Paint A Dreamy Spring Landscape in Loose Watercolor Style

1. About the Class : Hey guys, hi, this is Ryan artist and an art educator based out of Bangalore, India. I have been practicing with watercolors ever since two years now. And what can I say? I have fallen deeply in love with this medium in case if you're joining me for the first time and you don't know much about me. You can go check out my Instagram profile where all my watercolor artworks are displayed. I welcome you all to another fund relaxing and therapeutic class on watercolors. This class is going to be a short and relaxing class where we will let go off the control that we have over the medium. And we're going to paint a beautiful spring landscape in loose watercolor style. We will first start with discussing the materials from the paper to be used for the class project to the paints that we are going to use for creating elements in our class. I will be discussing about each and every colors that we're going to use for our class projects in the material section itself, we will also be looking at the brushes and the importance of this brushes that we can have in loose watercolor approach, a basic watercolor section technique has been added in case if you are a beginner, it will help you to get started in no time. Also in-between this class lessons, I have shared some important tips and tricks on how you can achieve looseness in your watercolor paintings. So come join me in this class and let's give it a try on how we can achieve looseness and watercolor paintings. 2. Materials Required: In this lesson, we are going to learn about the list of materials or supplies that we are going to need in order to create a class project. First, we wouldn't be needing this acrylic board, which is a non-absorbing surface. Make sure you grab any plastic or non-absorbing surface to deep down or to use your people. Next would be your paper. Now it is very important that you grab your a 100% cotton watercolor paper, which is at least 300 GSM and thickness. And it should be cold pressed paper. And the paper of mine is a fine-grained paper. Now you can grab any 100% cotton cold press paper, which is 300 GSM weight. The size of this is approximately close to A4 size. You could tell this is 24 into 30 centimeter size of the paper. Now let's take a look at the colors. The colors that I'm going to use today is from the branch in hand arts premium watercolor range. The first color would be my blue. So this is a paler blue that I have. I'll be showing you the pigment information as well so that you can pick the colors based on your pigment information. Now this is another shade of blue. This is known as royal blue for this brand, but the pigment information is BB 15 is 23, and bv 66. So this is made up of two pigments. Now you can select your blues containing either of these pigments, or you can go ahead and use the Boolean blue or cobalt blue, anything of your choice. Now next coming to lemon yellow, the pigment information for this EBI 81, now coming next to the paste and shade that is brilliant pink. Now these names may differ from brand to brand, but the pigment information, she will be the same. Br2 09 is the pigment information on the pigment value for this color. Now you can make your own pastry chefs by mixing little bit of your white gouache or white watercolor paint into your desired pigments. The next shade is lilac. So this is again a piece to shade. It is intermediate between phase still pink and your pistol violet Are you can directly go ahead and use some lavender faced 11 day if you have. Next is mineral valid? Now, when you mix white into your mineral Violet, any of your purple or violet, you would get those similar shade of lilac. Now, next will be my rounds Alpha, show you the green. So I'll be using these two greens, which is the leaf green, which has more of the yellowish dominance over here. And this is the pigment information. You can clear this greens by mixing your lemon yellow into your greens, such as who? It's green, sap green mode of yellows when you add, it will tend to inclined towards more of a yellowish shade, okay, So this is how you can create the shades of green if you do not have this color's already available with you. Next coming to the brown, so I'll be using this burnt umber. Now these are the pigment value information. So if you feel that this shade name may be different for your brand, go pick though pigment value information and find that correct shade in your brand of colors. Now you might also keeping handy some of that Payne's gray, indigo or your black or neutral tint color available with you and also grab your white gouache or your whitewater developing. So that's all for our colors. The next material that we will be looking into is our mixing palette. Grab any ceramic or a plastic palette, anything which is available with you or you can grab your very normal dinner ceramic plates. Also anything is readily available with you. You can use that and make it as your mixing palette. Next, we will be talking about our brushes. So you're mainly going to use brushes which are of bigger sizes and holds lots of water and paint pigment. I will be going ahead with science number 12, answer is number eight of my silver black velvet round brushes. And this is number two. Brush again for detailing, creating little structures urine there. Now, one of the most important brushes is this hake brush. You can see how broad this is. This will be very essential to create that smooth, dreamy kind of loop. Instead of the hake brush, you can go ahead and use any flat brush which is made up of gold hair and has a broader fair you will, or a broader base of the Brazil's that would do next would be some of these liner brushes are your detailing brushes would also help you achieve some of the floral splatters that we are going to do for, you know, our needles. Next you might be needing a pencil and an eraser to outline or to create the basic simple sketch or an outline and maybe a ruler. But I will not be using fences or cooler in Hunters landscape because we are going to go very free and loose for a painting. The most important thing is your two jars of clean water. You can have them by your side. When you start to paint with. Next would be this masking tape. Now, this is totally optional if you want to have crisp and clean edges or borders around your painting, you may use your masking tape, but for today's painting, I'm not going to use it. Next will be some tissue papers. Yeah. And that's all about the materials and the supplies I have covered each and everything that we will be needing to create a class project. So come, let's quickly take a look in the next section. And I almost forgot about this. You can also have this separate spare kind of clean clocked by your side. I'll be showing you in the next lesson what we're going to do with it. 3. Basic Watercolor Techniques: In this lesson, we are going to go through all the basic watercolor techniques that particularly which we are going to use for creating our class project. We are going to go with a very loose approach for this particular class project. First, we will see what exactly is wet on wet technique. Now before we start and look into what exactly is wet-on-wet technique, I want to share with you a few tips on how you can achieve loose watercolor style when painting. When it comes to lose approach, it is recommended that you use a brush with a longer handle, a bigger size brush, preferably this is a Hake brush of size number ten. This allows you to let go off all the control when you are moving across the paper. Hence, it focuses more on the shapes rather than having some definite lines are definite shapes. Now the same thing goes for this round brush also, this is a size number 12 round brush. It has a fat belly as you can see. When you hold it closer towards the ferrule, you have more control on the brush, but when you hold it towards the edge, you, your hands are more flexible and you have more coverage area. Now let's get started with the very first technique which is wet on wet, wet on wet. Typically men's applying of coat of water on your paper, wetting your paper, and then applying your wet paint on this wet surface. Now I will be reactivating my paint on my palette. And using this watery paint, I will be dropping the colors on this wet background and you will see how beautifully the paint spreads on the wet background. Once you start to lay those colors on the wet background, you will see how beautifully the paint starts spreading. And more you apply this watery paint makes on this wet background you will see that the colors are blending and spreading across each other. There is less control in this technique and so it is fun. The unpredictable effect that it creates makes this technique more versatile and is loved by all the watercolor enthusiast. I have shown you the wet-on-wet gradient blend that we are going to use water Skype. Next coming to the second technique that is the lifting technique which we will be using to create those fluffy clouds. Lifting technique is usually carried out wet-on-wet backgrounds. Your it means you will be removing some of the painted areas using your tissue paper or tissue towels or even with your clean brush. I'm just repeating the entire process which we had seen on the very first technique that is a wet-on-wet creating the gradient blended sky. Now I will be grabbing my tissue paper and gently dabbing on the surface of this wet background. I am lifting off this paint now exposing the whites of the paper. The next technique that we are going to look into is the wet-on-dry technique. Now wet on dry technique means applying your wet paint on the dry paper surface. So this tree trunk is made with the help of this wet on dry technique. Even the canopy of this cherry blossom trees we will be doing with the help of this wet-on-dry technique. Here I'll be showing you how with the help of your liner brush or any round brush of size number one or two, you could create this branch or the stems of this cherry blossom tree. You can see how well-defined this lines of the trees are looking. This is why we will be going with this wet-on-dry technique towards the last finishing step, when we are all done with the wet-on-wet background work for a landscape and then going ahead and doing this wet-on-dry techniques for the finishing touch, observe my brush movements as I'm doing this canopy of the cherry blossom tree, I have held my brush very close towards the edge of the handle so that it appears very loose. I am not trying to exercise any control. I'm just carelessly moving around the brush. This short subtle strokes. We will be using this similar wet-on-dry technique to create the grassland structures for our grassy meadow areas. In this technique, we will not let the paper dry out completely, like completely dry. We will start working on this Grass Lake strokes with the help of our liner brush or a small detailer brush when the background is still a little wet so that the grass appears to be well blended in some areas and when eventually the paper is drying out. Some of the graphs which are closer towards us will be more sharper and we will be going and creating more sharper and distinct strokes. In order to add a sense of depth in this grassy meadows, we can go ahead and use lighter values as well as darker values and create this sense of depth in the middle. Now coming to the next technique of how we will be creating this background Florida Blooms is with the mix of wet-on-wet and wet-on-dry technique. Wet on wet technique will give us a very blurred background and we will be going ahead and learning some more darker values on top of those areas, leaving some little amount of whitespaces, urine they're in-between, so that this tree looks beautiful and there is a sense of depth. When you add differentiates like lighter to darker values, you create the sense of depth. The main objective is to capture the essence of a scene and not get stuck into the details of the painting. This is a loose watercolor painting is all about. You can see I'm adding in some shades, darker shades of lilac or mineral violet. And I'm going over those dried patches where we had led first to the pace, still pink color. I'm just going over it. Now. It looks much more brighter and much more radiant and much more bushier rate. So this is what the sense of depth is all about. The last technique that we are going to look into is this flattering technique. Now this is a technique which is mostly used to create textures into your watercolor painting. This texture here we would be creating this floral middles are floral blooms, this technique, we will also go ahead and do it with wet-on-wet technique. Because the main objective of this entire loose watercolor painting is to go and work with wet-on-wet to have smooth and dreamy like finish to your painting. For this technique to really work and bring out the desired effect that you are looking for. You need to make sure that you work fast and you work on a wet background that is properly vet. In this method, what I will do is I will just prepare or reactivate my paint, make it a little loose and watery. I will just dab my brush with the help of my fingers. Or you could use a brush. As you dab your brush loaded with the paint, you will see this small little spots are blooms will appear on the wet background. You can do the same step using just your brush dipped in water and you can just flatter the water on this colorful wet background. In there, you will get those white little blues. So that would represent your white floral meadows. So you can do it either way. Either you can go ahead with is paint or you can go ahead and splatter some water droplets. That was all about the techniques that we are going to use for this class project. Now if you want to know more about the detailed watercolor techniques, I would suggest you to go refer back to my glass glowing auroras, a class on Northern lights or my first-class that is watercolor sunset see escapes where I have explained all these basic watercolor techniques in great details. I hope you are all very clear about the techniques that we are going to use for our class projects. Come, let's jump into the main project. 4. Prepping the Paper & Painting Sky: Before we start on directly painting on the paper first, I want you to show you this little tip on how you can retain the wetness of your paper for a longer period of time. This tip will especially be helpful for you if you are staying in some place which is very hard and dry, especially with the onset of summers. It is very, very frustrating when we start on painting on a bigger size of watercolor paper and it starts drying out too soon. So in that case, what you can do is you can whet your reverse size of the paper as well and use that paper side of that paper and stick it onto this non-absorbing board, like cure, I'm using this acrylic board and once I am satisfied on how prevented the reverse side of my paper, I will flip it over and I will wear to the front side as well. This is how you must flip the paper and adjusted accordingly on the non-absorbing board. Now remember always to use a non-absorbing surface while doing this trick or dip. Because if the surface is absorbed and it will absorb the water from the paper and hence your paper will start drying out soon again. While doing this step quarter generously, the amount of water that you are quoting coated generously and let the water get absorbed into the fibers of the paper. Now one more way is to just soak the entire paper for some three to four seconds in a tub of water and take it out and let the water drip out from there a paper and then you can stick it back on this non-absorbing. So first you're going to directly start painting on it. Now if you feel there is excess amount of water on the front side of the paper, you can soak it up by using a clot order tissue double, which I am going to show you next. I gently dab off the extra water that I felt was there on the paper. And it's time to start with dark painting. Now I'll get the colors on my palette ready, so I'm squeezing out tailor blue. Now instead of the yellow blue, You can offer other blues that you have in your palate. And then burnt umber, burnt sienna, yellow ocher, hookers, green pea is still pinks and purples. And for the floral meters, we will also be using some of the cadmium yellow and 11 yellow as well. I have shown and discussed all these colors in the material section. So please go refer back to the material section about the colors that we are going to need for this project. I would advise you to get your color palette ready before you start wetting your paper, because in the meantime, your paper might start drying out too soon. It's time to layer the paint onto our paper. So I'm using I'm trying to make this watery mix of my in yellow, blue, but do not make it too watery. You needed to have a little bit of pigmented value. We are going with top to bottom approach for a gradient blend of the sky. Meaning that I'm starting out with my darker tone of the color from the top and as I go down, it's going to get lighter. I'm trying to remove the loose hair which has got stuck onto this wet background. So this must be the head from the hake brush because Hake brushes, natural brush made up of goat hair. So I think those hairs are really very soft and brittle. They're often tend to, you know, come off from the brush. So make sure when something like this happens, you take it off when the background is still wet or else it might form of batch spot on your background once it starts drying. Once you are happy with the gradient blend for this guy, it's now time for her to make some fluffy clouds in the sky. For that, we will be going ahead and using our lifting technique. This I had already explained in the technique section. I just grabbed my tissue paper and I'm just gently dabbing those surface, the wet surface of my sky with the paper. And you can see the paper is absorbing the color and we're getting this white patches. So to make it look fluffy, you use your sum, this dabbing motion of your hand to lift the colors off from the surface. This must be done when your background is still wet because as soon as the color starts drying out, all your papers starts drying out, you will not be able to lift out the colors from the surface. Keep doing this clouds until you are satisfied and happy or however you want to go with the clouds, you can make really big fluffy clouds also at the middle or at the center. It's totally up to you how you want your sky to look with this fluffy clouds. I like it this way. So I'm going to do, and I'll stop it here. 5. Painting Mountain & Stream: Let's get started with our foreground. So I'll be painting the mountains, which will be towards the horizon and situated closer to the foreground. Here, we are not going to go over our pencil outline or sketch, but directly we are starting to pay into mountains. The idea behind this is that you are confident with your strokes when working on paper, especially for loose watercolor landscapes because you're, we're not trying to achieve realism. Photo see in grade, It's just letting the colors flow and to have an essence of seeing, right? There is no realism painting that we are going to do a hair. So this is very important for you to remember. Whenever you are trying to approach loose watercolor landscapes, your strokes is what gives the definition kind of shape to an object. There is no realism that you need to achieve. Also, another thing when you are going ahead with this loose style is start letting go of the control that you have on your paints are your brush. Because the more you try to control, the more you will try to have a realistic approach for your painting, which we do not want your VI warned, just a basic preliminary shape, more of color blocking. And just to get the idea represented on the paper, we're trying to create your different layers by using varying colors, lighter to darker shades. You know, that is how we are going to roll along the entire painting and create this beautiful, dreamy landscape. Entire point of this loose watercolor style is to have it work on wet-on-wet background. Make sure that your paper is wet. If you are especially residing in heartened, very dry places, there might be chances that even after soaking the paper in water and starting out with your hub paint, the paper might still start drying up because of the dry heat. Immediately know your paper before you are starting out with watercolor landscapes, especially when you are approaching this loose style because you need the colors to flow and that is what it gives the freedom, the freedom of expression, the colors expressing themselves on the wet background. Study your people well beforehand. See how long does it take your paper to dry out in-between the painting so that accordingly you can plan it out and choose a smaller paper size. Or if you want to go for a bigger people say is like me, then, you know, in-between you can keep a spray bottle handy and start spraying the water at different angles so that your paper is mystified all the time, does remaining wet, I'm adding some darker tones of my burnt umber now you can also add in a little bit of dark bluish mix to your heart, browns and turn it into a far more darker colors. So use and mix whatever you like you might be able to use already started to dry her. Then hence, I'm going over it with my wet hake brush. Now I will go and similarly tried to create this land area. On the left bank side of this extreme. I'm mixing in some of that cadmium yellow, green that I have now. In order to obtain this color, you can make sap green along with your lemon yellow and you could get a similar color tone. Now this is to represent a kind of Highland just beneath the mountains over there. And then this bank will be starting. And hence that's why I decided to go for this color gradation, green to brown. And now with some darker strokes and long slanted strokes of the brush, you can see very loose. I'm keeping everything very loose in this landscape, not going to in detail are trying to include very detailed structures over here. Now I'll be starting out with the stream. So for the stream, I have chose the same color, that is the color of her sky. This is the yellow-blue color because the sky is getting reflected in the water or the stream. Water has no color of its own, so it's a reflection that gives the color to the water rate. And hence, I have decided to go with it. If you do not have those two yellow, blue colored, you can go ahead and use colors like ultramarine blue, cobalt blues, early NLU, anything of your choice. Now I'll be mixing in some of my burnt umber with data of my tailor blue and created this darker shade. This is merely to depict the shadows of the mountains which are being tested. 6. Painting Foreground Meadows: Let's continue with that painting. We are painting the left side of the stream bank that we were painting earlier on. And now I'm just going and filling in some of the areas with the green. The green that I'm using here is green. You can use any green of your choice. You can also, of the viridian green mix in some of that yellow ocher in it and you can obtain this lighter shade or a mix of sap green. Now I've switched to my liner brush. This is a mini detailing brush that I have. And now I'll be going ahead and creating some horizontal, not horizontal or vertical. Lines are vertical strokes indicating the blades of the grasses. I am now going to squeeze out my pastel shades in a separate clean palette. Because my earlier palette has already become very dirty and all the colors are almost mixing with each other. I do not want this pinks to get mixed with the greens, blues and the rounds, then it will be a mess over there. So I decided to mix it in a separate palette. You could also do the same. Now, I'm loading my brush with this pastel pink shade. Remember not to make it too watery. We wanted to have little thick consistency and you'll go use the tip of your brush and just dabbing the colors. Short random strokes, and that's it. Now I'm going to squeeze out a little bit of my white watercolor paint. If you do not have white watercolor paint, you can squeeze out your whitewash as well. Now this white watercolor paint I'll be using to paint this blossoms into that distant mountains where it is very dark. So in order to create a contrast as well as a depth for this blossoms, I'm creating this white base. And over on top of this I'm going to go and create this piece still pink dots that it looks you're not a sense of depth comes into play. Okay, Now I'm quite satisfied with how the blues are coming to life on the right side. Now it's time to go for the left side. Might be but has started to dry and I want this mountain to be blurred in the background. I'm using my hake brush and just dumping the area all over again. So that when I tried to layer this cherry blossom pinks there, the colors spreads instantly because this is kind of blurred background that I want. While doing. And going ahead with this random strokes, remember to leave in some whitespaces in-between do not cover the entire area with this pinks, leaving some white gaps. This will bring out the beauty when we start letting it with darker sheets. Before my paper starts drying out in the background, I want to go and paint the mountain which is there. Now, I want it to be wet because this is the background mountain which I want to be blurred since it is at a distance from us, that cherry blossoms at the main focus at this part of the bank. We are trying to keep all the other elements little blurred and distant. Only the cherry blossoms will be the main prominent focus in this. While creating this middle, remember that you need to work this with using the wet-on-dry technique that we had shown in the technique section. Remember, your paper is almost dry but it is still wet. And you are loading that, you know, almost semi wet paper, wet paint. And you are going to create some strokes which will be of the grass blades, which will be blurred into the background. So you need to make sure that your paper is not fully wet. Because if the paper is fully where these drugs will get blended into the background. With the help of my same liner brush, shorter detailer brush, you can create these blades of grass. I'm using slanted long strokes, vertical strokes, and keep creating these strokes until you are satisfied and your middle looks promising. You know, we are not trying to paint something very realistic. I will go and see it again and again. Just the shape. We are just trying to create a shape of it. So to give an illusion of depth, we are using varying tones of greens if you are noticing it. We have used first as the base to the middle, lighter tone, and then on top we are doing the grass blades with a darker tone just to create the sense of depth. Now, we are going ahead and creating this dots indicating the floral wildflowers in the middle. You can either create this darts are splatter some pins. Remember in the technique section, I assure knew how you can create beautiful blooms and wet background. You can also go ahead and use that technique to create this blues in the floral middle. Okay, so the meters are done. Fortunately, my head right side is still wet, so I thought of creating this slope kind of structure where my cherry blossoms are. Just to denote that it is on a high land and it's the slope. We're just getting inclined towards the bank of the stream. Okay, So just to denote that I'm using different shades of greens mixed with little brown to create the illusion of depth than the sense that it is two different lens. 7. Cherry Blossom Tree and Final Touches: Hi, welcome back. So now we will be painting the cherry blossom tree. I'm mixing my browns. I'm using my burnt sienna and burnt umber and I'll be using my liner brush or you could use your detailing brush, anything which you are comfortable with. You can paint this tree trunk of this cherry blossom tree. When you are creating this cherry blossom trees, remember that the tree trunks towards the base will be thicker and as you go up it will become tapering. Thinner. I'm mixing the brilliant pink or the pace two sheets of my pink and lilac that I have got and I will be going ahead and creating them blossom on this tree trunks. I'm going to repeat the exact same process that we had done. Well, you know, creating the blossoms on the left-hand side, right next to the mountain. So I'm going to repeat the same step, retaining some whites and then filling in the spaces with random dabs of the brush. Tree is complete. Now it's time to create some textures on the tree trunks. Now this is storytelling optional step. You can skip it as well. Or you can use the tip or the backside tip of your brush and create some texture lines on the tree trunk. In order to meet the base of the tree. Look little neat. We will hide it out using some vertical strokes are slanting strokes creating some grassland patterns just near the base of the tree or you could splatter some of the yellow paint as well. Now for splattering, covered the other areas with fewer tissue papers so that you do not splattered the yellow paints around the sky or the stream area also splatter. Do this little carefully and that's all about it. Now, I'm going to connect the cherry blossom tree lines that are witches forming a canopy from left to right. So I'm going to connect it. And as I had told earlier also, when you are going towards the distant, use smaller strokes of the brush and when you are coming towards you, our newer, do you use a bigger strokes? Towards my right side, I'm using some random brushstrokes indicating that you're not with the wind. Some of these cherry blossom are following and strewn across the land area. Now the next step that I'm going to do is totally optional. I feel that my mountain has got far more blurred out and it is not clearly visible. So I'm going to go ahead and layer it with the damp brush using my red paint. You will have to be little careful because the paper has already dried out and I'm risking the formation of some hard edges. You can see hard edges are being formed as I'm trying to paint it. In order to take those things away, I'll be using my damper tip of the hake brush and I'll smoothen these areas out. By the time when it gets dried, it will always smoothened out. And yes, that's it. We are done with our final painting. 8. Final Thoughts: We have come to an end of our painting here I want to share a last tip before we end this class. Sometimes our paper starts buckling up when drank. So in order to prevent that to happen, what you can do is you can read the reverse of the paper once you are done with your painting. And you can place a weight over the trans side and keep it in the same position overnight and your paper will be flat and will not buckle at any cost. Thank you for joining in and painting along. This means a lot to me in case if you have loved the class and you have painted along, I would love to see your class projects do upload them in the projects gallery section.