Paint a St. John Beach Scene! | Suzanne Allard | Skillshare

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Taught by industry leaders & working professionals
Topics include illustration, design, photography, and more

Watch this class and thousands more

Get unlimited access to every class
Taught by industry leaders & working professionals
Topics include illustration, design, photography, and more

Lessons in This Class

    • 1.

      Class Intro

      2:01

    • 2.

      About Me

      2:18

    • 3.

      Acrylic Gouache Paint Palette

      5:43

    • 4.

      Supplies and Beginning

      18:58

    • 5.

      Blocking In

      20:12

    • 6.

      Building Another Layer

      14:46

    • 7.

      Now It's Finished!

      12:26

    • 8.

      Wrap Up and Resources

      2:56

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About This Class

In this class, we’ll start with a simple beach photo that may initially seem flat and lacking variation. You’ll learn how to bring it to life by adding interest while keeping your brushwork minimal and intentional. We’ll explore how to let the brush and paint work for you, creating natural beauty with ease.

What You’ll Learn:

  • Atmospheric perspective: Creating depth and distance in your painting.
  • Bold strokes and subtle textures: Mastering loose, expressive brushwork, especially in the sky.
  • Avoiding overworking: Knowing when to stop for a fresh, vibrant result.
  • Enhancing focal points: Using small accents of color to guide the viewer’s eye.
  • Balancing structure with freedom: Keeping a strong composition while embracing artistic spontaneity.
  • The “one and done” technique: Making deliberate brushstrokes for a confident, lively painting.

Who This Class Is For:

This class is perfect for beginners and experienced painters alike who want to explore landscape painting with a fresh approach. You'll have the freedom to be expressive while still respecting the fundamental rules of composition and value.

By the end of this class, you'll have a beautifully expressive beach scene and a new confidence in your painting technique!

Additional Resources:

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Meet Your Teacher

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Suzanne Allard

Landscape, Floral, Abstract Teacher

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Level: All Levels

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Transcripts

1. Class Intro: Hello, everyone. Okay, so today we are going to paint a scene from St. Barts. I don't know if you've been to St. Barts. It's an island in the Caribbean, but it's not the Caribbean. It's France. And the people there speak French, and they joke that the happiest people in France are in St. Barts. And we were lucky enough to go several years ago, and I took a picture, well, many pictures. But the one I chose for our painting, what we're going to do is paint it in a way that we're going to try to not be fussy. It's a hard thing to do, right? So we're gonna lay out our strategy and then try to be somewhat minimal in our brushstrokes and keep the painting fresh, and we'll talk through that. We're in a layer color. I'm going to use acrolGuah in this, which is really acrylic paint that's matte, and I'll show you the palette that I use. But you can use acrylic, absolutely or watercolor or oil, if you like to. So that's the medium doesn't really matter. And we're going to have a lot of fun with this. I'm going to show you some kind of dry brush techniques to do in the water and the sky. And this is going to make us feel like we're in St. Barts. So let's get started. Hello, friends. I goofed up. I started out the class, I did the whole class thinking I was painting one of my photos from St. Barts when I was really painting one of my photos from St. John. We've been to both places and I put all my island photos and one album on my phone. The first picture is St. Barts and I'm talking about St. Barts, but the second picture is Trunk Bay and St. John. Wanted to explain that. This is a painting of a St. John beat scene, and I hope you enjoy it. 2. About Me: Hey, I just wanted to tell you a little bit more about me if you haven't taken many of my classes. My name is Suzanne Allard, of course, and I'm a self taught artist. I got started painting later in life in my early 50s, and I finally decided to stop being scared of paint. I would create other things, but for some reason, painting felt like, No, no, though, that's for real artist. That's not me. Um, I'm just a creative person. And I got sick of hearing myself say that and started painting. And I started just, you know, with some basic drawing, like little challenges on Instagram. And I'm not a big drawer. I don't draw much. I'm a sketcher. And just one thing, you know, I don't want to say one thing led to another, because I worked hard. I don't want to diminish that. I worked a lot. I painted a lot. I created a lot. Asked my family. I was obsessed. I'm still kind of obsessed. I paint in the evenings. But I just wanted to share a little bit of that story because I think one of the things that really gets you where you want to go is just frankly not giving up. And, you know, you can get tired and you can have take a break and recharge your batteries, all that, but just don't stop and keep taking classes. And eventually, you know, if you want, you can get to where it's you're selling paintings. Many of my students have gone to sell paintings and show paintings, and that's so exciting for me. I myself sell my work online and license my work and teach classes online. I haven't done in person retreat yet. That's on my list. I have to think about that one because I get requests for it, but I think that if you are interested in pursuing, whether it's casual painting, just for pleasure, all the way up to an art business, like I have and beyond, you know, just stick to what you like to do. And then do that part and then add on things that you don't know little by little so that you can learn and keep your focus, keep your determination, and you'll be able to get there. Alright, keep creating. Let's get started on this painting. 3. Acrylic Gouache Paint Palette: Alright, let's talk about this acro guash palette and how I put it together. These are little containers that come with these little rubbery tops, and it's been, I want to say three or four weeks that I've had these in here. And I have replenished them a little bit. You can see I'm a double dipper. I keep them sprits with either a little spray bottle or this one's really misty. And I only do that, maybe once when I start and then if I'm say painting an hour, then I hit them again before I put them away. But all I did is I took some colors, two, I took two yellows, a cool and a warm, and then some red. So I've got, true red, this is a cad red, a magenta, and this is opera pink, which is, you know, my favorite fluorescent type color. And then an orange, a lime green. This is a Prussian blue. It's just a dark blue, altamarin turquoise. And these are mostly Turner brand that are in here, if not all, this is an ivory, of course, white. This is just a peachy. I had a tube of it, so I emptied the entire tube into there. I think it's called Juan. This is yellow ochre. This is a pale lilac. It's not this one. This is a brand new one. It's a little darker, yeah. So I just basically took what I had, but I made sure the essentials are you don't even need both these containers. The reason I spilled over, I really only needed from here, about five wells. I really only needed the white. I like the ivory, the yellow ochre, and the burnt sienna. I threw the rest of these in because I have the space. I figured if I was going to fill that many, I'd fill the rest of it, but you don't need greens because you can make greens. Lime green is challenging to make, so I like that one. But the only essential colors you really need are a warm and cool yellow, a warm and cool blue. Warm and cool red. And then in my view, turquoise is it's easier to have it than make it, and then opera pink you can't make. And, of course, you need white. So then but I have a fair amount in each of these. So like, let's see if one needs replenishing. The white usually always does. Ultramarine blue is getting a little low. So let's go ahead and grab some of that and put that in there, and I'll show you how I mix a little bit of this blending medium. Alright, so here's some whole vein ultramarine blue. And I just squeezed them in here. But you want a fair amount of paint in there because that's partly what keeps them from drying out is the amount of paint. So don't be I probably should just empty that completely into there. But don't be too sparing with the paint. And then this is Windsor Newton blending medium. It is for watercolor mediums. But even though this is acrolGloh, it's been working. You could also use just acrylic retarder, which I'm also putting, which is what I use in my acrylic paints. So and I just put a couple drops in and stir it up. That's it. Um, I like to get stirs at coffee shops. Those are really great to stir with. And the blending medium just makes the acrogse flow a little bit easier, I find. Aqugage can get really dry and chalky. So this lets it blend easier. It slows drying to allow blending. Let's see. Any more that need to be filled? Not really at this time. And then the only trick when you close them is you just want to make sure that you don't just set it on top. It's sometimes a little tricky to get the little bits going around each well so that you've got a good seal. Yeah, so you can kind of hear it snapping in. Alright. And this one and then I just put them in a zip lock bag, and I don't even do this all the time. But let's say I know I'm not gonna use them again till tomorrow. I just figure it gives me an extra level of security from them drying out because this is acro guash. If it dries, it's dry. You're not reconstituting it with water. It's not like my guash, regular guash, which has no acrylic in it. See how it can be trike sometimes. Okay. And then I'll put it in a ziplock bag and throw in some wet paper towel or even a wet cloth, not wet, damp. And yeah, and if I'm gone for even longer, I'll stick them in the fridge. So that's how I've been using the acro wash. I'll put all the links to this and this in the supply list. Enjoy. 4. Supplies and Beginning: All right. So let's look at the reference photo for St. Barts. We were lucky enough to go to St. Bart's years ago, and we hiked up to a pretty well known lookout. I can't remember the name of it. It's kind of in the neighborhood. And I took this photo among many others. It's so beautiful there, and it had been raining, so things were green. So that's the reference photo. And then I'm using the eight by ten watercolor. This is the hot press, so the smooth paper. But then I went ahead and covered the paper with clear gesso. You don't have to do this. I just wanted to sometimes I just use the paper this way and sometimes I just sew it. The difference being that without the gesso, it soaks into the paper more and think of the gesso as a paper protector and it just keeps the paint on top of the paper. So if you find that you're using a lot of paint and it just keeps soaking in and you find yourself going, why isn't this sitting here on top and looking the way I want it to, you might try just so and you can use clear or white. It doesn't really matter. I've got my pallet paper here and I've got the aqua che in this little hairtight compartments. So I'm going to open those up. They look good. I don't think they need a spray. I was using them earlier. I've got a flat number six, going to start with this big brush. Even though I've got a small piece of paper, try to work with a bigger brush. Then this time to sketch it out, I'm going to try the oil pastel and, you know, leave bits of that and see how we like that. All right. So sketching, I'm seeing here that this horizon is kind of right there in the center, which I don't really like to do. I'm going to move it up a little. To more like at the third mark and kind of sketch. Looks like it comes to about there for that part. And again, nobody is seeing our reference or it's not important to stay exactly true to it. But I like to use it to kind of get an idea, so I'm kind of marking this corner, and then it looks like, the greenery comes up and it dips down. Got this rounded bit here. The reference is just a jump off point, but there are pieces of it, you get to decide what you want to keep. The greenery comes in here and then there's the water line. I want to make I think two lines. That's the greenery and then it looks like the water line is something like this. That's the basic structure there. Then we've got this mountain range in the back, which we can tell already from the photo is less saturated and that's what will help us create that atmospheric perspective. That's that one. Then I ran out of room for that one. We're just going to lump this together because we want to simplify. This is a bit an island right here. So we'll distinguish that one maybe. All right. And then right off of here are these kind of little islands. Yeah, and then we'll just throw in some bits of cloud. I just kind of use these as a jumping off point, just a notation. It's almost like you're taking notes with a sketch like this. I think also, I see, and I'm going to extrapolate from a very subtle change in color here where this is a little more turquoisy we'll change up the colors in here a little bit. Then there's a bit of a ridge there. So that gives us a nice line because we need some variety in all of this greenery. We can't I don't want to have just a big mass of greenery. Just making sure this point is nice so that I remember what it is. All right. That's a good sketch. Let's play with that. I'm going to put in this stuff first because I'm going to want to cut into it with the watercolor, meaning this, not watercolor paint, the color of the water. So I think I'm going to start with all this greenery, which we're not going to make green, not all of it anyway. I think I'm going to make some of this some different colors. So I think I'm going to go with sort of a burgundy because when we talk about values in this, this is really the dark. You squint your eyes and you see all of this greener and then the two islands are about the same value, which is on the darker side. And there's a little bit of a shadow there that's also same squinting, which makes my voice sound weird. Then we have some midtone, which is, I would say the water itself. And these faded mountains here, and then we have the sky. This part of the sky is a midtone too. Then with the light values, we have the clouds, a little bit of this lower horizon, of course, the sand, and some bits around here. Just starting with some of the darks, I don't want to make them super dark, but I do want some variety, and I've been liking lately taking this purple and then the burnt sienna and just getting some darks in there. If you look closely, there's a lot of different colors in here and then we can just use our imagination from there. This allows me to get in some darker shades. I'm going to make more of a blue maybe over here. This is dark down in here. I'm just putting those bits of shadow in maybe in here. Really where I see any bit of dark. It's a little darker down here too. It'll probably get covered up. Then what I'm doing here is thinking, Okay, I want this stuff different colors. Maybe I'll take this one in more of a blue direction with various blues and then change the value of those go a little lighter. Because I don't really need this over here to be a focal point because it's way over at the edge. You don't want to make something at the edge your focal point. So I want to make this some colors that maybe are more subdued. There is some light at the end of it, though, so I'm sticking with value, and then it gets darker as it comes down. We'll put some water holes in there to show that. Kind of blend in with the purple here. I'm really blocking at this point. Some of this may get covered, some of it may stay. Now we're going to go back to kind of this burgundy. Get a lighter. I'm just trying to put different shades of it and I don't need just burgundy in there, but I'm sticking with that color family at least for now. Some bits that come out, remember, we're going to cut into these, I like to put plenty out there to play with. You don't want to be ready to cut in and there's nothing to cut into. A little bit more. I really like that Periwinkle. Isn't that beautiful? Can't cover everything, though, 'cause then you don't have the contrast. Covering this up here. And here's where I might switch gears a little bit to another color in here. I don't want to use too much turquoise because I'm really going to use turquoise in the water. I am going to make that a little more true to water. But I have this ridian it's like a dark turquoise, and that is the color I see in here. So maybe I'll just play with that a little bit, putting some darks in and then maybe lighting it up with a little bit of lemon yellow. That's making it too turquoise, I think. We'll tone it down with some I want it a little bit lighter. The burnt sienna and the burnt umbers are great for toning things down. This come right across here into the beach. I do want to blend in the idea of the purple. I don't want a line between these two colors. I just want to give it a flavor of something different. I brought some of the purple over and I'll bring some of the green in here so that it looks a little more natural. Then I think this is where I want to bring more of the yellow greens because I see them here and it just seems like a natural transition. I'll keep it darkish here to get the URSI going into the painting, and then we'll warm it up as we go, adding more yellow. Yellow ochre is also really nice way to warm up. You'll notice I haven't washed my brush yet. I know what colors will turn to mud and if that starts happening, then I wash my brush. But as long as I'm going the way that I've been going where I add a little bit, then it helps me get more of a unified palette or unified composition color wise because I've got a little bit see still of the purple in here coming through. We can always go over with a little bit, something if we want it to be a little bit different. I'm going to lighten this up in here. And I'm trying to put down not always successfully, but trying to put down a color and then stopping. I'm mixing up a really dark peachy thing here. Barely a light brown because I can't all the colors to be super bright. Just a little bit of variety there. Maybe I'll hit that right there. The sides of those rocks will come back to that. Now I'm kind of cleaning of my brush by just going back into the green. And there's some reds in here, some rusts. We're just going to exaggerate that a little bit, maybe bring in a tat of red. Let's see what we think of that. And then back to some of these really yellowy greens. So this is that first ridge, and I do want to distinguish the ridges. The best way to do that is with value or color because we're not going to put a line there. So put some of that yellow. We'll probably come back and add some yellow on there. I want to make sure I kind of lost some of my darks in here. We might have to come back in there, so if I'm distinguishing that ridge, then I can take this in another direction more back to this ridian maybe. And you know, these are the kind of paintings, you could literally do them in so many different color schemes. So I'm changing the value. I'm going a much darker value, and I don't want it to be that much darker. But I want it to be contrasted with the other ones, so I'm going to just lighten it a little bit. And come back to the yellow a little bit. Grab some of that Benciena. I'm always mixing for interesting colors. Trying to put my brush down and lift it. Let's go a little lighter at the top of that ridge. I just want to show that this is part of the same thing, so I'm going to bring some of that in there. This is a nice color to bring over here. Maybe a little bit of yellow, bring it up a little bit. I'm going to cut into these. I want to again, leave plenty there and I see that it's Bark ish around the bottom, which maybe will help it look like it is in the sea. We'll see how that because then it's white around that, but we'll just have to see how we deal with that when we get to it. Now I've got blocked in colors. These ones back here are going to be much more desaturated and cooler in temperature. I'm going to grab some of that I've got going here and then get some white and a little bit of blue. So for desaturating, blue and for pushing things back, blue and purple work well. I already have some purple here. I'm going to try it. So think cool and think light. Um, just how it looks. You see that it's this might be too greenish. Let's me wipe off my brush. This is what I can do. I still haven't washed it. I might need to, but let's see if I can get there with not that there's any big deal about washing your brush. It's just Okay. I think that's a good Remember, we'll cut into this as well. That's that furthest one. Then that's going to be the most whitish looking. Then the ones coming forward are going to have a little more color. We push things back with the white. This is probably too blue. Let's see. It's okay. We'll see if there's enough contrast with the with the watercolor, there should be because we'll go turquoise. This is just making this whole thing in the back one set of islands. These are actually all islands, but they look like mountains in this photo. That's coming behind there. And then in front of this is the island. So I'm going to maybe take that a little more in the Burnt Sienna family, kind of like these other islands are. But even lighter and less light. Let's clean that off. There is a light side here. One stroke and leave it, and then there's a quite dark shadow there. So I'm grabbing the blue and toning it down. Got that where I want it. And now, maybe just fell in the back of this with Let's do some yellow ocher mixed with this. Still too dark. Okay. So I got the main pieces. Now I've got to do the beach, but we're going to be cutting in there and the water, of course, and the sky. So it's a good place to stop and make sure everything's really dry so that when you're cutting in, you know, it's not a huge deal if you end up bleeding in, but it's for this, we're trying to get it dry so that we can cut in really clearly. All right. We're off to a good start. 5. Blocking In: Alright, we're back. I did wash my brush, but I wanted to show you it's not perfectly clean because I'm going to want some of that color in some of these other colors. So they're not too out of the tube looking. It just works better. Let's see. So I'm thinking about do I do the beach first? I think I will make the beach actual beach color. And maybe slightly pink. 'Cause actually not in St. Barts, but in Harbor Island. Oh, I should find those photos. Um, they do have pink sand. The sand here is more is really white and powdery. So I'm cutting in still with my big brush, which keeps me from getting too fussy. Cut into some of these trees. It's one of my favorite parts. And it's a little bit lighter on the sand, so I'm just gonna take a little bit more of the white. I take one stroke here. Alright. Then there are these bits in here. I'll hold my brush a little differently, like a magic wand. Get some of that in there. The waves coming up. Even some we'll probably put this in afterwards on top of the water, but I can play with it there. Yeah, that'll come in afterwards. Okay. So now on to the turquoise. Let's see if I don't need to wash my brush if I can get the color I'm looking for. I'm gonna put a range of colors in here. That's what makes things interesting. If you look, there's greens in here, blues, and we're gonna mix it up. The darker blues are out here. I'm not stirring it completely because with this water. I want some of that variation. That's much closer in. Looks like I forgot to extend some of that water this way. Do that real quick with another brush. So I'm taking my brush in the direction of the way the waters moving. Remembering that Glosh dries an acrylic also darker than it appears. So coming toward this way, I'm gonna add the tiniest bit of yellow to get those bits of greenish in here. There's also some greenish back here. You just learn to look at what's there and exaggerate it or knock it back. I need some sand there, too, but I'll come back in with it. It gets a little lighter as you get closer to the shore. Tutting into the trees here. That's just something that you'll practice and do and find your own. I am looking at the trees, but mostly just, you see, I've got my finger over here, it's kind of an idea of how they are breaking there. But I'm not obviously, hope it's obvious. I'm not trying to copy each little shape, using it as inspiration for what's happening here. And I got to get more white cause it's getting lighter and lighter in here. And it's kind of rough coming in, right? So I'm not going to make a line here. The other places I see, it's kind of light is right in here, while I have this light on my brush right here kind of at the front and back of that island. And then we talked about that kind of watery place here. Alright, so now we're going back to I'll wipe that weight off. So darker colors. Grab the altamarin blue. Maybe a little us radiant. Yeah, there we go. Kind of a bit darker in here. Not quite that dark, though. Kind of coming up behind, cutting into this little island. So here's what you learn to look at value wise. Value wise, this island is quite a bit darker than this water. But here in the painting, if you squint, they look much closer. In other words, either my island is too light, my water is too dark or both. I think a little bit of both. So we can lighten the water a little bit. And if need be, we can darken the island a little bit. Let's start here, though, and see what we think 'cause I do want that water back there more kind of saturated. And as you go back here, it gets even cooler. I hear it's nice and straight. I'm just gonna bring it right behind this little island. I go a little of that radian. Get kind of a little bit of water, get my paint flowing a little better. I'm gonna come around here. Come in there a lot of this will probably stay, but often a lot of this first layer doesn't. And it's just kind of the first step. I try not to get too attached. Okay, I'm losing kind of my green there. And I want to take my colors off the edge here because you have to think about that if you go to frame this or you're, you know, painting, which you will eventually you'll do something you want to frame. You don't want it not going Unless you do that all the way around, that can be kind of a cool effect. Alright. Bringing some of this blue in here. And tiny bit of yellow. I really like that greeny color. So we're gonna cut in with that here into these trees. For my cutting in, I like to turn the brush different ways. And you can get real inspiration by looking at the photo, you know, I cuts in all different ways, but this is something that I just love doing. It's also called negative space painting. But you get these, especially if you're using a brush like this, these really organic shapes. And then we'll put little water holes in here, like we talked about, the water's peeking through, coming through here. This is one of the things where I think your signature style comes through because it's really what your hand does. And so you'll cut in differently than anybody else. Just like your brush strokes are different than anyone's. It's like your handwriting. I'm just grabbing a little bit of weight so that I stay true with how we get to the lighter water here and maybe a couple water holes. There aren't too many here. It's a little thicker there. There were more over here. Okay, now I'm cleaning out my brush 'cause we're gonna do the sky. Although, before I clean out completely, I want to come through here a little bit. I want to cover. You could leave these little bits of white showing through, but I want to come through with another layer. I don't want my brush that wet and cover up some of this. My brush is still really wet. It's 'cause I didn't I didn't put both sides of it around my towel like that, squeeze it. Blend this a little bit. I need to get a little bit darker here. This allows me to put in a little bit of definition, too. Maybe some lights that are here in these shrubs, trees, grab some of that purple mix it in with the green. That's too light. It's okay for a bit, but I didn't want to do too much of that. When you get, is it starting to dry, like, one of my favorite effects, which is the paint coming up that we did, but then cut into. And I just love that. Okay, so I think that the little white bits are a little less distracting. I'm gonna leave them in the water, though, because water does that naturally. And I'm looking I'm checking some values now before we move on to the sky. And one thing that bothers me is that I think there should be something darker along here to delineate this hill island, really, from the water. And so I'm just gonna grab some of this Prussian Blue with the altamarne but not go too too dark. Grab some of my watercolor. Again, I meant the color of the water. Just kind of dragging there. And maybe the same here. Oops, I was a little too heavy handed. I got to come back over with some turquoise I was too dark. And now it looks just like the mountain. Alright, so here's what you do when that happens. Since we let it dry, we ought to be able to take that right off. Yeah. So that's gone. We'll let it dry again, and actually, I might just leave it, or I might put my line on the hill below, which I think is a little too dark. I mean, above, not below. It's already drying. Alright, let me just do that now. Makes a little bit of Let's see, is that dark? Too dark. Yeah. So that's the beauty of acrolquas. You can just wipe it. I just want to make that line of the water there a little more pronounced. So changing the value of this mountain. Well, island. It also brings it forward because remember the darker is more forward, lighter to the back. We'll leave the texture on that like that. Alright, so I'm happier with that. It shows up better. Looking at this, we've got our little we can add that detail later wherever we need sand when we finish when we do our finishing touches. So now let's go to the sky. I rinsed my brush, but I didn't thoroughly rinse it. Let's see what I've got in it. The reason I like to do that is if you leave some color in there, you might get some interesting bits for the sky, but it looks like I rinsed out most of it, but there is kind of a darker purple and still in the brush. So let's do that with the clouds. So I've got it on the brush and then we'll come around. Sometimes I do clouds and then the rest around it, cutting in and sometimes the other way around. It's just you can play with it both ways. And I want to make my blue a little cooler than the water blue was just so that there's a difference. So I'm going with the ultramarine blue. Horizons almost always get lighter as they go down. You'll notice they're darker at the top. So just think about that with whatever color you use, you don't have to use the blue. But whatever it is, you know, maybe think about bringing the value a little bit lighter as you come down. Might even just take a little bit in the violet direction so that we really differentiate it from the water. Sometimes I do that and I don't like it, and then sometimes I like it. So you're getting this scumbling. This is called scumbling, this kind of dry effect. You can do that, or if you don't want the scumbling, you just use a lot more paint. Okay, let me grab I'm gonna warm it up, too. So I'm using. That's why I love the ivory. Oops, that didn't lighten up the way I wanted it to. Nope. It's taking it too much in a gray direction. I still want it a lot later. So I'm gonna clean my brush with water. I mean, no, not with water with my paper towel. Okay, like that. And I'm going to be cutting in here. Get those edges. There is not a huge value difference in the photo between this B island and the sky, but it needs to be there, obviously, or you won't see them. So we're coming down here with lighter And just, you know, put the brush stroke down confidently and lift up your brush. And it's hard. I still I have to remind myself all the time. Don't get in there and play. Just put it down and move on. One and done. It won't be perfect, but that's why it's a painting. You know, we're trying to give it that character. Okay. I want to bring my lighter color here, do some scumbling there. And then get more of the ultramarine blue here. I had a little water. I don't want the scumbling that heavy. You can blend the sky as much as you want or as little as you want, you know, in terms of the colors. Just careful not to overwork it so easy to do. I'm gonna let that dry a little bit, and then we can drop some clouds back in. Alright, so now I'm standing by, and I'm gonna let it dry and then we'll just really evaluate where we are. 6. Building Another Layer: And letting it dry overnight. A couple of things that I want to do to finish up. One is that I want to pull the lighter part of the sky up more. There's too much dark here for me. I want it to look bright. It was a cloudy day, but I just wanted to look brighter. It feels too heavy. Then, I want to put in maybe some of this remember this white frothy stuff that got lost there. We'll just do maybe one brushstroke, keep it minimal. I really like the color in here. I was thinking about do I want to have more color here, but I'm not sure about that yet. Focal point wise, I feel like you hit here, then this light patch draws your eye and then you go out into here, this line takes you out into the water or it could come the other way around. Let's do the sky and then I might change that color a little bit. We'll see. Let's see, have to do the thing and then see how the thing looks. First, I'm going to mix up a sag color, which sometimes take some finagling to get because I want it to be lighter and I'm going to warm it up a tiny bit. I know I want to make it different than the water usually what I'll do is pick warm in the water and then cooler in the sky or vice versa. But let's see if we can just get it. Let's see what's that like? I think I want a little lighter than that. Maybe just a tad warmer. Just using the tiniest bit of yellow, maybe more white, easy to add too much color to the white's probably going to be I actually like that. Again, we're going to be minimal. It's definitely a lot warmer than what I had. I'm holding the brush lightly to get these scumbly effects. We'll see if we keep it. Don't know yet. I can help you blend though. If I scumble down here, I can blend that cooler. I don't want that hard line there. Yeah, I feel like that's more what I was going for. And then I'm going to go up into the sky, but I want it to be not as dark. I'm going to gradually blend in to get darker. You don't have to go in a straight line like this. This sky is there's not a whole lot going on in it, but you can invent anything. You can take something up here like this diagonally, cloud, let's just play with it. Why not? That's what we're here to do. Learn. If I bring something down here like this. I like the clouds a brushstroke. I don't want it to end harsh, do it that way. I like that better. Okay. I'm going to leave that kind of scumbling. We have some scumbling here and here. We can add a little more here for some interest and just take that scumbling throughout. So I'm just cleaning my brush and get some of this turquoise and maybe darken it. Let's see what that does. Maybe have a little scumbling here. Scumbling doesn't work if your brush is too wet, and that's what happened there because I had put it in the water. You got to really dry it out with your paper towel, then you can get some of that effect. Okay. Just a bit of texture. And maybe that's what I'll do here. This sort of gray is bothering me. I know I don't want to make it too bright because it's supposed to be in the background, but it is so boring. And I don't know. I want to try maybe we'll scumble a little bit of this same sort of violet just a tab because there are bits of light on it. It's it's just too monochrome. I'm going to scumble just some bits of something interesting there. I just wanted to show you something since this is acrylic basically acro gouache, if I felt like that came down too far, since this is dry, you just take a wet paper towel and dry it off. Same thing for this one, there's just not enough. There needs to be a little something else going on in there. So maybe I'll take a bit of this earthy. I want it very subtle, though. I don't want anything really calling attention there. I just want a bit of interest. Let me try to see if I got some then maybe just a tad later at the top of the sun. Okay. That works. We could add here some detail since we're closer up or we could leave it as is. Sometimes you don't want to add detail far away, and you usually want to keep detail for your focal point. Otherwise, you're drawing people away with the detail. I don't want to do too much because I have the focal point in here. If I started detailing a lot over here, it would draw too much into there. Maybe I'll just do a little bit of this warm violet here and just put a few little smaller things to call attention These are not individual leaves, of course. I really love that Fuchia that's showing through. Really, we could stop at any point. I'm going to tone that down. That's too much of a violet. We can tone it down easily with one of these Bncenas or even yellow ochres. I just wanted a little more color there. So pretty. Okay. So we're done, putting it down, leaving it minimalist or not minimalist, but at least, trying to control that tendency to just scrub and blend and do all that fussing, basically. Minimal fussing for our painting. A lot of this is going to be personal preference. You may decide that you love this effect. You may decide you don't like it at all. Same with this. I encourage you to do with all of these. Do them several times, turn the page and do another version. Especially, it's so much easier the second time because you really already have an idea of where the darkest values are, where the lightest values are, how your sketch is going to go. Do you want to change it? Do you want to say zero in more and crop it like the second time? Do you want to do some other composition? I just encourage you to do a lot of playing and repetitive painting of the same exact image. So is often the case after something dries and you have some time to step away from it, you think, Oh, I want to change something. So a couple of things that I want to change. One is related to perspective. So see how this land back here is further back, so it's faded and it's actually lighter in value than this one. When I darken this, I went too dark. I thought that this color we put over it would do it, but it's still darker, it's throwing things because it should be lighter in value. It doesn't really matter what color it is, but it should be lighter in value than this. That's one thing is the way to solve that is I can either darken this a little bit, which I may do. Or I can lighten this or both. Then the other thing is, I like the scumbling I did, but I overdid it. These are just things that you do when you step away and make changes to get what you're looking for. I'm going to go I think maybe we'll try a palish tone down green. So I'm grabbing something. Usually, you can tone down green with a but Siena or a yellow ochre. Not that much. And I make most of my greens, but sometimes I make them from an existing green. So I'm going to lighten this more. That's too light, let's see, maybe take it. Let's see if we add a bit of red, what happens? It's really getting away from green. Sometimes I mix a color until I'm just finding I'm grabbing some blue to put in there. You have to go in a lot of directions before I find what I'm looking for. I need to put it on there and try it. Well, that might be still a little bit too bright. Try a little pink in there, teeny bit and see what that does. Well, the best way to find out is to put it in there and see what we think. A little bit similar to this. I'm going to cool it down a little bit with ultramarine. White also cools things down. A little bit more white. I'm getting really close to this color, so I'm seeing now. So what I'll do is probably end up darkening this. I'm going to leave some of those bits from before because I like the variation in it, and then there's some lighter bits down in here. And I don't want too much detail on that back that island because it's not really something I'm featuring. We can have a little variation. I'm cooling that color down more. Sometimes it'll be one piece of a painting that you just keep monkeying with. All right, let's stop there. And then going back to this, I'm pretty close to that color, which I don't need to be, but I'm going to just cover up a little bit of that scumbling. That's better. So now, I'm going to just saturate this a little bit more here. 7. Now It's Finished!: Okay. So saturating and darkening this. That's what we're gonna do. Um, put in some I think I still want it more yellowy, though. There's so many beautiful greens you can make. Let's see what that feels like. So I remember how I had differentiated this by those tones. Now I'm getting back to more like this tone, but that's okay. Well, I don't have to change this part that's up here. There's some lighter bits down here. Just putting the brush down, lifting it up. Oh, so we can put in a bit of differentiating of how there's that reddish here. It's a little more color. There's actually some bits of it here and here, too. I just felt like overall, I wanted to play with it a little bit more. Put some little surprises like some of this green in here up in here. A little more interest. Maybe some brighter yellow in here. I'm going for the warm yellow. Let's lighten that up. Sort of suggesting some of these. They're actually palm trees that are in there, but just a little more detail. I'm kind of you can't see me, but I'm pulling away, pulling my head up to try to give myself some distance. You know, or I go like that, but I don't want to take it out of the camera. But that's the idea. I also sometimes stand up from my chair. The thing about see how these have faded, some of these Guash is both acro guash and regular guases they dry darker and especially the lighter colors. So I'm just watching it dry and it's lightening up so much that I don't see those highlights like I wanted to. Okay. And then I still had forgotten to put in some of that white here with the water. I'm not gonna make it a pure white. Soften it with a little bit of blue. Whoops, not that much blue. Get my fresh kind of dry and see if we can now, they kind of go this way, so I'm actually going to flip this to get this, you know, going the way that I want it. There we go. I like that, so I might just bring a little bit more here. I could even make it a little bit whiter as it gets closer. Sorry, I'm gonna flip it again. Get a little too heavy. So all I do is wet my brush but then blot it with a paper towel and pull some of that up. Is pulling the green out of my brush. Or the yellow from before. There we go. I like that. Paper towel, brush. You got to use what you can use, whatever you need. Okay. Now, to really just give this a little bit of fun factor, I'm going to take some of my opera pink, which barely any of it survived from the oil paste. So I want to maybe just find some bits, places where maybe it's a highlight of something shimmering in the sky. No, not that much. Just a little bit here and there. And I'm adding a little bit of white, and I could add, you know, yellow, but I'm just varying it. I'm gonna cover some of that that came out too big. I'm taking the opera pink and throwing in a little bit of this yellow mixture we had. Sometimes just a bit of a color here and there can just transform something. Putting it down, lifting up. Well, it's getting much more fun. That's the way it was feeling is, you know, I like my stuff to just have a pretty, you know, kind of energy and color. And I just when I stepped away, I thought, night isn't fun. It's in the eye of the holder, of course, and I don't want to overdo it. But I'm bringing the I feel like we're bringing the eye more here now by adding just a bit of the pink. The only place I feel like it's still kind of flat is I just want a little bit more interest here. Not much. So I'm going to go back to making some greens. Kind of warm it up. Let's see. Maybe just some small marks to kind of suggest some of this just adding more yellow, warm it up some more. Some of this detail here without going too far. Maybe even a bit of turquoise. This is just a little flat brush. That's a pretty color, isn't it? That turquoise mixed with that green mixture. Put that here. Maybe just one bit there. But I made the details clustered here so that I don't have them down here, if you notice, because then I'm drawing people out out of the painting. I'm gonna take just a bit of this highlight green there and change it a bit for there. Do I want it anywhere else? That's what I'm thinking about right now? Do I want any of it in there? I think it's a bit saturated for there. So I'm just gonna darken it. Of course, remember I always have to remind myself it's gonna dry darker. Alright. Now, I think I'm happier with this. I feel like the values are correct. This, if you squint, these still show the same value. So technically, no, they just said, you could leave it. I mean, you know, it's minor, but this is still after it dried, it darkened. And when I squint, these look exactly the same value wise. So I'm going to just lighten up this a bit more so I can push it back. And it is challenging when the paints dry a different color because you think, Oh, okay, I've got that. And then it dries and like, no, don't. So I do try to paint thinking about that, but it can be tricky. All right. So let's see how that I'm going to leave that scumbling and that dark on the top of it's kind of cool. That should be light enough. And I'm trying to focus the lighter part on against my border there between the two islands, because that's where it'll show up to most. No more variation in that. No, I guess my dark edge is disappearing. This is where you can get into danger of overworking. So we have the values right now. We can notice that this stuff is pulling us forward and getting our attention. That stuff kind of just falls into the background. There is a teeny, tiny bit of the pink oil pastel that's showing through there, and I love that. You just never know where it's going to show up. And that makes it kind of fun. Alright, well, thanks for joining me and the redo kind of bringing it. I'm happier with it now. And that's what you have to do. You have to just put it away, look at it, ask yourself things like, are the values right? Are the things that are darker? Darker? Are there things that should be lighter, lighter? And is there interest? Am I, you know, do I enjoy it? Do I enjoy looking at it? And then try that. Try some things, paint it differently, come back, just experiment. 8. Wrap Up and Resources: Well, I hope you enjoyed this trip to St. Barts. How fun was that? Just looking at the color of the water, I really like how our painting turned out. So the I see, it looks pretty saturated. It's not as saturated in the in real life, is it showing up on the camera. But I really like how we did the dry brush, especially look at the water there, the foaminess that we got there, and then leaving that in the sky and just letting some of the brush letting a lot of the brush do the work, right? That's I think one of the great learnings about at least this style painting, which is what I love. I don't want. I love those brush strokes to show. And we've got the color that we went back in and added them, just a little bit of pop. And learning that when you look at something, you know, if you look at this photo, here's what I love about this process. When we look at the photo that we started with, I want to see if I can get it to be less saturated, looking really saturated in the camera. But you look and at first blush, this is all just green, right? These are all just gray, and this is all turquoise, and this is blue with a couple of clouds, right? And then it just seems sort of flat. And what you when you use this process of really kind of looking and then taking some artistic license, you can change that completely. And you can do that with any photo, and that's what I hope that you gain from this class and my other landscape classes where we do similar things with different takes. And as far as keeping in touch and other resources, I just want you to know that I have an email newsletter that I used to send out more often than I do. You will not get emailed to death. Let me tell you that. I think it's been a quarter. I need to get one out. But I do love sending them out, and I just send studio updates, kind of what I'm working on. Occasionally, if I've got originals for sale, I'll let you know. The other resources I have are YouTube channel, just so you know it's out there, where I do supply reviews, I do paint chats, just kind of informal things that are a lot of fun. And of course, Instagram and Facebook are good places to follow me to see reels and stuff like that. I do have a student only Facebook group that if you don't get an email invite, just email me at art at suzanner.com, and I'll send you an invite to that. It's a really encouraging student group with, I think, over 20,000 students, something like that at this point. And I set the tone there to just get us all started and get us all painting. So people say I've had people on there say it's the most welcoming, encouraging art community online that they've experienced. So I hope you join, and I'll see you in the next class.