I like to avoid, but whatever, it's fine, I'm dropping in some more white on top because the water has a lot of variety and a lot of movement to it. It obviously gets much lighter as it gets towards the shore. There's not anything like actual surf right here, but I do want that sense of as the waters coming in and meeting the beach, what's going on. And I went there to be distinct changes in the changes in color in that water. So now I'm taking that same lilac color and I'm doing these shadows. The beach is completely dry. One of the important things about working in stages like this, you can let one thing dry before you do the next. And the thing about these shadows is they're kinda weird shapes and you really just have to look and trust your eye and really just try to copy those shapes. Now, there's other shadows from other trees coming in from the edge of the frame. And sometimes I don't include these because I have this thing about it can be confusing. And a painting, if you see the shadow, but you don't see the thing that's casting the shadow. But in this case I kinda like it. I feel like it suggests that there's more foliage and I mean, we know what it is, right? We know that that means that there's just some other tree casting a shadow. So I decided to drop those in. I also just love putting this purple color on this beach. Alright, so that's good. I'm deciding that I want a little more texture on the beach. Obviously the thing is when you really look at sand, you see so much texture like every time somebody leaves a makes a footstep, there's a little indentation and there's a little shadow or changing color right there, right, because it's uneven. Well, you can't possibly capture all of that. And a quick little painting like this, but just by kind of working these brushstrokes in and having some variety, you get this, this sense of sand that it's something more than just this wash of one color. And again, this is also something that we can play around with in mixed media too. So I just wanna do a little of that. I don't wanna get too crazy with it. I'm just kinda going back in now and touching up a few little things because pretty much we're pretty much done with the paint. But I wanted the shadow on this little tree in the foreground to be a little darker, but that's pretty much it.
21. Beach Mixed Media: Okay, so now it's time to come in with markers, colored pencils, pain pins, and finish this off. And I'm glad I left myself some things to do with markers because I love how you can get really fine detail. And I feel like I have more control with a, with a marker than with a paintbrush. I don't have to worry about rewetting it and making sure that there's just enough paint on it. I kind of know what's going to happen. I do want to remind you and make sure that everything's really dry before you start going over it with marker URL shear marker will just kinda add pickups and paint, which is not the thing that you're looking for. So I'm looking at the photograph and wanting to put in as much detail as I can see in the photograph if I'm kinda squinting at it, if I'm sort of stepping back and not and not looking at it up close on a huge screen. You don't want to get too detailed. In other words, is what I'm trying to say with these palm trees. Like it's great to sort of have some fun with the texture. And obviously everything else in this little painting is so just sort of one big brush stroke or, and other big brush strokes. So it's nice that this is different and you get this line work. But you also don't have to go completely crazy with it. So between a little marker and I just had a little bit of yellow paint pen just then to add in a few highlights. I mean, that's, you know, that's pretty good. I'm going to come in around the base and play around a little bit more with this. This is something else that I left deliberately kinda half finished so that I could have fun dropping in some more of those details. I also see that the shadow is deeper near the top of the palm tree, the shadow on the trunk. So I'm coming in, adding in a little bit with a brown marker, just a little kind of emphasizing some details here and there, but also doing a little bit of that on the trunk as well, up near the top so that you do get the sense that it is darker and it's in shadow. I don't wanna go too far down. And I wanna make sure I'm using the very, very tip so that there's a nice transition to the pink color that I was using. But it's nice to help it to stand out against the sky a little. Now I've got a gray marker and I'm just using that for that transition that I was talking about where I want to make sure that it doesn't that it looks right, that it blends in with what I've already done with the paint. So I'm just I'm just going around and looking for little things like that that I can touch up. I'm going to mess around with this. Some of the some of the little darker areas down at the base as well and see if there's anything else I'm not happy with. I can sort of mess around those palm trees forever. So let's move on. Touching up a few little areas of foliage here and there. And then I'm gonna come in with a blue let me see. Yeah. So Here's a blue colored pencil and I'm trying to just sort of integrate the two greens that I put out and also knocking back make him feel more blue but also give them a little bit more texture. So you do have a sense that you're looking at some trees out there and emphasize the line where they touch the water. This is another one of those great things where you have kind of an uneven area at the top, the treelines uneven but where it hits the water, it's pretty straight and I like that. And I'm just taking a green colored pencil and kinda messing around with what's in the foreground here as well. This is all just with the idea of adding a little bit of texture and line work so that there's something that looks a little bit different from, from what the paintbrush can do. And it's really up to you how much of this you want to, you want to do. I'm going in and I'm playing around with, you know, how a palm tree has these sort of rings around it. And so you actually see a little bit of a line. Now this is so small and I don't want to get too detailed, but it is kind of fun to just suggest a few of those. I would not go all the way up and down the tree and do a whole bunch of them, but suggests just a few of them gives kind of a nice little vibe of, you know, just, just the natural growth pattern of a, of a palm tree. It makes it look a little less cartoonish and a little bit more, a little bit more realistic. So I'm just dropping in a little bit of that without wanting to go too crazy with it. And getting out the white paint pen and just touching up a few places where I felt it was just a bit uneven, are needed, just a little bit more of a highlight so it can pop out. I'm adding a few little just white dots here and there in with the foliage to just give this sense of light bouncing off of leaves. And also just seeing what it looks like to have a few little marks of this white paint pen, little dots and things in the sand and also out in the water like little tiny ripples of water that I can maybe suggest with the with the white paint pen. Sometimes these are just aesthetic. It's just the artists making a few little marks. You know, these are those kinda little marks. So just say I was there and little dots and lines and scribbles that don't have to mean anything in particular. Now i've got out kinda sand colored pencil. I'm just to just work on that beach a little bit. And one area where I'd left the paper a little bit too white. I can't leave this palm tree alone. So I'm going to come back in and dark and just add a little bit of a darker brown to get this sense of shadow so that you really feel the light and shadow. I also have a light green acrylic paint pin. This is more about like I would just want to play with every single toy I have on my desk. So bringing in a light green paint pin on top of some of what I've already done is completely unnecessary At this point. You're really getting to see all the options here. But I think this is, I think we're really done now.
22. Final Wrap Up: Before you go, I want to look at the main takeaways that I hope you'll carry forward into your art practice. And I'll show you some examples from my own sketch bugs while we talk. So the first has to do with that horizon line. You saw me paint some landscapes from the English and Italian countryside where I chose to put the horizon line up very high so that the focus is on the land and the sky is really plan second fennel. But even with the beach scenes where the horizon could be really low, there's, there's a lot of sky, but the focus isn't on the sky, it's on the palm trees that are in front of this guy. So a really high or low horizon line is interesting and dynamic and you'll rarely see an artist but the horizon right in the middle of a painting, it's more likely to take up 1 third or two-thirds of space roughly. Another thing about sky is that in this class we didn't get hung up too much on clouds or sunsets are really dramatic skies. And my advice to you, if you're just starting out with landscapes, is, don't fuss over the sky. A few brushstrokes are blue and you're done. Move on. When you do get into painting really dramatic, interesting skies, you're probably going to find that at that point, the landscape starts to be a minor character and the sky is the star of the show. I mean, Van Gogh knew that better than anyone, right? But so for now we're keeping our skies simple. I also hope that you found some good go to colors for skies. Now obviously the sky in real life and it's a different color every day and it's different color everywhere you go in the world. But artists tend to develop their preferences and their signature color. And whether that's at cobalt, ultra marine civilian or turquoise. It's kinda nice to have a go to color that you can just drop in and it'll look right and you can get on with the rest of your painting. Now one more thing about blues. Remember that landscapes as they recede into the distance get lighter and they get bluer. Digital cameras tend to correct for this. So don't be fooled by the pictures you take. The trick to giving your landscapes a sense of depth is to really exaggerate the extent to which those colors fade out in the distance. And the same is true with details. You want more details in the foreground, whether that's leaves or grass or a fence post, and then less about as you go back. This is another problem with digital cameras. The details, even when they're far away, can be very sharp in the pictures you take with your phone. But if you want to reproduce how our eyes see the world, you've really gotta let go of those details as you move off into the distance. I also want to remind you this is your painting. You can choose to emphasize or de-emphasize anything you like. And that Italian watercolor, I said that I love to see a road heading off into the distance because it draws the eye in. So I exaggerated that road and made it more prominent. I also like to work in some vertical elements to break up all the horizontal lines. That's why palm trees at the beach or so effective, or fence posts or telephone poles. And I've been known to add things like that in, even when they're not there. Just to make the drawing a little more interesting, I'm always looking for opportunities like that. But finally, remember that bringing in these mixed media elements can do so much for your art practice. Using those color pencils and advance can help you work out your ideas in the sketch process. And it also spoils the page, so you're not afraid of messing it up. And then adding layers of line and little scribbles are filling and coloring in areas. Just a way to really put your hand into the process. Make your own mark, show that you were there. And at the end of the day, what you create is nothing but a souvenir of the time that you spent closely observing the world around you. The goal is not to make a great work of art or to get the most likes on Instagram, the goal is to show up and explore and observe and have fun. Okay, if you have any questions, feel free to post those. I'll pop into answer and I hope you'll stay in touch. I teach a lot of other classes I'm easy to find on Instagram and other social media. I have a website, I send out a newsletter and I would love to hear from you and see what you're working on. Alright, thanks so much.
Amy Stewart, Writer & artist
