Transcripts
1. Introduction: In this class, you'll
learn how to use watercolor paints to create these lovely artwork
of a field of flowers. You'll learn all
of the techniques individually by creating
a Techniques worksheets, which you will fill
in by following along with the real-time
demonstration. You'll learn so many
techniques including masking, how to paint different textures using wet and dry methods. Blending, how to make a cloud look fluffy
around the edges. Brush control, and how
spray bottle full of water can make your tree
look more realistic. We'll also have an
in-depth discussion about reference photos and composition before painting the
finished piece, it's important to me
that students understand the reasons behind every
decision and brushstroke. I remember being a
student and being told to copy what the teacher was
doing to make painting. And yeah, I had a
painting at the end, but because I hadn't understood why the teacher was doing
what they were doing. It didn't help me make
my own paintings. That's why in the
classes I teach, I make sure to explain every decision and
why I'm making it. Orange, you'll be able
to use the skills from this class to paint your own original
landscape paintings. Hi, I'm Caitlin, I'm brown and I will be your teacher.
In this class. I'll share with you the
knowledge of land or the seven years of being
a watercolor painter, plus three years of
studying academic drawing. This glass is best suited to intermediate and
above level students. But everyone is welcome
to give it a guard. For more beginner
level students, make sure to take your time with the techniques worksheet. And I'll be there in
the discussions tab to answer any questions
you may have. Let's get started.
2. Project: For your project,
you'll start off by completing a
techniques worksheet, which will fill you
with confidence for the final project, where you will paint
along with me to create these beautiful artwork
of a field of flowers. Make sure to share your
finished painting to the project gallery so
that we can all see your wonderful work or share it step-by-step and receive
feedback as you go. I'm more than happy to answer
any questions you may have a long way. Keep watching. And in the next lesson
we'll go through all of the materials that we'll
use for this class.
3. Materials: In this lesson, we'll
go through all of the materials that will be
needed for these class. You'll need some basic
stationary like this. Here I have a ruler, some Susan's, a graphite pencil, a normal eraser, kneaded eraser, which is squishy,
and a sharpener. I've also got a white gel pen
for highlights at the end. It's best to get papers
specifically made for watercolors because it's
stronger and can hold the water. The one I'm using is
by Saunders Waterford. It's made by cotton with
a cold press technique, which gives it some texture. And the weight is 300 g/m². This brand is high-quality
and good value for the price, so I would recommend
just getting this one. But anything with
the characteristics I mentioned, we will be good. The watercolor paints, I'm using a tubes from various
audit quality brands. The colors are French
Ultramarine Blue, Cerulean Blue, permanent rose, raw sienna, and lemon yellow. Next is masking fluid, which is a liquid rubber that
can be painted onto paper. When it hardens, it
repels water and you can paint over it without getting
paint where the food is. It helps to create
depth in paintings and I'll demonstrate how
it works in the lessons. I do recommend you get
this as it will make your life a lot easier
as a watercolor painter. But if you can't access it, I'll demonstrate an
alternative technique to get a similar effect
using masking tape. We will also need masking tape
to hold down the edges of your paper regardless of
which masking method you use. I've also got a paint palette
with individual wells. I sometimes it makes on a
dinner plate though too. So that's an alternative. If you don't have one of these, I'll be using to watercolor
brushes to paint with a mop brush in
size ten slashes here, which I like because
it holds lots of water and also
makes a fine point. You could also use a round or flat brush depending
on what you have. I also have a smaller
brush for the details, which is size zero. I have a different
brush that I'll be using for the masking fluid, which is a cheap size
one acrylic brush. Make sure to use a
cheap one for this because the masking
fluid ruins old brushes. Eventually, this clipboard
is to take my painting to, which allows me to
keep the paper toward, while still being able
to move the painting around the non slip mat so
that it stays where I put it. I have two containers for water, one for dirty, and
one of the claim. The spray bottle is
for use when we paint the trees and also for
keeping your palette. But the water dropper is an optional extra that makes it easy to put clean water
onto the palette. Finally, if you
have a hairdryer, you might like to
use it to speed up the drying time between
layers of paint, gather your supplies,
and I'll see you in the next lesson where we'll
learn some basic techniques.
4. Techniques Part 1: First up is this stuff
which is masking fluid. We're going to paint it onto the petals so that they don't get green while we're
working on the cross. Then we can take it off later when we're ready
to paint flowers. Start off drawing a few. Practice. Well is we've got some pretty big, just
basically blobs. Don't need to stress
too much about them. So I've got a couple
of blebs going smaller in size and
then even smaller. Smaller. And then
some blades of grass. That's a way using the
masking fluid for all do the same. While we're here. On this one. You can use masking tape if you don't
have masking fluid. So that's why I'm showing two ways that you
should just choose. One, make sure you get out your cheap
brush for this step. You don't want the masking
fluid to ruin your bristles. I just dip it in and
fill in the area. You'll notice it's
thicker than paint and it starts to get a bit
sticky. If it drives. Go as quickly as you can. Without rushing. These small ones, I'll
just do a tapping motion. And you can go in again
and tap it again. If you didn't get a nice shape. Then for the grasses, I'll start at the
bottom and lift the pressure of
my brush as I get towards the top
to make the wine. See now, push down hard, line it against the left edge, and then release the
pressure as you go off. And just make sure I've got the right side of the dome as well. But I don't repeat at the top. That's already done. Final one, Russia released. Makes sure it's thick enough that it covers the whole area. And not so thick that it rises
too high above the paper. Because if it does that, it'll take quite a
long time to dry. Next, I've got some masking
tape and a pair of scissors. I'll show you how to do
the exact same step again. But using masking tape for if you don't have masking fluid, I've just cut off a small
piece of masking tape. And I'll start by cutting a little rectangle and then smooth the edges. I'm rotating the paper
and not this Jesus. There you go. We've
got our first well, it's not the same exact size
and shape as in the drawing. But in this case
it doesn't really matter because flowers
come in all sizes. Second one, I'll cut off
slightly smaller rectangle. Just going over
any pointy edges, we don't want too many points. You could use some
tweezers if you like. That would help you place them. Just keep going like this, doing smaller and
smaller rectangles. Now, I won't lie,
this is fiddly, which is why I recommend if you can buy the
masking fluid, if you can access it where you live or if you can
get it in the mail. I definitely
recommend doing that. The last three little ones
I've cut the long strip. And I'm cutting squares. And then cutting the
corners off of the squares. Just a scratch to one-up.
To throw that one out. You'll find that
there's a limit of how small you can make these pieces when
you're using the tape. So I think my number
one recommendation, if you're going to
use the type method, is use a bigger piece of
paper for your painting. My one is quite small. It's about ten by 15 cm. I would recommend going
much bigger like e.g. A4 or six by 8 ". And you'll have a much
easier time making these little tiny
flowers at that scale. The blades of grass. But another rectangle of tape, my scissors at the bottom, and I go up in a curve
period of that piece. Then I stopped a little
bit further along. And I kept my line to
meet the other lines. Which results in a point. Same again, we can
use this same curve. So that's quite easy. I'll just rub my thumb along
all of the pieces that we've cut to make sure that
they're adhered to the paper and the paint
won't get onto them. Before we move on or paint a
layer of paint or birthdays so that we can see what the
masking fluid will use. My lighter blue, any
any colors fine. Make sure that
your masking fluid has dried if you're using that. And of course, in
the demonstration, we'll be using green for this. I'll teach you two
types of blending. Both or what is
called wet-in-wet, which means that we're
putting wet paint on wet paint when not waiting
for anything to dry first. First technique is
side-by-side and see why. Starting off with
my darker blue, I'm just going to paint a line. Make sure it's straight
at the bottom. Wash my brush. Go into
the lighter blue. Make sure it's not too wet. I'm wiping it off on my side. Then I'm just putting
it next to it. And I go back and
forth a few times and even up and down a bit. And then I lifted up. The water will do a lot of the
work with the blending. And when it dries, it'll vary from dark to light. And that's one of the techniques
we'll be using this guy. For this second way. We'll be painting a
whole area and then adding another color
on top of that will go with a light blue area. I've got a little bit of an
excess so I can dry my brush. And if that out a bit,
it's a bit too effective. There we go. I've got
my whole area painted. Then I can go into my graphical. Again, Wipro from the
side of the well. And I can drill into that. That'll blend out as it dries. This technique is
going to be used in the grass. The wetter. Your first code is when you're
adding the second color, the more it will blend. So this will become
fairly smooth, although not as
smooth as this one. If you wait for the
first layer to be nearly dry but not quiet for you
adding the second color, it'll have a lot
more definition. I'll show you that as well. Might have to wait a moment. Okay, it's nearly dry now. What I can do is just
touch my brush into this really thick paint
and tap it back the top. See how it's moving, but it's not blending smoothly. It's going out in
little tendrils. That's because the paper
was dry or when we did it, which we'll be using
more in the far field.
5. Techniques part 2: The next technique is
called dry brushing. And it's basically
what it sounds like. I'm going to paint with not quite enough paint on
the brush to paint smoothly. It's gonna be a bit dry and that's going
to create texture. So I'll start off
with my white blue. And I'm just going to dab it off a little bit on the tissue. So that when I get to my page, I'm going to angle
it quite flat. Paint and see how it's
not painting smoothly. It's missing areas where
the bristles don't quite go all the way
down onto the paper, you get this streaky effect. You might be able to see
it even better if I use the darker blue that off. There you can see I'll look at all of these areas where the paint is not
touching the paper, get a really
interesting texture. We use this technique
to paint the sky along the edge of the cloud and it gives the effect that
the cloud is fluffy. So I'll do a demonstration. Let's imagine that this is
the top edge of the cloud. This is a cloud. And up here is this guy. We're going to use the dry brushing right in-between
where they meet. We'll paint the sky over here. This is just the plain flat sky. Gerta, within about a
centimeter of your Cloud. Dry off the brush, and then dry brush in a horizontal motion along
that edge towards the Cloud. And look at that. That's a nice transition. It looks like the
cloud is sort of fluffy or wispy, floating away. I'll show you how
I make the trees. And there's actually two
parts that happen here. So the first one, we're going to start with
the dark blue and paint. A line along the bottom. Maybe with some downy bits. Show the tree tops. But then while
that is still wet, going to get the spray bottle, spray this top edge. Now, I'm going to use my hand to shelter anywhere that I
don't want the water to go. So I just want to in this area. Okay. I've done quite
a few pumps end. You can see it
draws the paint up, but only in certain areas. One thing you can do if you feel like it's going
a bit too high, is lift the surface that your paper is on and it stops the paint going
in this direction. I'll also take my my tissue
and dab off just at the top. And I'll do some
interesting edges there so it's not flat. Then basically
just let that dry. Get any bits that have
gone really high. I might put something behind the clipboard so that
I can take my hand away. So I've just got
the masking tape and I've put that behind
there so that it's lifted. And while that's drying, say a bit of the water is
going down into the trees. I'm going to take my brushing and go
along this line again, tap it up a bit to where
the water is going. The angle has done the trick. It has stopped the
paint going too high, so I can take that out now. Make it a lot again. Wash my brush. And as you can see, that makes it really
interesting edge, I use this for mercy
trees in the background because it makes it blurry the way that our eyes don't
focus in the distance. I'll dry it before we move on so that I'm not accidentally painting on an area
that's still wet. Then the second technique
we're also going to use for the trees is actually another
form of dry brushing. But we're going to
use the tiny brush. I'll get that out. To imagine a triangle shape. Like this. A pine trees. Wet my brush, dab it off. Then I'm going to fill
in this triangle. Or only with horizontal strokes. We'll start at the bottom. There's a bit too much paint on my brush, so I'll debit off. That's better. And I decide not being too careful to
stay within the lines, creating a shape like that. And in the final painting, we're going to do
this layered on top of the section here, so that we've got
these ones are in the distance and there's gonna
be some detailed ones that are like standing in front of a dark one
again, debit off. And just what I showed
you above there, it's not quite dark enough. So get some mix. It really documents here. This won't be dramatic. It's meant to be quite subtle. After all, it is the background, but it will give
an added detail. I would just do that again. Go a little bit above the area
where the tips of painted. Just do a little one as well. So that's the technique we use. We do the the blurry area with the spray bottle
and then we do the dry brushing on top using the triangles and we'll do
lots side-by-side, buy-side. And to get the
foreground detail. Another thing I'll show
you why we're here is how to paint grass.
It's quite simple. Just pick a color. I like to start
going low to high. So I press my brush flat. And then as I lifted up, I put less pressure
until it makes a point that a few more
times fluff on my brush. Press down, lift, and
the faster you do it, the better it will look. So instead of doing
it slowly like that, I will do it like that. And we're getting
some dry brushing effects because
I'm running out of paint. There we go. That's what you're after
when we're doing grass. And you'll need to do a few
different sizes of grass. So these ones will be in the
foreground where it's close. Practice a bunch of those, and make sure to get more paint Anytime you notice that you're
starting to dry brush. So that's foreground. Should get a bit further back. You'll need to do some
ones and shorter ones. So more like that. Same technique that
I press down, lift. And then further
and further back. You end up doing very gentle. Short ones like this. You want to make
sure they're not too wide by just using the
tip of your brush. And make them quite short too. So you want to lift,
basically as soon as you've put your hand down, you want to be lifting it. Then ride in the distance. There'll be some but,
uh, basically dots. I do a bit of practice on your strokes and then
we get to the painting. I'll show you when to do them. Finally, we're going to go
see how our masking fluid once or I'm going to use the side of my thumb
to rub it off. That's worked quite
well and I'll do the masking tape as well. Using my finger now is time. Now, while these are not exactly in the
lines that I drew, they do look like shapes that could be flowers,
all blades of grass. I'm happy with that. I'll
erase pencil on birth to them. And as you can see, both methods work well. Show you how to fill in
the flowers for these. And I have realized that
there was one flower shape. I missed out. There was a current
shaped flower, which I'll show you
how to paint as well. So these flowers can be done in all different colors
in the final painting, but we'll just use the
one color for now. The demonstration. We'll mix up just some. Luciana. Doesn't matter what
color you use x-axis. And I'll just do a little test to see how dark phase
that'll be fine. So I'm making quite
a light color. And I'm going to basically do
these like a coloring book. There'll be three layers on, or two to three
layers depending on the size of each flower. Just fill in the shape. This one as well. Let that dry and then we'll
show you the next step. For layer two, we start to define the shape of the flowers. For these big ones. Sort of imagining that there are spherical and they've got petals coming around like this. And this, we've
got the center of the flower and some petals
are on the other side. That's what we want
to demonstrate. For these ones that
are further back. Where we're not going to
show individual petals, we'll just show a
shape like that. And then these
small ones or even Sega for the toll shape one, we're going to try to do
a messy shelf like that. I'll show you in a moment. I need a slightly
darker color fill layer to just going to paint
in the foreground. Along with the
close-up petals would be here. For the tiny ones. Just gonna do a tiny dots
near the base of each flower. Bracket shutter. For the, the taller shaped flower, I'm going to dab with the brush. There's no neat line
of where the paint, hence, these ones
are finished now. They're just, they're
gonna be in the distance. And you can see that they've got a lot part and the darker part. But that's really
all we need to show. I will dry it though and
show you the part three for these two flower
shapes. All dry. So now we need an
even darker color. And in this case, I'm just going to
go straight into the paint that we've
got up the top. That's the darkest one. Going to dry it off a little bit so that it's not dripping. And I'm going to paint
along the bottom. And then a little bit of
definition around the petals. And I'm going to
dry off my brush. And when that up a little
bit more because it's a bit too harsh. Yeah,
that's about it. And then I can also, in the background flowers, background petals show a
bit of definition as well. Again, I can that a bit.
And that's really it. For the tall flower. Also use the darkest color. And it's the same as before. The tapping motion, but we
just weren't go as high. So I will end up with
a flower that grows from light to dark because the, the sun's hitting the top
more than on the bottom, there'll be a bit of a shadow. So those are our flowers. For the blades of grass. It'll be clear what to do
with them. In the lesson. If you like, you can practice
using the little brush and painting within that space that we created with
our masking techniques. There we go. I hope you painted along. If you haven't had a go and then you'll be ready
to paint the picture.
6. Discussion of Reference and Drawing: Reference pictures can
either be copied exactly or as just as a jumping off
point for your imagination. The first thing I thought
about here was composition. And while it's pretty
good in the reference, I felt like I could do better. You'll see that there's
a lot of repetition between the left and the
right side of the picture. A lot of the most
interesting parts of the picture on the
left-hand side. So the first thing
I did with crop it, this is how I chose to crop it. And I also added a
little border because I knew I need that for
the painting process. Now that I've cropped
it to landscape, it gives a really nice
zigzag composition, a bit like this. That's how it looks
to me anyway, the eye follows the
line of the trees, then down along the
line of the far-field, along to the flowers
in the mid ground. And then to the
closeout flowers. It also creates an effect
called Spoke wheeling, which is a term I learned
from James Gagne. It basically means that
there are a lot of lines coming off from one point. So this is a point
here on the right, about a third of the way down, which thirds? Excellent for composition. And then we've got this line, this line, one of the
bottom of the trees. And the line of
this cloud as well. And spoke feeling is also a really interesting
thing compositionally. Here we've got the reference, my drawing, and the
finished painting. And I'll keep talking you
through the decisions I made while I was going
through the process, choosing to crop it where I did also left some blank spaces, right here and right here. Those are important too, because when someone's
looking at your painting, you want the eye to rove around, but also have places
to rest and be still and contemplate
the piece as a whole. We have both in
this composition. You will also see that I
changed the time of day. One reason for that is that
I just thought it would be fun to paint the bright
colors of a sunny spring day. The other reason is
by making it a blue sky with a singular clad
it an enhanced that spoke willing effect I
talked about by adding the clear line in
the sky. This one. Other than that, I was largely faithful to the original
picture in my drawing. Once I've cropped it, I
really liked it composition. One little thing I've
changed is this flower here. It's almost in the
middle, right to left. Which can be a bit
awkward compositionally. I moved that flower here. It's more on the right. So it contributes to the
overall picture there. You'll see my drawing. I've got some lines
in the flowers. These two lines outline where the highest abundance of
flowers or it also helps me when I'm painting the
grass because this area is lighter than this
area, this line. And this one. Denote that there's an
area of darker green here. I'll get rid of those so
you can see properly again. But make sure you have
something like that. It'll help you with
the lights and darks when you're
painting the grass. I also added more flowers in my drawing than were in
the original picture. I started by copying all of the flowers
that I could see from the picture and then adding
extra ones in certain areas. So I basically went all out in this area
as many as you want, dense, medium and little ones. I added lots of
little ones up here. Those are basically just
dots with the pencil. And then closer to the front, I added them where I saw it. I was thinking about
this line now, do you remember when we
did the composition? It was like this. We want lots of flowers
along this line. And it can be a bit more spots. Here. And here. Again, we won't busy areas and not so busy areas because we don't want to have
you as eyes get tired. When I was drawing the flowers, I wasn't worried about
doing every single petal. I have simplified the
shapes for my painting. So wherever there's
a flower just or a blog generating
the overall shape. Other than that, you
can copy in the line of the trees the same as he's in
the picture for the Cloud, I tried to look for
where they will already lines in the
reference picture. So it's not exactly one
cloud in the reference, but you can see it is quite
clear line about here. I chose to use those
lines to create my Cloud, making sure to be
a bit random with the ups and downs are anti-A. I hope that gives
you a good idea of the thought process I'm using when I'm translating a
reference photo to a drawing, if it doesn't all
make sense to you right now, that's okay. Composition is really complex. And I think you will have benefited from just
hearing the ideas. And these ideas sort
of stack over time. Every time you do a
course from me or someone else who talks
about composition, you'll will start
internalizing these ideas. So go onto a drawing
similar to mine. If you are confident drawer and you feel like you've
understood everything, go ahead and do
your own drawing. That'll be great practice. If you're not so sure, you're either not confident
at drawing or you weren't sure about composition
ideas we discussed, it's absolutely fine to
go into the resources, download my drawing
and trace it. I don't necessarily recommend tracing if you're
learning to draw. But this class is
focused on paintings, or if you want to
make your life easy, tracing is absolutely
fine at this stage. Thanks for watching this lesson. In the next one, we'll start the final piece with
masking and taping.
7. Taping and Masking: With clean hands, the first
thing I'm doing is taking this masking tape and sticking the edges of the paper
down to my surface. I'm following the five
millimeter border that I wrote during
during phase. Makes sure to press your thumb
along the edge of the tape to make sure it is sealed and born alive water underneath. But this demonstration,
I'll be using the masking fluid
technique for the flowers. If you are using the
masking tape method, then now is the time
to do that using the instructions from
the technique section. Using the small,
cheap paintbrush, fill in all of your balance
with masking fluid. If you are right-handed, go left to right
across your page to not smudge the fluid,
vice versa, lifting. Don't worry about
the stems right now. That will come later on. When you're finished,
make sure to let it dry completely before moving on. You'll know when it's ready
because the fluid will go from R to slightly
transparent. This could take five or 10 min, so it's a great time to make
a cup of tea while you wait. Of course, if you've
used tape for this part, then you can go straight
ahead to the next step. Will be getting the painter
and working on the sky.
8. Sky and cloud: We'll need to mix two
shades of blue for the sky. And I've started by adding
water to two wells. The first color is a darker blue made with French
ultramarine and civilian. Use your scrap piece of paper to test until you have
the right mix. Sometimes it takes a bit of back-and-forth of
adding paint and water until it's perfect.
For the lighter blue. I just used cerulean to
make a midterm glue. Role the kneaded eraser
in your hands to make a cylinder and then roll it over the drawing to
lighten the sketch. You can use a regular
eraser for these two. Just make sure to be gentle
and not removed entirely. Start by painting the
darker blue along the top of the page in
horizontal strokes. Then get the lighter
blue on your brush and drag it along the edge
of the darker blue line, which is the side-by-side
blending technique, continue to paint the
rest of this guy, making sure to leave 1 cm or three eighths of an
inch around the cloud, go all the way down to
the base of the tree. Now we're going to do
the dry brush technique to create the fluffy
edge around the cloud. Wash your brush, then take the pure light
blue on the brush, tap it on a tissue to
remove some paint. Use the test paper to
check if your brush has the right amount of paint
to get the textured effect. Now start painting in the border that we left
here on the Cloud. You can go horizontally or follow the angle around
the edge of the class. Make sure to overdo this or you won't have
any cloud lift. Once that's done, take a look at your sky and see if it's
dark enough at the top. I decided to add
some more dark blue. I even makes it a more
concentrated mix in another well, by adding some of
the existing blues plus some more
ultramarine paint, apply it in horizontal motions, blending down into
the rest of this guy. Keep in mind, this only worked because the paint
on the sky wet. I wouldn't recommend trying
it if the paint is nearly dry because you get a line where the old and the new paint neat. Then I took some clear water and painted it at the bottom
of the tree line. Since I don't want
a harsh line there. I continue to paint the lower
half of the painting with clear water to ensure
a smooth gradient. Let that dry either with
a hairdryer or naturally. And then we'll do
some details on the cloud in the well where
I mixed the darkest blue. I added some more water than a tiny bit of permanent
rose to make purple. Keep adding ultramarine and rows until it is a
light purple color. And if it gets too strong,
add some more water. Then I wanted to
make it a bit grayer rather than a vibrant
purple color. I used some raw
sienna because it's the opposite color to
purple on the color wheel. And that turned
down the vibrancy. Dry brush that onto the Cloud, making sure to leave the
top centimeter wide. Once it's dry, do another layer and then just
below the previous one. By focusing on the shadow on
the lower part of the Cloud, we're showing its 3D shape. Let it dry again. Then if you think it needs it, do a third layer ending just
below the previous one. When I did this, I took some
of my paint color and edit some ultramarine to it
so that there would be some color variation
in the Cloud. Let that dry before moving
onto the next lesson, where we will paint the trees.
9. Trees: Use the kneaded eraser to soften the line at the
tops of the trees. In a new world,
we're going to mix adult green for the trees. Start by adding some water, then add raw sienna and French Ultramarine testing on the paper until you've
got the right color. I'm using raw sienna rather than yellow because it makes
a less vibrant green, which is good for something
that's in the background. That's also why I used
ultramarine rather than Cerulean. Use that color to fill
in the tree area, adding extra pain. If
it's not strong enough. Then I'm using my left hand to shield the lower part of
the trees from getting wet. Then using the water
spray along the top edge. If the pigment rushes up
higher than you want it to, you can put something
under the clipboard like we did in the
techniques video. Or what I decided to do
here was to use a tissue and remove some of the water and restrict how high
the pinky finger. It's something that you have
to monitor carefully as it tries to make sure that
it's doing what you want. I dried my brush a
bit and run it along the bottom edge of the paint to stop it spreading
too far that way. Then added some more dark
green onto the trace. The water spray
dilutes the paint, but you don't know how
much until it's happening. So keep an eye on it. The paint is still
spreading below the trees. So this time I use a
tissue to stop that. Watch it while it dries so
that you can keep track of what it looks like and
make changes as necessary. There will be a back-and-forth
process of adding darker green to combat
dilution and fading, and using lifting
techniques with the tissue, a paintbrush to keep the
paint where you want it. This goes on for about 10 min, which is how long the paint and water uptake to sink
into the page and dry. You'll notice that the
dry the paint gets, the less it will
move on the paper. This can be a long
process with minutes of waiting and watching
in-between making changes. So it's another time
that I like to have something to listen
to while I work. I decided to mix an even darker green using the same
colors as before, but less water and
drop that into trees. Then we'll let it
dry completely. Before going on to part
two of painting the trees. Now we're going to paint the modifying the individual trees. Starting with the
darkest green color, add more ultramarine and
Rosanna to make it even darker. Than just liking the
techniques video, use the dry brushing
technique and horizontal strokes to
make triangle shapes. Make sure you space
them unevenly and vary the height
and width of them. Once I made a line of trees, I drive them with a
hairdryer so that I can see more clearly
what it looked like. Then added a few
more here and there. In the next lesson, we'll
start working on the fields.
10. Fields Wet on Wet: For the fields will need
to mix three new colors. I want a bright green this time. So that's why I chose lemon yellow and cerulean
blue to mix width. Keep mixing in more pain
until it's bright enough. I don't want it to
look fluorescent dye, which is something
that can happen when you use lemon,
yellow, and green. I add some rows,
which is opposite of green on the color
wheel to turn it down. I want the next green to also be vibrant, but a bit darker. So I use lemon yellow again, but choose ultramarine rather
than cerulean for the blue. Keep testing it on the paper
until it's just right. The next color is a
yellow for my flowers. I start with lemon yellow, but I don't want it quite
so lemony, I suppose. So I add some rows
to warm it up a bit. Outcomes the kneaded
eraser again to lighten the pencil lines I drew to
show light and dark areas. If you want to at home, you could flatten
the entire sketch at the beginning before doing
any masking or painting. Doing it step-by-step in the class with an
intentional decision by me so that you would
be able to see the lines on camera for
as long as possible. But you don't have to worry about that when
you're painting for yourself using
horizontal strokes, take the light green and paint all the way up
to the tree line. Then take the dark
green and drop it onto the painting where there
should be darker areas. Then take the yellow
paint and painting in the background where the flowers would be blurring
into each other. Next, take the darker
green we mixed during the trees lesson and lightly tap it onto the furthest field. We're trying to
create the effect of distance trumps the dryer. The initial layer is when
we paint the shrubs, the less they will blend in. So I'm waiting until
the initial layer of the paint has sunk into
the paper a bit more. For me, it took
five or so minutes, but it will vary depending on your paper and how warm
it is in your house. Watch for the shine to start disappearing from the
surface of the paper. Here I decided to give it a go. But as you can see, the paint is still
spreading out quite a lot. So I wait for a
couple of moments. There we go. This time when
I tap my brush on the paper, the paint blurs slightly, but stays more or
less where I put it. But that's what
you're going for. Paint lots of individual dots connected in slanted
horizontal lines. As the paper dries. You'll see if you're shrubs
or as bold as you like them, or if you want to keep
adding paint, let it dry. And this is what
it looks like now. I like it so far
except that the yellow has blended a bit too much
into the furthest field. It sounds funny,
but I actually want that area to look
less interesting. It's not a focal points, so I want it to be a bit dull so that the viewers eyes don't
get attracted there too much. So I take the same
dull green that I used to make the shrubs and add lots of water to make it lighter and paint that
into the far field. See how that's already pushed the field into the background. It looks like it wants to
spread into the closer field. So I clean my dry brush, then run it along the
edge of the painted area. This soaks up the excess paint. Let the page dry. And next we'll be
working on adding blades of grass
and flowers Dance.
11. Fields Wet on Dry: We'll need to get out
the masking fluid, masking tape again. And we'll be creating some
stems and blades of grass. Be selective about
which stems you do. Focus on the ones in
the foreground and then a random selection of
them around the painting. It looks better if you suggest stems by adding a
few here and there. Then to clutter up
the entire painting by adding every single one. Try to make your lines as
delicate and thin as possible. Then put some blades of
grass and leaves him still focusing on the foreground with just a few further back. If you're using masking
fluid for this step, make sure to let it
dry before continuing. Now we'll start painting in lots of layers of blades of grass, which will create depth
in the finished painting. Take you a little
brush and dip it into the lighter green paint
that we mixed earlier, then start painting
blades of grass. Think back to what we discussed in the techniques video about making your brush
strokes thicker the bottom and
then tapering off. And also about doing larger
blades in the foreground and smaller and smaller ones
the further away they are, the paint is transparent, so the effect will be
subtle and that's okay. But if it's not
showing up at all, feel free to make your
pain a bit darker. Be careful to hold your hand
up off the paper so that your work doesn't get smashed as you move around the page. Once you've finished
a layout, let it dry. Then pick up the darker green and repeat the whole process. Layering over the
masking fluid is good because when it's removed, your blades of grass
will look like they go behind those areas. I've added some yellow and a
bit of each of the blue into the well with the light green to make a stronger
color than before. And then surprise, surprise. I'm adding another layer. This part can be
a bit repetitive. So if you want to listen to music or podcasts
while you do it, then that's an excellent
way to keep your brain occupied while you work. As long as it doesn't completely distract you, then
everything's fine. If I'm working on a
really big painting, I'll listen to an audio book. Now with the darker green, I've added some raw sienna, a bit of lemon
yellow for vibrancy, and some ultramarine
blue to make another variation
on a darker green. And then I paint another
layer with that. It's time for the last layer. Now, add some ultramarine blue to the darker green
for our final color. Notice this time that I'm not painting it over the
entire grassy area. This is a dark color, so we'll use it to
reinforce the shadows. Think back to the
reference and during the year to remember where our darkest shadows
in the gospel GR. Then for a final touch, if you can see any area
which could do with some brightening up at a bit of lemon yellow to
the lighter green mix and put in a few brush
strokes here and there. And that's done once it's dry. Move on to the next lesson, which is lots of fun because
we'll be able to remove the masking fluid or masking tape and start painting
some pretty flowers.
12. Flowers: To remove masking fluid, you can either use an
eraser or the side of your thumb as long as you've washed your hands first
to get the oils off. If you use tape, then your fingernails are a pair of tweezers will do the trick. We'll start off with
the blue flowers, which I think might
be grape hyacinth. Start off with a light blue, we'll mix for the sky and add
a touch of permanent rose. We're not trying to make purple, just soften the bright
blue color a bit. Lighten the color slightly as
well by adding some water. Then use the blue
to fill in all of the oval shapes denoting
the grape hyacinth. By reusing the colors we made earlier in another
part of the painting, it contributes to color
harmony throughout the pace. For the red flowers, put a couple of drops of
water in a new world, then add permanent
rose and raw sienna. Paint the color onto all of the flowers that will be read. At some lemon yellow to the
yellow we mixed earlier, plus a touch of permanent
rose to warm it up. Then fill in all of the rest of the flowers with that color. For the second layer
on the blue flowers at a bit of the darker blue
color to make a shadow mix. Then painted on the lower
half of the flowers, like in the techniques video. To darken the red at in a bit
more rows and raw sienna. Then also painting
the shadow areas of the flower is lacking. The techniques video do the same with the
yellow flowers, this time darkening the color with lemon yellow
and we'll sienna. For the final layer
of the blue flowers, just use the dark blue
we originally mixed for the sky and painted
onto the lower third. At raw sienna and permanent
rose to the red mix again, plus some French ultramarine to make it perfectly
shadow color. Then paint some shadows and
details onto the red flowers. If any of these feels
like it's going too fast, you can always revise the
techniques lesson where the flower painting process is demonstrated in real-time
for you to follow along. I've just raw sienna and a small amount of ultramarine
blue to the yellow color. And use that to make
the final shadows and details on the
yellow flowers. Once you've finished painting your flowers and
they're all dry, we'll move on to some
finishing touches.
13. Finishing Touches: Now's the time to
do any touch ups that might be necessary. A drop of green paint fell onto my clad area at one point. So I'm wetting my
paintbrush and scrubbing that spot until the color lifts and I can remove
it with a tissue. This works best on white areas. If you tried to do it on an area that he's
already painted, it might remove a color that you actually
wanted to stay there. So keep that in mind if you
want to do this as well. I also decided that the stems and leaves
in the foreground with a masking fluid was contrasted a bit too strongly
with the rest of the grass. So I used my lighter
green to fill them in. I also added a bit of dark
green while they were still wet in areas where
there would be shuttered, such as directly
beneath the flowers. They are still distinct
from the rest of the grass, but without being distracting. While the dark green
was still in my brush, I also added a few
extra stems in the areas I felt could do
with slightly more texture. Once that's dry, I
use an eraser to remove any pencil lines
still visible on the piece. Now he's one of my
favorite parts. It's time to remove
the masking tape. I find it so satisfying to reveal the crisp white
edges of the painting. Pull the tape back on
itself rather than up to reduce the chances
of it tearing the paper. If the paper does look
like it will tear, use a hairdryer to warm up
the glue and the type first. Then it should come off easily. Take a pencil and sign your name and the
year in the margin. Lastly, I looked at the
painting and decided to add some white gel pen to add
highlights to the flowers. I wanted it to look as if
it rained recently and the sunlight is bouncing off water droplets on the petals. This helps the
composition because the Cloud is such a bright white and it's good to balance that in the painting by having
white in the foreground to. It also brings attention
to the lovely flowers, which are one of the focal
points of the piece.
14. Final thoughts: Well done. Thank you for taking this class and painting along with me. If you finished your painting, make sure you upload it to the project gallery where we can celebrate your work and discuss any questions or comments
that you might have. If you liked this class. Now it'd be a great time
to write a review which helps other students decide
if this class is for them. You might also like to check out my other class on how to paint a forest landscape
and follow me on this platform to be
notified of future classes. Thanks again and happy painting.
Caitlin Hope Brown, Artist
