Oil Painting Water and Reflections in Water

1. Introduction: Hi, I'm Andrew Dicer, an impressionist oil painter, and I love painting landscapes, especially those that feature water. Here are some favorite paintings of mine that include water. This class is for oil painters with some experience painting landscapes or those who consider themselves at an intermediate level of painting. This class will take the mystery and frustration out of painting water and reflections in water by using a process of six easy steps, and you can use this process on any body of water. By watching my videos and applying my method, you'll learn the following skills. How to observe and note the characteristics of the landscape, water, and reflections in water in your reference photo. How to identify the major values and colors in different areas of your landscape. How to premix colors you use for different areas of your painting. How to apply your premix colors to appropriate areas of the canvas. How to apply brush work that creates the illusion of moving water and reflections in water. How to identify any adjustments that need to be made to the painting, and finally, how to place the finishing touches on your painting that will make it sing. For your class project, you'll use this reference photo that I provide to complete a nine by 12 landscape oil painting of a pond featuring the reflection of trees and the water. Also throughout the class, I'll guide you through my step by step process, and I'm always available online if you have any questions. To see what materials are necessary to complete the class project, please see my lesson titled materials, or you can consult a section of the class titled Projects and Resources, where I've attached a complete list of materials. Whether you're unsure about how to paint water or frustrated with your efforts, let's dive right into the first lesson and put you on the path to creating successful paintings featuring water and its reflections. 2. 6-Step Process for Painting Water and Its Reflections: But before I go over the materials you need to complete your class project, let's quickly review each of the six steps we'll be following to paint water and its reflections. Below is a nemonic device to remember my six step process for painting water and its reflections. In the following phrase, observe my vivid highlights before advancing. The first letter of each word stands for a step in the process. The O and observe stands for observe, observe your subject matter. The M and M stands for mix, premixu colors. The V and Vivid stands for vertical, make vertical brushstrokes to create the illusion of reflections. H and highlight stands for horizontal, make horizontal brush strokes to create the illusion of moving water. The B and before stands for blend, blend the edges of your reflections, and finally, the A in advancing stands for adjust, make any final adjustments necessary to complete your painting. Step one, observe the subject matter you want to paint. If you look at the photo on the right and squint your eyes, you can see that the water reflections of the trees to the right are lighter than the trees themselves on the land. Conversely, the water reflections of the lighter trees to the left are darker than the trees themselves. You can also turn the photo upside down and it becomes abundantly clear that the reflections of the darker trees on land now seen to the left are lighter than the trees themselves, and reflections of the lighter trees on land now seen to the right are darker than the trees themselves. Step two, mix, premix the colors and values you see throughout the scene. Keeping your observations in mind, mix the colors and values of the tree foliage on the land and the colors and values of their reflections in the water. Remember, the colors of the reflections in water are duller than the trees casting the reflections. To dull your greens, fold in a bit of greens complimentary color red. Also mix the color of the sky in a slightly darker and muted version of it for its reflection in the water. You can darken your sky color for the reflection by adding a bit more ultramarine blue to it and the slightest amount of cadmium red light to mute it. Step three, vertical. Make vertical brush strokes to create the illusion of reflections in the water. Using a thin coat of paint and a large long flat brush, make vertical strokes to represent the reflection of the trees and sky in the water. Line your brush up with the objects casting the reflections and pull straight down under the objects following their contours. Step four, horizontal. Using a light touch and a thin coat of paint, make some horizontal brush strokes across the vertical ones. Also, using horizontal brush strokes, drag some of the sky reflection into the tree reflection and vice versa. Do this sparingly and with a light touch. Step five, blend the edges of your reflections in the water. Blend the exterior edges where the reflection of the tree foliage meets the sky reflection. Blend the different values and colors of green within reflection of the tree foliage. And finally, step six, adjust, make any necessary final adjustments. Do you need to reestablish any vertical brush strokes? Do you need to reestablish any horizontal ones? Do you need to make some horizontal brush strokes to soften some of the vertical ones? Have you left out any colors in the reflections? Are the colors of your reflections dull enough? Do you need to further soften any edges? Being careful not to overwork the painting, make any necessary final adjustments and consider the painting finished. Now let's take a look at the materials you'll need to complete your class project. 3. Materials: For your class project, you will need a small spiral bound sketchpad such as this one, a number two pencil, and an eraser. You'll need a nine by 12 campus panel. You can buy one of these at any art store. They usually come in packets of four or five. You'll need three paint brushes. Now, feel free to use the brand of brushes that you normally use, but I would ask that you use the same kinds and sizes of brushes that I'll be using. So you'll need a number eight long flat a number four long flat and a number zero Filbert. With respect to paints, I use the gambling brand. I use their professional grade. So that's gambling artist oil color. You'll need 150 milliliter tube of titanium white. I use what is referred to as a limited split palette, which just means that I use a warm and cool of each of the primaries. For my warm red, I use cadmium red light. For my cool red, I use a azarin crimson. For my warm yellow, I use cadmium yellow deep. For my cool yellow, I use cadmium yellow light. For my warm blue, I use ultramarine blue, and for my cool blue, I use thalo blue. Now, I do use one other color to tone my canvas, and that is permanent rose. This is the Windsor Newton brand, which I used to use. That's why I have this leftover. In any case, you'll need a 37 milliliter tube of permanent rose. You will also need a couple of pallet knives with which to mix your paints. I recommend a medium sized palette knife, such as this one, and a small size palette knife such as this one. You'll need some mineral spirits. I recommend gambling gamsol odorless mineral spirits. Compared to other brands, this brand truly is odorless, and you'll pour the mineral spirits into a canister, such as this one. You can buy this at any art store, and we'll use the mineral spirits primarily to clean your brushes between brushstrokes, but we'll also use it at the beginning of the painting with what is known as the blocking phase of the painting, where we're just blocking in the major shapes with a thin coat of paint. You will also need a roll of paper towels. I recommend Viva paper towels because they're so absorbent. And finally, you will need a palette on which to mix your paints, and feel free to use the palette that you normally use. I will be using a plastic palette box just for the sake of convenience. You can buy one of these at any art store. You take the lid off. You will need to purchase a pad of palette paper and you insert the pad of palette paper in the box. I recommend a midtone gray pad of palette paper just because it's much easier to see the values of the paint mixtures when you're working with a background of midtone gray. Also, this measures 12 " by 16 ". The convenient thing about working with a plastic palette box and palette paper is that when you're finished with your painting session, you just tear the sheet out, throw it away, and you have a clean palette for the next painting session. Now, also, if you don't complete your painting in one sitting, just leave the paints on your palette, make sure that you put the lid back on and seal it on all four sides and in the corners, place it in your refrigerator or freezer, and your paints will last for up to a week or two longer. 4. Thumbnail Sketch of Scene: Before I begin painting, I always try to make a thumbnail sketch of my subject matter, be it from real life or a reference photo to work out any composition or design issues at the start. You may have noticed that I marked the midway point on all four sides of my picture frame. I do this as a reminder to myself to avoid placing any objects in the exact middle of the picture frame, either vertically or horizontally. In this first sketch, I place the baseline of the dark mass of trees on the right below the midway mark. However, I felt that since this class is about reflections, I should devote more of the canvas to reflections. In my second thumbnail sketch, I therefore place the baseline of the dark mass of trees above the midway mark. Making these decisions early in the painting process, I avoid trying to make major changes when I'm further along in the painting. 5. Toning Your Canvas: I for your class project, you'll need to tonee a nine by 12 canvas panel with the color permanent rose. Please try to avoid using too much paint. You just want to place a very thin light coat of this color on your Canvas panel. If you're unfamiliar with the process for toning a canvas, please go to my class titled Painting a Colorful Landscape in Oils Lesson 13 for a detailed explanation of the process and its benefits. The reason I'm toning my canvas with permanent rose for this painting is because the majority of the painting has some variation of green in it, and red is the complement of green. So these two colors work well together. And by allowing some of the relatively warm reddish color of permanent rose to show through on the canvas creates a certain color vibration with the green that captures the viewers attention. 6. STEP 1: Observing Your Subject Matter: The first step in the process for pending water and reflections in water consists of observing our subject matter. Here we have a landscape with a group of trees on the right, mostly in shadow and which are therefore of a darker value and consist of cooler colors and a group of trees on the left that are being lit by the sun, which are therefore of a lighter value and made up of warmer colors. Also see a third row of trees in the distance. The main thing we want to keep in mind with respect to them is that they will need to be of a lighter value and cooler in temperature than the other two rows of trees to show that they are in the distance. Remember, as objects recede into the distance, they become lighter in value and cooler in temperature. We can also observe that the reflections of the trees in shadow are lighter in value and in certain areas are duller in color than the trees themselves. Conversely, we see that the lighter and warmer trees to the left cast a darker reflection in the water, and the color of the reflection is also duller than the color of the trees themselves. We also see that the portion of the sky just above the tree lines is of a lighter value and warmer temperature than the upper part of the sky and the reflection of the sky in the water is of a slightly darker value and a slightly more muted color than the sky itself. A couple of other observations worth noting are that in the mass of trees and shadow on the right, we see a bit of a dull violet which suggests that some of the leaves are turning crimson in color and are seen in shadow, and in addition to the cool bluish green color we see throughout the shadow, we see a slightly warmer olive a greenish blue color at the bottom of the trees. Also, where the shore meets the water, we see a muted violet green color. Oftentimes shadow colors at the base of trees and foliage contain a warm earth tone. In addition to the bluish green color we see as we make our way up into the trees or foliage. All that to say that there is some variation that we'll need to show in the large shadow shape in this landscape. Likewise, in the lit trees on the left, we see a bit of a dull red amid the warm yellow color indicating that some of its leaves have begun to turn red. We'll need to keep each of these observations in mind as we begin to premix our colors and throughout the painting process. 7. Laying Out Your Palette: This is the way I set up my palette, and I do so primarily because this is the way I was taught by my mentor. Go ahead and set your palette up the way you normally do or in a way that is comfortable for you. And as a reminder, I'm using a pad of palette paper that is a midtone gray. I find that when I mix colors on midtone gray, I come up with much more accurate values. And if you are comfortable mixing colors on your own, feel free to skip these lessons that focus primarily on mixing colors. 8. STEP 2: Pre-Mixing Colors for Trees in Shadow: Okay, so I will start by mixing the colors of the row of trees on the right that are primarily in shadow. And generally speaking, I'll go from my darkest darks to the lightest lights. So the main color that I see within that group of trees in shadow is kind of a blue, green, cool blue green color. And I put out quite a bit of ultramarine blue and quite a bit of the yellow mixture yellow colors because I'll be using them quite a bit. So just want to make sure that I'm cleaning my palette knife so that I don't contaminate my piles of color. So I'm going to begin by folding in some cad yellow deep and I also want to fold in some cad yellow light, and I'll probably come up with a fairly dark value, which I have. I'm going to mute this color a bit with a little bit of cad red light. Remember, we can always use a color's complimentary color to mute the main color that we're mixing. Again, my value is too dark, so let me add some white and let's see what this looks like. I need to add a little more white. Okay. I feel good about this color. I'm going to mute it just a little bit more with some more cad red light. Okay, as you can see, I've made quite a bit of this mixture. That's because I'll be drawing from it for some of my other colors. And by doing so, kind of making a mother color here, that helps create color harmony. Okay. So the next color I see in that group of trees is kind of a dull violet color. And I mentioned earlier that there's a tree in there whose leaves are turning kind of a crimson color, but they're in shadow. So let me go ahead and mix that color. I took a little bit of a zar and crimson, and I'm just mixing it in with this color. I think I need to lighten the value just a little bit. Okay. I think that color will work. And now there was yet a third color. And that color was kind of a dark olive color. And so I'm going to take some of that initial green that I mixed up, and I'm going to add cad yellow deep. We should get a nice kind of dark olive color, which we have. I'm going to doll it down with a little bit of cad red light. I think I'm going to use a little more of cad red light. And I may need to lighten the value just a tiny bit, so I'll take a little bit of white. Okay. So now I may need a little more of that color. I didn't mix up very much, so I'll go ahead and try to add some paint to it. Okay. I think I'm satisfied with that color. And then there was yet another color at the base of the trees that was kind of a muted violet color. And so, again, I'm going to take some of that initial paint from that pile of green that I mixed up. I'm going to add some lazarin crimson. Now the value of this pile of paint will need to be a little bit darker because that shadow at the base of the trees is a bit darker than the other values that we see in that shadow, that large shadow. I feel pretty good about that color. Now, finally, I'm going to mix the color of the lit portion of the trees on the right side of the trees, those portions that are being lit by the sun. So I'm going to start with the dominant color, which is yellow. And I'll add a little bit of cad yellow deep, and I'll start folding in some blue and as much blue as I need. That may have been too much blue. Let me add a little more cad yellow light to that. I want this color to be warm, somewhat saturated. It's in the foreground of the painting. So let me add a little bit more of cad yellow light. And I'm going to add a little bit of white to it. The value will need to be lighter. So by adding white, I'm lightening the value. I'll add a little more white. And I think I'm going to add just a little more cad yellow light and cad yellow deep. I'm just going to hold this color up next to these, and I think I've got enough of a value change to show that those portions of the tree are being lit by the sun. 9. STEP 2: Pre-Mixing Colors for Trees in Light: So now I'm going to go ahead and mix up the color for the trees on the left that are being lit by the sunlight. And the primary color will be warm, but it won't be quite as warm as this color because I'll need to show that they're a little bit in the distance. They're behind this row of trees. So I think what I'm going to do is I'm going to grab a little bit of this mixture, and I will add just a little bit of ultimarne blue to it. I'll need to mix up some more. I'll go ahead and grab some cad yellow light. I think I've got a good start and a little bit of cad yellow medium, and I'll need to put in a little more blue than I did with this pile because this color needs to be slightly cooler than this. And I'm going to mute it a bit with cad red light. And I'm going to lighten the value. Remember as things recede into the distance, they become lighter in value and cooler in temperature. So let me hold this up. I feel like I need to add a little more blue. So let me do that. And maybe just a tiny bit more blue. And I'm going to lighten the value a little bit more also. M. Okay. I'm going to lighten the value just a tiny bit and add back in just a little bit of cad yellow light. Okay. If I need to tweak this color, I can do so later, but I'm fairly satisfied with it now. Now, I did mention that there was a portion of these trees whose leaves had started turning red. So I want to indicate that. I'm going to grab a little bit of this color I mixed originally and just a little bit of cad red light, and I will lighten the value a bit by adding white. Oh. May need a little bit more of this color, so I'm going to grab some from this pile, add a little more cad red light, and then lighten the value with a little bit of white. Now, we do have some shadow color among those trees. So I'm just going to grab a little bit of this color that I'll be using for the trees on the right in shadow, and I'm going to lighten the value. And I should be able to use that for my shadow colors for this row of trees on the left. And now I want to move on to that third row of trees. And for it, I'm going to use a little bit of thalo blue because it's cooler. And I'll add a little bit of ultramarine blue, and I'm going to add some cad yellow light. This color needs to be fairly cool. I'm going to add a little more thalo blue. And I'm going to start folding in some white. It's still a pretty intense color. It's too intense to show that the trees are in the distance, so I'm going to have to mute it with some cad red light. And I'm going to lighten the color just a little bit more. I'm going to add just a tiny bit of cad yellow deep. I think I want to lighten the value just a little bit more just to show that they are the row of trees that are farthest back into the painting. Okay, I've got a couple more piles of paint to mix with respect to the objects outside of the water. And one of those is the green field coming from the left that meets the row of trees on the right. I'm going to grab a little bit of this color that I mixed up for the portions of the trees that are being lit by the sun, and I'll grab a little bit of this green. I'm going to add some ultramarine blue, and I'll add some cad yellow light. This color needs to be fairly intense. I'll add just a little bit more of cad yellow light, and it'll need to be of a fairly light value because it's being lit directly by the sun. However, it is somewhat in the distance, so I'll need to keep that in mind as far as the value is concerned. So let me add some white. So I've added some white, and I think the value will need to be a little bit lighter yet. I'm going to add a little bit of palo blue, make the green a little more intense. Okay, so I'm gonna add more white. I'm going to add just a little bit of cad yellow light. I'm going to add a little more white. Okay. If I need to tweak this color, I can do that later. Okay, there's one more color, and that is the kind of sandy shore that we see on the left side of the pond. So to get that color, I'm going to start with cad yellow deep. And I'm going to fold in some cad red light. I want this to be a light earth tone, kind of a sand color, but leaning more towards the red. Okay, so I'm going to add just a tiny bit of blue to this. That may have been too much. It's fairly intense. And now I will add some white to this. And we'll see. That's a color that I think I can work with. I just need to lighten the value. Value needs to be just about as light as this. So I think this will work. 10. STEP 2: Pre-Mixing Colors for Sky: Okay, the only thing that we have left is the sky, as far as objects outside of the water go. And so I'll mix the colors for it. So I'm going to begin with that color that we see just above the tree lines, and I'll start with white. And I'm going to mix in just a little bit of ultramarine blue. Needs to be a fairly light color. And I'm going to warm it up with just a tiny bit of cad light. I may need to add a little more cadlolt I do. Let me go ahead and do that. Okay. I'm going to add just a little bit of white. So this is kind of a warm. I got a little bit of green over there, a little bit of my thalo blue, so I'm gonna take that out. So this is that warm color we see. I feel like I need to mix up just a little bit more. So I'm going to start with white. I'm going to fold in a little bit of ultramarine blue. I'll need more white. A little bit more white. And a little bit of cad yellow light. I think that will need to be just a tiny bit lighter. So I'm going to grab some more white, mix that in. Okay. And the other two colors I'll be mixing up will be for the upper part of the sky. To mix one of those colors, I'll use white and a little bit of ultramarine blue. The value of this color needs to be a little bit darker than that color. I think this looks pretty good. And then I want to mix some white with theo blue, mainly for the sake of variation. So let me grab just a little bit of Theo blue. Remember, Thealoblue is a stain. A little bit goes a long way. I'll need a little bit more here. I want to get the value of these two colors to be about the same. I think that we do 11. STEP 2: Pre-Mixing Colors for Reflections: F so now I will mix the colors for the reflections in the water, and I'll start with the large massive trees on the right, the reflection that we see in the water. And remember that dark objects will cast a lighter reflection. So I'm going to take a little bit of this color that I mixed up for the shadow portion of those trees, and I'm going to warm it up with some cad yellow light and some cad yellow medium. And I'm going to fold in some lazarin crimson to dole it down a bit. And I'll need quite a bit of this color because it's quite a big shadow, so I'm going to take more of this color. It's quite a big reflection, excuse me. Okay. And I'm going to warm that up just a little bit as I did before. And I'm going to add a little more azar and crimson. And I'm going to lighten the value with white. Okay. I think it needs to be a little bit lighter. Okay. And there's a portion of this reflection close to the base of the trees. It may be a little bit darker and may have a little more lizard and crimson in it. So I'm going to go ahead and mix that up. And then we also see those portions of the trees outside of the water that have the right side lit by the sun. That's also reflected in the water. So let me grab a little bit of these two colors, and I'm going to warm them up. The reflection of the portion of the trees that are being lit by the sun will be a duller color. Then we see on the trees outside of the water. Let me grab just a little bit more of these two colors. Now fold in a little more cadulo light. And I'm going to light the value just a little bit. Now, we have that group of trees on the left that are being lit by the sun and objects that are lighter will cast a darker shadow. So I'm going to again take a little bit of this color. I'll probably need to make some more of that color I taking too much from that pile. And I'm going to add a little bit of this color. The reflection of those trees will be a little bit darker than the trees that we see outside of the water, the color that we see for the trees outside of the water. So let me go ahead and mix a little bit more of this. Take a little bit of this green color, and I'm going to fold in a little bit of each of the yellows and some azar and crimson. A little more cad yellow deep, a little more cad yellow light. I'll lighten the value. A little more blue. Trying to get that same color. I'm going to fold in just a little more Lazar and crimson and lighten the value with some white. I think that's pretty close. I'm just going to add these two together. Okay, so the only colors that we have left with respect to the reflections are the sky colors. And I'm just going to work with color that is similar to this that I'm using for the actual sky. I'm going to take some of this color. It's going to be a little bit darker. So first, I want to add a little bit of ultramarine blue. And I'll mix in a little white. I'm going to have to mix more of this color. So let me add a little more ultramarine blue, a little bit more ultramarine blue. Tiny bit of white. To dull this color, I will add a little bit of cad red light. So my reflection color, the sky just needs to be a little bit darker and a little duller, less intense than the sky color the actual sky color. So I'm going to do the same thing. I'm going to take a little bit from this pile. I'm going to add a little more white. I'll have to add a little more thalo blue. Needs to be just a tiny bit darker than that. And and add a little white to it. And I'm going to mute the color with a little bit of cadmium red light. Now, I'll set these two colors off to the side so that I don't get confused when I'm looking for my sky colors. Put them right down here. And as you can see, I've been cleaning my palette as I go. You can do that, too, just by taking a paper towel and dipping it in your mineral spirits and wiping the portions of the palette clean that you want. 12. Sketching the Objects Outside of the Water: To get the color that I use for the sketch on the canvas, I take some cadmium yellow deep, and I fold in just a little bit of cad red light. I'll need a little bit more of cad red light, which gives me a pretty brilliant orange color. And so I mute that color by adding the complimentary color of orange, which is blue. So I fold in just a little bit of ultramarine blue. Don't want to get too much. And so this is the color that I'll be using for my sketch. The nice thing about using a warm color like this is that if some of it shows through at the end of the painting, it creates a really nice effect, especially since this scene is back lit by the sun. Before I begin my sketch, I wanted to mention that I was looking at the colors that I mixed for the trees on the right, that are in shadow, and I felt like I needed to lighten the value of each one of those colors just a bit. So I added a little bit of white to these colors. So if you've been mixing the colors along with me, you may want to add just a tiny bit of white to each one of these colors. Okay, I'm going to go ahead and get started with my thumbnail sketch. And just as I did with my thumbnail sketch, I have marked the midway point on all four sides of the canvas, and I do that, so it helps me avoid placing something right in the middle. And if you will recall, I made the decision when I made my thumbnail sketch to place the baseline of the large group of trees on the right just above the midway mark. Now, that's not my horizon line. My horizon line is somewhere up here in the upper third of the painting. So let me go ahead and get that line in. So I'm starting just above the midway mark, and I'll try to keep my line as straight as I can. When we get about three quarters of the way across, you'll notice that the shoreline of the left side of the pond comes down at an angle. So I'm going to go ahead and put that angle in. To get the angle, I hold my brush out straight, align it with the angle that I see on the reference photo, and I go ahead and bring it down to the canvas and put it in. It looks like it's a little It's a little steeper than that. The incline. There we go. So now I just want to get the gesture of the trees, kind of the contour of the trees at the top of the canvas. So we have a group of trees over here on the right, and they come down like this and kind of we have a gap between that group of trees and the next group of trees, and it's kind of squared. The gap is kind of squared at the bottom. We have this tree comes up. Now, this group of trees is a bit wider, and so it comes down like this. Again, I'm just getting the gesture. Of the trees. And then we have a quite narrow tree to the left of this larger group of trees. So it kind of comes up like this, And then we have a final tree to the left of it. So let me go ahead and put this tree in angle kind of goes up like this. I'll probably make this tree a little bit higher just so it's not the same height as this tree. May even have it coming off the canvas in the end. And so this tree gets wider as it goes down, kind of protrudes here. And we have several branches kind of coming out like this. And then it cuts in like this. Now we have that nice pathway coming from the left and meeting the row of trees, that first row of trees. So let me get that in. And again, to get the angle, I'm holding my brush out straight, aligning it with the angle that I see, and it goes upward just a bit. So let me go ahead and put that in. And there's some sunlight showing below this tree, so I want to make sure I get that in. So that pathway coming in kind of comes up at an angle. And then you'll also see that there's a nice shadow from this tree. So let's get that shadow in. It comes up like this, then comes down and kind of extends outward. I'll put the bottom of that shadow in comes up. Okay. It's a little bit straighter here. I can play around with the shape of that shadow later. And then we see a bit of the shadow along the shoreline. So I want to make sure that I get that in. I've taken a step back, and I want to make a couple of adjustments. I feel like maybe I got this this tree wasn't quite I wasn't quite right. Where I had that gap. So let me reestablish that. Maybe this tree comes out a little bit more, this group of trees. And then the gap between the trees is kind of squared at the bottom, and this tree comes up like this. And I also noticed that this final tree on the left maybe is a little bit bigger. This part comes out maybe a little bit more. Kind of down like this. Maybe has a little wider base. Okay, so now I'm going to go ahead and put in the second row of trees. We have a small tree here being lit on the right side, and then the left side is in shadow. And next to it, we have another tree that is a little bit higher, and it's being lit mostly by the sun. And then to the left of it, we have another tree or two, could be a group of trees that kind of bulges out like this and comes up and we start to see it come down. Now, we also have that third row of trees. So let me go ahead and put it in. The main thing about this third row of trees is I just don't want the top of it to be even. So I want some irregularity to it. So I'll have it come up, make a little dip, and then we have a little gap, and we have that third part. I'll make this tree come up just a little bit higher. 13. Sketching the Reflections in Water: So the surface of water acts as a mirror and it reflects the objects that are casting the reflection into the water. So one thing that you want to make sure of is that your objects, casting the reflections are lined up with the actual reflections in the water. One good way to do that, for example, is I'm going to take this gap, put my brush here, I'm just going to bring my brush straight down to where I see the gap in the reference photo. Now, I'm painting at an angle, so I'm going to get directly in front of the canvas for a minute to make sure I've got it lined up correctly, and then I'll continue to my left. I want to do the same thing with the next gap that I see. You could also do it with the middle of this narrow tree. I'm just choosing the gaps as my reference point. So I'm going to bring this down. This appears higher in the canvas, this gap. So about right starts about right here. Again, I'm going to get in front of the canvas to make sure I've got my reflections lined up correctly. So I've done the same thing here, and then I've got this gap. Now, you'll notice that this reflection almost looks as if it were extended. And that's because all these ripples running across the water each time we have a ripple, it kind of extends the image in the water. So that's why it looks like that. So it looks like this part protruding is kind of this this reflection, and it's faint because we've got the blue coming across. And then we've got the tops of these trees. Again, this reflection is somewhat faint as the blue ripples running across it. I'm just going to try to follow the line here. And then we have this third group of trees that kind of comes up like this. Now, I'm going to go ahead and just fill in where I see the shadows. And because this scene is backlit, if some of this warm color from the sketch or even the pink shows through in the end, it's going to create a really nice effect, and it's really going to enhance the the look of a scene being back lit. So now I have switched to my number eight long flat just to kind of fill in shadows. I'm just going to put a light coat of paint on. I'm squinting my eyes and just looking to see where the shadow areas are and where the sunlight is hitting the trees. So where I see the sunlight hitting the trees, I'm just going to leave that blank for now, and that will represent the sunlight hitting that portion of the tree. And every once in a while we see what I'll refer to as sky holes. Now, actually, sky holes are when you see the sky peeking through the top of a tree. Here, we see this second row of trees being sunlit and peeking through this first row of trees. But for lack of a better word, I'm just going to use sky holes. For lack of a better term, the right side of this tree is in shadow, and then the right side of this tree is in shadow. And some of that shadow goes into the lip portion, some of the lip portion comes back into the shadow. Shadow kind of comes down and up like this. In the second and third row of trees, we have a few spots of shadow. Between these two trees, we have some shadow. This tree shows a little shadow here, and even these trees in the background show some shadow. Let me go ahead and continue putting in the shadow areas. I've got this coming across. And then we have that nice shadow on the left. I'll go ahead and fill it in. I want to try to stick with a large brush for as long as I can because that's going to help us keep the painting loose. And I'm squinting my eyes to see these shadow patterns. And really, if we want to paint in impressionistic vein, we should really squint our eyes often. And basically, we want to paint what we see when we're squinting our eyes. That's the impression that we would be painting. Okay, so this comes across. And we do see some kind of the sky holes peeking through. So later, I'll show that with the blue reflection color of the sky. So let me go ahead and finish this. So I'm just continuing to my left and filling in the reflection. You'll notice that even at this stage of the painting, when I'm dealing with the reflection, I'm primarily using vertical brushstrokes. I'll talk more about that later when we get to the actual reflections. Okay. So I feel satisfied with my sketch. Now we have arrived at the stage of the painting called the block in stage, where I'm just blocking in the major shape. 14. Blocking in the Trees in Shadow: Okay, I will now begin to block in the major shapes of the objects outside of the water, and I will begin with that first row of trees that is predominantly in shadow. And generally speaking, I'll move from my darkest arcs to my lightest lights. So I'm just dipping the corner of my brush into the mineral spirits. I'm going to draw from this color that I mixed for the shadow area of these trees. I'm just putting a light coat on it. Again, I'm squinting my eyes to see where the shadow areas are trying to follow them. And the right side of this tree is lit. So again, I'm going to leave that blink. I'm squinting my eyes. The shadow comes up. We see a little bit of sunlight hitting the tops of that trees, those trees. Okay, I'll continue. And I'll leave a few what I referred to earlier as sky holes. And that's that second row of trees kind of peeking through this first row of trees. We want to vary our breaststroke, some horizontal, some vertical, some at a diagonal. I'll bring that shadow across. Again, I'm squinting my eyes. I see a little bit of light coming through here. And then this thin tree is in shadow on the left side. Then we have some light on the right side of this tree. The left side is predominantly in shadow. Okay. So I'm just continuing along. There were a couple other colors that I mixed up that I wanted to put in this shaded portion of this first row of trees. So I'm going to clean my brush, and I mentioned that there was some muted violet color that basically is leaves from a tree that have turned a crimson color but are in shadow. So I want to go ahead and put that color in. Let me see that color right around here. That tree kind of comes up like this. And then I also mentioned that there was a dark olive blue olive color, and toward the bottom of the trees, so I'm going to put some of that in. And there's that dark shadow, whose value is darker than the values of the mixtures of paint that I just put up. So I'm going to go ahead and put that in. Um, it looks a tiny bit dark, so I am going to lighten that just a bit. Okay, let's go ahead and put that in. But I lost some of that color. There it is. It kind of tapers up at this point. Now, I am going to use some of that same color for that shadow area, and I may put in a little bit of lizard crimson. And I'm going to lighten it just a tiny bit, a little bit of white. And let me go ahead and put in that shadow area. And we see it come down here just a bit along the shoreline. I'm going to bring that shadow down just a tiny bit. It's a little bit wider on the picture. And I'm gonna blend these colors. So it's not so pronounced. 15. Blocking in Lit Areas of Trees in Shadow: Okay, I am still using my number eight long flat, and I'm going to stay with the first row of trees, and I'm going to put in the lit portions on the right sides of some of those groups of trees. So I may have to adjust this color. We'll see. I think I want it to be a little bit brighter. I'm going to add a little bit of cad yellow light, and I'm also going to lighten the value, and I'm just going to put in a little bit of cad red light. Let me see what that color looks like. Okay, I think I like that color a little bit better. Okay. So I'm just starting with this tree. We see the right side being lit by the sun. I see a couple spots over here being lit by the sun, and then the right side of this narrow tree and the right side of this tree. Again, I'm squinting my eyes. And I'm going to go over some of this area. It looks like I had a little too much mineral spirits in my brush, and some of the paint ran a little bit. So I'm just going to go over those sections. Bring out a little bit. Okay. And see one more thing. S one more area where I want to bring the lit portion of that front row of trees up a little bit. That's right here. I kind of goes straight up. Okay, so now I'm squinting my eyes, and I'm going to put in those sky holes. And I'm going to mute the color just a little bit. Sky holes tend to be a little bit darker and more muted than the actual color of the object shining through. In this case, it's that second row of trees. And the reason for that is that the light coming through is picking up the shadows of the leaves and colors of the leaves as it's filtered through the trees. It usually tends to be a little bit darker sky holes and a little more muted than the actual color itself. Okay, we even see some of that here. Again, squinting my eyes. Even see some here and some here. 16. Blocking in Trees in Light: Okay, so now I will move on to the second row of trees. I'm still using my large number eight long flat. And see this tree here, and you'll see that this color is a little bit cooler than this color. And I want it that way. I may need to just a tiny, tiny bit of cad yellow light, but it does need to be a little bit cooler because it's further in the distance. So let's try this. There we go. Let's see, some of those shadows. I'll put those in in just a second. So I'm just getting the lit portions of these trees on the left. This one comes up like this. And then we have that third row of trees. So let me go ahead and put that third row of trees in. I may have to lighten this value. It looks like I do need to lighten it. Let me just go ahead and do that right now. It's the last row of trees. So in order for it to read in the distance, it has to be a cool color, and the value needs to be light. So to put the shadows in among those second row of trees and a third row of trees, I'm going to use this color, which looks like it may be a little bit dark. It needs to be a little bit lighter. At that distance, the shadow would not be that dark. So I'm just giving some hints of some shadows. The shadow areas that we see in the photo, there's a shadow here. There are some shadows along the base of these trees. We even see some up here. And then we see some shadows in the trees, the third row of trees. That got too light. I can't really see it, so okay. Darken that. Alright. And then there were those leaves that it start turning red. So I want to make sure that I give a hint of that. Maybe I need to lighten this just a little bit, so let me do that. So let me go ahead and put that color in. I think I'm going to add just a little bit of cad red light and a little bit of white, a little more cad red light. Okay, that may have been too much red. I see it. That's the color I want. Let me see a little bit here. Okay. 17. Blocking in the Sky: So the first color I'll be drawing from is that light blue, warm color that is just above the trees and just looks like it has a hint of green in it. So I can cut into the treetops here where I want. I'm just moving across the painting putting this sky color in these gaps. I'm going to add a little bit of white. Okay. So now, I'll go ahead and put in the two other colors that I'm using for the upper portion of the sky, which were ultramarine blue and white, and then thalo blue and white. I'm going to put a little more ultramarine blue in this mixture. I may end up leaving a little bit of that pink show through a little bit of that warmth. Okay, now I'm going to draw on myTalo blue. And again, this just adds a nice variation to the sky color. I may have to bring that tree up a little bit. I'm going to have to reestablish some of my some of my lines. Okay. And that color that I used just above the trees, it's not quite light enough, so I'm going to add some white. I'm going to use my number four long flat just because this is a fairly thin band that I'm putting just above the trees. And it looks like it needs yet a little more white. Okay, I think that does the trick. So now we are ready to put in the reflections. 18. STEP 3: Applying Vertical Brushstrokes to Create Reflections: So I'm cleaning my brush out thoroughly, and I may have to tweak these colors. We'll see. I'm going to dip into that kind of a very muted violet color that I see just below the shadow mark. So again, we want to use vertical brush strokes. I'm just starting at the top and dragging my brush down. I'm going to add a little more mineral spirits to that. It's okay if I let a little bit of that warm kind of orange color show through. Let me go ahead and bring this across to the left. Go to grab a little more mineral spirits. So the paint flows a little better. Okay. Okay. So now I see a lighter color as we make our way down the water and come closer to us, the viewers. So I'm going to go ahead and dip my brush in that paint. This may be a little bit light. I think it's okay. So I just want to continue with my vertical brush strokes and I'm holding my brush like this. When I get down toward the bottom, I will start from the bottom and make my way up because it's too difficult to hold your brush at that angle. So toward the bottom, I just hold my brush like this and I come up. I'll continue to do that. And then we have this thin tree, making sure that I'm right underneath it. And we have this shadow from this tree. Let me go ahead and reestablish some of those the darker value that I started with. I'll put some of that right up underneath the shadow. We see some of that. Shadow has a reflection in the water, too, so I'm putting that in there. Got a little too much warmth showing here. I'll go ahead and grab some more of that. You can already see that we're creating the illusion of reflections in water. Okay, so I'm going to continue to my left. Since these trees are lit by the sun, their shadow is going to be a little bit darker. So I'm going to take a little bit of this color. I may need to lighten it a little bit. It's just a little bit darker than this color. So let me go ahead and continue putting that in. Trying to follow the contours of these trees. Then we have this. So now I'm going to put the portions of the trees on the right being lit by the sun and the reflections. So let me go ahead and dip my brush in that color that I mixed earlier. I'm squinting my eyes to see where those portions are we have just a little bit here, and then we have more here. And I may need to lighten the value just a bit. Okay, I'm going to continue with these brushstrokes. They need to read as portions of the tree being lit by the sun, but they're going to be a little more muted than those same portions we see outside of the water in the actual trees. This one is pretty pronounced. And we have some that go all the way up. And I'm going to go ahead. I think I have the correct color. I'm going to reestablish some of those sky holes because that's where some of these long vertical reflections are coming from. So, for example, we see a reflection here and here. Again, I'm squinting my eyes. Okay, so I'm moving to the left. And as I said before, we see that shadow reflected in the water. It kind of comes down at an angle like this. And we see some darker portions of these trees that are casting their reflection. But we also see where the sun is hitting the second row of trees right here and here, and here. Okay, so now we are ready to make our vertical brush strokes for the water. I have cleaned my large brush, my number eight flat, and I am going to start by using the reflection color of the sky that I made with ultramarine blue and white. And remember, I said that the reflection of the sky would be a little bit darker than the actual color of the sky or the value of the sky, and it would be a little bit muted. I'm just dipping my brush in a bit of mineral spirits, and I'm just kind of skipping over to this section. And now to vary the color of the water a bit, I'm going to use some of my mixture of the blue and white. And remember, I put in just a little bit of cad red light to mute that color, just as I did with the ultimarne blue and white. I'm just trying to vary my color going between the ultramarine blue and the thalo blue. And I'm continuing with my vertical breast strokes. And now I'm going to grab a little bit of my ultramarine blue and white for this far side, this gap between the two trees on the far side. So I'm just continuing with my vertical brush strokes. I'm going to go ahead and finish this up. And I need to do a little better job following the contours of these trees. We have a little dip here. So now I am going to take a break and I'm going to let this sit overnight. The reason being in the past, when I've applied my horizontal brush strokes, this paint that I used for the reflections of the trees in shadow, if that's too wet, when I drag my brush across the canvas horizontally, it picks up some of that color underneath and just has kind of a muddy appearance. So I'm going to let it sit for 24 hours and I'll come back to it tomorrow morning. 19. STEP 4: Applying Horizontal Brushstrokes to Create Movement in Water: Okay, I have waited a little less than 24 hours to let the paint dry just a little bit. It's still wet, but it's a little bit drier than it was yesterday. And the reason I did that again was because when I start to make my horizontal brushstrokes, which is the next step in the process, I don't want it to pick up too much of the color underneath and to muddy the colors of the ripples, which is the reflection of the sky. Now before we move on, I've also taken a step back and I want to make one adjustment. I feel like that narrow tree got pushed a little to the right, so I'm going to just bring it back here. I've dipped my paper towel into the mineral spirits, and I'll make this just a little wider here. I'll bring this tree over just a tiny bit. Okay, so I'm just going to again, push that tree over just a little bit, and I'm going on the side that is in shadow. Making sure it's lined up. And now I need to reestablish the lit portion of that large tree on the left. It's reflection in the water. I have mixed up a little bit more of this color that I used just under the bottom of the trees. The first horizontal brush strokes I want to make will be with that color. I'm just going to it's a very light touch. I tend to hold my brush toward the back of the handle, and it's just a very light touch. That's pretty dark. I'll put it up here. So you just kind of have to get a feel for the amount of pressure that you need to apply. Okay. I feel pretty good about those brush strokes. So now I'm going to clean my brush as thoroughly as I can, because I will now be using the blue color that I mixed up, the ultramarine blue and white and a little bit of cadmium red light to make those ripples across the walk. Okay, as you can see, I've mixed up a little more of this color, just wanted to make sure that I had enough. And to get this color, I used ultramarine blue, white, started off with white, folded in some ultramarine blue until I got to about this value, and then I fold it in just a little bit of cad red light to mute the color. So now I'm going to just dip the corner of my brush in the mineral spirits. I'm going to load my brush, loading it just about like this. Now, this is a very light touch, and I'm squinting my eyes. I'm looking at my reference photo, and I'm going to go ahead and put these in. I see just an indication of some ripples here. And then I see these coming across. I'm just again, it's a light touch. They come across like this and they even go into this green reflection. I'm just looking, squinting my eyes, seeing if there are any other places. I see a place right here. I just turned over my brush because the paint that I had on it, it had run its course. And so I had to flip my brush over. Okay, so I'm still looking. And I see guy holes, but the reflections are quite vertical. So I'm just going to go ahead and put those in lightly. So let me just I want them to be kind of uneven. So maybe this one will come up a little bit further. I'll flip my brush around. Okay. So now, with a very light touch, I'm going to go over those with some horizontal brush strokes. Just where we see a little bit of the water. Cut into those. Squinting my eyes just to see if there's anything else. This looks a little bit too much like a tick tack toe board. So I'm going to have to make some adjustments there. I'm gonna load up a little more paint and 20. STEP 5: Blending Edges: I have switched to my number four long flat, and we have now arrived at step number five, which is to blend. And by blend, I'm primarily talking about the edges of these reflections. As they stand right now, they're too hard edged. So I'll need to soften those edges, and I'll need to bring some of the blue colored reflection of the sky into some of those as I've done here. So let's go ahead and get started doing that. And although I've had some variation in the water, I use the blue and white and then ultramarine blue and white and added a little bit of cad red light to both of those mixtures. For the ripples, I just want one color. I don't want two competing colors. So I've dipped my brush in the mixture of ultramarine blue, white, and cad red light. So I'm just going to I'm squinting my eyes. I'm looking at the reference photo. I'm just softening these edges. Dragging some of this water into some of these tree reflections. This edge here is kind of too hard. Dipping the corner of my brush into the mixture Okay. Squinting my eyes. We see a few sky holes here, and I don't have the sky holes in the trees outside of the water, but I'll put those in. We see a bit of this water coming in here. Again, we see some sky holes up here that are being reflected into the water. That edge is a little too hard. I want to soften that edge, and this edge became a little bit hard. Okay. And also, these edges. For these edges, I'm going to make vertical brush strokes. Cut into them just to soften those edges to blend. Okay, I'm going to re establish some of these vertical brush strokes. Wherever I see some hard edges, I'm just trying to soften them to blend them. Okay, I'm pretty satisfied with the way that looks. And so now we will move on to the final step in the process of the pending, which is making our final adjustments to both the objects outside of the water and inside the water. 21. STEP 6: Making Final Adjustments: Okay, I've made a list of final adjustments that I want to make to the painting, and I'll point them out. So I'll need to put in some sky holes up here in the tree foliage because they're being reflected down here in the water. Ideally, I would have put them in first and then put these in second. But I'll put these in at the end of the painting, and it'll be okay. I also want to lighten this third row of trees just to set it back in the distance a little bit more. I may bring up the value and warmth of these trees just a tiny bit, and my shoreline kind of was eaten into by the reflection of these trees. So I want to re establish it, and I'll probably lighten and warm the value of this light coming from the left and meeting the trees on the left. I like that. It's a little bit warmer. Okay. And I want to lighten the value of the grass. Okay, let's see how this looks. And I will need to reestablish the shoreline. And I'm just going to grab a little bit of this paint that I used for my sketch. My initial sketch on the canvas. I'll fold in some cad red light, and then also I will lighten the value considerably. Let me put this up the palette knife next to it to see if that's I think that's about the right color and the right value. So I'm cleaning my number four long flat out because I just used it with some green paint, and let's go ahead and reestablish that shoreline. Okay. And one thing I want to do with that shoreline is just so it's not floating, I'm going to anchor it with some dark shadow lines underneath. So I'm just dipping into these mixtures that I've used for shadow. And again, I can reestablish that. Well, that's a little too dark. So let's lighten that up. Okay, comes down like this. And then I'm just going to a broken shadow line. I think that helps keep the shoreline from looking like it's floating. And I see one more thing I want to do with this darker shadow. I just want to bring it up in here a little bit. Bring it up into the shadow. And as the shadow extends outward, it becomes lighter. I also see I'm just moving all around the painting, seeing the adjustments that need to be made. This is pretty heavy, so it could stand a sky hole or two. Okay. And I see one portion of that tree where it's gotten a little bit bright, which is okay, but I want to vary the color a little bit here. Okay. Like that. I'm leaving a little bit of that warm color that I use for the sketch show through, squinting my eyes to see if there's anything else. I want to I'm going to put one stroke here. Okay. And I kind of dipped into that shadow, so let me go ahead and just put a stroke here. Okay, I'm looking things over. I'm going to change the shape a little bit of this tree. So I'll need that initial color that I use just above the tree lines. I accidentally dipped into a darker color. So let's just make this a little more organic, have a little bit of a dip there, and then just re establish that color right above the tree line, which is kind of a warm baby blue color. I feel like I need to reestablish some of the shadows in that second and third row of trees. So let me go ahead and do that. Add some shadow area here. So here. Squinting my eyes. Okay. I think we are finished with the adjustments. Looking over my list. I think I have covered all of them. I feel good about this painting. I think it really looks like there's just a little bit of wind bringing these ripples across the water. All of this looks fairly organic. Again, the nice thing about using this method, my six step method is you can apply this to any type of painting, whether it's a pond, a river, a stream, or even a large body of water such as an ocean. 22. Conclusion: Well, I hope you've enjoyed this class and now feel more confident about your ability to depict reflections in water. I strongly encourage you to complete and submit your class project so I can provide you with constructive feedback and answer any questions you may have. Also, if you get stuck at any step in the process, please contact me, and I'll be happy to troubleshoot the issue. I hope to hear from you soon, and please check back often for new classes.