Natural Landscape Essentials: Paint Reflections In Watercolor

1. Introduction: Hello, and welcome. In this class, we'll be painting a natural landscape with reflections. Using a variety of wet and wet and wet and dry techniques. Creating convincing reflections can be tricky when you're learning watercolors. Wet and wet technique brings out the natural strength of water color and is essential for you as a beginner when you're learning. I'm going to show you the importance of timing when you're using wet and wet techniques. I'm going to show you how to gain control and layer effectively so you can create soft and atmospheric landscapes. It's definitely easier than you think in any painting, planning is crucial. I'm going to show you how to simplify shapes and sketch in large ones, such as water, sky reflections, trees, and grass. Getting in those large components accurately beforehand is essential for your painting to make sense. So join me in this class. I'm really looking forward to showing you how to paint this amazing natural landscape scene. 2. Materials Required: Alrighty, I want to talk a bit about materials and allow you to prepare for this class. I'm using here a little bit of 100% cotton watercolor paper. I always recommend having some of this stuff if you can get it, because it's the best quality and also allows you to maximize the effect of wet and wet. Here you can see in the water that beautiful blend of green and the blue. And you can only get this when you're using decent quality paper or just textured paper, textured paper. You got to be quick with it, but it allows it to blend really nicely. Some people do use hot press paper, which is completely flat. I find it's tricky to work on, especially as a beginner, because the colors don't mix easily together and just get areas that dry too fast. Here are some brushes I want to talk about that I use. So these are just some mop brushes. Mop brushes are used for getting in large areas, large washes here, the yellow on the ground, the trees in the background, this green, even some of the trees here, that golden color in the background here in the water reflection, a bit of the foreground, Definitely all this water in the sky as well. Really important because they hold a lot of water and allow you to cut round larger shapes like the tree trunks and things like that as well. For smaller details, I use synthetic brushes. So these are little round and flat brushes and these are used to just get in small details for the trees. The reflections, bits of grass, rocks even here in the background. Some of these trees as well of use the round brush. They don't hold much water, but they allow you to get in control. Once you've got those soft washes in there, make sure you've got a couple of these around. Just the round brush, that's going to be fine. I use a little Filbert brush as well at times, and I've used it in a couple of times in this scene just as a demonstration. But I've lifted off a bit of paint. You can use also a round brush, Wet a bit of the paper and then lift off with the tissue that just reveals a bit of the white of the paper. Nice soft scene there. And sometimes you get those little ripples or disturbances on the water that you want to indicate. A couple of other brushes that are used as well. This one here, which is a fanbrush, I get in some grassy effects like that. Just makes it easy so you don't have to draw in each individual strand. This one is a, this one is a rigger brush. And the rigger brush is great for getting in little details like the branches or some of these smaller trees or individual grass trends as well. Great for that kind of thing. Let's talk a bit about paint. You notice there's a really strong sense of light in this scene. You've got all this golden color. This is ronacodone, yellow. I do use a bit of yellow ochre in there as well. Just a vibrant yellow in there, I think would be great if you really want to emphasize the effect of light in this scene. In the background here, I've got some cerulean blue reflected into the ground, on the ground, the water or the lake. This here is just a bit of darker green that I've dropped in here. You can use pre mixed green, something like an undersea green or a hookers green for there. But again, you can mix up your own greens as well. You've got a bit of darker blue, like a thalo blue or a ultramarine blue. You can mix that with a bit of yellow to get a nice dark green. It's also use a bit of brown in the scene as well. We've got some burnt bit of burnt sienna as well, to just get in some darker earthen colors. Apart from that, the last secret green is some white quash in this wash is a way that I use right the end to bring out some final highlights. For example, these little trees at the back, you highlight in that tree, these rocks here in the foreground as well. Maybe a little bit on the trees. I find that the white wash is great. I just mix it up with a bit of yellow so that it takes off that complete white color to it just gives it more of a warmer color. But apart from that, that's about it. Another thing you might want to keep in mind is getting a color like a neutral tint. It's just a convenience color. It's basically gray if you've got your own three primary colors. If you've got a blue, red, and a yellow, mix those together and you're going to get this darker color anyway. It's just a convenience one. 3. Drawing: All right, we're going to go ahead and start with the drawing for this one. The area where the sky, or I guess the trees touch the ground, It's roughly in the center or just a little bit below the center point of the scene. So I'm going to just connect up roughly these two dots here. Just coming across like this. It's not completely flat as well, it just arches down and that's because there's some of these shrubs and things there. Something like that. Okay. As long as you've got enough sky there, it will be good. Now, probably the trickiest part of this scene is this tree on the right hand side and you've got kind of the sand here. You can see this lake here in the front. And it comes up all the way here. And I think I'm going to actually get in some shrubs or just a bit more going on down in the front rather than, yeah, because we do have this lake in the front, but there's this blurry bit of land here. But I'll turn this into some more shrubs and things later. But this tree is probably the trickiest part to draw in. But once we get that tree in, we're going to be fine. I just want to draw in a bit more of that sand. A bit more of that sand. I'm actually going to make the lake go roughly around here. Okay, We'll go up. This is like the area of the sand. Okay. We'll probably ignore this line running across there. I just wanted to lower the area of the sand a bit more to give more room. Here are some of these shrubs. We've got this big one that comes up all the way across like that. The trees, trees come straight up from there. You've got this side of it like this. Okay? Here you can see like a bit of it even just comes all the way forwards here and branches off into the shape like that. And then behind it you've got the bigger branches that just shoot off out into the sky. Here you've got a one that just comes off like this there. Okay, here we got it. There's three main trees. There's one that comes up like this as well. Again, you don't have to make the exactly as per the reference, but I want to roughly put them in, in the same spot you can see here. This one branches off a bit to the left like that and there's a branch that goes up. Some of them go smaller as well here. This one just disappears behind this mass of leaves and things. Okay, there's a darker tree here as well. It's growing also directly up that just keep that structure of it. It goes all the way to the edge of the scene, really. But the big one is what I need to preserve it, just a bit more detail around the trunk, I think. And to outline it better so you can see it's going to make a big difference. Okay. Down here there is another tree just coming up, coming up. It's almost like it's blown over to the left. You've got branches, one that comes all the way across like this Y shaped. It's very tricky not to get to bog down and all the details of what is happening here because essentially I've got so many little branches and things. You got to be careful not to spend too much time on it, but spend enough time on it to get in some of the details, all these little branches here we can get in afterwards. The main thing you want to focus on is the trunks there. Because the trunks, I think they create the main shape of the tree. You have to get that right. Otherwise, all the little branches and things are going to look funny. There's even a tree here, you can barely see it, but it's just in the bush in the background as well. And again just forms some branches that go upwards, cuts through some of these trees and things. We can fix that and add some more details later on at the moment. As you can see, just adding in some branches and offshoots of this, a lot of this stuff here is also. A lot of this stuff is also just foliage. This whole thing, there is just tree foliage. It comes across out the back like that. There look, just the shrubs. The reflections are going to be tricky, but essentially we just have a mirror image. We've got the shrubs here that there's actually something floating on the water. Whether we put that in or not, I'm not sure, we'll decide later. But you've got these trees that come out on this angle like this one to see how it just mirrors the ones here. Okay. I'm really trying not to do too much here because otherwise I'm going to certainly spend too much time on it. So let me just try to figure this one out like that. Maybe there we are, okay. And then we've got this one here as well. Is a little bit of this reflection of that tree like that bits and pieces, the branches all coming off as well that these main three trunks think you get these in, you're going to be completely fine work on those branches and things later and see what we can do in the water. But that's a good starting point. I think there's a lot of these shrubs. You can see the reflections of them. These larger trees all in the background as well. Here, There's one here, smaller ones there. I'm just putting in the general outline of them. You've got these tree shapes as well, the trunks of the trees. There's one here at one there and coming off that, you've got one here coming in on a slight angle towards the left there as well. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. Of course you've got these reflections in the water too, so touch of that, we'll figure it out along the way. Okay, So let's get started on the painting. 4. First Wash: Now first things first, I'm going to go in with some yellowy color. I've got Quinacridone yellow. And this is a nice color that has a golden tinge to it. I've added in a little bit of titanium white. First thing I'm going to do is go over these trees, the trunks of these trees now that they're a golden color because of the quality of light in this scene. Normally these trunks will be more whitish or light gray, but just will play around with that. Start with those trunks and I want to see if I can get these in a bit faster as well. Of course you've got this one here, these, these darker ones that come up and do their own thing. But we'll actually get in the darkness of it a bit later. I just want to get in nice, warm color for some of these branches and cut around them later. Get in some more details, but look at how I'm just putting in a bit of this golden color for the trees, the branches, okay, one here in the background. And you get a little bit of these ones here in the distance as well. Just a little bit of color that, something like that. Okay. There's also like a bit of brown, little splotches of brown or even like gray on there. I can pick up whatever is on the palette and just add in a little bit there as well as you can see, get in some variations, tiny little variations of color on the trees. One thing you got to remember as well is that the light source is coming from the right. You're going to have maybe a little shadow on the right hand light source coming in from the left. So you're going to get a bit of light darkness on the right hand side like that. I'm just dropping in a bit of that color on the right hand side. It's more exaggerated, definitely than what you see in the reference. Okay, the reflect. The reflection I'm going to get in as well. Just a touch of that yellow like that in the water. Okay, it should actually be a bit darker. I'm putting a bit of grayish color that Okay, here there's the shrubs, I, a bit of yellow Oca to get in, some of that bit of yellow Oca for the shrubs that goes all the way down into the sandy area here. Okay, where I might want to just like this golden color really At this point, all I want to do is just get really light colors. Most of the paint I'm using here is just 10% yeah, 10% paint, really. The rest of it is just water reflections tend to look a bit duller as well than the actual subject above. You want to make sure you've got a bit of that going on? Okay, I'm trying to get in more of this yellow here and there before I actually start getting in the green. I do find that if you're not careful, everything just turns to green where possible. I try my best to get in as much of the yellow and lighter shades of things then I can always drop in, of course, green afterwards. Okay, just shake that up, little bits like that even for the trees back there. I've got a bit of this stuff under Sea Green, which is just a dark green really. We can drop that bit of this dark green. I think a bit of brown as well. I find that Australian trees desaturated color. You don't have really vibrant greens in this mix. Go in areas more yellow, yellow here. Join it all up. Okay, some of these may become rocks or something like that as well. We'll change it up later. The sky, I'm going to go pick up cerulean blue light wash of it, mostly water. Just drop that in straight at the top. First, I'll go across to the right hand side and blend a bit of this in here. A blend a little bit into the sky, the trees, A touch, keep it light. This air is too dark actually, I'll just remove some of that, okay? Weaves in between the trees and the yellows and things. This is why I love painting wet and wet because you can only get this amazing effect when you do it this way. Give up a bit of control, but you get this continuity of color, this amazing effect. I'm just going to move this whole block of color towards the right. Really trying to preserve that blue as well. It's tricky because we've got some yellow in here. But the yellow, yellow ocher, and Rnagradone yellow, which I think doesn't make too much of a vibrant green color when you mix suan with it. That's also a reason why I use okay, good. I'm going to move into the water. Get this done at the same time as well like that. Okay, just a bit of that. Serle in, drop that in there at the edge. Okay. More in here. Just mimicking the sky. Because the rest of it's going to be the reflections of the trees as well. There's only a bit of blue in here, There's not a whole bunch of blue running through that water. Just in sections, I might pick up a bit of that green and a bit of brown mixed together, just desaturated. And I can just work a bit on this stuff here, a bit more yellow in there as well to get in a little indication of that. Darker, darker. I'm also taking a bit of time to see just cut around the yellow of those branches I've painted in the water as to not eliminate that reflection entirely. I want it in there, but I also want the sharpness of what's around it. Okay. This is just a bit of yellow here in the foreground or whatever. Just a warm color mix that in the touch there more here. Okay. Yeah, a bit of brown, a bit of brown, a bit of green, bit of brown up here. For the trees, the reflections of these trees, I haven't even got in the proper trees yet, but because that water is quite, this area is still wet, I want to take the opportunity to really get the reflections in as quick as I can. A bit of purple might be okay as well in there. Let me just. Test it out. As long as it mixes, it has dried. I bet you at the bottom spray that little there we go. Just blend it down. There's actually a lot of yellows and things even in here that I can just try to get in around this. Notice I've left some white and stuff in here as well. That's no big deal. Okay. All right. I think it looks all right. I'll probably add some more color in there in a moment. But before I do that, I want to actually work on these trees in the background and make sure that there's more body to them, bit more of this dark green. I can mix that with black as well to create extra contrasts. Like for example here, it's significantly darker. If you pick up your paint and make sure that it's quite thick on the brush, you can actually prevent it from spreading too much. As you can see here, it doesn't really spread much. I'm going to use this brush, It's just a little flat brush. Okay. There just to create a little barrier here for the trees. Okay. I want to cut around the branches as well, but yeah, quite tricky because the paper is still wet. It's most likely I'm going to have to use some afterwards to bring out some extra highlights, these branches. But for the time being, I'm not going to worry about that. I don't want to ruin the wash. Okay. Just leaving in little high lights like that that can be turned into a tree or something later. More green and more black and brown mixed together. Okay. Can just see here. There's a little shadows on the right hand side underneath the trees. See shadows on the right hand side of the trees that helps to indicate that light source again. Okay. There's another one here. Here. Let's have a look. Part of the tree or something here. I think I can use some of this brush, this mangled looking brush. It's really just like brown and brown and green mixed together. Okay. To get in some nice little bits and pieces, I pick up some yellow ocher as well to drop in there. I do find that there's just a touch of warmth as well in these leaves. As you can see, it's like a light green brown. I don't know, something in there. Just to join on to the sky and have some of this quality of light. I'll have to go in again in another wash. I think the trees leaves the sites of the trees here. You can do things like just pick up a bit of green, dry off the brush and do things like this sharp that connect, connect with the body of those trees and create some sharper edges in the sky. See sharper edges, it's tricky. I just want to get it in there quickly and continue on really. Okay, good, good. The fan brush, got the flat brush as well. Let's see what we can do. Let's see what we can do with the flat brush. A tiny bit more darkness may be here, while I can just get the darker darkness of the reflection here near the edge of the lake, if possible. And move some of that around a touch that, okay. Scratch off some paint in the foreground for, I don't know, some shrubs or things just growing close to the foreground. I think this is going to be too dry. Can't really do any of that part of the tree. That's okay. This one's okay. Can scratch out a bit there. Just a little bit of texture. I suppose it does help and it creates that impression of foreground. Okay, I've got a bit of, just a little knife here, but you can use your fingernail. You can use a credit card or something like that. You know, some of these areas as well. At the back, the paper hasn't completely dried, so you can't really get at them. Okay. So I'm going to give this a really, really brief dry. 5. Second Wash: I'm going to be using two main brushes, or three main brushes. The fan brush, the flat brush, and this little mangled round brush. Firstly, let's play around with a bit of this yellow. Let's see if I can get in some tiny bits and pieces of detail like that fan brush is probably going to be easier for this bit of yellow, just feathering in detail of the shrubs below. Just going over the top of all this to give it some texture as you can see. Just a little texture here. You've got the tree and things here as well. Just a bit of the fan brush working. I haven't dried the paper completely. It is melting into the page touch as well, which is really what I want so that it doesn't look too sharp. But I have to do this quickly to make sure that it blends nicely. I'm just picking up a bit of basically just the green paint that I've got left over on the palette. Do this with, okay, the Phil Fan brush. And what I'm finding is that I need to actually go over the background more to bring out the light on these trees. That's what I'm trying to do. Just create some extra contrast in darkness around the trunks of the trees in order to bring back out details. Okay, I'll have a bit of black. I'll use this to perhaps just bring out some of the details safe for this tree here. Darker tree there, okay, It's all the way in the distance behind the other ones. But it creates a contrast as well with the other trees. There are extra darkness as well. And even this one here, it's kind of darker, but coming through there a bit more brown in this mix. Okay, I'm just trying to get in some of the details of these branches that overlap and join on with everything else. I will use some gas actually afterwards as well. But for the time being, this is going to be good. A bit of color back there as well. Just some more of this by branchiness going up, intertwining with everything. I'm trying not to take too much time and be too precious with everything as well. I find it doesn't make a huge difference even if you copy every single branch, um, looks similar. Anyhow, once you're done darkness here in the background, I'm just using some black again to just Bring out this tree or whatever in the background there. Getting a bit bit of that dark darkness there too. Don't be afraid to use your darks as long as you remember to leave your lights in as well. Okay? Dark colors, just a bit of black underneath like that. Okay? I'm going to use a rigger, a little rigger brush with some black paint and some brown paint mixed together. And this will help me get in some of these little intricate branches hopefully a lot faster. Hold the brush at the end and let it do its thing. You can see just move that brush along, you get up near the top. I find that it does help to just hold the brush a little further down, but it will do that in a moment. I'm just want to get these main ones in set quick indications of the branches. You just feather it in quickly like that. Okay. It takes a lot of certainly bit of fiddling around with this, these branches, but sooner or later you start to find that they make more sense. We do need to give it some time. Do the darkness back here as well in there like a kind of shadow cast by that tree? There's some of the shadows on the trees will here in the water, just a touch of darkness in areas it more contrast around the tree trunk, the base of the tree trunk anyway. Uh, that does help more here more of these darker branches. I'm heading up to the top like that. We're going to put in some other lighter branches afterwards as well. Probably with a touch of quash back to the flat brush again. Let's see what we can do with these little things here. They can be rocks, for example, just a bit of brown and a bit of black mixed together. You can get a rock or something here on the ground, something like that. They can be bits and pieces near the river, the lake or whatever. It also helps to draw the boundary. Just little rocks and things on the water. There's some stuff just floating about here as well that I can just imply there crush the scene like that. Middle bits of clumps of stuff, rocks and things. Just trying to make some rocks like shapes as well. Here, some bits and pieces catching the light or what have you. Grassy like shapes. Just a bit of using this fan brush, bit of green paint and just feathering touch of this watery paint through here. And you can get in a bit of subtle effect. It looks more interesting than just the, what we had there before. Some more dark, some parts of that tree. On the right hand side of the tree, I try to get as many of these bits in as possible before I go in with some lighter colors. A bit of even here might be okay to scratch out. Now just see that just a little branch or something like that here can easily be taken out, that even here, like that texture like kind of these trees and shrubs running through. Okay, good touch of white gash now and I'm going to mix this up with a bit of yellow. Yeah, just a bit of this white wash. A bit of yellow. More vibrant yellow, and let's see what we can do here. On the left hand side of the tree. Just feather it in a little bit as you can see. Like this. Okay, a little bit. Just dry the brush off and feather feather in like that. That's how you get in a nice indication of sunlight on the left hand side of the tree, reemphasizing the light source. I'm just looking around again at the reference photo and thinking to myself, you know, what else could we potentially bring out a bit of that yellow guash? Again, reappearing and like I was saying before, it helps to create some variation between all these dark spots there. Yeah, You know, some trees heres will like that the branches more of this yellowy color, but going into this area because it's kind of quite green in here, you're going to end up with probably accidentally, a little bit of greeny tinge to that yellow. I got to keep on mixing up a bit more in there to make sure it doesn't turn completely green. A little bit more here. Reflection as well. A bit of this feathering into the front as well, for these shrubs and stuff. Another thing is you can just actually add highlights, say on these rocks a bit here on the left hand side of these rocks. Tiny little highlights and stuff as well. And Father, this dry the brush off. I might get in a few little strokes here. Water, the edge of the water. Like I don't know, there's not really any grass growing there. But I think it just looks nice if I very bit of the tone in there so that we've got some sharper brush strokes and lighter ones as well. Just getting a bit near the tree trunks that more of this like that, yeah. Okay. It's about as light as it gets now unless I go just completely white. But yeah, you can see how I'm just bringing out that little bit of light, all the branches and layering over the top of everything else and creating the illusion of depth and detail. Maybe a few bits of darker, darker brush strokes and in this mix as well, fish.