Modern Watercolor Techniques: Paint Enchanting Woodlands

1. Welcome: Do you want to paint magical and enchanting art? This class is all about exploring watercolors, perfect for artists of all levels. You'll be able to paint along with me. My name is Madu, I'm a professional artist and a published author, and watercolors is my favorite medium. I live in Bahrain and I'm very inspired by colors. I generally start with colors and let them intuitively guide me. This class is the best place to experience the magic of watercolor painting. My innovative approach to art education combines traditional methods of watercolor painting with latest techniques to unlock your creativity and inspire you to create meaningful works of art. Come and join me and discover the joys of watercolor painting. By the end of this class, you will have a stack of four projects, and we'll have techniques that inspire you to create your own woodland art. Come join me and let's begin. Happy painting. 2. Color Mixing: Time to talk about the colors we are going to be using in this class. We have cadmium, yellow, crimson, red, orange, gray. And if you don't have gray, you can use black as a substitute. Finally, we have verdan green. Now if you have shades of green with you, that's perfect. If you don't, we're going to mix a few. So you have a couple of options starting with our cadmium yellow. You can see it's a bright yellow. I like showing out the colors because different brands name them differently, which is surprising to be honest. If it's cadmium yellow, you would expect it to be the same. But I have noticed other brands doing a different shade. Just for your information, we've got this bright yellow, We've got this orange. It doesn't have to be very bright. We want something that's subtle. Indian yellow is a good substitute as well. The next color that I'm getting into is the dian green. Now, I personally don't like dian green as a color on its own. I always like to mix it up just to give it a difference in shade. You'll see me mix it, always taking a little bit of that green. If you add in our bright cadmium yellow, you end up with a very bright green. It's like a part green. It's a beautiful color that we're going to be using for our class. I consider this as a medium green. It's very light, it's not dark. Through our projects, you will see me refer to it as medium green. The reason I'm going to do this and not really get into the colors is because it can get confusing based on the, the set that you're using. Medium Green can be any color of the same shades that are not too dark, not too light. And I'll show you what I mean by that. Just keep that in mind as we go through the class. One of the things I like doing is simplifying terminologies and making the class more accessible. I've had a lot of students who come up to me and they're like, oh, what is wet on wet? Did you use wet on dry? And they get so confused and bogged down by the terminologies that they don't really get to learn the paint itself, like learn to understand the water on its own. In the same way, even colors, people get into warm tones and cool tones and it can be overwhelming. I'm just simplifying it as much as possible. Now, if I add more yellow to this, you can see how the color becomes even more lighter. This, I would consider is a lighter green. Do you see the difference between the two? The one on top would be medium, and the one below that we just mix is a lighter green. Let's mix some more greens. We're going to do a forest green. I'm taking the Verdian green and I'm going to mix it with the orange. That's going to give us a really interesting vintage color that I absolutely love. We're going to use it a lot for our forest. If you can mix quite a bit, keep it ready in hand. That's going to be brilliant. You can see the color, very pretty, just really captures the warmth of a forest. Similarly, if we add more orange to this mix, we'll end up with a slightly different tone. These two are still understood as medium greens. They're not very dark, hence the basic name. Now we move into some darker colors. Darker greens. I'm taking out Vardian green and I'm going to be mixing it with a little bit of gray. If you have black again, just a little bit of black. Goes a long way and we're going to end up with a dark green. And that's what I would refer through our pieces as a darker color. Adding more gray to the mix is going to give us even more green, which we're also going to use. You may not need to use all shades of greens, but just having the options I think is a great start. If you're confused, you're wondering what I'm using, just follow along the basic colors. That's our mix of greens. We're additionally using red as well for our mushrooms. I hope you have fun with this. We can dive right into our projects. 3. Materials: We are going to need some key materials to begin. The first thing is water color paper, 300 SM cold press. About five sheets of five size. Next, we would need a round brush. This is a size six, but I think a size four will also work depending on the brand itself. Next we have a size four brush. Again, it could be a size two depending on the brand. Next, a bigger round brush of size 16. This is going to be great for our backgrounds. We will also be using acrylic paints for some of our work. Accordingly, we need a small round brush for the same watercolor paints. I'll be talking a little bit more about this in the color mixing video. We also would need a white paint. This is heavy body, you can use anything that you have at home. Finally, we'd need ear buds and you'll get to know as we proceed with our projects. Along with this, some of the normal elements that we always use like water pencil eraser and masking tape. 4. Project 1 - Berry Magic: Are you ready to dive into this incredible project? I have taped down my sheet and I'm directly painting the background. We're going to keep in mind where we play certain colors. The bright yellow goes right on top, and then we can go into the Indian yellow. Or if you have an orange that works well, then let's move into some lighter green colors. If you have mixed your own, you can go ahead and use that. As you can see, all I'm trying to do is just build up the color. As I move downwards, the bottom of our painting will be dark. It will be the darkest green that we can find. Maybe adding in a little bit of the gray. The top part remains very light bright. Keep in mind to smooh around your brush like I'm doing to avoid any brush marks. This is going to look a lot nicer and that way we can avoid any lines in the background. Now I'm adding a little bit more yellow along the diagonal and using a tissue to lift up some of that paint. This is going to clear out the way for our painting for today. Now quickly I wanted to show you what I'm exactly drawing because it's going to be hard for you to see it on our painting. I'm starting with simple circles to represent berries. You can see how at the bottom they were much bigger. And as I move upwards, they are smaller in size. Then you can go ahead and add some leaves. We're adding just a few, enough to really fill up the space. As we finish this, we will add in another layer later on, the stem with three leaves added the DF of this in the about section. Now that we've practiced this, let's copy out the same thing into our painting. The layer has completely dried and with a pencil, I can go ahead and draw out our cherries. Make sure that you can see your own drawing, which is very important. When we move into our next step, I'm switching over to my thinner brush. This is the six, I've taken, the darker green color, and I'm painting around all the elements that we drew in before. This takes a little bit of patience, but it results in such a beautiful painting that this is undeniably beautiful to create. What we're going to do is start with darker greens towards the bottom. And as we move upwards where the painting is in the lighter yellow shade, we're going to also change the greens and use lighter greens. That way we have a variety of greens going on and it goes in theme with what we were trying to do in the beginning. I've added in the sample to the left so you can see how the final look is. Meanwhile, you can see me paint layer by layer, just building up the color as we move upwards. Something that might happen when you're painting is certain areas might dry out. Here you can see that the line is very obvious, that area dried out. If it dries out, all you need to do is paint over that area again. And this lifts up the paint and then you can just smush it around and then that line goes away. This is quite an easy trick to go over areas that are drying up, so you don't have to worry too much about that as much as possible. Try to avoid lines within your piece, but it is natural that it happens because we are working in smaller sections, depending on where your based, some layers might just drive very quickly and you end up with patches, don't worry, because this is also going to work on our theme, which is the woodlands. It's going to give you that effect of grass and greenery and leaves at the background. It doesn't have to be perfect. It doesn't have to be one color. It can have shades, it can have patches. That's all part of the painting. Now that we are almost done at the bottom, make sure to use the darkest color if you can. You can even move into the gray for the bottom to really deepen out the color as we finish up the area. I'd like to just look over the piece and see if I missed out any areas or any places that I feel like there were lines that didn't look that great or that are very obvious. If that happens, just paint over those areas, that should help it. But again, as I mentioned, we want the pache look because that's what's going to look really great. I have managed to paint around our piece completely, which is great. We now move into our gray to add in another layer of leaves. These are going to be connected to what we did before. There are sections that look quite empty. This is your chance to add in leaves to fill in the space. I like to play around with small and big leaves to again, give a really nice dimension to the artwork. We are working our way upwards and maintaining the sizing, trying to go from big to small as I move up. Once we've completed our main plant, let's add in some more leaves along the sides of our piece. All of this is done with gray, and if you don't have gray, you can use black as well. As I mentioned in the color mixing section, we're now going to add in some dots. These are basically representing leaves along the piece. I like to do sets of three. All of this is with a green. Just to show you a little bit more of the leaves or the background, we switch to red to go into our cherries in case there are two cherries right next to each other. What I like to do is complete one, move into some of the other cherries and then come back to the second one. What this does is give different layers because one is a and that way the second one looks like it's underneath it and it gives the distinction of two different cherries. But if you do them all together, they merge and doesn't look as great. Now using a ear bird with yellow pigment, I'm adding some dots around the top of our piece. Make sure you pay attention to that. It's only in the top area where there's yellow. We're not going to add them at the bottom. It's not going to look as great. Just keep it upwards. Can add ins to our leaf. And finally, using white acrylic paint, I'm adding reflections to the cherries, or you could call them berries. I didn't really have a specific specific plant in mind when I did this. Just move upwards, slowly adding in that white, and you can see how this gives life to the berries. Rowing out our white tape for our completed piece. 5. Project 2 - Illuminating Deer: So this painting wasn't even on the list of projects, but I tried it out. I loved it so much that I had to add it to the class. It was just so mesmerizing and exactly the theme that I was going for, which was magical woodlands. And again, exploring different techniques that are very interesting and different from what we normally do with watercolors. So I had to add it in. I hope you guys enjoy it. Let's dive right in. We're going to start with painting our bright yellow in the middle, bottom of the paper. Center it out, and then go a little bit downwards. And that's why we're going to place our yellow. Now you can use an Indian yellow or an orange to continue with the sheeting. We're creating layers of color. Again, smushing around your brush so we don't end up with any brush strokes or any lines that we don't want using the biggest brush. This is great for just covering a larger portion of the piece. Now we move into our green, adding a light green all the way to the end and just blending out the layers. I'm making sure I work fairly quickly so it doesn't dry out. Adding the green thing to give an even look as we move all the way up. I'm going to go with the color. If you can pick a darker green, that would be great, or even the gray, that's a good idea. But we're going more deeper in color, away from the center to give a little texture, just out your wet of paint along the edges. This will blend out completely, but you will end up getting a nice dash of color in the background. Now we let it dry. I'm going to go into a rough drawing of the deer that we are drawing. The PDF is below so you can use it as your reference. I started with the head or the face of the deer. Now we add in the horns on either side, the antlers horns, I just realized, on either side. And then we go into the body. I think the most important part of the drawing is to get your feet as thin as you can because that makes it look really realistic. Pay attention to the feet, the front and the back. We want to choose a pose that's very obvious, that makes it look like a deer. Here, you can see it looks bold. It's a great representation of a deer. And that's why I decided to pick this for our piece. Going back to our painting. Make sure your background is completely dry. I actually like to let it dry naturally sometimes, just for like 10 minutes, and then use a dryer, because I feel like the layers settle down a lot better. Like you can see here. That looks so nice. Compared to if I just use my dryer immediately. I have noticed that sometimes I just need to have patience and wait. Having drawn out my dear, we can start with our painting. I'm going in with the bright orange, or if you have in yellow, you can use it. I'm going to be painting around our deer. I've switched into my thinner brush. This is the size six brush. I think it would be also called a size four depending on the brand. I'm just gently going over the entire deer, adding a lot of water so I can blend the remaining into the background. Once I've done going around the deer, just take a lot of water and mix it in and slowly work your way through the piece. We're going to pay special attention to the antlers, making sure that we get paint in between those ridges so it looks very natural and completes the work. Take your time with it. Don't rush it, because we want to make sure that it looks really great. I'm adding a lot of water along the edges to avoid any lines that are showing up. Completed. All the way you can see how I've left the area that is below grass, where the deer is standing. I've left that and now I'm just going to do the background for the deer. Continuing in with that orange, I've moved into my bigger brush so I can cover larger portions of the piece. You might have to go over some of the areas that you painted before to reactivate the paint in case it dried out. Going into the yellow and adding that in next, we're then going to go into green and continue adding in the green and just adding in layer by layer of color till we fill up the entire background. For the topmost section, we're going to use the darkest green that we have to build out our color. Again, try to avoid strokes. Smooh around your brush to avoid any lines. You can see how that looks. May not look the best, but don't worry, we wanted to have a very patchy look. Add in color if you feel like it needs a little bit more. Also notice how I didn't do a proper circle around the deer. It is hapizard and we want it to look that way. Can again go into the color. I'm adding green with a little bit of the gray to do the grass below the deer. I'm still using my thin brush to add in some strokes for the edge of the grass. We're going to add some parallel lines to represent the grass. And these are much more thinner, so you can see how that looks. Give it a more artistic look. Adding in dots to represent the gross. And you can see how that just completes that section. Now I'll be going back to my thinner and filling it up with the golden yellow and painting in between the feet the legs of the deer. A piece is coming along. We're going to let this dry a bit and then we can move into adding in our trees. For the trees, I'm taking my big brush just so I can sweep through the paint through a larger portion, a middle green color. You can see how I do the trunk of the trees and the branches creating a map, creating just lines connecting them to a central stem, a central trunk. I'm mixing up my word here, but you get the point of what I'm trying to do. I think seeing in this case is better than me explaining it. What's nice is you can see a little bit of the yellow on the right side of the tree, which is really interesting. That's because we did a billow previously of the background. I like how this looks overall. Let's add another one to, um, the left side of the piece, again following the same method. Now allow this to dry, then we're going to go in. I think this is our final layer. I am taking the dark color, which was the green mixed in with the gray. I'm continuing on with the grass and you can see how I've not done it all the way to the middle. I've left a little bit of gap where the deer is standing, so you can see that yellow show through. Then you have the dark green along the edges. Can add in some strokes to represent the grass we're now going to add in our tree. Very similar to what we did before, but I'm using the thinner that way I can control it more also because this is our main, main tree that's going to be visible, so we want to make sure it looks really great and natural. While this is drying, I'm going to go in and add in the leaves. For the leaves, all I'm doing is patches of paint. The trick here is to add in some smaller dots around these patches also smooshing around your brush, because that gives it a better look than trying to paint in the leaves. Those dots you can see looks really great and looks like some of the smaller leaves. Go ahead and dab out your brush for some splatters. Finally, we can add in some dots using the gray. Now, using our bird with yellow, let's add some dots here. I'm adding them more in the yellow section in case I add them in some of the darker areas. I'm just lifting up the paint using the back side or the other ear bud. You can lighten down the color or make certain sections thicker or bigger just by doing that. There we have it. Remove out your tape for our completed piece. 6. Project 3 - Bold Butterfly: We're going to start with another lovely project. The first step is to tape down your sheet. This is a five sheet that's been taped down, leaving maybe a centimeter along the edges. Now just to rough out and plan out the elements, starting off with the mushroom on the right side, this is going to be fairly big. Doesn't have to be too perfect in terms of the semicircle which is want to get something that looks like the mushroom. Now let's take a quick side practice session just to show you the butterfly we're going to do. It's super simple. We start off with two curves, equidistant from the center, then you have a rounded shape, another one for the bottom wings. For the inside, you can see how I'm doing a curve shape. And then three little layers, you have two more splotches. Bottom we have a oval, then a scallop, and then the scallop connects to the oval shape. This is super simple. It's not the perfect butterfly. But the end result is so beautiful because we use white and we play around with it that it looks very realistic. Yeah, I think it turns out amazing. The PDF of this is below for you to download as your reference. Now, doing the same thing on our painting, but I'm making it fairly big. Our butterfly is about, let's say 4 ". It's quite big. It does occupy space. It is the main element of this piece. I'm not going to do the inside of this because we're going to start painting the background and then later on I'll come back and do the inside. As we move through the piece, I'm taking in my middle brush. You can take your bigger one if you're comfortable with doing smaller sections. We're starting off with bright cadmium yellow along the bottom of the piece, switching to orange as we move upwards. And then we're going to add green as we go higher and higher up switching over to the green. Just painting out the remaining part for the butterfly itself. We're going to be a little bit careful the inside of the butterfly, where the wings are. We're going to have to keep the color yellow and orange and surround it with green. Watch me closely as I do that section. You can always pause your painting and once you get a clear idea, you can go ahead and continue. This is exactly what we need to do is paint around the wings, making sure that there's no green in the middle of the butterfly because that would ruin the entire effect. What I'm going to do is I'm going to take bright cadmium yellow, and I'm going to add it to the wings of the butterfly. Adding an orange, this creates a really nice shade within the butterfly wings. It gives it a little bit of variation. When we go into the next steps, it looks a natural compared to just having one flat color, moving into a little bit more of cadmium yellow, getting those colors blended in beautifully. When we're happy with it, we can switch over to the green and paint the remaining part all around the butterfly. You can see clearly now that only the butterfly section is yellow and orange and the rest of it is still green. If there's too much color that's come in, just use a tissue and dab out the areas of the wings so that you don't have too much of the darker color or darker green entering into the butterfly. Switching over to our round brush, we're going to use the thinner one size six and paint around these leaves going to be very careful. I'm going to go into the darker color. For this, remember to paint around the stems. Very important part. We're now going to paint on the stem. We're painting around it. I love how that looks. It almost looks like light was shining at the bottom of the forest floor and just illuminated the bottom. It's such a magical look. I really love trying this specific technique. Anytime I want to show light and make it very interesting and unique, it really makes the viewer think and stop and watch and wonder how this was possible. Definitely very fun to add into your artwork. I've sped up the process, but you can see me just kind of going through all of it. If you do have sections where you weren't sure you can see me paint, and that's going to help you a bit. But I'm just going starting section by section, going downward, and then slowly working my way to the left and then upwards. We can go in for darker, towards the left because that's going to look a nicer. Also, we want to build up that color, but as we go higher, we can maybe lighten it up. It doesn't have to be really dark green. It doesn't matter either way. There are no mistakes in this section. We're going to paint around the butterfly in this step so you can take your darkest green color and very carefully paint around the butterfly wings. I've made sure to take in the darkest, adding some of the gray to it. Now we're going to add our gray for the forest floor, trying to avoid any hash marks or harsh lines using a light water down mixture of the gray. Let's do the stock of the mushroom. After it has tried, let's switch into painting our mushroom cap. And I've taken an orange and then going in with red painting, the entire section can keep a little bit of white cap along the outline towards the right side. While this is trying, we're going to move into using dark to add in some smaller leaves to the forest floor. I've switched to my thinners brush and I'm adding some lines to the stock, adding those curves. For the bottom of the mushroom, we're going to also add in some dots to give it texture. Making the dots very, very small so it doesn't look like polka dots. Super important butterfly is the next step, similar to the drawing we had done before. So I'm using my pencil to draw out the same details, the curve shapes and the layers, so I have an idea of how the butterfly looks. We're going to use a thin, with gray and do the outlines for the butterfly. If you have black, you can use the black as it is. Just doing all of those wines of the wing, painting out the surrounding for the butterfly, all the way to the butterfly wing tips. We're going to add dots, just small dots in between the wing. This is going to give it a little texture and palance out the piece. We're going to have to let this whole thing dry. Meanwhile, let's move back to our mushroom. Take an acrylic paint and adding in white dots. These don't have to be perfect dots. As you can see, I'm just dabbing the paint. You can notice that the butterfly isn't really standing out in our background. We're going to use our white to do the antenna for the butterfly. We're going to add in white dots for the butterfly around the wings. That's why I suggested using a thinner brush. Make sure you don't use the same brush that you use for water colors. For acrylic, you will see your brush getting very ruined fairly quickly when you use it. For acrylic, it's better to have two different brushes that you use. For both, I'm adding thin lines along the edge of the wings and then bigger dots on top of that for the bottom. Again, thin lines along the edge. You can do the same for the other side. I feel like the white really brightens up the butterfly. And naturally this butterfly also has white spaces. It really lifts up the butterfly, makes it more realistic, and also makes it show through our background. Once we've done that, we're going to also add a very light outline just on top, along the bottom of the wings. You'll see me do this. Right now, just a very thin line. If you aren't comfortable using your brush, you can use a white pen for the same. And you can see how this now makes the butterfly stand apart from the background. It gives it a little bit more. I actually don't know how I would describe it, but basically it differentiates the two. Realistically, when you see butterflies in nature, light reflects on the wings and there is a little bit of shimmer. And that's what we're trying to create here. Just a few more steps to our piece. I'm taking my thin brush and I'm just doing the shadows for the mushroom using just semicircles at the bottom. Let's take a earbud, wet it, add yellow, and add some spots. Now I'm picking out areas that are much more lighter in color. If there are sections, that's where we want the yellow to be placed, you can have some bigger circles. This effect is meant to give the appearance of light sparkling overall. It gives it a very interesting finish to the piece. I always dab out the excess paint by using the dry side of the ear bud to mix in the colors a little bit more. That way you're not just ending up with polka dots of yellow paint. You can see me do this, just switching to the other side and just lifting up the paint, moving it around, you can see how the color also becomes a little bit more of a light green than a bright yellow. I love the piece to completely dry and we can remove out our tape along the edges to reveal a final painting. 7. Project 4 - Mystical Mushrooms: This is the longest project in this class. Get comfortable. Set aside some time to dive into your art. If you want to have a cup of tea nearby, that's great. I always have my marcher next to me. It's been my obsession for the summer. We start with taping down our paper. As always, this is an five sheet in case you missed out that information, and I'm starting with drawing out some mushrooms. This is fairly simple to do. I haven't added the PDF below. You can have a quick look just adding in those semicircles. It doesn't have to be really accurate because mushrooms really don't have like the perfect symmetricity. You just want to have a nice lump. We have three of them very close together on the left side. And then we can have two smaller ones on the right. Follow along as I draw the smaller mushrooms on the right side. Once you're happy with the base, we can begin painting. I'm using the bigger, but if you find it a lot harder, you can use a smaller brush because we're basically going to paint around these elements, these mushrooms. It could be a little bit tricky if your round big brush doesn't have a nice tip. If it doesn't have a thin tip like mine. If you're struggling, just go ahead, switch to your thinner brush. You can do the bottom half of the piece with it and then continue on to your bigger brush as we continue shading the background. I'm not going into the names of the greens as I had mentioned in the color mixing, you can see what I'm doing. I just mentioned the lighter green and darker green because, you know, if we go into the names, it really depends on what you view specifically. So here at the bottom side, I'm going for the middle green, so not too dark, too light, and we're just going to paint around. Now that we have completed the bottom section of the mushrooms, we can switch to our bigger brush if you haven't, we go into our darker green. I'm not using any yellow for this background, It's just going to be a play of the greens that either you have already or that you're mixing and using. I'm bringing it all the way to the top without actually adding a section for a darker color. So it's the same mix throughout. I hope that makes it clear, like when you see it, it's pretty noticeable. I haven't used any dark grace, nothing like that. I am trying to smoosh around my paint so that there's no brush marks when the background dries up. Now, I wanted to show you a quick drawing of the leaf we're going to do for this, for the background, because when I draw it on the actual background, you won't be able to see it. Hence, it's fairly simple. You can see how easy that is, just a curve of a stem and then you have leaves on both sides. And then as we move to end is just on one side, your background is completely dry. Either let it dry naturally or you can use a dryer. I like to let it dry naturally for like five, 10 minutes and then switch on my head dryer and just let it dry out. Now, with my pencil, I am, I'm drawing out the leaf on either side. The left is taller and the right is shorter. Let's switch to our thinner brush. This is the size six brush and I'm going to be painting around the leaf that we just did. Take your time. This is very tricky because you do need to remember to not paint the mushroom. So we're avoiding two different areas. It's okay just go one section at a time. Don't try to do all of it together can get very confusing. Another thing to note is I'm using the darker green. For this part, I will be using the darker green as well as gray. As I move upward to create some interest in the piece, I always switch around my colors. You can see how I was using the middle green, the darker green. And then I was painting, I've switched on to my lighter green. And then as I continue on, I might switch into the darkest. I just keep doing that. And that's such an easy way of transitioning between the colors. And they're all green, which is great, so there's not going to be too much of blending that needs to be done. They just would move into each other very easily and just look really nice, switching the color again to my dark cream. I find this process very calming and very meditative because you're just painting each section and letting your mind wander in a way. I also try to think of something specific. I generally am watching something. It's a great way for me to relax into the moment and just be very present. I'm going to speed up the process so you can follow along, you know what to do, so just go through each area. I'm leaving the middle section just doing the edges. And then I'm going to come to the middle, towards the end. Now for the middle, I'm switching into my darkest green. I'm also going to start using some gray to add more depth to this part. One thing to note is there's no wrong, you can't really make a mistake in terms of the color for this section. Don't worry about it. If it's very light, it's okay, because end of the day it's going to look amazing. Your project is going to look great. Don't worry too much saying, oh, she used the lighter color here. I need to follow that. We're almost done with our background, just adding in more darker greens to the top part of the piece. You can add in some dots and this gives the illusion of leaves just not very obvious, but it adds to the background. Now we're going to go into our mushrooms. I'm just erasing out any of the pencil marks from the leaves that I had drawn, but I made sure that my piece is completely dry before I do this. And that way I don't have any pencil marks on the mushroom. Switch to your thinner brush and we're going to do the stalk of the mushroom with a light gray. Just add a lot of water to the gray. If you don't have gray, you can use a black. But again, use a lot of water and just paint out the stock. I am just doing them on the left side. This shows that the light is coming from the right side. After we're done, I'm going to take a little bit more of the gray and we're going to add in the lines for below the mushroom. These are the flaps. If you look at, look at any mushroom. The quick curved lines connecting to the to give the mushroom more texture. Adding some dots with the gray. These are very tiny dots. We're not doing polka dots. Just a couple of them. And this gives it a little texture. While the gray layer is drying, we're going to add in some leaves with the gray along the edges of the bottom of the piece. Now even if you have painted it really dark, it's okay. It will still be noticed. Even if it isn't noticed, that's fine. It gives a really nice look in areas where it is noticed. Just continue adding some simple rounded leaves. You can pick whichever type you want. I'm just making it very simple and adding it to different areas at the bottom. We have only a couple of steps left. A big one is the mushroom itself. So I'm using a combination of orange and red. The orange lifts up the color and also gives the mushroom a little bit of a shading. I really like doing that because the color looks a lot more vibrant. So I added orange in the middle. And then I'm just going to paint in the red painting out all the way to the edges. It's okay if the orange mixes up with the red. You can see how edges kind of smosh around. That's fine. But you can still see that orange through the layers, which is really cool, adding in a little bit of water to the red. For those smaller mushrooms, we're going to use a ear bird with yellow. You can wet your ear bird, dip it in yellow paint, and then use that to add some dots. These are to show your light reflecting through the piece and it gives you a magical look. We're going to do it in sections which have a, let's say, lighter color. If there isn't a section that has lighter color, just them along the top of the piece and I'm going to bring them all the way to the bottom. This just targeting the top part, you can see how I add in, some of them being bigger circles, you can play around with that as well. If it's too bright, just remove a little bit of that paint using the other side of the ear bud. Now, since the red of the mushroom has completely dried, I'm going to take in my white acrylic paint and add in white spots at them randomly. They don't have to be perfect circles. The small ones, we're not going to add it to them. Again, letting this dry completely. When it's dry, we're going to add some shading. This is using R. Gray can see how I'm just doing a semicircle at the bottom of these white splotches that gives it shadow so it looks like an actual mushroom. It looks realistic as well. The painting to completely dry and then we're going to remove out our edges, the tape, making sure we have a crisp edge. This is our final project. 8. Final thoughts and information: I want to thank you for joining my art class using watercolors. We explore the world of colors and created some stunning artworks together. I hope you had a great experience and learned some new techniques that you can continue to develop. Please try the projects and add them to the project tab. I'd love to see them. It's always such a great experience seeing how artists interpret my work. Please take a moment to leave a review so others can learn about your experience. Have a great time and looking forward to seeing you in my next class.