Monsoon Inspired Moody Landscapes- 5 Day Watercolor Class

1. About the Class- Overview : [MUSIC] Finally, it's that time of the year when the purged earth, size and relief with spells of soothing rains or scorching summers. Monsoon is a blessing to all. It's a time when nature replenishes itself and you get to see large greenery around. Though I am not a great fan of this season, but I definitely enjoy sipping a cup of hot tea or a beverage with some pacoras or Fritos and watch the rain drip away through the glass windows. If you are someone who loves this season and associate yourself with rain, then this is the class for you. Hello guys, I'm Neelam Royan, artist and an art educator based out of Bangalore, India. In case, if you are joining me for the first time and don't know much about me, I go by the name at the rate, nilsarartsy_cove on Instagram, where you will discover my passion to paint nature with various mediums such as watercolors and gouache. Though I have been into watercolors for over three and-a-half years now. Watercolors has become my absolute love. Apart from Instagram, you could also find me on Facebook, Pinterest, and YouTube, the link to which is given on my Skillshare profile. I welcome you all to another Skillshare class which is inspired from the Vettii monsoons. This class is going to run for five days, where each day we will try to capture the essence of monsoon through various landscapes. We're going to start with a stormy sky followed by a thunderstorm, tornado, rainbow, and finish it with a soothing rain. Does this look exciting to you guys? If yes, then join me in and let's take you through a quick class overview. We will be kick-starting the class by discussing all the supplies that we are going to need for creating our class projects, followed by a section wherein I discuss about various watercolor papers which are available in the market and what to look for when you are choosing the right watercolor paper. If you're an absolute beginner or intermediate artists, I would recommend you not to skip this section. This section would also demonstrate how differently your watercolor paper varies from brand to brand. I have also added in a cloud study section and if you were someone who were always skeptical or didn't know how to start painting different kinds of clouds, then this would be a best start. Pause this, I have added in this section wherein I discuss the color palette and the elemental composition before we begin with the class projects. This would help you to be ready with the supplies and the colors that we would be needing for our class projects. Come on now, get your supplies ready and brew a cup of hot tea or a coffee, and let's start painting this beautiful monsoon landscapes with watercolors. I look forward to seeing you in the next lesson of this class. 2. Types of Watercolor Paper: [MUSIC] In this section, we're particularly going to talk about the various watercolor papers that are available in the market. You might have entered a store and you come across various different brands of watercolor paper along with varying prices, and that often leaves you confused. What watercolor paper should I go for? Obviously being a beginner or an intermediate artist, we all try to take a paper which is little economical than the others. But in doing so, are we compromising on its quality? In this section, I'm going to address all of that. So here is an example, this watercolor paper by Saunders Ford is fine grain paper. Now here in my hand, I have paper from Lanaquarelle. This is also 100 percent cotton, 300 GSM is the thickness of the paper. But what is the difference? It is the texture that the paper has. Now, this is also a cold press watercolor paper, but it is rough. Now, let me show you the comparison. So I have, on the other hand, Arches paper which is fine grain. Now, when you compare both Lana and Arches you see the texture of this Arches paper is somewhat, very similar to that of the Lana, but just by looking at the texture, will we be able to judge about the paper? No, we will need to try this paper out to understand the behavior, how the paint and the water is absorbed. Now here is another example which is Fabriano's rough paper, just like Lana, how it was rough, but look at the difference in the texture. Here in this paper, it is much more textured, it is much more groovy. Can you see the tooth of the paper? It's so ingrained, it is so heavily textured. I do not prefer working in such heavily textured paper, but if you are somebody who loves these rough track textures, then maybe you could try them out. It is always on our what paintings do we prefer and what surface we prefer to work on depends. Now when you see the comparison, feel it through the hand. This paper from Fabriano is much rough than that of the Lana. So this was an example and a comparison of how different brands will manufacture different surfaces of the same paper. That was the rough paper. You see, this is the Lana's fine grain paper. So you can see the drastic difference between the textures. The Fabriano paper obviously is much more heavily textured than that of the Lana. Now, this is just by physical interpretation. Now, let's take a look at another example. Which one do I go for? Yes, this Hahnemuhle's block. Now, this is also a cold press paper. This is also 100 percent cotton paper, but what is the difference? You will see the difference being here, mentioned as the matte fine grained paper. So this is also a cold press paper, but here the differences, it is matte. Look at the texture. It is just like a plain hot press paper, it almost feels like that. Now, this is another hot press paper by Lana, I have not yet open it, but I will show you some other example of how the hot press paper surface will feel like. But this is not a hot press paper, this is a cold press paper, but it is matte, but also the feel of the paper is hot press. So this was from Hahnemuhle, see again the brand difference. So each of these paper brands will have certain manufacturing process due to which the texture and the feel of the paper is very different. Now this one is from Etchr Labs, the perfect sketchbook, which is 100 percent cotton and 300 GSM is the thickness of the paper. Now, Etchr sketchbook too has lots of many variations, some are 200 GSMs, some are 300 or lesser than that, also there are some gouache papers also. So this one is particularly for watercolors, look at the beautiful texture. The beauty of this sketchbook is that all the pages have the same texture, even though backside of the paper, so you can paint on the front as well as on the backside of the sketchbook. Now, another important factor that you must remember when getting your own watercolor paper is the thickness of the paper. So this one is from Arches, and here it is mentioned as 300 grams per square meter, which is nothing but the thickness of the paper. Also, it is mentioned in pounds, which is one for TLB. The similar thing is mentioned on this Saunder Ford's paper. Now here is a handmade paper block. Now here also, the GSM is mentioned, which is mentioned as 270 GSM. Now, this is a paper which behaves like Chitrapat, and you can see how lanky the paper looks because it is not 300 GSM, it is 270 GSM. So when you go for heavy washes in this paper, the paper starts warping up even though it will not tear apart, but it will warp and it will bulge out for heavy washes. So this is the difference and that is why it is recommended that you go for 300 GSM as the thickness of your watercolor paper. Also, one more specialty of this handmade paper is that you have seen the surface or I'll show you once again. So the surface of this paper is just one side of this surface is workable. The reverse side is not textured, so only one side of the surface is textured and it will try to hold or absorb the water. As you can see here, this side is textured. You can see the green, whereas on the reverse side, it is very plain. Now I will show you some other brands. Now here I have this paper from Brustro, which is 25 percent cotton. So mostly 25 percent cotton papers are the ones which are often called as student grade papers. Now Canson Montval is a example of such paper. It is very, very similar to this paper. As you can see, this is not 100 percent cotton paper and this is not advisable to go with watercolor paintings. For smaller watercolor illustrations, yes, maybe you could use this, but for a full-fledged watercolor paintings where heavy washes and wet-on-wet techniques will be implied, this paper will not do good. [MUSIC] Now, the next brand that I'm going to show you is from Neveskaya Palitra, their White Nights watercolor paper. Now this paper is also 100 percent cotton paper. The front side of this paper is all written in Russian, so you're in the reverse side, the backside, you will have it mentioned in English. So it's a natural white and fine-grained paper, 100 percent cotton, and let me show you the texture. I use this paper for very small sky paintings, and I was not really very happy with the results that I have obtained. Now, when you compare this matte finish paper from Hahnemuhle and this paper from White Nights, you can feel the difference, it's almost similar. There is no texture at all in this paper. This paper will do very good when you go for this glowing Northern Light skies on this paper because the inks will flow more easily here without any resistance to the surface. So the skies will come really good in this kind of a plane surface papers unlike the groovy and the textured papers, where the paint gets trapped into those grooves and surfaces. So that was all the difference, and I have been trying and experimenting with different watercolor paper just to find the best compatible paper for my particular style, and I love Arches for that very same and I grew very fond of Saunders Ford as well as this Etchr lab sketchbook too. Now here is another brand, which is Stonehenge Aqua cold press. Now, this is also 300 GSM paper, as you can see, 140 is the LB mentioned out here, and the other one is 300 LB, which is 600 GSM. So this is quite thick. Can you see how thick the paper is? Even Arches has a variant of 300 LV. These papers are really expensive and really, really thick. The other is this hot press paper. You can feel it. There is no surface at all. Just the paper feels heavier because it is 300 GSM. So that's all about this section. I'll meet you in the next section where I will be talking about and giving you a demo of some of these papers and showing you the difference between professional grade, student grade, and academic grade papers, along with some other professional grade branded papers. So I'll show you the difference, how the paper behaves differently, what is the water holding capacity and all of that. So see you in the next section. 3. Knowing your Watercolor Paper- Paper Quality: [MUSIC] In this section, I'm going to examine different types of professional academy student grade and various other brands of professional grade watercolor papers. To start with our examination, first, I'll just take you through the brands that I'm going to select. For this student grade paper, I have chosen Fabriano, 25% cotton. For professional grade, I have chosen Arches, which is 100% cotton paper. For academy grade paper, I have this Baohong watercolor paper, which is also 100% cotton and 300 GSM is the thickness of the paper. This is how the paper looks in general. These are the brands and we're going to test it out. On my left, I have got Arches professional paper. In the center, I have got Fabriano student grade, which is 25% cotton, and towards the right corner, I have got Baohong academy, 100% cotton. Let's begin testing our papers. I'll directly go with wet-on-wet method because this is the real test of the papers, applying a flat wash of water on my Arches paper. The moment I start layering the paper with this flat wash, I see that the paper is absorbing the water really fast, so let's test it out with my dilute paint and look at the spreading of that colors on that paper. How beautifully the paint is spreading, the paper is slowly releasing and absorbing the colors. Such beautiful thing. Can you see the spread? This is how the Arches paper behaves. Now let's test out the second paper, which is Fabriano 25% cotton, which is a student grade paper. Instead of Fabriano, you can also go ahead with any student grade paper that you have. Canson and Montville is also one category, Montville or Canson XL. Either of these, you can go ahead and test it out. Now let's start. The moment I start layering the paint, I feel that the paper has not really absorbed any water. See the paper has this surface and the water is just sitting on the surface, and so it's a paint and hence the paint is also not spreading across the paper since the water has not been absorbed at all by the paper, how limited the feathering or the spread of the paint is on the paper. This is how your student grade papers will behave. Now, again, coming to the third category that is the Baohong academy grade paper. This is also 100% cotton paper. I'm making sure that the paper has no standing pools of water. Now let's start layering the paint on this paper surface. This feels much better than that Fabriano paper since this is 100% cotton paper. But yet I cannot see any bleeds happening in the paper though. There is no spreading of paint at all, so this is not how exactly you should be looking for the paper. See how very limited almost the same as that of Fabriano, isn't it? The test result is very clear. Arches is the clear winner out here because of its beautiful absorbing capability, as well as the spread, how beautifully the spreads are and such smooth edges that we have got. Did you see? This is because the sizing of this paper is just perfect, unlike Fabriano where the sizing is just too much. They have used some starch-like substance to size the papers due to which it is not really absorbing any water. The third one is our Baohong. This is almost the same as that of Fabriano. A little better because it is 100% cotton. Yet the bleeds are not as beautiful as the Arches because this is an academy level and Arches is a professional grade paper. Now, one thing that I noticed in Baohong is that the paint started spreading a little bit more in a better way once I think the papers started absorbing the water, but not like Arches. Arches paper is still wet, whereas the Fabriano is just dry, and Baohong also feels very dry. Arches here has better water holding capacity than all the three other papers. Now, here let's examine three professional grade papers, all of which are 300 GSM in thickness and 100% cotton. For the professional artist grade, I am again using Arches as one of the brands, second one is Lana paper, and the third one is Saunders Ford or St Cuthberts Mill's paper. I have arranged it in the following order. It's all labeled down with the marker. The left-hand corner is the Arches, the center one is Saunders Ford, and the last is Lana. Now for the Arches paper, I am again going ahead with wet-on-wet technique. Wet-on-wet gives you faster comparison as compared to the other techniques, because this is the main test of how good the paper is and how good its water absorbing and paint releasing capability is. I'm wetting the paper at the very same time and we'll start layering the paint on the paper simultaneously. We're starting with the Arches. Now you can clearly start seeing the results out here. Look at the spread and the bleeding of Arches paper. Saunders Ford is still not too bad, it is also spreading, but not as much as Arches. But yes, that's why Arches paper is regarded as the best professional grade papers and all watercolors just love this paper. But Saunders Ford is also equally good. You can see how beautifully and soft edges that we have got for both for Arches and Saunders. But for Lana, the result was not that great. The spread of the paint, I would say it is a bit more irregular and uneven for Lana, but in Arches, it is beautifully and smoothly spread out. See the beautiful bleeds. It has nicely released the paint off the paper, and see in Saunders Ford also nice smooth edges. But for Lana, the spread is not that much because the paper is quickly absorbing water, but it is not releasing the paint as much as it should. This was the difference between these three professional grade papers. Now you can experiment this at home and find the best paper that you own. In this way, you can always experiment and find out which is your paper which is the best fit for your paintings. Even in here, in the category of professional or artist grade papers, Arches is the clear winner, second goes to Saunders, and third is for Lana. Now, I had coincidentally arranged the papers in the same order. But anyhow, it was a good session. I hope you will have drawn useful insights from this exercise that we have done. Even though there is a price variation in all of these three professional brands, Arches being the most premium than all the three. Yes, the quality of the paper does matter. Hence, it comes with the price. I'll see you again in the next lesson where we will be doing this beautiful clouds study, which will be helpful in the coming class projects. [MUSIC] 4. Materials Required: [MUSIC] I'm so glad to see you guys join me in this section. Let's quickly get started with the supplies. Let's get started with our very first supply, that is a paper. Now here is a sketch book, a customized one from my very dear friend, Ashwini, who is also known by the name as September Fleur on Instagram. Also, there is this website link in case if you want to get a customized sketchbook for yourself, you could go ahead and check out her website. The paper in this sketchbook is a cold pressed, 100 percent cotton paper from Fabriano. This is one of my most favorite papers when it comes to watercolor paintings. Now, the thickness of this paper is 300 GSM and it is cold press, so it has got some fine-grain texture to it. Now, this sketch book I'll be using to swatch out the colors and to show you the elemental composition. Now here comes the paper sheets, so the paper cutouts for the class projects. Now, this paper too is from Fabriano, the same paper. This is Fabriano artistical paper, which is 100 percent cotton, acid free cold pressed, fine-grain paper. Now the size of the paper is A4 size, that is 28 into 19 centimeter, I suppose. I'll just quickly measure it up for you guys. This is the breadth and length so 28 is the length and 19 is the breadth. If you want, you can go ahead with the smallest size paper such as this A5 size too would also work so it is totally up to your choice. Choose any size of the paper that you are comfortable with. Now, the next supply that I'm going to discuss is our board. Now, you would need a surface where you can stick these papers right work on. You would need a non-absorbing surface where you can stick down the paper and paint. I'm here using this acrylic sheet board, which is a non-absorbing surface. Since we are dealing with watercolor paintings, you need a surface which is non-absorbing and this is actually transparent but I have just retained this brown cover on top of that sheet which comes from the manufacturer so I just like it this way, so the brown color. This itself is also non-absorbing, so there is nothing to worry about. That's all about the board. Now, let's take a look at the next supply. Next is a watercolor paints. Now the watercolor paints that I'm using in this class is from PWC, which is from ShinHan art. This is a Korean watercolor based company, just like Mijello Mission Gold Class but I really like these colors because they are very vibrant, rich, and creamy. Now these are artist grade paints, but feel free to use any watercolor paints which are available with you. You need not go ahead and use the very same brand that I'm using. Go ahead and use any watercolor paints that are available with you. Now coming to the colors, do not worry. I'll be showing you or swatching out all the colors that we will be using for creating our class projects before each project, each day so there is nothing to worry about. You can get your colors ready by then, or else you could watch the entire class and get your palette set accordingly. If you're using watercolor tubes, you would need to squeeze out the paints onto a surface. Here, I'm using this ceramic palette and a folding palette. Now, use whatever is available with you. Instead of these pallets, you can go ahead and search in your kitchen about some ceramic plate or any plate that would also do the job of a palette. Now, we will be talking about masking tape or washi tape. There's actually not much to talk about it. You need something to fix or tape down your paper onto your board. For that, we will be using a masking tape. If you want to have this clean borders and to give a clean look to your painting, you can use your masking tapes or else you can just go free hand without any borders as well. The choice is totally up to you. You can very well skip this part if you are using sketchbook. Now comes the next important supply other than the paper that is our brushes. Here I'm going to be using this hockey brush or hake brush from Silver Atelier. This is very soft, made up of goat hair and I love using this brush because it really gives nice effects. Because of the soft bristles, it is easier to do various lifting techniques to give that more softer look to the skies and here is a substitute of that. You could also go ahead and use Neptune series brush from Princeton of wash brush. Now next would be our round brushes. Here I'm using my all-time favorite brushes, especially the ones from Silver Black Velvet series. This is a Size number 12 brush, size number 8 brush and our size number 2 from the same series of Silver Black Velvet. Now, apart from these brushes, I'm going to keep some more brushes handy. That is my rigger or a liner brush from Princeton Heritage Series. This is a synthetic brush. Now, I love this brush because it has got a very long bristles and one more a tiny one, which is for mini detailing. This is a mini detailer brush from a local brand stationary. That's all about the brushes. The other supply is a tissue paper. Now this is very important, especially when you're painting skies. You just cannot be messing it out. Apart from this, we would be requiring two jars of clean water one to rinse our brushes and the other to lay flat wash with water when going for wet on wet technique. Now, that is all, and yes, we will be needing some basic stationary such as a scale, pencil and an eraser to do preliminary pencil outline or sketching. That is all the supplies that we are going to need for this class. I'll see you again in the next lesson. 5. Cloud Study: Types of Clouds: [MUSIC] Welcome back and in this section, we will be discussing about various clouds. Cloud formations happen at multiple layers in the atmosphere, which is a defining factor of how clouds behave whether they form into a massive weather system or just drift lazily along. Meteorologists have classified clouds based on their shape and how high up they hover in the troposphere. Here is the chart which classifies the clouds into three main categories based on their altitude. The types of clouds can be divided into three levels that is the high altitude, middle altitude, and low altitude, each in turn with its own main groups of clouds. Here is an example of high altitude clouds which is cirrus and cirrocumulus. cirrus and cirrocumulus are the most common types of clouds and they're thin and crispy with chin like appearance. The next is cirrostratus. The only white cirrostratus, clouds signifies stored moisture in them hence indicating a light shower of rain. This cirrostratus clouds when they descent to mid levels, they form alter cumulus clouds, which are also known as social clouds because they appear in groups and have grayish white color with some darker portions than the others. Next coming to altostratus, these are bluish or grayish color sheets which cover all or most part of the sky. Next is the cumulonimbus or nimbus clouds, which are responsible for thunderstorm. Coming to stratus clouds, which are again low altitude clouds, which often appear as gray sheet, which blocks out the sun and is responsible for precipitation. Coming to cumulus clouds, which are my favorite. They are detached and fluffy clouds with clearly defined edges and they also have some gray areas. Coming to cumulonimbus, which is having a mountain-like shape, and they are responsible for hurricanes or severe thunderstorms. Coming to the last one, which is our stratocumulus, which are rounded masses of clouds with gray or white patches. Now that you know different types of clouds, you are now certain that nimbus and cumulonimbus clouds are the ones which are responsible for thunderstorms and dreams. The typical monsoon clouds. Come on now, so let's go ahead and do some cloud study with watercolors. I have divided my paper, which is an A3 size paper, into six equal squares. Now, going ahead with the first square and I'll be going with wet-on-wet technique here, we will be painting our cirrus clouds. Wet-on-wet technique means layering of flat wash of clear water on your paper, pre-wetting your paper before you start painting on it. Here with wet paint, I start layering the colors and you can see I'm creating this thin lines and strokes which are facing upwards with just the tip of my brush, make sure that you leave certain whitespaces or gaps in between to create those white sheet-like appearance of the clouds. Since these are high altitude clouds and form sheet-like appearance so I will be going ahead and using dab brush to lift out certain areas or portions of my wet sky and to create those fluffy clouds. Next coming to our cumulus clouds, which are also known as cirrocumulus and altocumulus, based on where they are found in high altitudes or mid-level altitudes so I'm going ahead with, again, wet-on-wet technique. This is my most preferred technique because I love to have skies which has smooth edges. I have layered my paper with nice flat wash with water, a uniform one. Now with just the tip of my brush, see the clouds that I'm trying to create over here leaving out certain whitespaces so this is the cauliflower effect that I'm trying to create over here so use just the tip of your brush and go ahead with ultramarine blue. That is the color of the sky, so just use the tip of your brush, start with some angled strokes and in-between create smaller white pockets. You create those quality flower shapes. I'm going to repeat the same for the rest part of the square so keep watching. Here's another cool technique that you can use to create this clouds so let it with an uniform code of base color and then use your tissue paper, crush it, and then with very small rounded shape of the tissue paper, try lifting out the paint from the wet surface and behold, we have our cauliflower shaped clouds. Next we will be looking at altostratus clouds here. There will be some darker gray areas because these clouds are also responsible for some amount of precipitation. I'm going with wet-on-wet technique again so let your paper with a uniform coat of water and starting with the base of the sky here I have used Naples orange. Now with your blue with long slanted strokes from the right corner or left corner, any side which you feel like you start with this shapes of the clouds and lead the paper, always remember to leave out certain whitespaces in-between. Now we will start layering with my indigo with burnt sienna mixed paint. See the brush movements. I'm using very long slanted strokes and facing though, strokes little upwards and creating those shorter strokes in between. Now using this dabbing motion, I'm just rubbing my wet brush on this wet surface or area. Once you are happy with your sky, just leave it there. Do not try to rework or overwork when your paper has started to dry because you will have this nasty hard edges and spoil the sky in entirety. [MUSIC] 6. Clouds Study : Types of Clouds Part 2: [MUSIC] Continuing with our cloud study, now it's time to paint our nimbo stratus clouds. If you have known, nimbos is derived from a Latin word, which means rain, and stratus means spread out. These gloomy clouds are the heavy rain bearers which form thick and dark layers of cloud that can completely block out the sun. With that, you have an idea what we are going to do. We are going to use some really dark shades along with lighter shade to bring out that intense dramatic look. Also we are going to go and work on wet-on-wet technique because you need these clouds to look dramatic and have those softer looking edges as well. Here I have used ultramarine blue and spreading it out on the paper in certain random shapes and directions using just the tip of my brush. Make sure that in all this cloud study, you use our exercise water control or use limited water in your paint. Your paint should not be too runny because then it will be a total disaster or mess. Now, I am using my indigo. You can see the indigo. You can mix a little bit of your browns as well, like that of burnt sienna or burnt umber into your indigo or your blue mix to create those darker tinge of grayish cloud. I have mixed little bit of my browns and my indigo. If you do not have indigo, you can go ahead and use your paint gray as well. This is how we are going to go ahead and create this dark and dense clouds with just the tip of my brush, directing the colors to move, flowing, and freely on the paper. Leaving certain gaps is necessary because that will bring out the white parts of the cloud as well, which will look like the sun's rays are trapped into it and which is getting illuminated. Because of that very same reason we are leaving these little gaps or pockets of whites paces. I'm going to go and make those white pockets little bit more prominent by using just the damp tip of my brush and lift out the colors. Now, at the bottom, lower end, I will just go and use a little bit of raw sienna to give the clouds a little streak of that sunlight color over there and that's it. I'm not going to do anything more. Now using just my damp tip of my brush, the paper is still wet enough for me to create this, again, movement in the clouds. To show the wispy movement in the clouds, I'm going to go and use this damp tip and lead the indigo color since the papers is already semi wet. Now, if your paper has started to dry out completely, avoid doing this step. Make sure that your paper is wet for you to do this. This is exactly the same way how we are going to create our clouds for the very first project. Now moving on to our next one, which is a stratus clouds, which is also a low-level or low altitude clouds. I'm going to go ahead and lay a flat wash of water on my paper because again, we're going to go wet-on-wet. Do not Worry, the last cloud we will be going with wet-on-dry technique. But for now, just lay out flat wash with your clean water on your paper and start with this random strokes with just the tip of your brush using any color of your choice. I want to make this color cloud look little colorful. I'm going ahead and using my nipples orange, but you can go ahead and stick to your normal blues and grays of the clouds that is totally up to you. Here, try observing my brush movements very closely. I am not completely covering up going to the nipples orange with my blues. I'm leaving some white gaps in between for the colors to spread and blend beautifully because the paper is still wet. Once you have layered in your blues, now it's time to create some of that darker clouds amongst this group of clouds. I'm going to layer my indigo or the mixture of my burnt sienna and my indigo grayish mix into some of these areas and do the step only when your paper is wet. My paper feels to be drying up quickly, so I will just stop at this. My paper is starting to dry out. Can you see those edges of those darker clouds that it has formed? Because the paper had started to dry out. Now I will let it dry. Now it's time to go with our cumulus, the cotton candy clouds. Here I'm going with wet-on-dry technique and I'm just demarcating those cotton candy shape of the cloud using my ultramarine blue. Now, I'll be filling out the top part of the sky with my ultramarine blue. Whenever you are going with wet-on-dry technique, always remember that you make your paint mix a little watery so that you are able to cover larger surface on the paper. [MUSIC]. Now it's time to start with some of that grayish areas where it is laden with moisture. For that I am again going to go ahead and use the same indigo plus burnt sienna mix that I had created and from just the right side of that curvy or the cotton candy cloud, I'm going to layer this paint. Now here do not try to cover the entire area, use the tip of your brush to make some shapes and contours to the cloud. Using the damp brush just try to wet around these area's not bringing too much of water into it here, just the damp brush and you move around the colors. In there I'll go ahead and create some more shapes of those cotton candy shapes in between those spaces. Now try to blend out the hard edge that you have got where we had gone with wet-on-dry technique and do not go near to the lighter edges of those clouds. Retain it as such like that. This will give dark clouds that beautiful 3D effect. [MUSIC] I'm just going and darkening some of that right corner of that cloud. Now, do this very soft handily with just the tip of your brush to give that cloud the 3D effect of the grayish clouds in there. I'm loving how the cloud is coming to shape and especially the white contrast borders the edges that it has got. The cloud has really come very beautifully. This is how you can create these clouds and in between you can go lift out certain areas over there to create some more of those cotton candy effect. [MUSIC] That's it, I'm not going to overwork this cloud. I'll leave it to dry. My paper has dried thoroughly and it's time to peel off our masking tapes or the washy tapes from all the sides. I hope you have enjoyed painting this cloud study with me. Do practice this because this is really going to help you understand your paper that you are working on and the wetness that you need to work on. I'll see you again in the next lesson with that Day one project. 7. Color Palette -Day 1: Hello guys, welcome to Day 1, and we're going to paint this beautiful stormy sky with canola fields for our Day 1 project. Without any further ado let's quickly dive into our section where I'm going to explain all about the colors that we are going to use for creating our Day 1 project. I will be been using paints from Xin Han arts, PWC watercolor range. The first color that I'll be showing you is lemon yellow PY81. This is a very nice and light fast, semi-opaque color. The second is cobalt blue. Also the pigment information is PB28. This is also a very transparent color. I love this using for my skies. The next is leaf green color. Now, this color is totally an optional color and is made up of three pigments. This is not a pure pigment color. Now, the next is the sap green color. If you have sap green in your color palette, you need not go ahead and use leaf green this color alone will do the work. Next would be my blues, especially indigo. I love using this for the stormy depiction of the sky. This is PB66 and the other one is Payne's gray. Now if you do not have indigo, you can go ahead and use your Payne's gray. This is made up of two pigments, PB66 and PBK31. Now here's another alternative to your cobalt blue in case if you do not own cobalt blue, you can very well go ahead and use your French Ultramarine blue also to paint the sky. [MUSIC] Now that you have brief idea about all the colors that I'm going to swatch out. Let's quickly do the swatching study. Now in case if you're a beginner and you do not own any artist grid supply where your pigment information is given, this swatching study, the swatches that I'm creating for each of these colors would help you to choose your colors according to the shape that I'm using. Hence, I have swatched this colors so that you can get a closer look at the shades of the color. [MUSIC] Most of the other colors we have discussed in the previous section. Now here I wanted to show you how you can mix your darker shade of green just by mixing your sap green along with indigo. Here is the shade that you would obtain. Now, depending on the indigo that you would be using, your darker green shade would depend a lot on it. If you use an indigo shade which is closer towards black or Payne's gray, it would be very much darker, like how I have obtained here. [MUSIC] 8. Elemental Composition -Day 1: [MUSIC] Thank you for joining in. In this section, here, I'm going to discuss about the composition of our class project 1. Here, the sky is going to be our main focal element, followed by the mid ground and the foreground, which is going to be our canola field. Now let's walk you through each and every element step-by-step. The first element that we are going to create is our main focal subject, which is a sky with some dramatic intense dark clouds, because here we're depicting a stormy sky using our wet-on-wet technique, that is layering my wet paint on the wet paper surface. We are going to go ahead and create this dramatic, intense stormy sky. Now, if you are joining me for the first time here, I would recommend you that you go ahead and take up my class on 15 Days of Expressive Watercolor Skies, where I have demonstrated tips and tricks to paint this gorgeous, and intense dramatic clouds. Now, whenever you are painting clouds or trying to attempt to paint a dramatic sky, always remember that use a variation of lighter as well as darker tones to create the drama in your skies. Here, for example, I have used that cobalt blue as a part of the sky, which is not too intense, but a very lighter shade. To create the drama, I'm going ahead and adding this intense darker tones of my Payne's gray or instead of Payne's gray, you can also go ahead and use your indigo. This is just a demo example for you guys to warm you up to the technique that we're going to use for our class project 1. Do not worry, the sky will be in much more details when I start with them in project. Now moving on to our next element, which is the mid ground here, I'm going to paint some bushes or shrub-like structures out here, you could also call it some vegetation. Here we are going to go ahead with wet-on-dry technique. If you want, and if you are an intermediate artist, you know how wet your paper is, you can also go ahead and do this technique when your paper is just about to dry so that it looks blurred in the distance. Now coming on to our foreground element, which will be our canola field, here, we will be using two colors, that is our sap green. We will be using a tonal contrast of a lighter and a darker green values for creating the greenery around the canola fields, and the flower of the canola fields, we will be depicting it with the help of lemon yellow. I have fore started with the plant of the canola, so here I'm going ahead with darker tones in between that sap green. Here, observe my brush movement, I'm trying to push the colors from down to the upwards direction. See the brush bristles out here, my brush is just dry. I'm just trying to move around the wet paint on my paper surface using just the tip of my brush, and hence, I get those sharp, pointy strokes of the grass blades. Now once you are satisfied with that, we will be starting out with the flower part. For the flower part, I'm using my lemon yellow color, but I will suggest to you that you have another color such as cadmium, yellow deep, or mix a little bit of orange with your white quash and create pistol yellow or orange shade, which we will be using just to create a little bit more dimension to this canola flower, we will be just adding those drops in between certain places where we have left those white spots or gaps. [MUSIC] That is all about canola fields, I'm done with it. Now, this is how our elements are going to come together and make our landscape. We will be starting with sky, followed by a midground, and then painting our foreground, which will be our last step. See you in the next lesson. 9. Day 1: Stormy Sky with Canola Fields: [MUSIC] Hello, hello. Thank you for joining in and like always, I'm going to tape down my paper on all four sides with the help of masking tape. Here I have taped down my paper on all four sides on this non-absorbing board here I have used an acrylic sheet board to tape down my paper and now to tilt my paper facing down, I will be using a smaller sized masking tape to just tilt the board as I have positioned the board out here as you can see so that when I start painting the clouds, the colors on the red background start moving downwards. As already discussed in their elemental composition section, I will be using two-thirds of the paper for our sky, since our sky is the main subject element in this landscape and the rest of the paper I will be using to create a canola field. To create a horizon line, I have used this very thin masking tape. Now I'm going ahead and layering my paper with a flat wash of clear water. To lay an even coat of flat wash here, I'm using my hake brush from Silver Atelier series. Now you can use any broad flat brush that you have got and do this process, make sure that your paper is fully and uniformly wet before you start layering your paint on the paper. Now here you would have observed that I have dipped just the tip of my brush in water and I'm trying to reactivate my paint. This would ensure that my brush is not loaded with too much of water and I'm having the right amount of paint, making the paint consistency a little thicker, not runny or watery. Now, observe my brush strokes. I'm going ahead with some angled brush strokes at starting from the right-hand corner. Before my paper starts getting dried out, I will go ahead and quickly create my darker shades of blue, if you do not have indigo, you can use your ivory black that you have got because it has light brownish tinge to it and you can mix in any of your darker blues to create this darker mix for the clouds. My paint mix is ready now it's time to paint clouds. I'm just using the tip of my brush and some angled strokes to create this dramatic effect of the sky. Now here I will be using different tonal variation of this darker mix. Sometimes I will just go in and add in some of that cobalt blue with my mix. I'm not going to wash my brush you'll see my brush is not too watery, the paint mix is at the right consistency. It is not too watery, or runny because runny or watery paint will eventually make this look faded out when it starts drying out. Always remember and always keep in mind that your clouds will start appearing more smooth and have that dramatic look when your paper is still wet. The moment your paper starts drying out, you will be noticing that you will get some very dark edges, which will look like some patches in-between on the paper. Try and do this step until the time your paper is wet. It is very essential that you know your paper right so that you can time yourself and get these things done at the pace where your paper will still allow you to work on it. Towards my left corner of the sky, you would have noticed that I have left that white blank space. That's the area where I'm going to show you guys how you can create that cloud burst effect when you have such dark clouds hovering in your sky, especially at that left side. Can you see what I have done? I have used this diluted paint mix, a little watery paint mix and I've just layered it. Now, what I will do is I will try to tilt my board this way if you can, you can tilt it downwards so that it looks that the clouds have burst open and the partial area of the sky is holding onto the ground so that is what cloudbursts means. I let that area be because I'm really happy how that area has turned out and my paper is still wet enough for me to create some more cloudy effects with the help of my brush. Just the tip of my brush. My brush is not loaded with water, it is just damp for me to create those smaller utter strokes just with the tip of my brush. Now it's time for me to go ahead and do the lifting technique. For that, I have just used the tissue towel to dab my brush and remove the paint that I have just lifted off. This would give that glow in between those darker clouds, you know, and this would make the painting look much more appealing to your eyes. It's time to begin a middle. In that meantime, our sky will get completely dried, and then we can take off our masking tape from the horizon line. I'm starting with this intense tone of sap green color here to observe that I have not used too runny or diluted paint, I'm just going ahead with this intense pigmented values of sap green and my brush too is not loaded with water. I am just going ahead and using the damp brush. When it comes to watercolor painting, exercising water control is one of the very key aspect in any watercolor painting. It can make or break your paintings. That is why it is very important that you know your paint and you know to exercise water control. There is this water control exercise which I have demonstrated in my other classes, especially the one where I have released the class on Skillshare, about painting 15 expressive skies in 15 days. You can go check out the class. There I have discussed in great detail about this water control and how it can affect your paintings, especially when you are painting skies with dramatic clouds. To present the canola flowering part of the field that I have used, the lemon yellow. Now it's time to remove our masking tape. Yes, the sky has completely dried out. Now here I will again load my brush with this lemon yellow. Just see the water control that I'm having my brush feels too dry at the moment and hence I was getting those dry brush patterns so that is the way that you would know that your paint needs little bit more of water to be added to make it flowy on the paper. You're making sure that my paint is not too watery or diluted because it can start flowing into the sky and ruin my sky. That is why I'm just preferring to go with this color mix which is little intense and concentrated, even though I have those dry brush patterns. But just going to and fro will sort this issue out. Now, we can again go ahead and create this layering technique using our sap green mix. Now makes sure this time you use little watery mix than before. Now here on this wet background, I will be switching to my size number two, silver black velvet brush, and mixing a little bit of indigo into my sap green mix. I have got this darker shade of green, which is closer to that of shadow green, and just with some upward strokes of the brush, I'm going ahead and creating these grass-like patterns for the foreground of the needle. [MUSIC] Looks like that my horizon line has dried out completely and so has the sky. Hence, I'm going ahead and starting to create this midground element that I had shown in the elemental composition section. I'll just go ahead and create these distant bushy shrubs in the distance. Just using my silver black velvet size number two brush and using just the dabbing motion of the tip of the brush, I'm going to go ahead and create this vegetation over on both the sides. Now, use a variation of shapes and sizes. Do not go with the street uniform [inaudible] because in landscape it is never same symmetrical things. Go with a little variation of ups and downs in this vegetation or growth and that is all with that midground element. We will be very soon beginning to create some more details onto that canola field flowers using another little shade of cadmium yellow mixed with lemon yellow. Now, this is totally an optional step. You could skip cadmium yellow and just use your lemon yellow and on this middle part where we have painted with this sap green, you can just go ahead and create these dot-like shapes using just the tip of your brush and in the distant needle too you can repeat the same steps since you have used already a lighter shade of lemon yellow to paint the distant horizon fields of canola, you can go ahead and use another darker shade of yellow to create the small dots in the distance. I'll be showing you shortly how. Here I have used cadmium yellow to create these smaller dots, and I'll be using the same color mix to fill out even the distant horizon field and as I'm approaching the horizon, as I'm closer to the horizon, I will be using very smaller dots and dabs of my brush. Now, this is how our field will look. Now using just a white gouache mixed with sap green. I've created these lighter tones. In-between these lighter tones, I'll just go ahead and use the shadow green mix that I had created, mixing with indigo and that is all. Here you go. Our paper has dried out completely. I'm taking off the masking tapes from all the four sides very carefully. Make sure that your paper has dried out completely. To take off all these masking tapes I keep on repeating this on each and every class because this is very important. There were multiple number of occasions where I have ripped out my paper because I was too impatient to wait for my paper to get dried completely. Please do not do that mistake and wait for your paper to dry out. This is how our final painting looks like and I'm just loving the contrast of the dark clouds with this bright lemon yellow fields. I will meet you tomorrow again with another dramatic sky. Until then, bye. 10. Color Palette: Day 2: [MUSIC] Thank you for sticking around and joining me in Day 2. Let's quickly take a look at the color palette. We are going to paint a very colorful thunderstorm. I'll be showing you in a while the colors with their pigment information. Now here I have along with me some shades of yellows and oranges. It is not necessary that you need to particularly stick to those colors, but always make sure to go with the pigment information. The first color that I'm showing you here is permanent Yellow Deep, which is PY83. Your names can be different based on the brand that you are using. The next is Permanent Yellow Orange which is PY83 and PO13. It is not the pure pigment, but a mixture of two, a one yellow and an orange pigment. Now, the next is this Cadmium Yellow Orange. Now you could use this too. This has a pigment information on PY35 PO20, so either of the oranges you can go ahead and use. Now in case if you do not own any of these oranges, you can always use your Scarlet Red, which has a PR pigment of 48 is to one or PR9, or any warm red shade. You can mix it with the warm yellow to create a warm orange shade. Now, the next color is mineral violet, which has the pigment information of PV23. Next is Crimson Lake whish is PR83. Now instead of Crimson Lake, you can go ahead and use any permanent rose color pigment too. Now, the next is Permanent Violet. Now, this is optional in case if you do not own Mineral Violet, you can use your Permanent Violet and mix a little bit of your Permanent Ross or Crimson Lake to create a shape similar to that of Mineral Violet. Permanent Violet pigment information is PV3. One constant companion that you would have for dramatic sky is your indigo shade, which is PV66. Always keep it handy in your palette. Now next, this color is totally an optional color. You need not own this color. This is greenish yellow shade. When you mix your sap green with lemon yellow or cadmium orange-yellow, you get this greenish yellow shade. Now, this is a Sap Green color, which has a pigment information of PG8. Now, you can create your own Sap Green by mixing your green to your lemon yellow. Now, this is the Prussian Blue color. Instead of Prussian Blue, you can go ahead and use any darker shade of blue. Now let's quickly take you through the swatching of all the shades so that in case you do not own any of this pigment information or it's not mentioned in the brand's website, you can always refer to the swatches and pick your colors for the project. [MUSIC] I hope you have got your color palette sorted by now. Keep your colors ready and let's dive into our next section, which is our elemental composition for our Day 2 project. I'll see you in the next lesson. Bye. 11. Elemental Composition: Day 2: [MUSIC] Let's quickly get started with our elements for our D2. The very first thing that we're going to see is how we can paint this dramatic side. We're going to go for multiple colors for the sky. I have started on with my permanent yellow deep, and then with some of the scarlet lake, or if you have any bright red, reddish orange, you could use that and create those streaks of clouds over there. Now using your damp wet brush, you can just try to smoothen out the hard edges that you have got. Here we are going with both wet on wet and wet on dry technique. The first thing that I had started was with wet on dry, meaning I had led my wet paint on the dry paper surface. Now to give a little bit more intense, dramatic look to our sky, I'm going to go with my mineral violet, a little intense and use just the tip of my brush to lay the intense color on top of the first layer that we had gone for that layer of the cloud. Did you see that? Now, I'm going to show you here a trick how you can create that cloud burst effect using just your wet diluted paint on the wet background, or just adding little bit of your damp, wet brush and letting the colors flow across the paper downwards, so that it looks like the cloud has burst open and it is raining. This technique can be done using your round brush, but you need to have a bigger sized round brush so that the belly holds more water. Or the very same can be done using a hake brush, which is just the perfect way to do this technique. In case if you're an absolute beginner and are not aware of the basic watercolor techniques like what exactly is wet on wet, wet on dry, layering, blending and bleeding, etc, then I would request you to go check out my other Skillshare classes. For example, my class on watercolor sunset seascapes, where I have described in great detail about all these basic watercolor techniques. Or you could go ahead and check out my class, 15 days of expressive watercolor skies. Now let's move on to our second element, which will be the misty mountain, which is our midground element. This misty mountain, will be apart of our main project. I will also be showing along with this misty mountains some other elements that you could add to your landscape, apart from just the misty mountains. Misty mountains is nothing but going ahead with the layering technique in watercolors, along with some tonal variation, just like how we paint in monochrome landscapes. We start with the lightest value for this background. Then as we start coming closer to the foreground we increase the tonal values. That is, we go ahead with intense layers of colors, just like how I did for the mountains. Here is another example of the other supporting elements that you can add to your landscape, such as a road along with the shrubby sidewalks. For the road, I'm going to go ahead with wet on dry technique. I'll start with an intense tone at the corner curvatures of the road, and as I come to the other curvature I will start to fade out the colors. The center part will be little lighter than the curves. This is how you can add a realistic draw to your landscape. Now going with the sidewalk. Now for the sidewalk, I will start with intense tone and then feed it out using my damp diluted watery brush. Now if you have observed roadways, all the national highways or state highways will have greenery all around them. That is what I'm going to add along the sidewalks of the road. You could add some sap green along the sidewalks, that is the fringes of the sidewalk, and start with the diluted lemon yellow. Since we are working with wet-on-dry technique, use little watery paint for you to allow the colors to flow on the paper without any dry brush strokes seen on the paper. Now this is how you can do it. Use variation of greens and yellows and lighter background, and use the darker tones for adding some trees or tree-like silhouettes in the foreground. [MUSIC] Now my road part has dried out, so with the help of my Gelly Roll pen, I am going ahead and creating this center line that you generally see on the road. The center line, white demarcation that you have on the road. Either you can use a Gelly Roll pen or your white gouache. Now my paper has dried completely, I was waiting for the sky to get dry to add in the last element which is a thunder. For the thunder, you can go ahead and add it with the Gelly Roll pen. But this is one way that you can add your thunder, but you can also do this step when your paper is just about drying. That is when it is little semi wet so that it blends beautifully into the background. That's all about the elements. I'll be showing you in much more details about all these things in the final project. See you over there. [MUSIC] 12. Day 2: Evening Thunderstorm -Part 1: [MUSIC] I hope you have prepared your colors, and you are ready to kick-start Day 2. Let's begin. The paper that I'm using here is 100 percent cotton, 300gsm is the thickness from the brand Fabriano. Now, I'm going to stick it firmly on all four sides using my masking tape. Using a smaller sized or a thinner washi tape, I'm going to use that as my horizon line. We will begin with the sky. As you can see, two-thirds of our paper is our sky. The remaining half is our land area. I will begin first with a flat wash with clean water. We will be going with wet on wet as well as wet on dry technique for the sky. Whenever you are going with this first coat of water on your paper for wet on wet technique, make sure that your paper is uniformly coated with water on all corners and the sides. Now, let's start. I begin by spreading out the indigo across the paper slanted, see the brush strokes. I'm starting from the corner and moving in to the center of the paper with just the tip, using some random motions of my round brush. Now, I will be mixing some of that mineral violet with my indigo and will go ahead and paint some intense dark clouds on this top part of a sky. Look at the brush strokes that I'm creating out here. I am using sometimes just the tip and sometimes the whole belly of the brush. Now, use varying pressure when doing this because you need to make these clouds look dramatic and intense at the same time. By varying the pressure of the brush, with slight release from your wrist or fingers, you will be able to create some beautiful strokes of these clouds. Here, try to observe the paint mix that I'm using here. My paint mix is not too watery. This is the reason why I'm able to create those intense, dramatic look. If the paint mix is too runny or too watery, your paint will start flowing across the paper and the colors will start blending and mixing together. In that way, you will not be able to create this definite shape that you would want for your clouds. [MUSIC] That area looks too much with colors. What I will do is, I will go and use another wet damp brush and I lift out some of the colors from there using just the tip of my damp brush. Using my damp brush, I'm just going to blend this lower part of the clouds so that there is no hard edges formed. Now, it's time to paint our lower part of the sky. For that, I'm going to go ahead with my Naples yellow mix. How you can prepare your Naples yellow by mixing yard yellows with white gouache. By adding more of your white gouache, you will be able to turn your color to a more [inaudible] shade. Can you see the dry brush marks? I'm going to fix it by using my damp brush and going over those areas once again. Now here I'm going to go ahead and layer my crimson lake color in some strike like patterns on this lower part of the sky. Now, I will create a group of clouds over there. We are using my mineral violet. Mineral violet and crimson lake really go well together. You can just go ahead and use these colors together to create some dramatic clouds. Now here, my paper has started to dry out pretty soon. I'm going to re-fix those areas by simply blending it into the background using a damp brush. Here, remember I'm using a damp brush, not too watery brush. Now we will start our center part of the sky and create some more dramatic clouds. Here, when you go ahead, create a little watery paint mix here, I'm saying little. Observe my color palette over there and the brush, my brush has no too much of watery or runny paint mix. Always make sure that you have the optimum consistency of your paint mix. Do not use too runny, too watery and not too intense as well. Just try to get a hang of how your paint mix should be when creating these landscapes. You can go check out my class 15 days of watercolors, expressive skies where I have shown in great detail what really could happen when you use too watery or too runny paint. Now, I'm switching to my hake brush, dipping it in water and making sure that there is not too much of water in it by dabbing it on tissue paper. Just using dabbing motion of the brush, I went ahead, and now I am creating this long slanted strokes from that area, pulling it downwards. This would look that it is raining, that the cloud has burst open. In between, I will just go ahead and dab with just the tip of the brush using some of that indigo paint mix just to create extra drama in that sky or the cloud, an extra layer of colors in the clouds. That is how you are going to do it. Now, I'll go and repeat the same process from the bottom part of the sky as well. Just do this process very slowly and gently without applying too much pressure because in that way you will be lifting out the colors. You do not want to lift out the colors, but to gently pull the colors down. This is the reason why I have chosen my hake brush to do this step. This is because hake brush is made up of very soft goat hair, natural fiber, which holds lots of water and is soft. This will facilitate you to achieve this step much more smoothly. Using my damp brush, I'm going to lift out certain areas from the darker group of cloud. Why? Because when a lightning strikes, a part of that cloud will be eliminated. Just to create that effect, I'm going ahead and lifting out certain areas and certain portions, random areas from that cloud. Now, using just the damp freight tip of my brush, I'll go ahead pick up some of that indigo, and I'll gently start creating some clouds over there. Now, do not do this step if you feel your paper has dried out completely. My paper was wet here, so I went ahead and have done this. Now, using my damp hake brush, I'm going to pull down the colors. Next it's time to paint thunder. For that, I'm squeezing out some white gouache. Now in case if you do not have white gouache, you can go ahead and do this with your white watercolor paint as well. Just remember to use a thicker consistency of your white watercolor paint so that it is prominently shown on the paper. Now, using a mini detailer brush, I'm going to paint this thunder. It's very simple, let us just a crooked zigzag pattern that I'm going ahead and creating this thunder. Here, just remember that you need to have very thin lines when you are approaching towards the horizon line because if you have observed thunder, you would have noticed that when it starts, it is more prominent, and it fades out when it reaches or touches the Earth ground. That is what we are doing out here. You may paint your thunder when your paper is still semi wet, and that way you will get some very nice blurred lines. It will look really nice if you try that out. That's it. We're done with the sky. Now, leave the paper to dry and then slowly takeoff the washi tape. 13. Day 2: An Evening Thunderstorm- Part 2: [MUSIC] Let's continue with the painting. Our paper has dried especially the sky area, and we have removed the washi tape that we use to create that horizon line. We have got that perfect straight line. Can you see? Either you can follow that step or you can use your pencil outline and use that as your separating line between the sky and your land area. Now, I'm going ahead and creating these misty mountains. I'm going to go ahead and use a technique which is known as the layering technique in watercolors. I will start with the lightest tonal value of my mineral violet to denote this furthest mountain range which is almost fading out in the background. Then I will be creating a second range of mountains with little more intense tonal value then background mountains. I'm here trying to fix and create some little peaks of those mountain ranges because right now it is looking very flat. I'm just going ahead and using just the tip of my brush creating these peaks. Next, I'll be starting out with my second mountain range. This time I have mixed little bit of my indigo and my maroon violet, and this is the resulting shade that I have got. It's little darker ray. It could be similar to that of permanent violet that you have. I'm just going to go ahead and create these peaks of the mountains. You may try to create these peaks bigger or smaller than the background mountains that's totally up to you. [MUSIC] Now using a very damp brush, what I'll do is I'll just try to make these colors flow a little down and I had messed it up a little. I'm just going to refix those areas again. Just do not try to go over and over those areas because here we're working on wet-on-dry. You will be lifting out the colors in certain sections. Remember to go with little watery paint at the very first core and then do not keep going again and again on that area. Now, we were a little bit of Payne's gray. I am going ahead and creating this foreground mountain. [MUSIC] I think I'm satisfied with how my foreground mountains are looking. I think it's time for me to start with the vegetation or the growth on these mountains. With just the tip and dabbing motion with random strokes, I'm going and creating some foliage lake shape to denote the vegetation or the plant growth on these mountains. When you are creating this foliage, you do not go with two running or watery paint mix of indigo or Payne's gray or there might be chances that you will get some big, big blotches or dots of paint over there. Always remember to go with the little thick consistency of the paint when you are doing this foliage or tree-like shapes. I'll maybe add one more out here just to keep this tree here company. Now, I'm going to add few more to my right as well. The liner that I'm using here is from the brand stationary. It's a local Indian brand, but I really love these brushes. They are very sharp and pointy. It's very great to do this fine detailing and that is all. I'll let the paper dry now. The paper has dried up completely. Now it's time to peel out our masking tape on all four sides. Always wait for your paper to dry out completely and then peel out your masking tape set in 45-degree angles to ensure that you do not rip out the paper. [MUSIC] We have got perfect three saves and here goes the last one. I'm crossing my fingers and yes, we have got those perfect clean edges. That's all for today. I'll see you again with day 3. Here is a little sneak peek for you guys. We are going to paint this fierce tornado in day 3. I'll see you in the next lesson. Bye. 14. Day 3: Color Palette: [MUSIC] Welcome to Day 3, we are here to look at the color palette, and swatch out the colors, so let's quickly introduce you to all the colors. The first color that I have with me is cadmium yellow orange, which has BY35, and PO20 as their pigment values. The next is raw sienna, which is light fast color, and it is PR101. The next is burnt sienna, this too is a very transparent color, and this is the bond form of the pigment PR101. Next will be our indigo, which is PB66, now the indigo has been regularly used in all the projects. The next is mineral violet, we have used this for our second project as well, PV23 is the pigment information. Last but not least, Payne's gray, which is again a combination of mixed pigments, PB66 and PBk31. That was all about the colors. Now, let's quickly take a look at the swatches of these colors. Now, I have been repeating this, I will repeat here once again. I'm swatching out for the sake of those who do not have tubes or they do not have the pigment information available with you, so in case if you are one of those, these swatches will help you to identify similar colors in your palette. We are almost done swatching the colors. I think we are just left with two more swatches of indigo and Payne's gray, and with that, we will be done with the swatches. I will be meeting you again at the next section where I'll be discussing the techniques and the elemental composition of our project. See you in the next lesson. [MUSIC] 15. Elemental Composition: Day 3: [MUSIC] Are you excited to paint with me a tornado? Come on, let's get into it, get your colors ready and let's jump into this elemental composition where I'll be showing you techniques, how you can paint a tornado. Here I'm going to show you a very simple and easy way, that is by going with wet-on-wet technique, and going with wet-on-dry technique simultaneously and layering process. But in our main final project, I will show you how you can create that intense dramatic look with layering process on wet-on-dry. Let's get started. Always remember that most of the tornadoes originate into a funnel shape, narrower at the base and broader at the top, so that's how the shape of a tornado is. I am here going with the base of the sky, which I'm going with the shades of brown. Since here I want to depict that the tornado is sucking in on the ground and it is creating the whirlpool of sand and the other soil particles and it is going up, that is why I'm painting the sky with brown, denoting the soil of the earth. Using the same burnt sienna mix, now I'm going and creating the funnel shape of the tornado, I'm making the shape little inclined towards the right. That is like denoting the direction or the movement of this tornado. Now, here, one side of the tornado will be darker than the other side, denoting that one side, it is not receiving light, and the clouds and the other particles which are just sucking in is not allowing the light to pass through it. So that area will be the darkest part of the tornado. I'm trying to create the shape filling in colors in the shape, here I'll start with the darkest part, which is towards the right. So here, it's just about your brushstrokes, you need to understand your shape of the tornadoes, so I would suggest you Google some of the images of tornado. Try and study, through, tornado, especially how the shape occurs and inside through whirlpools of the tornado, there, you will get the idea how you can go ahead and approach with different techniques and watercolors. In painting or in art, your observation skills play a very important role because when you observe things in your mind, you try to break down that image into techniques that you are well aware of. That is how you can break down a composition and try it in your own way. Now, did you see what I am trying to do? I'm trying to create here swirls. Now, my swirls are from right side of the tornado going into my left, that is how we are going to create that windy whirlpool of tornado, which is getting broader and broader at the top. Use just one direction, if you are going from right to left, use only that direction or if you want the tornado to sway from left to right, use the other way. So it's totally up to you, here I'll be showing you from right to left. Though I started the process with wet-on-wet technique, my paper is almost about drying up. Here you can see the colors are not spreading so it is almost we're working wet-on-dry. I'll try to blend out those hard edges. Now, I'll be starting with the building layers for that intense clouds at the top of the tornado. For that I'm using my intense dark shade of indigo and I'm trying to blend it out towards the broad funnel of the indigo. Did you see I'm using tonal variations of dark and light colors to bring out depth because in a painting, you cannot do everything too dark, it will not look appealing to your eyes because it will be all very dark and it will look flat. So in order to bring out that 3D vector dimension, you need to go ahead and use some lighter values and darker tones. Now, my base layer of tornado has dried out, so I will go ahead and layer it with a darker shade of my mineral violet, indigo and burnt sienna mix, and wherever needed, towards the left, I will lift off some of the paint using my damp brush, not too watery brush as you can see, I'm just trying to lift out some of the areas over there. So that is where I will be indicating that all the particles and the clouds are striking against each other, producing friction which is resulting into thunder. You can paint in those wider gaps, thunder emerging out, that's the main idea. Now, I'm creating this whirlpool at the base of the ground. Okay, so for that, I'll be going with wet-on-dry technique, and those hard edges, I'll be smoothening out with a damp brush. Now, here at the base of the ground, you can go ahead with tonal variation of raw sienna and your darker shade of burnt umber, or burnt sienna, anything which you have got in your palette. Towards that base of the tornado, I will go add some darker tones of indigo into the browns, and I will be now blending it again with a damp brush just to create more drama near the base that everything is getting whirlpool and sucked in into the tornado, that's the idea. This here is more often impressionists style that I'm showing you out here to give you a rough idea how we are going to approach this subject. But in the main final project, we will see it in very much details about how to go and really create a furious tornado. It's almost taking its form, now with just a damp brush I'm trying to move around the soil particles over there, did you see? There is no base of the tornado that we can see, it's though sandy whirlpool storm that is going on at the base, and I'm going to prominently paint the ground surface with little bit of darker tone of burnt umber, and going ahead again with that soil particles because I think when it will dry up, it will dry out to be faded. That's about it, and that is how we are going to create a tornado. I hope you guys are excited to do this. Let's jump start and go create our tornado in the final painting. 16. Day 3: Tornado Hits Part 1: [MUSIC] Hey, guys. Welcome to Day 3. I'll be starting with a quick pencil sketch, a basic outline for our tornado and the land area. Starting out with the land. Then I will be creating the tornado, which will be narrower at the base, and then it will be broader at the top. This is going to be a funnel-shaped kind. Roughly somewhat like this. Now I'm going to smoothen out those curves a little bit more. I'll be now marking certain areas where the main causing whirlwind of the tornado will be, so it will move from right to left. I just temporarily marked that. Once you are done with it, the top part of the sky is going to be much dramatic. Then comes the tornado. I will be taking the direction of the whirlwind from right to left as discussed earlier. That is how we are going to go ahead, and now I'll be layering flat wash of water onto the entire paper because I want the clouds not to have the hard edges. It becomes really tricky to fix those hard edges. Whenever you are going with this flat wash of water, always make sure that you go with broad strokes covering the entire surface of the paper, especially the corners. Make sure that you do not use too much of water. You use your flat broad brush or an hake brush to evenly spread out the water throughout the paper surface that you want to go with wet-on-wet technique. During this process, when your paper starts bulging, this is the sign that the paper has started to absorb the water. Next, I will be starting from the base of the ground and move upward. I'm starting with my raw sienna. Now, if you do not have raw sienna, you can go ahead and use your burnt umber or raw umber as well. This is how we are going to go with it. You'll observe the tonal value of the raw sienna that I'm using. I'm going with a very lighter tone first, and then we will be building up layers, increasing the intensity of the colors gradually. Now taking some burnt sienna and going with the street strokes just with the tip of my brush. Now, I have mixed some indigo with my burnt sienna, and I kept that color mix ready. Now on my left, I'm going to start with some cloudy shapes using that color. [MUSIC] Now I will start working with intense tonal values of my shades of burnt umber and burnt sienna just like this. Look how I'm trying to create those cloud movements out here with just swaying circular motions from the tip of my brush. Now, I'm going to mix a little bit of mineral violet and my burnt sienna or burnt umber mix. I will create this perylene violet mix. But when you add more of browns, it will have that violetish undertone to it. I'm going to use that to paint further the top layer of the sky, but I feel my paper is drying out. I'm just going with once more layering the paper with flat wash of water, making sure that I have uniformly coated all the areas that I feel has dried out. One tip for you guys to know if we have covered each and every part of the paper is to tilt your paper and see the reflective sheen. Based on the reflective sheen, you will know where there are some dry spots. My paper has now been covered with flat wash of water. Now it's time to start painting our dramatic sky. I'll be layering it with tonal variations of browns and violets, trying to prepare my color mix well ahead so that I do not have to go and prepare the mix when I'm in-between painting. I'm starting with the swirls, which is moving from right to left. Now I'm going with this medium tonal values and some very lighter values at the top corner most part of the sky. You can see my strokes, these are long and streaky kind. Now, using my indigo mixed with a little bit of brown, I'm going to go with the swirls again from right to left. Now, when you are going these, use some broader brushstrokes, use the belly of your brush, starting from the tip, then drag the brush belly and then create the strokes. Using the same color mix, now I'm going to go ahead and create some dramatic clouds, making those swirls more prominent from left to right. Now, I'm going to use another damp brush and try to blend out those areas where I feel there are some hard edges forming. Now with the other brush, I'm going to drag the brush creating some more strokes. This is how I'm going to create the drama using mix of indigo, that brown and violet mix. This is how we are going to go and paint. But make sure that your paper remains wet because this is very crucial or else you will start having some very nasty hard edges. Now keep observing my brush movements and the usage of different tonal values of colors. Somewhere I'm going with lighter shades, somewhere I'm going with darker shades. This is how you can create the dramatic effect in your skies. Now, if you have noticed, I will just be going with some more of that violet at the mouth of that tornado. All my cloud strokes are released upwards direction, if you have so noticed it. As you can see, I am here using two brushes. One, where I'm layering the colors using my size number 12 brush and the other damp brush to lift certain colors to create those white pockets so spaces and to lighten certain values of the darker shades. Now, starting from the top, again, I'm going to go ahead and start making this dramatic clouds using the same mix of indigo and my sienna. This is how I'm going to go ahead and create the strokes. Look at the brush strokes that I'm creating out here. [MUSIC] I am able to understand that my paper has started to dry out. I'll just quickly go ahead and start creating some more clouds using my purple plus burnt sienna mix. So keep creating these strokes. But do not overwork. Try to retain some whitespaces as well because that will give more beauty to the painting. [MUSIC] Now towards the left, do you see that space where I have left certain gap? I'll just go using my hake brush. I'll try to pull down the colors from the darker shades. Because my paper has started to dry out, I'm noticing that certain areas or colors are not blending properly into the background. For that, I'm going very soft handedly with the damp tip of my brush reblending those areas. Can you see the hard edges which is being formed? Very lightly go over those areas using a soft tip of your brush and softly try to resoften those areas. Now starting with the main piece that is painting the center part of the tornado. I'm going to go and layer it with the base coat of mineral violet and a little bit of indigo, very light tone of indigo in it. You can see now, I'll be going ahead with that brownish mix at the mouth of the tornado. Since my brushes already offloaded the intense values, now what I have is the lighter values. Using that and taking that as an advantage, I'll go and create the shape on the left side of the tornado and using a damp brush, I'll try to create some whiter spaces in-between. Now, I will go ahead and add certain more layers and depth to the tornado. Here you can see my paper has dried up, but anyways, we are going to go ahead and do this on wet-on-dry technique, so I'll be switching to another size number 8 brush and gently try to soften out the edges, making it some lighter tones. Now I'll be going ahead and adding some more of that burnt sienna into certain areas to create that sense of depth in the tornado. I'm layering this burnt sienna from the base and taking it upwards because the base has the sand particles and that's why I have used burnt sienna to indicate that. I'll be lifting out certain areas at the mouth of the tornado using my size number 2 silver black velvet brush, use a damp brush. A water droplet had fallen. I will go over that area with third round of layering using my indigo mix. I have not used full tonal or intensity of my indigo, just a medium tonal value. I'm gently layering the colors. Be very careful when you do this step, you should not be lifting out the colors. You'll have to gently stroke down the colors onto your paper. Do not try to put too much of pressure on your brush. In that case, you'll be lifting out the colors rather than laying. We'll be repeating the same steps using my damp brush size number 2 and lift out certain areas just to create certain whitespaces in-between those darker clouds. Now it's just entirely the game of layering the colors one by one, letting the base layer dry out and then going ahead and starting with another layer. I'm going now layering certain indigo shades on the top of that tornado, that is the mouth of the tornado. Now you can see my paper has started drying out. This will be a little hard. I might have to rewet certain sections, especially the top part of the paper, so that my blending is proper and no hard edges are formed. I will be, again, repeating certain steps that is lifting off certain colors and retaining certain whitespaces. That's it. I'll meet you in Part 2. 17. Day 3: Tornado Hits Part 2: [MUSIC] Let's continue back. I'm going to go ahead and smoothen out those edges and I'm trying to revert this area. Particularly the lower part of the sky once again, because as you can see, the colors have faded out much than I expected. I'm going to go and layer some colors all over again. Since I have wet this area, again, it would be easier for me to create that soft, smooth blends that I wanted. This time I'm going to go ahead with rich and intense tones because I do not want it to fade it after drying. I'll just go ahead with some rich tones and that's all about it. Same I'm going to repeat on the other side as well. From this part now on, it is going to be all about the layering process. I'm going to make this sky look little bit more intense. As you can see, since we worked on wet-on-wet, our sky has faded out to be a lot lighter. I want to make it a little bit more dramatic. I I go again and redo certain areas, but making sure that I'm using a soft damp brush to doing so and using or exerting gentle soft strokes. Do not use too hard strokes with your brush, you will lift out the colors. Now, during this layering process, you might be covering up those white pockets of spaces that you had left. The trick is to use a damp wet brush and remove or liftoff the pains from the areas that you want the whites to be retained. Now, I'm going to go ahead and create more dramatic flowers on the left side of the paper. Here the paper is still somewhat wet. It is semi-wet situation over here. I'm just going to use my softer silver black velvet size number 12 brush. With a very little damp, watery strokes I'm going to do that sky once more. Makes sure it is not too watery or else you will really ruin the pain. Wherever you are getting those hard edges using just the damp tip of the brush, blend out the areas. I'll be lifting out some of the areas at this top section as well, because here I want to create certain whitespaces or white gaps. Now I'm going to layer a little bit more of my mineral violet in that funnel of tornado. I'm starting with some areas where I want the thunder and lightning to come out. Only on those areas I have went ahead and use my purples. The final area is drying up. In the meantime, I will be going ahead and trying to create the dust cloud, which will be at the base of this tornado. For that I'm using my raw sienna mixed with a little bit of burnt sienna. Here I'll be using some of that indigo as well and try to pull the colors up into the funnel of the tornado. The right side of the tornado radius has already started fading out. I will pull in the colors over there as well using very soft light strokes, gently trying to move around the colors. I'll be redoing that entire section, creating more dramatic and intense look at that area. I'll be switching here to my broader brush, that is size number 12 brush and I will start creating the shape of the clouds using indigo mix. Now, make sure you use little watery paint. It should not be too intense or else you will get start getting dry stroke patterns. Now, I will try to fix those spots or areas by lifting out some of the colors from there using the same strokes. This whirl strokes, this is actually the wind which is moving the clouds. That is why it is essential that you have some lighter values also to denote the passing or the moving clouds in that tornado. Now moving on to creating the dust cloud at the base of the tornado. For that too, I'm going with wet on dry technique. Here too layering process will be involved. Keep watching, I'm going to go with different tonal variations. Some adding darker and lighter tones to this part of the ground. I'll be trying to blend out those areas using just a damp brush and you can see the colors flow smoothly into that wet background. Now, I will be creating another layer of dust cloud over there. Just add the base of that funnel where the tornado is actually originating. Use a mix of burnt sienna and a little bit of your indigo, or Payne's gray, whichever you have got and try to soften the edges using the tip of your damp brush. Now using just the tip of the damp wet brush, free the brush tips and you will get this strokes. Load some more of that burnt sienna and try to dab it on that wet background. It will look like the soil particles are swirling into the air. Now we'll create the ground which is closer to the foreground. For that, I'm going to go ahead with little bit of intense tone of burnt sienna. Then I'm going to fill that area using the same technique what we have done for the misty mountains in day 2 project, remember. I'm going to add the intense tones at the very first layer. Then I'm going to slowly blend it in with the help of a damp wet brush. This is how it is going to look like. I'll come back again to that base of tornado. Here I'll just add in that darker mix of brown and indigo, here over there just a little bit. Do not worry this hard edges will not be visible. I'll start to blend it with the damp wet brush and this will be gone. Right there at the base of the funnel it is looking a little intense. I'm just going to use the Fred tip of my damp brush and I'm just going to spread it out. It's now time to paint some shrubs here at the foreground. I'll be using the brush and strokes, which is like inclining from my right to the left, just like how we did those swirl or the radius of the tornado. Because it is windy. All the shrubs are moving in the direction of the wind, swaying in that direction. That is what I'm trying to present out here. I'm almost done creating the shrubs. Now I will go back to the top part of the sky because it has really faded out. Now using my size number 12 damp brush, I'm just going to load some of that indigo color and I will try to create some more dramatic effect. Here you need to be a little patient. Or instead what you can do, you can lightly go ahead and re-read that area using your hake brush or your broadest flat brush that you have got and try doing this step. Now, when you are re-wetting the paper or area, make sure that you are not lifting out any colors. Do it very softly and gently. This is how it looks at the end of that process. It is little time consuming, but layer by layer, if you start doing it, you will come to this stage. Do not lose out on patience and always remember to use very soft light strokes so that you do not lift out colors. Now using some white quash, I'm going to paint the thunder in-between those purple white spaces that we have left. Just to add them out of that tornado. Over there, I'm going to paint this thunder using the same technique like I had shown in project 2. Small thin lines emerging out. For thunder I've switched to my mini detailer brush from stationary because it has really nice thin, pointy tip and the bristles are really nice. I get this smoother thin lines at the end. I really love using this brush. That's how we're going to do it. We will paint three thunders emerging out from three spaces that we had left. Our paper has dried already, it's now time to take off our masking tapes finally. It was a long, tedious process. I know, but keep your patience and you will love the end result or outcome. We'll be taking off the other side as well. I hope I get smooth, the clean edges. I'm just crossing my fingers. Let's see what it is. The third one is about to be peeled out. Yes, I have got some clean edges. I was little worried because we were too many times wet-on-wet, but it looks like all is well. Yes, I have gotten clean borders and I'm really happy with the outcome of this tornado. Do try it out and upload your projects in the projects gallery section. I would love to watch them. 18. Day 4: Color Palette: [MUSIC] Hello, welcome to Day 4. Let's quickly take a look at the colors that we are going to need to create a project. The colors that we are going to need are, first I'll be showing you blues. The first one here is phthalo blue, which has the pigment information PB29. Next, is our Prussian blue, which has pigment information of PB27, followed by indigo, which has a pigment information of PB66. Now instead of indigo, you can use any other darker shade. Next is sap green, which is PG7, followed by a leaf green color, which is an optional color. If you have, you can use it, which has PY74, PG7, and PWC6 as the pigment information. Next is lemon yellow, which has a pigment information of PY81. Now when you mix your lemon yellow along with sap greens, you get a color similar to that of leaf green, followed by Scarlet Lake, which is a orangeish red color. Now, this has pigment information of PR48:1 and PR9. Permanent yellow, orange PY83, PO13. Lastly, mineral violet, which has a pigment information of PV23. Now let's quickly swatch out the colors. In this particular landscape, our main focus will be our rainbow sky and that is the reason I have chosen these colors. Our main sky will be created with Prussian blue, a little bit of phthalo blue, and indigo so that when we paint our rainbow, the contrast is vividly brought out. Swatching out my greens in monsoons, greens and blues really go hand-in-hand together. Next is another substitute of sap green, that is this leaf green. Now you can always mix your two parts of lemon yellow and one part of sap green to create this leaf green color. Now, next is scarlet lake. Now this will be used in the rainbow colors. Next is orange, followed by mineral violet. Now these are all our rainbow colors. Now, I'll meet you again in the next lesson where we will be learning techniques and or elemental composition of the landscape. 19. Day 4: Elemental Composition: [MUSIC] Starting with the first element that is a sky, I'm here working with wet-on-wet technique. Lay a flat wash of water, pretty wet your paper and then start with the clouds. For the clouds, I'm going ahead and using Prussian blue for painting the mid and the lower clouds and at the top, I'm going to darken it using some intense tones of indigo. This is how you can achieve a dramatic look to your sky. This is just an example out here to give you an idea how we are going to approach a sky for the final main project. I'll tell you in details about all the steps in the final project. Now, getting started with the mid-ground mountains. For this, I'm going to go with wet-on-dry technique. For the wet-on-dry technique, I'll be using this watery mix of sap green. Here too I will be using some darker as well as lighter shades, I'll be using some browns as well. Now, this is totally optional if you want to use browns, you may go ahead and use some browns or else use a contrast of dark green and your sap green. Now, behind this foreground mountains, I'll be painting some blue mountains as well. So use a watery mix of Prussian blue, but makes sure it is not too runny. So the third element is a lake, but unfortunately my camera went out of battery and I realized only when I finished painting it. Do not worry the lake is fully explained in detail in the main final projects, so you have nothing to worry about. So let's take a look at the fourth element, which is raindrops and the ripples that it causes on a still water body. So here I'm creating a background of the lake, so I'm here going with the wet-on-dry technique, now I will gently blend those colors using a damp brush. Now here at the base you can see my colors are really light, so here at this point, I'll switch to our mini liner brush and with the help of its fine and pointed tip, I'm going to paint here this drops and the ripples surrounding those areas. So can you see my brush strokes? So use some smaller circles as well as some bigger circles in nearby the surrounding areas to create that effect of the ripples in water. Next coming to our fifth element and the final element, which is our rainbow. Here, I'm going to show you one brushstroke technique for the rainbow. So arrange the colors in line using the word VIPGR. So you will know the schematic arrangement of the colors and create this shape. Now if you use too watery paint, like me out here, you will get this smudgy rainbow lines, if you want that kind of look to your rainbow, you can always go ahead and do the same or else you can paint single strand of this rainbow colors with the help of a size Number 2 brush, or size number three brush. So this is how you are going to go and fill in the rainbow with each and every single color, makes sure that your brush is not too watery, lift the individual colors like the intense tones and start layering it where you had stopped. So this is how you will get the final look of the rainbow you painting, single, by single colors of the rainbow. There is another way by which you can do this one stroke technique for the rainbow, that is with the help of your sponge. So what you can do is if you have any blender sponge or any sponge, you can start layering the colors in the VIPGR arrangement. Use your round brush and make sure that you are using some little dilute mix of your pain because the sponge needs to absorb it right. But always test it out in a separate piece of paper, then you go and do it in your main painting. So for the brush you can either use this flat brush or an angle dagger brush anything that you have got. 20. Day 4: A Thing of Beauty Part 1: [MUSIC] Welcome to Day 4 and today we are going to paint a very beautiful landscape with the lake and the rainbow, let's get started. The very first thing that I have done is used my washy tape, which is a very thin one, and use that to denote my horizon line. With the help of my pencil, I'm going to create some rough outlines of these hillocks or mountains which are in the mid ground, which will separate the horizon line, especially the lake and the sky. The mountains which are closer to the horizon I'm going and creating some short ones and the background ones, I'm going and creating a little bigger ones. Observe my pencil sketching, view this point entirely, to help you with the pencil sketching, pause the screen when you feel that you are ready to go with the sketch. The pencil sketch looks good, now at this point, we will start by pre wetting the paper for our sky. We are going to go wet on wet technique for the sky but before that, I'm going to erase some of those pointed tips from the mountains so that it looks like the clouds are passing through the mountains. That is the reason why I erased them off, let's get started. First, I'll be layering the paper or pre-wetting the paper with a flat wash of water. I'm using here my hake brush, if you do not have a hake brush, use any broad, flat brush that you have got and do this step. Ensure that you are layering a uniform coat of water through all the sides of the paper where you want to paint the sky. Until you are done layering this flat wash, we will start out with the sky. For the sky, we are going to paint nimbus clouds and the colors that I'm going to use is Prussian blue and indigo. Here I'll be going with two tonal values of colors, especially the blues, I want the sky to look the typical monsoon sky, which you see along with some greens. I'll be using some darker tones of indigo as well as some lighter tones, of Prussian blue to show that effect. Here, try to observe my brush movements and this brush movements will help you to get that dramatic effect in the clouds. All this was described in that clouds study section, which I have included in this class. In case if you missed missed it out, you can always go back and refer to that section where we have discussed about the types of clouds and have done a quick cloud study session where we learn to paint six broad categories of clouds. Just above this mountain areas, I'm very soft handedly spreading out the colors, can you see? But when I'm going the center of the paper, I'm using just the tip of the brush, which doesn't have much color in it, only at the sides, I'm going with stronger values. Now here, observe the brushstrokes, I'm going with some upward slanted strokes to denote that these clouds are floating upwards. I think I have been repeating quite a lot in this class that, use a color mix which is not too watery. It is very essential or else what really happens is because your paper is already wet, the color starts running down and it becomes uncontrollable. You will not get this white spaces that you want to leave in between these clouds. That is why it is very important to go ahead and use an intense color mix or a mix which is having less concentration of water. I had gone ahead and used my flat brush to go create or make those white spaces little bit more prominent using lifting technique. Now, I have loaded my brush with some stronger tones of indigo, I think this have become too deep, I will use the belly of the brush and create these strokes. [MUSIC] Switching to a damp, wet brush, whenever I say damp wet brush, I mean, damp brush, not too watery, damp brush. Always I dip my brush in water and soak up the extra water on tissue paper or tissue towel. Washing off my brush over here and using my damp little watery brush, what I'm going to do next is, switch to my round size brush number 12. Again, dip it in some water and here, using just the tip of my damp brush, I'm going to move the colors down in slanted strokes. Observe my brush movements out here, I'm just trying to place the colors so that it looks faded out in that background. With some more indigo, I'm repeating the same step, but here the only difference is my brush tip is loaded with little bit of indigo, just a little indigo and I'm just spreading out the colors and using slanting motion of my brush to show the effect of that drain or that cloud burst. Here, I added in some more darker tones and trying to just pull down those colors in that same slanted strokes. Here we go, this is how we do this [MUSIC]. It's time to go paint our mountains for that, I'm using very diluted tones of my Prussian blue or instead of Prussian blue, you can also go ahead and use Taylor blue if you want some brighter looking mountains faded into the background, you can also do that and see just with the help of my damp brush, I'm trying to fade these mountains out. This is how you will do this step, if you would have noticed, my mountains here were dry, this is wet-on-dry technique that I'm working on. Whenever you are going ahead with wet-on-dry technique, it means that you are working with your wet paint on dry paper. Creating the other side of the mountain here, I'm going to go with very intense tone of my indigo and just look at the strokes. When I almost touching the horizon line, I'm diluting the paint a bit more. Now, it's time to paint the foreground mountains, which will be with sap green, this is how we are going to paint it. That blue will look faded out in the distance and the foreground mountains will be with this sap greenish mix. Here, I have created more darker tones for my right because here the light is not passing through, but for my left, it will be like the light is shining upon since you can see the direction what I have painted. Based on that, I'm going to use here some lighter tonal values and now towards the base of indigo, I'm going to go and fill in with very some light tones of my sap green see the color difference between both the sides that I'm using. This is how you can represent the light and the shadows of any landscape. Just above this greenish yellow mix, I'm going ahead with the olive green shade, the recipe for this mix is very simple. Mix a little bit of your browns into your sap green, or your very light sap green mixed with your browns and you will get that shade. Using the same brown shades here at the right side too, here, because the right side, I'm going with just one single motion of the brush, did you see I slanted from my colors from top to down? Using that, you paint your right and for the left, you just leave it at that. Now, I'll be taking off this washy tape, which has created such a perfect horizon line for us, it's time to start painting on lake now. I'll be dipping my brush, that is size number 12 brush in water, soak off the extra water in tissue paper. Now, I'll be going ahead and loading my brush with a little bit of indigo, look at the paint mix that I have created here, it is not too watery. Now, very carefully and gently, with the tip of my brush, I'm going to go and start layering the colors just beneath those mountains. Here, I'm going with the darker tones because the mountains are getting reflected on the water and it is casting a shadow on the water because the right side absolutely has no light, this is the reason that I'm going with this darker tone. [MUSIC] I am not letting this color you can see to the right, I went ahead and created a very small liner boundary. Now, towards the right, I will start using my Taylor Blue, look at the mix, I'm here using a medium tonal value. Here, I'm going with wet on dry technique because I'm layering my wet paint on this dry paper surface and hence this dry brush strokes that you are getting. Now, with just a damp brush, I'm going to wet around these areas a little bit where I'll be starting to layer my paint, so that my paint is easily flowing into this wet background or easily spreads into this wet background. That is the reason I'm wetting around these areas to create a smooth, seamless blend of colors or reflections into this lake. Observe my brush strokes in here, I'm not going and layering it completely, I'm leaving certain white spaces or gaps and pulling certain colors from other areas as well. In these whiter gaps that we are leaving, we are going to paint the green reflections from the mountains. Now, using a damp, dry brush, you can see how frayed my brush tip is looking, I'm here using my flat brush and lifting off certain areas where I want the whites to be retained. I will start to create some water ripples using darker tones of indigo, I'll use just the tip and create some very thin lines, leaving in between some spaces where those underneath base lighter colors are shown through. [MUSIC] Towards the right side, I'm going to start layering my lighter shade of this Taylor blue, leaving in between certain white gaps. Similarly with same long and short strokes, I have created the mountain reflections. Sorry, this part had stopped recording, this is how I went ahead with it near to the base of that mountains. It will be a little darker and as you come to the downward part of the mountains, it will be lighter, that is what is also getting reflected in the water. Using very thin brush strokes, long straight lines, and some shorter straight lines, I'm going to create the shape of these mountains and the ripples. You can see I'm going ahead with this darker tones creating this ripples very randomly, both on the left and right, making sure that towards the left, my ripples are more darker at the base of those mountains and in certain areas leaving out certain gaps of the lighter shades as well. Wherever you see that the colors have not blended in properly or are looking like dry brush strokes, use just the damp tip of your brush and try to blend it in. [MUSIC] 21. Day 4: A Thing of Beauty Part 2: [MUSIC] Let's continue with our ripples. I have here switched to a mini liner brush because it has got a very nice pointy tip and I love using this brushes for creating any details into landscapes. Here am going ahead with the smaller dots. Some that you can see are shape. For creating those ripples, I'm using intense tone of indigo. I'm not going to go ahead and create these circular ripples closer to those mountains or near the horizon line because it is further away from our perspective point. From here on, this is going to be little repetitive, so I have fast-forwarded this section. The same steps I'm going to repeat on my right side as well. If you want to paint in real-time, you could slow down it from the Skillshare browser using various options, that is 0.5X or something like that and you could see it in real-time. [MUSIC] Here at this point, I think I'll be going ahead with one more coat of my tailor blue just near to the base, and I will blend it nicely into the background. That is what I have done here. Now I'll be going ahead and creating those ripples all over again. Just to make this a little bit more prominent. Once you are satisfied with these ripples, then we will proceed on painting the rainbow. But before that, I'll just use little bit of white gouache using this same brush. I'm just going to go and create the smaller ripples just underneath those darker indigo ripples. I'm going to do it in just few of the places and not all do not overcrowd with white gouache. Finally, it's time to paint a rainbow and for that, I've switched to an angle shader brush. This is how we are going to paint the rainbow, but makes sure your sky has dried out completely. My sky has dried out completely and hence, I'm going forward with the rainbow. First I'll squeeze out all the colors in small little quantities. You already know the colors of rainbow. It's VIBGYOR that is violet, indigo, G stands for green, which is our sap green I'll be using here. Then it is yellow, orange, and red. This stands for VIBGYOR. I squeezed out the colors in that sequence starting with violet. I'll just use this angle shader brush, just the tip load the color, another. This is how I'm going to go ahead and load the color in my brush. You can use another technique, use any sponge or your round brush. Paint each of the bristle with their respective color and then go ahead and create the rainbow. This is how it's going to look. Now create little watery mix for this each of the colors, I would advise you to use a separate palette or well for each of these colors because you don't want these colors to combine all together if you use them little watery. I switched to half an inch angle shader brush and I'm going to go with the rainbow. This is how it's going to be. It is looking like it is faded into the clouds. It is because I created some pressure starting at the base and then released the pressure lightly when I went into the clouds. This is how you are going to do it on there. Now, same thing I'm going to repeat here at the lake also. Same principle, put pressure at the base and then start releasing it once you come into the other side. Now using the other angle shader brush, I'm trying to create those ripples just spreading the colors out a little and that's all, so your rainbow is ready. [MUSIC] Now, that lemon yellow looks almost hidden out. What I'll do is I'll go get my liner brush and taking some of that yellow and I'll use this damp liner brush and I'm just going to go over that yellow strand of the rainbow one more time prominating this color. [MUSIC] Similarly, I'm going to go and do ahead for that green strand of rainbow too. I'm just using this liner brush and I'll just carefully with steady hands try to make the color more prominent. [MUSIC] Now with my size number 2, Silver Black Velvet round brush, I'm going to go get some indigo and create these ripples on the left side of the rainbow little bit more prominent. Use just the tip and use very fine thin delicate lines and just go on creating these ripples. Drag them towards for this left too and that's all. [MUSIC] Remember to use very thin delicate lines for these ripples. Do not go ahead and create some broad strokes. Once you are satisfied with it, just stop and let the paper dry. My paper has dried already it's now time to peel out the masking tapes from all the four sides. [MUSIC] With this Day 4, we have almost come to an end of our class just one more day to go. 22. Day 5: Color Palette & Elemental Composition: Hello, I'm so glad that you made it to the final day. Today is Day 5 and we're going to paint this beautiful rainy day scene. We will be using just four colors in total. Here they are. They are sap green, leaf green, indigo and some of that lemon yellow along with some white gouache. I'll be quickly swatching out the colors in case you want to refer to their pigment information, please scroll back and look out for the text appearing on the screen, you will get to know the pigment information for each of these colors. Now, in case if you do not have this pigment information labeled on your tubes or your pans, then you can look at this swatch shades that I'm swatching out here and choose your colors. Leaf green you can prepare by mixing your lemon yellow along with your sap green. The more you add lemon yellow, the closer you will be getting a shade to leaf green. This is how you can create your leaf green by using just two of these colors, which are lemon yellow, and sap green. That's all for the color palette or the color swatches of this project. Here we are going to paint this view. This view is like a rainy day depiction, it's a view from a veranda or from a shade, where the greens are looking little blurred out in the distance and the raindrops are falling from the shade. This is what we are going to paint. First I'm showing you here how you can paint this background which is blurred out. For this blurry black background, always remember that you must be working completely on wet on wet and totally on loose style. I have already laid a flat wash on my paper, now I have squeezed out some of that leaf green, we are starting from light, then we will be increasing the intensity of our greens to some darker ones, to bring out that depth. Here just go with random strokes using your colors. Do not go for a flat gradient wash look over here. We want to show some irregularities of some background trees, which is blurred out. That's why these loose strokes are very important for this landscape. Now remember that the topmost part or the area will be closer towards light and from there light is reflecting ray, so those parts will always be very lighter than the rest of the other areas, and towards the base, or the bottom part will always be darker so use a little bit of indigo into your sap green and create this darker mix of color. That is how you are going to go ahead and create this background. Simple and easy. We will talk about it in more details in our main project. Now coming to the last element that we need to add here is the rain drop, that is the water droplets. Here, you will have to consider the light from where the light is getting reflected on water and the shadow, the parts where it is being overcasted with shadow. That is what we are going to paint. One part will be darker, which is the opposite part of the light. The other part will be lighter. This is how we are going to create the rain drop. Since we will not be masking this water droplets or the rain drops in our final project or the main project, so there will already be a background to it. You need not worry about that. You just need to worry about where your lighter parts would be and where you need to create the shadows. If you feel, it would be a lot easier for you guys if you have certain reference image as the source image for you to understand how to go ahead and paint this water droplets. Then go ahead and search it in Unsplash, Pixabay or Pixels, or even in Pinterest. You'll get tons and tons of this references. You can choose either of them and try to replicate it or understand study the reference pictures. The way the water droplets will be, which part will be darker and how the light is getting reflected on that water droplets, so you can understand through that reference picture. Study and observe the references very closely. This would help you a lot when you approach your painting. Now, I'll be going ahead and adding in some of that white gouache to denote the reflection from the water droplet, the light getting reflected. I'll start at the base of this droplet. Just observe how I'm doing it. It is looking a lot lighter. What I have to do is I have to increase the tonal concentration or intensity of my upper part of the droplet, the top part of the droplet. See, now it makes that vividness pops out. [MUSIC] That's it with the droplet. I'm happy with how this looks, blending it a little bit more and yes I'm done. This is how we are going to go and approach our final project, I'll meet you in the final project. 23. Day 5: A Rainy Day- Part 1: Welcome back. I have taped down my paper on this board along all the four sides like I have been doing so far in all the projects using the masking tape. Maybe prepare your paper, fix it down, and let's get started together. [MUSIC] I'll be first starting out a very basic pencil sketch. That is, we are going to create that roof for that kind of a partial roof structure, which will be at the top of the papers. Here I am going ahead with a slanted straight line. Your little curve which would be like a beam or something for the support or shade protruding out. Anything you can call it. That's how we're going to go ahead with the sketch. That is all about the sketching. Once you are done, you are good to start with the painting. [MUSIC] Starting with flat wash-off water, so here we're going to go wet-on-wet just how I had explained to you in that elemental composition section. Here I'm going to go ahead and lay my flat wash on the entire paper suffers apart from the penciled outlined roof or beam of the roof. Apart from those areas, rest of the papers, we will be going ahead and uniformly coating the paper with water. Do this step little patiently because you need to uniformly make your paper wet so that it remains wet for a longer time. It is very essential because we are going to go ahead and create a very blurry background. It is very essential that your paper remains wet for a longer period of time. Starting with our sap green, here I'm going ahead and randomly layering my sap green onto these wet areas. Now, make sure you are creating this upward strokes to indicate those tree foliage in the background and going somewhere around the corners, try to create some rounded shapes as well. This would represent the bouquet that we would be doing later on. But also ensure that you are leaving out certain whites-paces or white gaps and not covering it up entirely with the sap green. Here you may go ahead and use a mix of your leaf green like I had shown you in the elemental composition section or use your sap green in a very diluted mix but not too dilute. What I mean here is to go ahead with the lightest tonal value of your sap green and create these random shapes. For these purposes, I always tend to prefer the colors which are squeezed out from the tubes because this allows me to have much more control on the water that I'm adding. Generally in [inaudible] in order to activate the colors, you need to already spray it with some water due to which the color gets already diluted whereas when you squeeze the paint out from your tubes, it is fresh and moist. You just need to add a little bit of water to reactivate it. It can give you some intense, beautiful color mixes. [MUSIC] You're dropping in some medium tonal value of my sap green just in random areas not covering it fully leaving certain areas of that bright, refreshing green to pop out in-between those darker mix of sap greens. Now, here I'm going with the layering process you can tell with different tonal variations of greens. First, I have started with light and then I'm going with a medium tonal value of sap green. Then, at last, I will be going and using certain more darker pigments or darker colors at the base and in-between some areas just like how I have started doing it. What you can do is for this darker color, you can mix your sap green with a little bit of indigo or Payne's gray as well and create this darker mix. But remember to start working with this technique a little fast because you may run a chance of your paper to start drying up. When your paper starts drying up. It will be hard for these colors to get blurred into the background. You will be getting some hard and defined strokes when your paper starts drying out. As you can already see at this right corner, my paper has already started to dry out, so I will be very quick out here. We're going ahead and dropping in these darker shades. [MUSIC] My paper feels to be a little wet on this left side, so I'll switch to the right side. Oh my God, right side has dried completely. Can you see him the strokes that I'm getting? Here what I do is I dip my brush with little water and try to use here little watery paint. Even then it will not be blending out that smoothly because the paper layer has already started drying out. I'll just work here quickly. In this case, especially in these blurred backgrounds, what you can do is you can have a spray bottle handy with you and you can start spraying the water. Not too much spraying of water, just a little bit of water in places where you feel the paper has started to dry out. Right now here I tried to re-wet those top part of the area, but you can see my brush already had those darker shade of green. I got that greenish shade into here. What I'll do is I'll try you to refix that area using my hake brush. I'll try to lift it out and dabbing that area with tissue paper. Yes. I'm scrubbing the colors off. Can you see that? Here, the paper might be again dried out. I'll just go here and quickly try to create these bloody edges because here right now the paper is wet. This will give me a chance to achieve the result that I'm looking for. [MUSIC] I'm going to work similarly in this manner until I'm satisfied with how the greens are looking blurred out into the background. Keep watching. I'll join you back when it's time for the next step. [MUSIC] Here, I had got pretty bad heart edges. With just the damp brush, I'm trying to smudge these areas out. I'm trying to soften those hard edges. Next, I'm going to switch to my Payne's gray or indigo. Now, if your indigo is having a little bit of bluish tinge, then you may use your Payne's gray or neutral tinge to do this step. Here Here I'll be using little bit more watery mix. But while creating that line or outline, I'll be very careful while doing so. I need to have really steady hands because I don't want some crooked or curves or curvatures out there. This is the reason why you need to go ahead and do the brush control exercises, which I had included in my previous class, seven days of vitamin C. If you have not checked the class, you could go ahead and check it. This will give some steady brush movements for you and build the muscle memory for your hand too. This would allow your hand to have better brush control or you will have better grip when doing or creating straight steady lines. This is how I'm going to fill these areas out. I'll be fast-forwarding these areas a bit because there is nothing much more to explain and be just filling out the colors. [MUSIC] Now, here on my left, can you see that ugly, feathery spot that has become maybe a water droplet had fallen and blend the colors over there? I'll just try to go and refix using a watery paint over there making sure that I do not cover up the whitespaces in-between. I don't think so. This is going to work out because the paper has absolutely dried. What I'm going to do is I'm going to here use my spray bottle, rewet the entire area, and use my hake brush to go over these areas very smooth and lightly. This is how I'll be getting these darker tones. I have started again with my intense tone of sap green. I used the dabbing motion or dabbing strokes of the brush and created that green. Now it looks much better than the previous one. It is very essential to have your paper background wet. Now it's time to create our bokeh effect. Using my white gouache, I'm going to go ahead and create bokeh. Use little watery paint over here and keep another damp brush handy with you. I'll be using my size number 12 brush just a tip to make sure that it is blurred out into the background. This is how we are going to create this bokeh effect throughout the other areas, especially where it is little white. Whiter tones are too much there. I'll be creating more of these patches or the bokeh effect. [MUSIC] I will continue to create these little round circles. I'll sometimes go with some overlapping circles of different shapes and sizes until I feel that I'm satisfied creating this bokeh effect into the background. This is how for the rest of the two minutes or five minutes, we will be going ahead and creating bokehs, so keep watching. 24. Day 5: A Rainy Day- Part 2: [MUSIC] Here too we'll be continuing with the bookie effect. Now, pose these areas. This is repetition so I have fast-forwarded these areas but you can always go back to your Skillshare browser and change the speed of the settings. If you want to watch it at a slower speed, you can go ahead and select the option for doing so. Here, I'm trying to paint some rain drops as well. As you start approaching the bottom of the paper, we will be painting these rain drops so for that use smaller rounds and create such oval droplet shapes. This is how the rain looks when your camera lenses focus on the rain when it starts hitting to the ground. This is because of the light refraction. Now we'll be continuing with the same process till I cover these parts with droplets since I'm working on a bigger size paper, which is roughly close to an A4 size paper. This is going to take a little time for me. But if you are working on a smaller size paper, which is like an A5 or A6 size, you will be able to wrap this step much faster because your surface area to cover is smaller. I have switched to my size number two brush and here I'm going and creating these water droplet shapes. Some, I'm keeping it half open. You can see, right? This is how I'm going to create some other droplets here at the bottom of the paper also, some semi half open. This process of creating each and every raindrop may feel very intensive so there is another quick and easy hack. What you can do when your background is still wet, especially when we were going ahead and doing these greens and the second time when we have reverted our paper, that time what you can do is you can use your white little diluted white gouache and start splattering it across the wet background. You will be able to create this very faded-out blurred effect and in between, you can also go ahead and add some water droplets or water splatters. In that way, it will be much more easier to create our background which looks with little bit of bouquet. Now, with the help of my intense Payne's gray mixture, I'm going and painting this, creating the shapes of dripping water. Whenever you paint the dripping water use certain curved lines and then make the drop of water at the base rounded. That is how we are going to go ahead and create this dripping water from the roof. Now to create a volume at the base of that drop, I'm going and creating this shadow with my intense tone of indigo, as you can see. Now with the help of some white gouache, I'm going to go and fill in some of that white gouache on that drop where it bulges. That would look little bit more realistic. I'll be going ahead and using the same technique to paint more dripping water from the roof starting from the right coming to the left. [MUSIC] Use varying sizes of this dripping water outlines that you are making because when the water drips it is never equally uniform and symmetrical. There will be some shorter dripping water formations and the longer ones so create something similar to that, search for references of this painting. You will be able to understand and observe this dripping movement of the water in a more better way. [MUSIC] Once I finish outlining these dripping water shapes from the roof, what I will do is, in the same alignment where the water is dripping, I'm going to go ahead and create some water droplets with the same liner brush that I have got. I'll be creating the same kind of technique. Bulging at one side of the droplet. I'll be going ahead with some broader stroke of indigo and the other side will have a thin outline. That is how I'm going to create the shadow and then I'll be filling in some of that white quash later on. But first I'm just going ahead and creating these droplet shapes. Now I'll be going ahead and filling in some of that white gouache in certain water droplets to create that white reflection of the droplet so just keep on doing this. Not for all the droplets, only in some of the few droplets where we have made the bulge of the droplet more bold. Go ahead there and do it. I'm trying to create here a few smaller dots just at the inside curvature of the roof here so that it looks like the dripping water is coming at an angle from there. That's all. The small small little details that you add into a painting, makes it look more realistic in real life. [MUSIC] Now, I'll be going ahead and using just the dam tip of my brush, I'll be blending out the other side where I want the whites not to be seen that prominently. This would give that very much realistic look to the water droplet, so only at the sites where there will be that bulge or curvatures use that brighter white droplet and the other side just straight to blend it and fade it out. That's all I'm going to do for the rest of the droplets as well. [MUSIC] I'm done with the droplets now, it's time that I start painting the rain. I have switched to my liner or rigger brush size number two, this is from Princeton Heritage Series and it's a synthetic brush. I'm just going to go and use the fine tip of this brush and create these small and longer, shorter strokes to create that rain effect in the background. Now, I have reweighted that area and I'll be going ahead with little bit of white gouache because the area is already prevented. The white gouache will blend into that area, and this will make this part of the top layer look much more blurred out into the distance and will look really very appealing to your eyes at the end of the painting. For this part, try to use a little dilute mixture of pure white gouache because you do not want this area to become too intensely white so your green should also be visible underneath. I will let that area get right now with the help of the same liner brush, I'm going to go ahead and create some more smaller water droplets towards my left side. Here your I'll again switching to my mini liner brush with a very fine pointed tip to create the rain effect. [MUSIC] here I'll be filling up this kind of long and short-range strokes with the help of your liner brush. If you do not have a liner brush or mini liner brush, use a brush which has a fine pointed tip, preferably size number one or two, anything which you are comfortable with. [MUSIC] Happy with how this is looking right now. I will just go and add a little bit more of details onto those water droplets as you can see. Some of the areas I have created that shadow effect using my Payne's Grey. If you're indigo Swiss more towards the Payne's gray, you can feel free to go ahead and use your indigo for the same or instead of indigo, go ahead and use your neutral tint. Your black or Payne's gray, either of these three shades of black. I think I will just leave it at that. I will not overwork it too much because the more you want to create details, you might overwork and end up ruining it. Just let the paper dry. My paper has dried completely and this is looking indeed so refreshing. I'm really loving how this has turned up peeling of the tapes at an angle and very gently and slowly, making sure that I do not rip out my paper. Always, always do this step, when your paper has completely dried out flat like this. It will be much more easier to peel out the stapes and here you go. Here is our finished painting. I hope you have enjoyed painting this monsoon landscapes with me. Next is a bonus lesson for you guys. 25. Bonus Lesson: Color Palette: [MUSIC] Hello, welcome to the bonus lesson, and this is what exactly we are going to create for our bonus project. This is something which I had created a long time back and you guys totally loved it and wanted me to include this as the bonus lesson, so I'll be using the same sketchbook that I had been using. Here are the colors which we will be requiring. Basically, I'll be here working with just the two shades, but I'll be showing you here two more other colors. In case if you do not have those shade, you can always go ahead and work with this. The first is Tetre Vetre, which is PB28 and PG8 pigments. Next is Shadow Green. Here it is PBk31. But in case if you do not have this color, you can go ahead with White Nights, green original and mix little bit of Payene's Gray into it to obtain this color. Payene's Gray we have already used in our other projects. Here is another combination, you can mix either of your sub green or your White Nights, green, original color, or that of viridian hue. The darkest Viridian in dense stone mix it with the Payene's Gray or black shade and you will be getting a shade which is very close to that of shadow green. Let's quickly take a look at the color swatches for all these color pigments in case if you do not have the pigment information as I have been repeating it throughout all the projects. You can go ahead, look up close to these shades and pick your colors. Now let's quickly take a look at the elemental composition. The first thing that we are going to learn is to create the blurred background. Now, this technique we have already discussed in our project number 5, the very last project that we had seen. Here too we're going to do something similar. Here, we are going to be painting a scene which is like in right middle of vegetation or a forest you may call. There we are going to paint the rain, which has been focused on a particular subject, that is the rain falling on the leaves and the drops. That is what is the main subject element for this project. I will quickly show you how you can go ahead and create the background using tonal variation of our Tetre Vetre and your shadow green. Now, in case if you do not have this colors, do not worry, you can always go and layer flat wash with clean water. Now, do this step properly because it is essential for your background to be wet for a longer period of time to create this transition of light and dark colors. I'm starting with my lighter tone or the medium tonal intensity of Tetre Vetre. Now, in case if you do not have to Tetre Vetre, you can always go ahead and use your medium tonal or lighter tonal values of your green original mix from White Nights. Green Original is a color which will be very close to this color. When you mix in that green original little bit of your Payene's gray, you will obtain a very darker form of green, which is close to black, so that would be your shadow green. Now once you lay this layer in-between, we will be going and lifting out some of the colors to expose the paper white. You will see why we're doing this when we start layering it with a darker shade. Now, I'll be preparing my darker mix, so try to use minimum of water when you are going and creating this mix of your darker shade. Try to have a consistent paint mix, it will be easier for you when you start with it. This is how I'm going to go ahead. I'll start from the left corner and then I will go halfway in between to my center and just drag the colors over there. Just see how I am creating the strokes, releasing my pressure halfway through the center. Just soft, nice, and gently. Try to go with an intense paint mix of this darker shade in the very first time, because these darker colors tend to dry a little faded when the paper starts drying out. Now, during this process, in case you have covered off those white spaces, do not worry, we can always go ahead and lift out the colors because the background is still dry. I'm going ahead and lifting out the colors. Lifting colors is nothing but removing the excess paint from your wet surface using a damp brush. Now try to go ahead with a damp brush only and not too watery brush because in case if you are using watery brush, you will be adding more water into your paper and you will be ruining it. [MUSIC] Now, I'll be going ahead with one more darker layer of my Shadow Green because you can see the color is fading out to be lighter. That's why I told you to go ahead with an intense tone at the very first time. The heart, you need not go and do this layering process because by the time you come to do this process, your paper already might be getting dried, and once the paper dries, it becomes very difficult to make the colors blend and you will have some pretty hard edges. We do not want that, hence, we will try to work this background on wet-on-wet as much as we can do. With exact strokes of my brush, I'm going to lift off certain areas one more time and maybe I'll go with one more coat of shadow green towards my left to make it more darker. This is how we are going to go ahead and create a background. It's very simple and easy, so the next steps I'll discuss with you in our bonus main project. 26. Bonus Project- Rain Drops In The Forest: [MUSIC] Let's kickstart our bonus projects. For the bonus project, I have used an A5 size of paper and taped it down with the help of my masking tape. Now, I'll be going ahead and layering a flat wash of water on my paper. Now, do the step very nice and gently and uniformly. I've switched to my bigger Size 8 brush so that I cover larger surface area because using the other flat brush, it would have taken some time to cover the area. Always based on the size of the paper, try to select your brushes. This always helps you with covering the larger surface areas. Now starting out with the background going ahead and layering it with my medium tonal intensity of [inaudible] You know you can go ahead and spread it out onto your full paper starting from the top or from bottom, any side that you feel like to start, you can go ahead and start using your strokes. Now, leave certain gaps here and there because we are going to go ahead and start filling those corner edges with their darker tones of shadow green, just like how we practiced in the elemental composition section. Now switching to my shadow green, and I'm just going ahead and dragging the colors into the center and releasing the pressure. Similarly, I'll try to do the same onto my right side as well. Do not go and cover the center area. You need those areas to have that blurred effect and to play that effect of light and shadow. That's what we are trying to aim for, to give that blurred background, that lighter and darker areas. That's why we have used two tonal concentration or variation of green, that is our [inaudible] and shadow green. I'll be going ahead and try to create this darker tones and lighter tones. Keep observing and watching my brush strokes. This is how we are going to go ahead and first create a blurred background. Once the blurred background is set, we will be starting with our leaves. Now, in case in this layering process, when you start with the darker tones by mistake if you cover up the lighter areas, one easy fixes, take any damp flat brush or your damp frown brush and especially take a soft brush and try to lift out the colors and go with little zigzag patterns in between. We do not want it to look too symmetrical. Just go and have little zigzag patterns of these whiter spaces in between and we will be good to go. You can see because our paper is wet and this shade of shadow green is a little granulating so the upper part of the paper also the colors are all blending together, I'm just going ahead and with zigzag motion of the brush trying to lift out certain areas. I will go back and start layering with the darker tones one more time. Now once you are satisfied with the background, go ahead starting with the leaves. I'll be using my size number 4 brush and creating these leaves. This would be a very simple leaf, just how you would draw any palm leaf; it is something like that. With just the intense tone of your shadow green, try to start create these leaves but make sure that your paper here is semi-wet. Not absolutely wet because if your paper is wet, these colors will start bleeding into the background. You do not want that. You want the leaves to retain its shape. Either you can wait out for your paper to dry completely or else start working on it when you feel your paper is starting to dry up, and always go for this intense consistent mix of color so that you do not spoil your background with too watery paint mix. Now it's time to paint our rain drops. For the raindrops, I'll be going ahead and creating a consistent thicker mixture of my white gouache. Here, I have switched to our mini detailer brush, the brush that I have been using to create all details for the other projects as well. I'm going here and creating the drop. Can you see it? Now I'm going to fill in certain areas of that drop using my same white gouache. Since our background is already with a darker color, that's why for the drop I'm going ahead with this white gouache background for the drop. Using another **** brush with just the tip, I'm going to blend out that white areas with the darker areas. Similarly, I'm going to go ahead and create drops around these areas. Again, just how we created the drops in our Day 5 project. But here, we will be focusing on the drops mainly which are emerging out from the leaves or are falling down from the leaves. Yes, that's how we're going to do it. Now use a damp type of the brush and always try to blend out the whiter colors and the darker areas a little bit. Now, I'm going to create drops on the upper surface of the leaves out here. Now remember, I have started creating these drops only when my certain areas, especially the bottom part of the area has dried out. The upper part still is wet, so I'm not going ahead exactly and creating drops in that areas. I will work with these drier areas first. In the meantime, those areas will also get dried. This is how you can save time in your watercolor painting. Wherever the areas are dry, start working on those areas especially when you want to work with wet-on-dry techniques. In the meantime, you will let the other areas to also get dried. Now using just the tip of my brush, I'm going to load it with shadow green and just let it on that other side of the drop to indicate the shadow. I'll be repeating the same steps for the other drops as well so keep watching. I'll be going in and creating these other drops similarly, and this process is going to be a little bit tedious because we are going to go ahead and create these single, single drops every time. But do not worry, keep your patience. We're not going to create too much of these drops, just a certain of these prominent drops, and then we will be going with starting with the rain in the background. That's pretty much about the scene that we are depicting out here. This is the part which might be a little time-consuming process, but rest assured we will be done with it. I have here fast-forwarded these sections because these sections are the same repetitive process. Once you get the hang of creating these drops, rest of the part will come to you very naturally. Time to go ahead with creating our rain. For that, I'm going to use the same technique that we had seen in our Day 5 project. We will go with longer and shorter strokes, but always remember that go with just one direction for this rain. Do not mix two types of direction when you are going from left to right or right to left to your paper. Stick with just one direction of the rain. If you are going and making your rain looks slanted starting from right to left, just maintain with that flow. Now whenever you are going ahead with this rain, always go ahead and remember to use varying strokes with your brush that is longer and shorter strokes. I'm done with the rain now I just thought that I'll just go and create one more drop out here. It's the same process. I outlined it first in the shape of that drop and towards the base of the drop, I'm showing it's a volume. That's why with the white gouache and the upper parts I'm blending it with my damp brush. Now, when we had started out with the leaves, the paper was slightly wet so these greens had already faded into the background, almost of the same color that our background is. I'm just going to go ahead with a little bit more consistent dark green mix one more time and prominently mark out these leaves. This is what I'm going to do for the rest of the other leaves. I've switched to my mini detailer brush again and I'm going with these rain movements one more time. This is the last and the final step. Now just here in the overlapping leaves, I'm just going to create this effect of rain splatter, and that's it. My paper has already dried out so I'm peeling off my masking tape at an angle from all the four sides. Always peel out your masking tapes when your paper has dried out completely. I hope you have enjoyed painting these monsoon landscapes with me. I'll see you again in the next class.