Pinte uma árvore moderna em aquarela em uma paisagem simples: bis ao vivo da Skillshare

1. Introduction: [MUSIC] Oh gosh, the things I think I love most about watercolor is, it's own beast. It has its own personality and as an artist you can coax it into doing certain things but it's always got a mind of its own, so you have to really open yourself up to those unexpected quirks and beautiful things that watercolor just does. Hi. I'm Jen Dixon. I'm a multi-disciplinary artist living in the UK. I've been a top teacher on Skillshare since 2016 and I've been a full-time working artist for about a decade. Today we're going to build a modern watercolor tree in a simple landscape. We're going to make it really value conscious. That's really paying attention to your light, medium, and dark values, but we're going to stay loose and it's going to be a lot of fun. We're going to work with a lot of very wet-in-wet techniques. When you do that, you are relying on the watercolor to push pigments around in places that you aren't dictating. You can maybe put a drop someplace, but where that drop travels in the already there wet paint is up to the watercolor itself and that's something beautiful to embrace. Although we're doing a tree today and we're really focusing on this loose landscape, I use these techniques whenever I paint whether it's abstract or another figurative subject matter. The things that you'll learn today these are core techniques especially the color mixing, and that is going to carry forward into everything that you do. For today's class, you're going to need minimal supplies. This is something that I really wanted people to be able to just pick up and do with whatever they've got on-hand. We're only using a handful of colors. You'll see Ultramarine Blue, Payne's Grey, Burnt Sienna, Alizarin Crimson, Cadmium Yellow. Those are really the core colors that we'll be using. If you have a little travel set, a travel watercolor set is perfect for this. What I want you to try and keep in mind is using reasonable quality watercolors because part of the magic of watercolor is how those quality pigments and those quality paints behave, and you won't get that with maybe a kid's set or something like that. I want you to begin really exploring not only what you can do with the paint, but what the paint itself can do. This was recorded live as a Skillshare event with participation with students from all over the world. [MUSIC] 2. Materials & Inspiration: Hello everyone, my name is Tiffany. I use the pronouns she and her, and I am on Skillshare's community team. I get to be the lucky host of today's live class with top teacher, Jen Dixon. Why don't you tell us a little bit more about what we'll be doing with you today. Well, today, as I said, watercolors can be really exciting and deep, and vibrant, and that's what I want to help everybody do today. There's a site that I like to use for a lot of my reference photos called pexels.com, that's P-E-X-E-L-S.com. Instead of pixels, it's pexels. Anyway, the reference photo that I found, because my idea was, since it's springtime in most places that I'm familiar with anyway, I know different parts of the world have different seasons flip-flopped, but I wanted something that felt springy or summery so I thought we'd do a tree. I've done a trees class before which I think some of you have taken called Painting Trees With the ABCs, and it was a really fun introductory way to trees. But now I want to take you on a next level, and if you've never painted trees before, this is a great place to start as well. I found this photo, this reference photo of just this big bushy tree on Pexels. We're just going to crop it down to what we want to focus on today, which this is the reference photo that you'll be finding. We've just got a nice big, bushy leafy tree. We've got a simple landscape. We've got some clouds, we've got some sky, and we've got a little bit of shadow. But most importantly, this is a really good study in value. As I said, watercolors can be pretty exciting as long as you pay attention to keeping those values nice and deep. You've got light, medium, and dark, and that's going to just really pop this thing to life. Continuing. [OVERLAPPING]. All right. [LAUGHTER] Should we get into materials a little bit? Brilliant. This is going to be a limited palette study. What I mean by that is, typically my desk palette is this, and this is only about seven or eight colors. You notice that there is no green on here whatsoever. We're going to do a lot of intuitive color mixing today, which is really important to learn. As far as your own watercolors, if you just have a little travel set, that is perfect. You don't need many colors today. The colors that I'll be using, which are in my palette, I've got ultramarine blue, I've got cobalt. I've got Payne's gray, cadmium yellow, yellow ocher, burnt sienna, Alizarin crimson. There's a sneaky little pocket of cerulean blue down here that I didn't actually put in the materials list, but it happens to be in here from another project, so we may dip into it anyway, but it's not necessary. Beyond that, continue. [LAUGHTER] This live thing is weird. Anyway, I'm going to be using cold pressed watercolor paper. The reason why I'm using cold press watercolor paper is I do like the texture. However, if you got any watercolor paper, that'll be fine. This is a block because blocks are really easy to work with and you can get them really wet. What they mean by block is it's bound on all the sides, so when you have a normal tablet of paper, it's glued on one side, this is glued on four sides, so it really holds it down for you. Now, you notice I've divided mine into two sections. That's because I'm going to be painting two examples at the same time. That way, if anyone has any questions about techniques or something that I want to highlight, then I've got two that I can work with at the same time, but please only work with one if that's what you're comfortable with. You can always paint more of them later. I've divided it up with some washi tape. Let's see, the other things that you might like to have today, just some simple sketch paper or a sketchbook or even printer paper. Something that you can just draw a little bit on. This is just some cartridge paper. I've got a fat pencil that I'm going to use because we want to do a little bit of studying of the subject before we commit to paint. As far as brushes go, I'm going to be mostly using the big one of these two. So I've got a size six and a size 14. I'll just bring them a little bit closer so you can see them. I love big brushes. Once you start using big brushes, you'll find that they're really expressive. I think a lot of people stick to the smaller brushes because they feel more comfortable or it feels like you might get more control that way. But a big brush is going to be your best friend, I promise you. Finally, I've got something called, it's spelled H-A-K-E, but it's pronounced hake. A hake brush is something that I'm going to use to wet the paper with. If you do not have a big brush like this, it's okay. You can just use the biggest brush you've got to wet your paper first. Or you can use maybe a little spray bottle, or you can use a sponge, anything will do, it's just fine. That's really about it. Limited palette, a bit of watercolor paper, some sketch paper, and a couple of big brushes. 3. Getting Started: First and foremost, I want to have a quick look at the reference photo. I said that you wouldn't have the original, but I just want to explain why I cropped it down the way I did. The focus of today is about painting that big, loose modern tree. That is what I wanted to focus on. This has a lot of space around it. Personally, from a composition point of view, and I've got a class on composition if you want to dig a little bit deeper into that. But center placed items tend to look a little bit unexciting and they're a little confrontational. I wanted to just throw the tree off to the side a little bit. I wanted to focus on it a little bit of the foreground and we're going to extend up just that little bit with the sky. Because at least with the format of paper that I have, I have that little bit of wiggle room just to extend that sky up just a tiny bit. What I really like about this photo is I like that you can see a lot of values in it. We've got everything from your lightest stuff in the clouds to the medium tones and values, to those deep dark values. Pardon me. You don't hear that when it's an edited class. [LAUGHTER] You've got your light, medium, and dark, which are really important to bringing something to life. With this tree, I really liked its shape. Let's have a quick look. I'm just going to grab some sketch paper and talk a little bit more about the reference itself. Looking at the reference and I think you can see that side-by-side. We've got your basic lollipop tree. It's that shape, a little bit more top heavy than it is bottom. My assistant from off-camera just brought me some water since I had to clear my throat. Isn't that lovely? I'm just going to set that aside. We've got your lollipop shaped tree and looking at the light, there's a shadow that's falling away from it. Now that shadow means that the sun is not directly above or else that shadow would be a lot more underneath it, exactly. You can see the shadows are mimicked in the clouds as well. We're looking at the sunshine, the light direction. We want to make sure that light direction is the same in all the elements in the final composition. Because if you put the shadows in a different place on the clouds, it's going to confuse whoever is looking at the final painting. We're looking at a shadow that is drawn away from it. We've got some under shadow and we've got some deeper shadows inside. Now, our clouds in the background. We have that same look mimicked throughout. That's something I want us to pay attention to when we're actually painting, is that light direction, is that shadow. You can see in the foreground, there's even some stuff we can't see that out of shot that's causing some shadow that's interesting in that very near foreground. I really like that about it. Now, if we want to break down that tree shape a little bit more, I'm just going to flip my paper. A little bit more accurately, we've got a tree that's growing nice and fat and wide at the top. It's a little bit thinner at the bottom, and that's because as the tree grows, it's branching out and it's trying to find more light. You've got a lot of coverage here at the top. We're going to play with that a little bit. If you've seen the promotional paintings that I've shown as examples, you can see how we're bringing that into our own way. It doesn't have to be exact. A reference photo is purely for reference, so don't worry about it looking exactly like it when you're painting it. It's your interpretation. I always want you to keep that in mind. The chances are somebody who has never going to see these two things next to each other. Be pleased and happy with what you create and use that reference as inspiration, but not as gospel if that helps anyone, I hope. Without further ado, now that we know a little bit about the shadows and the light and the shape. Let's get our paper out for watercolor. If you don't have watercolor paper, it's just fine to keep working on the cartridge paper. Here's an example of what some of the paint would look like on just sketch book style cartridge paper. You can still make something that looks really fantastic even if you don't have watercolor papers. Stick with us. First thing we're going to do is we're going to wet our paper. Now, again, I'm doing side-by-side, so I'm going to wet both panels for me, but you are welcome to only be working on one painting at a time. See, I'm getting it really wet with this hake brush. These are wonderful, fairly inexpensive brushes typically. But any broad brush will do just something to wet your paper with your paper. This is a cold pressed block with your paper. Just let it sit for a second. Let that paper just do its magic. Soak that up a little bit and then take your brush back through it a second time. You want that really nice and saturated. While that's soaking into the paper, we're going to have a look at our reference photo. We're going to begin with some blues. I've got ultramarine blue here, and I'm just getting a nice big puddle of it. Now, one of the things I want you to come away with today is thinking about intuitive color mixing and also intentionally contaminating your colors a little bit. Just for that cohesion. Because if you have everything in very distinct colors without having a little bit of contamination between them. It can look a little bit coloring book. We're going to allow some of this muddiness that's already on my palette, we're going to allow that to get right up in there. Let's say I'm just going to test this. Can I pass along a question or two? Absolutely. Please do. Kristi wanted to know what is the red color again that you're using. The red up in the corner, I may only dip into it a wee bit for the shadows and the clouds just for a little interests, but that is Alizarin Crimson. So A-L-I-Z-A-R-I-N crimson, alizarin. Thank you. Anybody that popped in late, I'll just run through my palette real quick. That's Cadmium Yellow, Burnt Sienna, Alizarin Crimson, Ultramarine Blue, Cobalt Blue with bit of Coeruleum Blue, which is also known as Cerulean Blue depending on who you talk to or where in the world you are. This is Payne's Grey and Yellow Ochre is over there as well. These are just the common colors that I use to mix almost everything, anytime I sit down to paint. I've just got a little bit of blue I'm gonna test on my paper and I think that's a bit dark. I'm not going to go quite that bold because we're putting a bottom layer down and we're going to be painting our tree over top of this sky color. We definitely don't want it to be too bold to begin with. That is a much nicer consistency. I'm going to take just some blue. I'm going to dot it through about two-thirds the way down the page and you just it's a little heavier and I just let it run out a little bit as I got down towards the horizon. Now that's because the way sky works, it depends on light waves that come from the sun. Blue is one of the hardest colors to make it down to the earth. There's a whole bunch of science involved with that. But just know that that's why things get lighter as they go down towards the horizon, has to do with wavelengths of colored light coming from the sun. They just don't travel down quite that far and it gets the illusion of it looking a little bit lighter. That's as dark as I really want you to go just a nice light level. We're going to take a little bit of Cadmium Yellow. Cadmium Yellow is a Warm Yellow. Ultramarine Blue is a warm blue. It sounds a bit strange to call a blue warm, but it has a bias. What that means is it leans a little bit towards the more purpley red side of things. We're mixing basically a warm color and a warm color. They are very compatible and we're getting this mid green. Now I know that the Zoom does dull color a little bit, but trust me, it's a nice earthy green. You notice the way I'm painting. I'm painting with the side of my brush. I'm allowing things to be just that little bit scratchy and that little bit imperfect. That's part of what really brings a watercolor to life, is that little bit of imperfection. I have bunch of already prepared bits of paper towel. I use them over and over and over all, dry them on my lamps when I'm done, just going to take a little bit of wadded up towel and blot through some of that blue to help show where there might be some clouds lifted out. Now if we look at our reference photo, again, it's just referenced. It doesn't need to be an identical painting of the reference photo, but you can see that there's a cloud bank across that horizon line. I'm just going to plot that out a little bit. I'm going to have a sip of that water that came through to me. What with lock down I think we all talked a lot less over the past bunch of months. [LAUGHTER] Forgive me if I sound just a little bit hoarse. That is our base layer. The other thing I want us to do now, and then we're going to set it aside for a moment to let it dry a little bit. We're going to place our tree trunk. I'm just going to pick up a tiny bit of burnt sienna. I'm just going to contaminate it a little bit with what's already on my palette. In composition, a lot of times the rule of thirds is something that's really pleasing to the eye. When you look through the viewfinder of your camera, you'll also see usually there is a third's grid and that helps you to place your subject. I've basically done sky down two-thirds and the grass down or up rather about a third. I'm going to place my tree trunk about on the third. You can see I'm just putting a little dash in there. That's just my marker telling me about where I'm going to start placing my tree. 4. Starting the Tree: So from that, I want you to set that aside. We're going to learn just a tiny bit more about our tree with pencil and paper while that dries for a moment. With our reference photo, we know that the overall shape is like this big lollipop, but I want us to go a little bit further with that now. If we have that shape for our tree, I want you to really start looking at where the highlights and the shadows are specifically. We've got probably these big lumpy areas of leaves and when you start breaking things down into shapes, that's when things really start to get exciting. I'm just looking at where I've got these bundles of leaves and I'm thinking about the space in-between them is where I've got a lot of shadow. This is already beginning to map out where we're going to place our darker values and again, don't worry if it's not 100 percent accurate to the photo. You're using this as a reference. You're getting an idea. Now you know some of the branches, they're further away, and so those are your dark values because they're actually in the shadow from our light source, that branch right there is in the shadow. This is in the shadow, but we've got that light coming not high noon, but we've got it coming from the front side, whatever you want to call it, and hitting that tree. Just take a moment and be mindful of where you're going to be dotting in darker values later. If you think about a shape like this with your tree, think about it as maybe a cluster of grapes or cotton balls, something like that. Something that you can begin to think in that way where you're looking at it, not as an individual bunch of leaves because that'll trip you up, but think of it more like these big shapes of color and value. Are there any questions so far? There was one question from Claude wondering if you could take us through your approach to paint two trees at the same time, and if they could paint two or just paint one? I would say just paint one for today, honestly, the reason why I'm painting two at the same time, is just to show slightly different techniques, like different variations. It's really up to you if you want to do it two at a time, you are very welcome to. It is a little quicker pace and sometimes that works to the benefit with watercolor because watercolor, you do want to work quickly. I've brought my paper back from off to the side and you can see things have been drawing a little bit. That little indication where my tree trunk is has bled into things and that's fine because with watercolor, one of the things that I think frustrates people the most is, it always looks a bit poo at first. Nobody likes what they're doing with watercolor on a first layer. Yes, you want to work quickly, but you also want to keep working a little bit. Then as time goes on and you get more experienced, you start to figure out when to say when and honestly, sometimes, I still don't know when to say when and when to quit. You can overwork something really easily, but there's that balance. You have to keep working on it to find out when to quit if that makes sense. With our tree the next thing I want us to do is mixing the greens. I mentioned that Ultramarine Blue and Cadmium Yellow. You knows, I'm not even worried about getting my colors dirty and messy in here. Part of the brilliance of the watercolor is just making those cohesive colors with just a little bit of contamination. So this is purely Cadmium Yellow and Ultramarine Blue. And I'm making a medium green. If you want to think about, here's something I made earlier. If you want to think about light, medium, and dark, we've got Ultramarine and Cadmium Yellow, and I'll bring that up just a little bit closer so you can see the words on it. Ultramarine and Cadmium Yellow and then we're later going to make a deeper green, which is Ultramarine, Cadmium Yellow and then we're just going to contaminate it, dirty it up a little bit, darken it with Burnt Sienna and Payne's Grey. I'll take you through that a little bit more. Then my highlight color it's just basically a dirty Cadmium Yellow. If you look at your reference tree, you can see that actually it is really yellowy where the sun is hitting those leaves and if you go out into nature, you see a lot more yellow in green trees than you even realize. I want you to keep that in mind. Even down here in the foreground, that's really yellow compared to a lot of the green of the tree. But we're making this mid green first and we're going to make a lot of it. Because we want to paint this tree fast and wet. Because we're going to use a technique called wet in wet, where we're dropping in lots and lots of color as we go so that is a pretty good mid green. I might even just lighten that up a tiny bit more with some yellow and some water. Now's where we get pretty exciting. We're going to work upwards from about where we had our tree trunk and my tree trunk disappeared almost entirely. I'm just going to pop that in just ever-so-slightly. Show myself where it is. It doesn't matter if it's not quite the right tree trunk color yet because I can go and refine that later. Looking at our tree and thinking about in the idea that it's a bunch of shapes and balls and light and dark areas, so you're thinking about them in that dimensional sense. Here's a drawing that I did showing it more like grapes or cotton balls and you can almost wrap your hand around it. I want you to think about that while you're painting. Don't paint something flat, paint something dimensional. When I say that, I mean, let's just get in there and start [NOISE] my reference photo. I've got so many papers on this desk. There's my reference photo. I'm looking at those basic shapes and I'm keeping it really wet. In fact, I'm going to add more water to that still. I'm thinking about those big round shapes. I'm not thinking about individual leaves. I'm thinking about, and that's too dry. I'm going to make sure it's really soupy. It's important to keep this stuff wet because we're going to want a lot of blending. You can see, I'm just winging it, but I'm thinking about, could I wrap my hands around it? Think of what you're painting your subject in that very sculptural way. I'm adhering to that original idea that the tree grows up and outward a little bit. I'm keeping that really nice and wet. Now I trust that I can go in and re-wet that a little bit. I'm just going to paint this a second time. But I'm going to be a little sloppier about it over here. I'm going to allow the brush to do a little bit of exciting stuff at the same time. Two at the same time, but slightly different brush techniques a little quicker on that one. There we go. 5. Adding Depth: Next thing we're going to do is we've got a puddle of that color still built up. If you don't, hurry up and build a little bit more of that mid-green. This is where we're going to start popping in those shadows. Burnt Sienna is a very warm color, but it's also going to muddy up. I'm just going to pull some of this from the side because my palette it tends to run off to the side a little bit. I'm just going to pull some in. You notice that that's a mucky color now. It's not the shadowy color I want. How am I going to deepen that? I'm going to pull in some Payne's Grey, which is a beautiful shadowy blue. It's going to look a little weird at first. But I promise once it's in context, it'll look really good. It's okay if it gets almost black, like a really deep green black. That's looking pretty good. In fact, I'm going to exaggerate that even more. Just play with it. This is intuitive color mixing. Here we go. That is a really nice deep green. Think about your shadows. Get your reference photo. Look at where the shadows cradle the underside of these rounded blobs of leaves and think about where you might just touch them in. You remember down here at the bottom we had some stuff happening behind the tree. That's going to be an all new bunch of branch. You can just dot some in wherever you think it needs that little emphasis with the underside. Just let it bleed. Let the watercolor do the exciting stuff that it does. This is why we've left it really wet. Because we really want to allow that paint to paint itself to a certain extent. We're here guiding it. But let the watercolor paint itself. I promise it's really good at it. I'm paying attention to where my shadows are, but I'm also not stressed about accuracy. Because in my mind I know where they need to occur and I know I've got the power that I can change it a little bit if I need to. I've just noticed there is a little bit more depth down there. Painting two at the same time is a fun way to learn from yourself in real time. What happens if you get this really big puddle? It just looks wrong. I just noticed I've got a lot of paint that snuck into the middle of my fat brush, just trying to rinse that out. But there is two ways you can pull out some color that you don't want to be in there. I don't want this massive puddle. I've just plotted my brush a little bit and I can push it in there and it'll pull some out. I've got some blue on there that's contaminating, but that's okay. Blot your brush and let it soak it up a little bit like a sponge. The other way you can do that is just take a bit of towel and soak just that little bit up. If you've got it in maybe slightly the wrong spot, if you think so, can just give her a little dab. Like I seem to have a buckle in my paper in the same place on both of them. Just dab a little. Actually I still like that. While it's still wet, and it's important that we are working really wet, I am now taking pure Cadmium Yellow with some contamination and I'm dropping in highlights. It's going to look a bit weird at first, I know. But I promise that the pigment in Cadmium Yellow is heavy enough to start smooshing the other colors aside a little bit. Just work a little bit on that one too. I've got a question from the audience if you want. Yes, please. Go ahead. Christy is asking, do you ever use Neutral Tint? What are your thoughts on it? I do occasionally. I have a much larger desk set of paints that if I have a big subject that I want to tackle or something. I do have Neutral Tint. I think it's useful, but limited. I much prefer typically making my own contaminated tints with what I have. Here is the way to utilize that more intuitive color mixing, is warm and cool. If you add a warm color and a cool color together, they will neutralize one another. If I were to use, let's say, Lemon Yellow instead of Cadmium Yellow. Lemon Yellow would make a much brighter, cooler green. Then it's going to react differently with, say, Ultramarine Blue because Ultramarine Blue is a warm blue. If you are wanting to use more grey tones, use that conflict that happens between warm and cool colors and try to come up with something on your own because it will always look better than something from the tube. As we've got nice wet trees, you can see how that Cadmium Yellow has been pushing the other pigments around. It's a much heavier sort than what we already had down the really wet stuff. It's actually painting itself for you. Hopefully you can see that how we have these very distinct areas. That shadowy stuff because we've dropped in those highlight colors, that highlight yellow, it looks green, but it's also pushing those dark values right back. 6. Finessing the Landscape: While our trees are doing a little bit of drying, we can start to finesse the foreground and the sky. I see a couple of questions popping in. Go ahead if you've got them, Tiffany. [NOISE] Sure. There was a question from somebody who was unable to find Cadmium Yellow in their local art shop, so they're using Yellow Mid instead. Is that okay? I don't know your manufacturer or exactly which pigment you're using but I think most importantly is being able to determine whether it's a warm or cool color. Got it. Yeah. It's how it mixes rather than the very specific yellow. As far as Cadmium Yellow, it's just a common color, but you could very easily be doing this with maybe a Gamboge or an Indian Yellow, those yellows also, nice warm yellows. You've got another question. They're saying amazing demo by the way. Thank you. [LAUGHTER] But also I'm asking about a particular paint brand Daniel Smith has lots of great greens, why not work with those versus making your own? Because making your own, being able to mix paint is a far more valuable skill than shopping. I know that sounds like a really blunt answer, but I could spend millions of pounds on all the colors in the world and I wouldn't learn anything from it. But learning to mix your own colors, I think is one of the most fundamental, most important skills that you can have. I'm not saying don't have some of the fancy colors because I'm a big fan of Sap Green. Sap green is a favorite green of mine, and green is my favorite color. Why am I not using prefab greens? Because I know I can get all of these greens out of these primary colors. I think that if I wanted to really teach somebody something, I think color mixing is probably the most fundamental skill there is outside of understanding basic values of light, medium, and dark. Definitely. Thank you. You're very welcome. As I said, I didn't mean that to sound, like, super blunt, but yeah, I want people to be able to rely on themselves and their own knowledge. Definitely. While our trees are beginning to ooze around and do their pigment magic, we've got sky and we've got foreground to deal with. I definitely don't want to take up too much of everybody's day, but I want to definitely blast through some of this for you. Looking at our reference photo, we've got some foreground excitement that we're going to simplify. One of the most important things that you can do besides color mixing and knowing your values of light, medium, and dark is also how to simplify, how to edit, how to take things out that don't matter. A lot of this doesn't matter. If we look at an example I painted ahead of time, you notice that I didn't add in any of these trees happening in the background. Mostly because I want the star of the show, my main tree, I want that to be what people notice. I don't want them to have the confusion that we have in the photograph, which is where does the tree stop in the foreground and where does that background start? Photographs tend to put everything at the same sharpness. Everything seems to be a bit in-focus. I want to take that out. I want to just blur it up a little bit and I really want to bring that star forward, which is our tree. What we're going to do, is we're going to do a little bit of finessing with the foreground. I'm just using some of this dirty paints, this dirty green that I've got already here, I've added a little bit of water because working in glazing layers, glazing is adding a layer over top of something that's already dried or drying. We can get some really beautiful nuances by doing a little bit of maybe side stroke. Here I'm just bringing in a layer for that foreground. You notice I'm just flicking and I'm not letting it really coat that paper area. It's already beginning to lighten and that's okay because I can always go back and darken it. But I really like that technique and I'm just going to throw in some horizon line. You can see it doesn't even take that much effort to really start to build that depth. I'm going to do it on this side too, but might change things up a little bit for my horizon. You can see I'm twitching my brush around, just getting a slightly different feel to that horizon instead of the swipe that I did for that one. That horizon, I'm just going to blue it up a little bit. Because as you look into the distance, oftentimes things more distant go a little bit purply. I'm just going to pull just a tiny bit of Alizarin Crimson into this dirty blue-green color. It's a purply blue green now. The funny thing is I would always tell somebody, I'm just dropping that in. I would always tell somebody that if you want to mix a color, learn to mix a pure color if that's what you're after, using as few pigments as possible. Say you need a green, but you want a nice pure green. Try to just mix two colors together. The more pigment you add to something, the more muddy it can become. As you learn further color mixing techniques, you can begin to blur those lines and break those rules a little bit. But do your best. You can see I'm just dribbling it through there. Do your best to learn color mixing with as pure colors as possible first. Then when you build your confidence up, you can start having these beautiful contaminations, but still not have mud. You can see where that color is really starting to affect what's happening in the background. The beauty of that is then if we look at our reference photo, you maybe squint your eyes so you're not seeing it quite so sharp. You can see that those nuances of the hills and the trees in the background, they may be starting to appear where you've been dropping in paint. [NOISE] 7. Finishing Up: You hear a little ting ting noise in my water. Just want to share a quick tip with you, and that is about rinsing your brushes with a seashell. I have a seashell in my water all the time because seashells are meant to be in water, and it gives me something to rub my bristles against in the bottom of my jar. I'm not just jamming my brush around, which can damage your brush. I just want to share that quick tip throw a seashell in with your water. We're going to delve into the sky just a little bit to sharpen that up and add some definition. We're going to work quickly because I know we are typically at about an hour for these sessions and we're rapidly running out of time. Nice, dirty blue, again don't be afraid of a contaminated pallet use that lovely paint that's on there. We have in our reference photo, a slight sharp edge above some clouds here, but we also have really soft edges around here. What I'm going to do, I'm just going to wet using my hake brush. Just a little bit of that top and you can see I've accidentally gone into my tree, that's a danger move, not for the faint of heart, but I'm going to take a towel and I'm just going to blot out whatever happened. That's another reason why I'm doing side-by-side. Because I didn't do that to this one but I want that slightly damp paper. I can just begin dropping in some blue paint because again, as we said earlier, the sky is bluer, higher up and that nice wet paper is giving me that softness. Does flicking swipes that we did below in the ground can look really good in skies. Don't worry about going over your tree a little bit it's fine and you can see how loose and exciting that looks. I might just dab in a little bit of Alizarin Crimson, make a little bit more of a purply color, just gray it up with a little bit of the blue and whatever's on my palette. I'm just going to drop a little bit in up at the top to mimic the reference photo, maybe a little pinker on the one side. When you begin to learn flicking and dry brush techniques, your art will change because you will get a looseness and an expressiveness that is really difficult to achieve any other way. Down here towards the bottom, I've got some clouds, but I'm looking at the way the clouds are billowing there. Again, think of these things as sculptural, can you wrap your hand around it? I'm just going to take my brush and do some circular movements down here. I'm going to go right up into my tree a little bit, pull a little more blue because it's a little bit darker towards the horizon in that cloudy area. Because that is actually a changing weather pattern. This is probably an early summer or a late summer afternoon, because we've got this lovely warm sky. Mornings tend to be a little bit bluer and if I think I've gone a little bit too far with it, take a little bit of towel, just blot it out. I may have been optimistic thinking I could get two of these done at the same time with you, but I will never stop being optimistic. I'll just do a little bit on the other one. I think I'm going to remain focused on this right-hand version and we're going to wrap things up with a little bit more depth in that shadowy, stuff in the foreground, remember you can add layers. This is glazing, one of the strengths of watercolor painting, and there's some really beautiful yellowy stuff happening. I'm just going to take a lot of bold Cadmium Yellow and just go nuts. This again is another good reason to paint two at the same time because you can really experiment and take some risks. Because you should always take some risks. I'm taking my brush and I'm just drying it a little bit, flicking back through just to change some of that texture so it doesn't just look flat, and from this point, it's all about finessing. You can take a little bit of your other colors and you can begin to bring a little bit of light detail back to your tree. If you've lost your tree trunk as I have, I'm just going to blot it out, dry that little area a little bit. I'm also going to dry a little bit where my shadow was, and the way I'm doing that is I'm blotting my damp brush, pulling some of that out because our tree should not be floating in space, we need to throw a shadow under it. Looking at the shape of the shadow, just bring that right on back and as it dries, we'll be able to add more definition to that. I've gone really wet on mine but I want to come back to the ones that I've already done. You can see that I've added layers and layers of glazing to be able to bring that definition forward. You can go back in and make some really deep dark colors. You can see this has a lot of Payne's it's almost black in the deepest shadows. But if we look at our reference photo, it is also almost black in those deep shadowy areas. But look at how side-by-side this one doesn't really have the punch that this side has with a little bit more yellow. In fact, I think I could make that a bit more yellow and just really get that punch happening in the foreground. 8. Q&A + Final Tips: Well, there was a lot of excitement around colors when you were chatting about making greens and that thing, and warm and cool. I love color. I'll pass along those. Well, first of all, there was a request for to do a class on color mixing and/or advanced color theory, which I think would be [inaudible]. Oh, wow. Now, I see I've avoided that because I know there are several classes out there, but perhaps my take on it would be appreciated and I really like that feedback. Thank you. I'll think on that. Well, folks always want to hear directly from their favorite teachers. I'll put in a plug for that as well. There was a question around how can you tell the difference between a warm color and a cool color? That is a fun one because that is all about color wheels and bias. Basically, you think about there are a couple of different primary color sets that you can utilize to really tell the difference. If I wanted to show a warm color wheel, I would probably use like Ultramarine Blue, Cadmium Yellow, or another warm yellow. For the red, perhaps a Cadmium Red. Those are all really bold, warmish colors. When you mix them, the sense that you get, the bias of those colors is a warmer bias. If I wanted to make a cooler color wheel, I might take something like Cerulean Blue and Alizarin Crimson, which is a more purpley, bluey, red. Also Lemon Yellow, which is very bold, greenie, bright yellow. If you make a color wheel with those two sets of primaries side-by-side, you can really tell which one seems a bit warmer and sunnier, and which one just seems a bit more bright and garish. They both have their uses absolutely. But it's something that you definitely can look at as a side-by-side and learn a lot from. I just saw a question come in saying something about why don't I use black? Black is very flat. I do use black at times to tint other things to add strength, that deepness, that strength that sometimes you can't really easily achieve by mixing your own, but to mix your own blacks, you can add that nuance, that bias, that color leaning, that can really help tie a piece together. If I were to add a pure black to a painting that I had concerned myself with the cohesion and the mixing of colors, that black would stand out as something manufactured. However, even just adding a little bit of one of the colors from your palette to a pure black. Because maybe you do need that depth. That can just really blend that color into the rest of the piece. I see a yes to a color class for me. Thank you. I really appreciate this feedback. I so very rarely ask what people want to see. I should do it more. I don't know why I don't ask as much. Maybe I should put a poll out or something. If everybody would like that. Any more questions than Tiffany, I'm happy to keep answering. Yeah. There were a lot of questions more around color and getting greens that you want. In fact, it sounds like some folks really struggle to mix greens and actually have them match what they're seeing in nature because they get overwhelmed with the color combinations, especially with the warm versus cool. Wondering if you have any tips for getting those realistic greens without using up all the paint and paper while trying. Again, practicing those color wheels, you're going to learn so much and color mixing charts, I absolutely love swatch charts. Those I would love perhaps in a color mixing class, we can do some various color mixing swatch charts to really go in depth on that. Because color mixing charts, you can make them for so many different purposes. I make some really specific ones in the class that I'm getting out next, which is a skies class. It's all about the way other colors affect blue. Really depends on what your goal is with them. But color mixing charts are not only gorgeous to look at and really meditative to create. But you will learn astonishing amounts about the way color behaves together. You'll find some new favorite colors I've no doubt. I think that wraps up most of the substantial questions. Maybe we can just do the final bits of piecing and then wrap it up for the day. Yeah. Absolutely. You can see, and this is real life. This is live. I'm not making another one of these for you to be the real deal. This is me, flubbing my tree because I've let it get really bleedy down here at the bottom. I've lost it, but actually just letting it dry that little bit and working it and finessing it. I'm not giving up and I'm coming up with some stuff that I think I like again. With watercolor, I think one of my top tips is to not give up on it. Do multiple paintings of the same subject. You can never be one and done. You can never just nail it and be good at it with one attempt. This is why I often, and in fact, believe it or not, I've painted these trees also. Again, I have just painting this tree. This was my first attempt, my second attempt. I really like this little one a lot, especially these small dots of dark, shadowy stuff. Then I went bigger. I like them, but I like the one on the left-hand side better. But every time I repeat something, and if you've taken my classes before, you know that I say repetition. Keep studying, keep doing. This is the way you learn. This is the way you get better. The same subject can turn out differently half a dozen times in a row, but they'll all look like they are a growth. They will look like you have evolved and learned each time you do an example of something like even these, this one is incredibly loose and I think the sky is a little bit too much, but I've learned new things on it. Every time you paint, it doesn't have to be the one and only painting you do of that subject, in fact, I would encourage you to always keep exploring the same subject. Have a whole sketch book of a tree. I promise that sketch book will show an evolution and a growth page to page definitely. That's beautiful. Thank you, Jen. Good tips for everyone. You're welcome. In there as well. [LAUGHTER] Wonderful. Well, any final touches to the paintings or should we wrap it up? I think we should wrap it up, but what I want to do is I want to just talk a little bit through how I finished the pieces. Obviously we've run out of time, but you can see that there's additional glazing layers just a little bit in that background, but I don't show any real detail. Again, with that reference photo, it can become a bit confusing because you've got a lot going on that looks very similar to the tree. Just trying to take that back a little bit, diminishing the color, the vibrancy of that color a little, and taking away some detail can really help. Whereas in the very foreground of that photo, there are some weeds at the beginning and they don't show up a lot in the photo. But I really like them because they help to promote that sense of depth and that sense of travel into the painting. With that, I just created a little extra in the grasses. If you can see that there's some really nice dark shadow in there, but there's also some highlight. The way I created those highlights is I painted it in but then I went through with my brush. You saw the way I was pulling color out. I was lifting color out with a damp brush but dry. I did the same thing. I just drew in basically like an eraser to get some of those highlight bits in the weeds. It really gives that sense of depth. Practice your brush strokes, give those nice big sweeping strokes. Allow yourself to play with a little bit of dry brush, which means that you're not just blobbing color around, you're allowing it to really scratch the surface of the paper a little bit. Don't be afraid to keep glazing in layers and let paint do a little bit of its own magic. Don't try to control it. You can manipulate the paint but unless you know the very deep science of every pigment you use, it's going to do some stuff you don't expect. One of the beauties of watercolor is learning to embrace that. 9. Final Thoughts: One one the things I want you to take away from this class is that watercolor is a little bit of its own animal. Seeing me paint live and us painting together live, you're going to encounter things that you're going to need to either repair or change or just really think on your feet during the process. This isn't one of those picture perfect moments that you see on the Internet. This is real. Every time I paint, I'm learning something and I'm overcoming something or I'm finding a new path, and that's really what I want you to take away from this Live. Thank you so much for joining me for this Live and I really hope to see you again.