Paint Loose and Colorful Watercolor Skies with Me!

1. Introduction: Hi, hello and welcome. My name is Amber, and I am super passionate about all things watercolor. I started painting in 2018, but stepped up my own game in 2020 when I decided to paint daily. Even last year, I took on my own self challenge of painting tutorial every single day of the year. And that has really helped me grow. I've gained all these different experiences and perspective. I try to bring them into my own life and see what works. And today I want to share that with you. So if you're stuck in a rut and don't know what to paint next, I think this is the perfect way to loosen up to play with color. In today's class, we'll explore the use of colors within a similar composition, as you can see, to show how the power of color can change your mood in a simple and small way. Those little changes can make big impacts. This class is designed for anyone who has picked up a watercolor brush before all the way up to intermediate. We can all use a bit of relaxation and letting go, right? We'll create nine landscapes plus two bonus pieces. I'm so very excited to see what you create. Each project is short and sweet and quick for you to get a break in your busy day, grab your supplies, and let's jump in and get going. 2. Materials & Supplies: For this beginner class, the most important beginner friendly class. This can go up from beginner to all the way to intermediate. If you just need to loosen up and let go and explore this class is definitely for you. But the most important thing we want to have is 100% cotton. I prefer RS. You can also use Bow hung meeting. I would also suggest having an assortment of brushes. The brushes that I'm going to use in this class are going to be a mop. I'm going to also use a round size six and a round size two and a rigger brush. And they all serve different purposes, and I will tell you exactly what purposes each of those serve. Also, what I prefer to use are handmade paints. I love using handmade paints. That's my preference. And also, you'll want to have a rag nearby or some sort of towel to dab your brushes on. I like to use cloth. I also have this old paper towel that I use over and over and over. You also will want to have a plexi glass type surface that you can put your cotton paper on. And you'll also want to have some tape. My favorite is Holbein soft tape. This is not hole bind right here. This is some cheaper stuff I'm trying to use up, but my preference is holbin soft tape. You'll maybe want to have a few shimmers that you can splatter on the double sided median water vessel. I love this one. It will never knock over because it's very shirty. I'm excited to get started. One other thing. You want to have water pets. Water ceramic water port pets. They can be anything. You can use a plate. Just something that you can mix your paints in close to next glass. 3. Class Project 1: Red: So let's get started. Here's my one eighth inch plexi glass that I've already shown you. I'm going to use my 100% cotton paper. I'm going to tape it down. I'm going to tape the bottom, then the top and the side to side in hopes that it won't leak. If it does leak, it's okay with me. First of all, these are mostly practice pieces. And if you were to truly frame something, a mat would cover up. The area with the paint on it. So it's not a big deal. I do like to make my edges rather thin, so I have more space to paint on. But for a different kind of artistic look, you could definitely use larger tape or have less or more of borders. It depends on what you like. You can also use a block here, 100% cotton block, that way you would not have to tape anything down. It's a personal choice and completely up to you. My paper is about two and three quarters. To about 5.5 ". That's my flat wash brush. I'm going to show you my paints. I'm going to use differ handmade paint throughout each one of these. And I won't nessly call them out each time. I just want you to kind of play with what you have and explore, really. So, this one is going to be our red, and so we're going to start off with some reddish pinkish hues here. And I'm just mixing rather than using straight from the pan. I do like to mix on a palette so that I can vary the water strength and the strength of the pigment. So you'll see me dipping into the paint, sometimes directly onto the paper, and other times you'll see me dipping into my palette. So I kind of I kind of bounce from those those ways of doing it. And I'm just adding different colors. So I added a red, and I've kind of got a more of an orange or red, and I'll keep moving slightly through that now a little bit of a coral color. So I went from red to orange red to a pinkish. And you could do any colors you wanted to really. But I was going to focus on more of a rainbow feel for each of these pieces. So this one does focus on red, which I feel does turn out to be a little bit pink, but I guess, like Pink is just kind of a form of red, right? Less pigment, maybe a little bit of white. I'm going to drop in a little bit more darker red for the sky to create kind of cloudy feel, add a little more texture, a little more rusticness and you can really do whatever you like here. I'm going to use a little bit of orange, to do the kind of the same thing and just basically add a little bit more rather because you know when it's going to dry, it's going to be lighter, right? So this is our opportunity to add a little bit more. I did not pre wet the paper here. I sometimes will, in this instance, I did not. So after we wrap up that sky and horizon area, we're going to work on the foreground and the lower portion of technically the horizon. I'm using an kind of a lighter green greenish yellow. I like to use that kind of green because it has a little bit of the yellow in it, and it kind of mimics the feel, the glow of the sky or the sunset area as well. And then I like to quickly switch to a darker color for the foreground, leaving a little bit of that negative space in the middle as sort of a pathway or maybe it's a river, and it's just suggestions, right? These are so quick and so loose that really we're just suggesting stuff. Like see the horizon where the paint starting to bleed up into the sky. We're kind of suggesting trees or shrubbery back there. And so quickly, We're going to dry with the heat tool or you can let it dry. And we're going to add little birds. I like to use the Shimoni rigger brush. It is a very, very thin and it leaves very, very delicate birds. So you're just getting a more of a hint of birds. Again, a suggestion of something happening in the sky, your eye leading your eye is being led to this center with that weight negative space and those birds and the horizon color change. And that is it for our first one. These are quick and these are pretty swift going. They're very basic. We're kind just keeping it more so that we can experiment with colors. And we can explore different compositions, actually, not so much compositions to explore the colors. So the colors I used there. I used the reds and the pinks at the top row, little bit of those yellows and the greens. And that is it for this first one. Thank you for joining. And I hope you explore and use as many colors as you feel like you'd like to in the sky, so you get a good variation going. Okay. So again, I've used this red, red, this other red, a little bit of starting to move into the corals and then the pinks, and we used a little bit of an ocher style yellow, and then just dark greens and spring greens. And that was it for this one. So this was supposed to be a red pace, and it did turn a little pink, but we did use red. So I think it was a success, and I hope you'd enjoy, and we'll see you in the next one. 4. Class Project 2: Orange: We are back for our next piece, which is the orange piece. Again, we are going to tape down top and bottom sides, and then side to side. And we're going to push to make sure our tape here's pretty tightly. You can see here that I like to use reuse my tape. I find that tape is a pretty wasteful thing. I'm not super picky about my edges. So re using tape for me is an absolute mess. It may not look as pretty or professional as some, but you know what, it's worth it for me to be able to reuse the tape. Okay, so we are using 100% cotton again. I am using my C Chamoni mop brush, and I am using wet on dry, which means my paper is dry and that my paint has water. Mixed in with the pigment. And I am just brushing on a variation of yellows and oranges here, particularly orange at the top, and then I work my way down to using a orange yellow. And you can do this in any way you want. You can go bright orange. You can do more of a peachy orange totally and completely up to you. I like to use a lot of different colors to get variations. And so now I switch to a coral. Coral is one of my favorite colors for sunsets. I really love using coral. I think it works really well, especially in oranges and yellows and with other reds, but particularly here with the yellow and the oranges. And so I'm bringing it down pretty far. On this piece. And so basically we are kind of working on a wet on wet because our piece is so small and almost you know, almost most of our work is done when the papers kind of wet with the previous paint. So here, I'm going back into the upper portion to darken up the sky a little bit, which you'll see me do a lot in this series. And, you know, since these are so quick, we want to make sure we're adding enough texture and enough depth and enough contrast to draw our eye and make these a little lee a little bit interest. We also don't want to underestimate the power of simplicity, though, right? And the power of suggestion, you'll hear me talk about power of suggestion over and over and over in this series because I think it is really important. And I think that's what helps with the simplicity of these pieces is that we can easily suggest things without actually painting them. And it's a really it's really it opens a lot of doors when you learn how to embrace this, I feel. Once I kind of learned that, I didn't have to paint the perfect tree, it really really lightened the way off my shoulders and I can go forward. And I didn't feel like I had to do things exactly the way I saw them, or others did in tutorials or demonstrations. So I am just, you know, adding some texture and contrast in this foreground. We did light greens. We did dark greens. We left some white space. It should be noted that I was careful not to introduce too much extra water at this point. I am tilting my plexiglass so that some of that green goes up into the horizon, so that we do add some suggestions of trees or shrubs, grasses or anything. So again, with this Chamoni rigger brush, it's so fine. I'm just doing those faint little birds, just two right in the middle. You could do two, you could do 12, you can do however many you like. I either do two or no dd number, and I think that's just the perfect little hint. And that's all these are really going for. You're exploring with color. You're testing out maybe color combinations that you're unsure of, or maybe you stick with monochromatic. Really, these are to inspire you to do what you want. Do you have to do the way I'm doing? Absolutely not. I encourage you. I really, really encourage you to try what makes you happy and what brings you joy. And please post all of that. If you create something you love, post it, I'd love to see it. So take that tape off. And let's see what we have here. We have a nice look at that bleed on the horizon. I love those. I live for those. They make me happy. They make me really, really happy. And I hope you enjoy and I hope it makes you happy, too. Okay. So that was project number two. We'll see you next time. 5. Class Project 3: Yellow: Alright. Here we go. Round three Class Project Number three. This one happens to be focused on yellow. So, we went from red, orange, and now we're on yellow skies, and I think this is just such a fun exploration, and to see what a difference, the tiniest shift in colors can make, right? Or the biggest shift in colors, and you can see the dramatic difference. So I am starting with a few different yellows. Take all the yellows you have, maybe, and just explore, right? There's some warm yellow in there, probably, like an ochre. And there's some cooler yellows, like a lemon. So when I say, I don't need to use that word overly use that word. But my handmade colors, I don't often have them, the labels or the names visible. So sometimes I'll just grab yellows, and that's why I'm saying, you know, similar to an ocher and similar to a warm. And also, handmade colors have cut C names. And so I didn't want to give you the vanity name, and you're like, What is she even talking about? So warm and cool yellows. You see that I'm layering them. I'm dropping them in. I'm adding texture. I'm going back to the top, back to the bottom. And we're already to the horizon. It really can be that quick. It can happen that quick. This is a leaf green, a very spring green color, and I'm just letting it again touch that yellow so that we get some bleeds going up in there. So we have some suggestions of shrubbery and some trees. If you hear me repeat myself, I know that some people do you like to skip around for different projects, you know, if you feel pulled towards a certain color. So that's why you might hear me repeat myself, some of the same things. And some of these, I don't leave white space. I am trying to leave that white space. So this is a bit of a I wouldn't say dry brushing, but it's definitely less water than I sometimes use when I get to this point when I want to leave a little bit of the white negative space. But I don't want to leave it on that bottom. So definitely going to want to add some darker paint to that area down there. And I want to keep that middle light. Do you see how light in the middle is just glowing? I'm really striving for that. So a little bit of dark around the edges, a little bit dark in those bottom corners, and the way the sky is kind of pointing down into the middle and the way that foreground and that ground near the horizon coming up. It's just kind of leading you there with that light. This one was just kind of a happy accident. I'd love to say that was one 100% intentional. But sometimes you just get lucky with how the brush your hand leads the brush. I'll be honest. I don't think about what I'm doing a lot of times. My brush just kind of happens, and I've had a lot of practice. So this is dry, and I'm adding my birds once again with my Chamoni rigor. Again, my favorite brush, love it, just the most delicate birds. Just adds just a really tranquil peaceful feeling for me. And, yep, go to remove my re used tape. I'm going to save it because once it starts leaking, I'll toss it. But look at that. Those lines look pre dar and Chris, so I will keep using that tape until it leaks on me, and then I toss it. But sometimes I'll get, you know, anywhere 3-5 uses out of it, and that makes me happy. And I paint a lot. So, for me, it's it really works. It doesn't have to be for everybody. It's a personal choice, but it's my part, and I do my part. So remove that plexi and let's take a look. I didn't add any shim or anything, but I think this is just really pretty, a really suggestive, pretty piece, and I cannot wait to see your version of the yellow. So I will see you for the next class. 6. Class Project 4: Green: Here we are starting off the same way. Our 100% cotton paper taped down to our plexiglass, our one eighth inch plexiglass, super strong, doesn't warp super nice to be able to tape these pieces on so that you can rotate the paper, you can rotate the board. You know, you can put it at an angle 45 degrees if you want something to kind of bleed or if you just want to pick it up and be able to sometimes I'll paint when I pick up. So anyway, taping down the tops, the bottoms, the sides, the sides. I like to do the toe two tops first and the side by side one, and I press the tape down. And as you already know, I reuse my tape. So there we have it, and if you're not doing these in order, it's why you'll hear me say a lot of the same things twice or three or however many times you're in the project. So I'm going to use a mop brush. You could use a larger size round if you wanted. This one is green. So we are starting with a green sky. What do you think about that? Interesting, right? I am using a cobalt greenish. So I feel like cobalt green kind of lends to a bit of a almost like a blue. I wouldn't say I wouldn't say it's blue, but it felt more blue to me than say, using a like a a different a typical green. So I used this green thinking that we could just have suggestions again of maybe some mountains in the background. Maybe that's just clouds. I don't know. It depends. So I did leave some more white in this one, but I'm kind of unsure. So we'll see. And at this horizon line, I did paint a line of water versus more paint. So you can see how that's bleeding up and kind of pushing the paint away. I'm going back here again to a very spring lime green, which has a lot of yellow. So that does help with the glow. So I would probably highly suggest having some sort of spring green leaf green, a very yellow green on hand. It is one of my favorite colors to use since I do paint a lot of landscapes and a lot of green. And now I am doing what I always do. I'm bringing in some dark colors in the foreground. I really love the way this frames the pieces, and you can see now, look how much that water is moving up into the sky. And that's kind of what I did why I did that. So, if you will, let me call that middle spot the horizon where that water. So I took a clean brush and just swept across with more water than I typically would use. And so that's leading those fun funky bleeds that some people would say, Oh, no, I don't want those, but for me, I really love those. And the foreground this time is a little bit of a more of a rustic olive green, and I'm adding a little bit more texture. So there's maybe some patches of grass and some darker s for contrast here. And so I am pretty much following the same formula each time, right? This one I did finally splatter a little bit, but I am doing the sky, the horizon, the foreground. And those are all kind of blurring into basically, you know, two two steps. But I feel like you can really play with these two steps and alter things. And for painting the same thing over and over, you're getting drastically different results, even though you're painting essentially the same thing over and over. It's just the color can change the mood so much, right? So I am using a size. I think that's a size two or size zero round brush to splatter, and I used that gold shimmer to splatter in the foreground, just to mix it up a little bit and add a little bit of texture. That's a little bit different. For this piece, I used my handmade Masha paints, and I'm showing you the coal balt green that I use and the other greens. I love her line of greens. They are amazing. She makes super granulating handmade paints, and they're just phenomenal phenomenal phenomenal phenomenal. Okay, I can't say it. Alright, dry your painting or let it dry. Of course, we're going to add our birds with our rigger brush, just two little birds in the middle. I think I stuck with two birds this whole time in all my class projects. I felt like it was just simple enough and just suggestive enough. And it gets your practice, right? Doing these things over and over, builds muscle memory, and it builds practice so that when you do this again, it becomes easier and easier, right, more fluid and more natural, more organic and less trying so hard, right? I remember starting off and I was always trying so hard to get it so. Anyway, tape off. Look that. I think it's fun. I think it's fun and funky, and it's just suggestive enough that you don't exactly know what's going on, but that's okay, too. All right. S in the next class. 7. Class Project 5: Blue: I All right. Now that we are on our fourth one, I feel like this one's going to be pretty swift. Okay, I'm using a round again, round mop on 100% cotton paper. Papers taped down to my plexi glass, so it doesn't move around, and I can move it if I'd like. I am using ultramarine blue and a little bit of another blue, just to kind of mix those two together. You don't have to use these same blues. You can use Prussian. You can use indigo, you can use Ceron. You could use any blues you want. Don't feel tied to my blues. But I thought playing with these different blues, different hues of blues and different variations is fun, right? Through the darks, typically go near the horizon like I'm doing? Not necessarily, and that's okay. So I did that, put those darks there, and then I used kind of just a wet brush to kind of blur and bring pull that paint down a little bit to break it up a little bit. Maybe those are mountains back there. Maybe that's an icy pond, right? We don't have to know. We can just suggest these things. And very quickly, I'm going to go ahead and go in with the foreground. I decided that I didn't love that green, but I wanted to leave it because I think it's okay to question the colors you use. That's what we're doing this for, right? To find what colors work for us, what colors make us happy. What colors make us want to use them again and again, right? What colors maybe don't work for us. Maybe the colors that we need to mix with something else so that we like them they're more palable for ourselves, right? We like them more. But again, you got to bring that dark to the foreground. So a bit of dark somewhere in the middle of the top and then a little bit more in the bottom, kind of help ties the piece together for me, helps me bring it together, helps me kind of sandwich it, right? Make it makes sense for me. It doesn't mean it has to work that way for everybody. And these are just quick, loose experimental pieces just playing with color and trying to be in the moment without stalling out like I was doing. It was stalling and overthinking a little bit too much, even though this one is under 5 minutes, which is I think is pretty darn fabulous. So these are great if you just want a little warm up, if you're just wondering what to paint for the night, if you you know, have a long, busy day, and you just don't have enough time in your day. You can grab one of these, grab one of these. You can, you know, pull one of these up and do one of these little class projects. Alright, let's go again with some shimmer. This time, I'm using my simony round size six to sprinkle on the shimmer. Different size brushes are going to give you different kind of spatter, right? And that's important for you to practice and decide what works best for you. But you also want to be careful about not dropping water onto your paper when you're dipping in and splattering. I often way more often than to admit, end up introducing more water splats to my piece, which is unfortunate for me because you'd think I'd learned by now, but nope, not at all. All right. So after this, we're going to dry the piece, and then we're going to add our birds. You know, I love my birds by now. So I'm going to use again my Chamoni rigor and just do these little light suggestions. You can put them anywhere. You can put them up high, you can put them low, you can put them off to the side. You can make 13 birds, or you can make no birds. You do what you want. Okay. There we go. That is it for this one. It was really, really quick. And I wanted to make these accessible for people on a time time crunch or just to get you playing with color. That's it, really. And there we have it. I hope you enjoy this one. I look forward to seeing this one and your versions and your color and see what you end up doing. So, right, we will see you for the next class. 8. Class Project 6: Blue Violet: All right. Welcome back to Class Project Number six, another quickie here, and I wanted to show you a variation with a slightly different blue. And we're going a little bit lighter here. It's actually an ultramarltra Marin violet. So it has more of a purple hue blue, but it just goes to show how many different variations, which we all know, right? But you can make so many different variations on your skies and adding so many different texture. So I'm using the mop brush again. I like to sweep from the sides inward and Hopefully, that creates the illusion, the suggestion of clouds of movement, of the sky, not being just stagnant, but maybe of it changing or flowing with the atmosphere or maybe it's more of a windier evening, you know, just to give it something to think about versus just a flat perfect wash. I'm not always a huge fan of flat perfect washes. They do have their time in place, and I do love how pretty they can be, and especially a gradient that is perfectly executed, right? And there is definitely a time in place. Like, if you're doing that with some trees, beautiful. But in this piece, I invite you to add the texture to play with the brush strokes, to just explore. And so here we are again, I was that quick, a very, very quick sky and a very, very quick foreground. Again, with the lighter at the horizon, a little bit of darker. Now, this combination, I don't absolutely love. So maybe you could tweak yours to incorporate a better color combination. I love the ultramarine violet in theory. I don't love the greens that I chose to pair with it necessarily. And I am going to leave this because I want you to know that it's okay if you don't love something. And maybe it adds some depth, right? Maybe those green hills are a little bit farther back there. But adding a little bit of dark at those sides, maybe we'll help kind of pull it in. I'm not sure. I do almost really like the negative space, though going on in the foreground, and almost looks like a little zigzag, maybe a little waterway going through. But I'm going to leave it. These are just meant to be quick. They're meant to be done without too much thought or over thinking or trying to overwork stuff like we typically might want to try to do, right? We might want to go in and try to fix everything. These are meant to just invite you to explore, invite you to experiment, invite you to play with your brushes, and just kind of it down, get it down, and get it done. And not that you're trying to rush through it. Just that you're trying to be less indecisive, right? Try to just be there and be in the moment and get done. Okay. So, Those spotters went a little crazy there. So I just wanted to kind of s mere them in a little bit with my round size six. And I do need to get this dry. So we're gonna dry. And of course, we're gonna add our birdies. So there we go with the Chamoni rigor again, and those suggestive suggestive birds, a little hint of bird there. And I Oh, when I do this, I'm usually using maybe a brownish blackish mix. Maybe I'll use whatever's in the palette and just mix the darkest one and use that. And you don't go heavy with the pigment. So it's more of a watery but not super watery, right. You don't want your birds to faded at nothing. You want them to be, you know, visible after they dry, 'cause of course everything dries lighter. That's it for this one. I don't end up not liking it as much as I thought I wasn't going to like it. I didn't think I'd like those colors at all, but, you know, surprisingly, it surprised me and I do like it. It's not so bad, but, you know, these are just meant to really, really get you to explore. So, again, I'm excited to see yours, and we'll see you in the next class. 9. Class Project 7: Aqua: Hello, welcome back for Class Project Number seven. We have taped our paper down onto our plexi. We are using a round a mop brush, not around, I'm sorry, a mop brush, and we are playing with some Aqua, some tii cobalti turquoise colors. And I don't say the specific colors because I want you to explore your own colors, right? I want you to use what you have so that you can adapt to what you have and be able to use what you have instead of wishing you had something else, right? I went through so many tutorials thinking, Well, I wish I had the colors they're using. That's all I want. And I hyper focused on that idea of having those exact colors because I thought it had to look like their piece. Come to find out. Obviously, it doesn't have to. It's more fun when it doesn't, and it's more fun when you can make it your own. So again, I'm playing with the textures in the sky here, adding more pigment in places, and I like to bring that horizon down with just kind of a wet brush with a light amount of a lot of light amount of paint so that we can kind of have the sky and the horizon or the horizon and the foreground touch and have a little bit of magic happen where they meet, right? We want a little bit of that foreground to make its way into the sky so that we have a little bit of texture back there, a little bit of suggestion of greenery, of shrubs, of anything back there. And so that's why you'll see me playing with this lighter color. This is a more of a mint color handmade paint. It's a really pretty blue color. And so now I am again playing with some sort of lighter green leafy green, spring green, and just letting it touch that blue. And I love what happens. I can use these greens all day every day, and I kind of do. They are my favorite favorite greens. And so I am leaving negative space again here, and you can see the brush skipping over the paper and leaving those white spaces. And I love that about RS paper. It leaves that texture. And so you don't have to even make much effort to get that negative space there because rs just has that perfect amount of texture of the paper, that tooth so that you know, your brush skips right over it and leaves that space for you. It really does all the work for you. Between good brush, good paper. And some amazing paints you set. But really, the most important thing is, make sure you're using 100% cotton when you're creating these pieces when you're playing, when you're learning, 100% cotton is really, really important. Even if you are brand new to watercolor, use the good paper. If you want to cheap out on paint brushes or paint themselves, do that. But don't cheap out on your paper. And don't think you're not worth it, and don't think, like, Oh, I'll use it when I'm better because The paper makes you better. I promise it makes you better. I got a piece of hair stuck in my work right there. Trying to dig it out and in doing that, you can see I left a I dug out some of my pigment, my paint. And so it has a spot there. So I'll have to fix that. Or I can I can leave it does if it bothers you, fix it, if it doesn't, you can leave it. It's kind of a personal preference kind of thing. I don't like to leave the hair because it or the fuzz, because it will leave a mark on the paint sometimes. So let's splatter with my round size six again. Adding a little bit of color there. Just to add the texture, nothing major or big. And after that, we're going to use my heat tool and dry it up. You can let it dry if you don't have a heat tool, but this is the best $10.99 I've ever spent on Amazon. So I would highly recommend it. And again, here we are with the birds. We're just going to do two little suggestions of birds off a little bit off to the right from the center this time. And I just love the way the light is on this one. These are so much fun to explore the light. I love doing that, like, less pigmented middle part. This one is a little divided, but that's okay. The colors make up for it for me, really, really pretty colors. So I do suggest that you explore this kind of rainbow color feeling thing. I think it adds a lot of invitation to play and invitation, just kind of have fun with it. I really do love how that one turned out, and I am very excited to see yours, and I hope to see them in the project section, and I'll explain how to do that all later. So, see if for the next class. 10. Class Project 8: Purple: Welcome back. Let's get on with our next class project, which is going to be purple. I am using a darker purple here. You are absolutely free to use whatever purple you like, mix your own purple, use a convenience color purple. Convenience color just means color that's already mixed up. I love to use convenience colors, but I also like to mix in other convenience colors and other single pigment colors. So I use them all. I love to mix them all. I love to add the variations of all the pigments in the textures, pigments, the different pigments add to the textures. And so for me, it's just fun to play with a lot of different colors and making sure that I'm mixing those up, right, because if I used the same purple in the whole sky, it wouldn't always be as fun. It actually can be really effective if you have granulating colors and you're using different amount of different hues and different amount of pigments in your colors. So you can do a very successful very successful piece of art, not saying that you can't at all. But for these, I do like to drop in a lot of different colors since they are so quick and we're not doing necessarily that build up of layers, right? So I'm quickly adding the foreground and again, with that water layer so that the green will kind of be drawn up into that water near the horizon and introduce some sort of suggestive shrubs, or maybe it's a wetlands. Maybe it's a meadow. We don't know. We don't have to know. It can be whatever you want it to be. I am using a mop brush again for this one, and I'm going to add a bunch of not a bunch, but I'm going to add some dark color to the bottom here. I'm going to retain some of that white space. And I just want to make sure that I leave that light in the middle. So our eye is drawn. In and back, and sort of through the picture. It makes us think like, Okay, we can there's more to this other side of the world, right? There's more to this side of this wetlands. There's just more more in general. And that this isn't just it, right? There's always. There's always more to life. And so that is kind of it with this one. I just wanted to keep it really simple. I'm going to add some dark. I felt like it was lacking a little bit of contrast in this foreground I created. So I'm using a color called tree bark. It's kind of it is a green brown. And so I just added a little bit on the sides just to kind of to force the eye in a little bit more. So, here we go with the splitter again, because by now, you all know that I'm quite obsessed with splatter, whether it's shimmer or whether it's a yellow to contrast with green. It's kind of up to you, use what you like. If you don't have shimmer, you can use water splatters even. You can use white paint. You can use whatever you like. It doesn't have to be shimmer, and it doesn't have to be Anything that I call out, right? If you don't want to, don't do it. Absolutely 100% skip it. We're going to go ahead and dry so that we can do our birds because we don't want to introduce our bird on top of wet sky, right? Then we'll just end up with a bleedy mess. We don't want that. So again, with the rigger brush using that to make my tiny little birds, my tiny little V bird suggestions, they really are just a V. That's it. That's what keeps these birds so simple. And we're going to take the tape off, and we have a really, in my opinion, a really pretty and simple piece. And that's what these are all about just pretty and simple and just exploring the colors that you already have and trying to see what you can do on your own with your own stuff. And that's that. I think this would also be awesome if some trees added in. But for now, we're leaving these really simple and we're leaving them as it is. So I hope you enjoy this one, and we'll see you for the next class. 11. Class Project 9: Pink: Here we are back for Project Number Class Project Number eight, and we are doing pink. I'm using more of a magenta pink. You can use a softer pink if you prefer. You can use a more purple pink. You can use whatever kind of pink you want and just play with whatever ones those are. You can add more water to your pink. You can add less. You can make it really saturated. You can not. It's really, really up to you. I don't want you to feel obligated to do as I'm doing. Or do exactly what I'm doing. I want you to feel that you have permission to explore and that you have permission to play with the colors that you have so that you become more comfortable with the colors that you have, not the colors that, you know, maybe somebody else has. Because you're going to ultimately, you want to use what you have. At least that's how I feel. And I wish someone had told me that. Instead of trying to buy all the colors and all the tutorials, ended up with way too many colors that I don't even use. And or necessarily even love, right? Because you can pretty much make any color you want and you can use any color that you want, and it'll be very similar to another color. You know, so I want you to use what you have. Okay. After that quick sky, which is very quick. And what was that under a minute for that sky? We're going to move onto the score ground, and I chose kind of a brighter Vortian style green And I'm tilting my board right now to the top. So that the green runs into the sky and creates, again, those suggestive shrubs or trees back in the background near the horizon. I decided to drop a little bit of the brighter grain since I did not use it closer to the horizon on this one. So I decided to drop it in now, and then I'm going to add a little bit more dark to the bottom to kind of sandwich that green in the middle. So it's not just popping out of the front for no reason. So it's going to add some depth hopefully because we got the dark in the front, and then we're moving towards the midground of the foreground to the lighter and then the dark again. And then the light at the back of the horizon, I feel is another point to draw the eye into. These little spots of highlights of lights light. I feel kind of help make these little mini pieces successful, right? Because there's not a lot to them. Let's be honest, right. They're pretty simple. They're pretty straightforward. They're really just a lot of playtime for us to sit down really quickly and maybe pop out three or four. Maybe you could do four versions of each color. Totally up to you. Alright, so dry, let it dry or use a heat tool. More splattering because I love splatter. Splatter just doesn't get old for me. If it does for you, you can obviously skip it. Skip anything you don't like. If you don't like it, just leave it out, take what you like, leave the rest, and that is pretty much for all of life, right? I think we learn that the older we get. You just need to leave some stuff out of our lives. Because it just isn't worth it or doesn't suit us or it doesn't serve us, and we just need to get better about just leaving that there. Alright, I am going to dry my splatters just so I don't put my hand in them when I do my birds, 'cause I do have a tendency to do that sort of thing. And again, I'm using my rigger brush for my birds. I'm using a watery mixture of a dark color from my palette. And I'm Joy going to do these little V shaped birds, and they're all vs. I don't make any upside down vs. You can, if you'd like, you know, 'cause birds do alternate the way they fly. They're not always a V, like mine are. And I'm not a realistic painter. And that's okay. You don't have to be either. Or you can be. Whatever. Whatever you like, whatever you enjoy. Whatever makes you happy? Oh, look at me adding more birds. This is the first one. I've added three birds. I do like odd numbers, so. I added that third bird, and let's take the tape off. My tape is still holding strong. Look at that tape. Go. No bleeds under there. Pretty darn impressive for used tape, right. And even if they did bleed, if you wanted to matt it or frame it, you would put a framer on it. So I do like the rough edges of this sh paper that I tear that I cut up myself. I use big giant sheets. So that was it for this pink one. Excited to see yours in the class project section, and we'll see you for the next class. 12. Bonus Project 10: Gray: Okay, truth be told, these pieces started off as original project class pieces. But as I went, I did two of these, and they both had mishaps in them. And so I thought I'd share them with you as bonus pieces. So what I am doing here is I'm painting a blue sky. So this was going to be one of the blue pieces. And you'll see quickly that I had a little mishap. And Rather than just toss it, I wanted to show you what could be done if you have one of these mishaps, as well. I have these a little more often than I'd like to admit, and you think by now that I maybe would not. But again, I continue to have them. And that's okay. I take it as a learning experience, an opportunity to embrace and an opportunity to see how I can rescue myself in my own situation, right? And so I take this opportunity too, again, I'm just playing with these blues here and maybe adding mountains. Maybe these are skies, maybe not skies, but maybe those are clouds that one on the left might be a mountain, a little range in which it looks like it could be. And so here I go with a little bit of a blue green background to mix it up a little bit, right? But I do want to keep that light in the middle. So I'm not going to add too much pigment in that middle area, just so the light hits right there where I left that little bit of negative space. We're going to add the dark in the foreground just to kind of, you know, make your eye go in the middle. A little more dark on the edge there. I am quite obsessed with doing that. As you know by now, since this is the tenth piece we've worked on together so far in this little series. And so I kept the little white area, again, the negative space, and just wanted to make sure that I need to yeah, I needed to do that. I needed to be a little bit less. So if you end up with too big of a space. Did you see it? Do you see it? It's getting bigger. There it is. And I don't notice it quite and you'll see them when I notice I was like, Oh, no. Because it's spread so slowly, Wham O. What a way, too. I drop another water spot. That's what I do. So right next to that one, I drop another water spot, and I kind of play off and I realize that I'm going to make these into trees. And so that's why I put the second water drop. Should I have done a third probably because I prefer things in thirds rather than twos. But I'm letting the water do its thing, and I wanted to show you as it spread out and what we end up with. So that's what we end up with. I'm going to take my rigor, and I'm going to add a trunk, and I'm going to kind of let that trunk bleed into that tree that's already kind of wet. And so that helps just diffuse everything and kind of gives the branches a chance to give some coloration, as well. That's how I work those trees. And so I will add a little bit more color in there, which you could technically leave it like this. It's kind of like I don't know, kind of a ghost tree, if you will. It's definitely a different kind of look. But I'm just slowly adding branches with this really tiny rigger. It doesn't hold a lot of paint. So I'm just going back and forth and having to, you know, re dip, grab some more paint, grab some more water, and just kind of have this mix, dance of enough paint on my brush to get what I'm even looking for. And I'm not sure the proportion, the perspective the sizing is right on these. I probably should have gone a little maybe a little more sturdy with my trunks, since we're kind of I feel like it's closer up than that I'm showing it as to be. That's okay. Again, this is all play and just practice and trying to just adapt to things quickly on the fly, right? And I feel like that's a big part of my art, especially since my pieces aren't necessarily, you know, three to four to five hour pieces or they're not, you know, weeks and weeks of work put into them. They're just these quick intuitive. Fast, you know, on your feet, kind of adapting as you go pieces. And I love that. I enjoy that instant gratification. I don't think working on pieces for hours and hours, the tiny detail, you know, days and days on end would be as satisfying to me as these style that I do are. And maybe down the road, maybe I'll enjoy that more, and maybe I'll adapt. And maybe that will be my thing. But for now, I love these kind of quick and loose. Mythical, fairy tealish story tale, storybook sort of feeling pieces. And I think they're a fun escape from reality. I think they're great, and they're therapeutic. I find that they just really help me kind of let go in life. You know, I already have a lot of things that kind of are not flowing as easy. So, We're going to dry those trees, and we're going to dry everything, and we can add our birds. And at that point, after we add our birds, we can kind of re evaluate if we want to enhance those lollipop trees or leave them as is, kind of up to you, what you decide to do. Do I love mine? Not really, necessarily, but I did want to share how the adapting part took place on this piece, and I wanted to, I guess, kind of see what you thought. They are a little round for me, I like my old school style lollipop trees, and I did add a few more birds on this one. So also, that was kind of fun and different. I'm liking the light on this one, but my trees do kind of look like they're sitting on top, and I'm not sure I'm a big fan of that. So let's add a little bit of splatter to kind of mix this up a little bit. Maybe that will help. Taking my round size zero, which is a little too small for splatters. But I thought we'd add a little bit there. And let's go ahead and get the tape off this and see what we think and see why this ended up as a bonus and didn't stay in the original class project section. I think that exploring, you know, making your errors turn into, you know, learning experiences is the way to go. So If you try some water dropped trees. I'd love to see them in the class project section. If you skip this, I completely understand as well, but I think it would be fun to see your water dropped trees or even if you don't make the water drop trees, just to see how your colors work together. All right, we will see you in the last class, very soon here. 13. Bonus Project 11: Bright Pink: Okay, truth be told, these pieces started off as original project class pieces. But as I went, I did two of these, and they both had mishaps in them. And so I thought I'd share them with you as bonus pieces. So what I am doing here is I'm painting a blue sky. So this was going to be one of the blue pieces. And you'll see quickly that I had a little mishap. And Rather than just toss it, I wanted to show you what could be done if you have one of these mishaps, as well. I have these a little more often than I'd like to admit, and you think by now that I maybe would not. But again, I continue to have them. And that's okay. I take it as a learning experience, an opportunity to embrace and an opportunity to see how I can rescue myself in my own situation, right? And so I take this opportunity too, again, I'm just playing with these blues here and maybe adding mountains. Maybe these are skies, maybe not skies, but maybe those are clouds that one on the left might be a mountain, a little range in which it looks like it could be. And so here I go with a little bit of a blue green background to mix it up a little bit, right? But I do want to keep that light in the middle. So I'm not going to add too much pigment in that middle area, just so the light hits right there where I left that little bit of negative space. We're going to add the dark in the foreground just to kind of, you know, make your eye go in the middle. A little more dark on the edge there. I am quite obsessed with doing that. As you know by now, since this is the tenth piece we've worked on together so far in this little series. And so I kept the little white area, again, the negative space, and just wanted to make sure that I need to yeah, I needed to do that. I needed to be a little bit less. So if you end up with too big of a space. Did you see it? Do you see it? It's getting bigger. There it is. And I don't notice it quite and you'll see them when I notice I was like, Oh, no. Because it's spread so slowly, Wham O. What a way, too. I drop another water spot. That's what I do. So right next to that one, I drop another water spot, and I kind of play off and I realize that I'm going to make these into trees. And so that's why I put the second water drop. Should I have done a third probably because I prefer things in thirds rather than twos. But I'm letting the water do its thing, and I wanted to show you as it spread out and what we end up with. So that's what we end up with. I'm going to take my rigor, and I'm going to add a trunk, and I'm going to kind of let that trunk bleed into that tree that's already kind of wet. And so that helps just diffuse everything and kind of gives the branches a chance to give some coloration, as well. That's how I work those trees. And so I will add a little bit more color in there, which you could technically leave it like this. It's kind of like I don't know, kind of a ghost tree, if you will. It's definitely a different kind of look. But I'm just slowly adding branches with this really tiny rigger. It doesn't hold a lot of paint. So I'm just going back and forth and having to, you know, re dip, grab some more paint, grab some more water, and just kind of have this mix, dance of enough paint on my brush to get what I'm even looking for. And I'm not sure the proportion, the perspective the sizing is right on these. I probably should have gone a little maybe a little more sturdy with my trunks, since we're kind of I feel like it's closer up than that I'm showing it as to be. That's okay. Again, this is all play and just practice and trying to just adapt to things quickly on the fly, right? And I feel like that's a big part of my art, especially since my pieces aren't necessarily, you know, three to four to five hour pieces or they're not, you know, weeks and weeks of work put into them. They're just these quick intuitive. Fast, you know, on your feet, kind of adapting as you go pieces. And I love that. I enjoy that instant gratification. I don't think working on pieces for hours and hours, the tiny detail, you know, days and days on end would be as satisfying to me as these style that I do are. And maybe down the road, maybe I'll enjoy that more, and maybe I'll adapt. And maybe that will be my thing. But for now, I love these kind of quick and loose. Mythical, fairy tealish story tale, storybook sort of feeling pieces. And I think they're a fun escape from reality. I think they're great, and they're therapeutic. I find that they just really help me kind of let go in life. You know, I already have a lot of things that kind of are not flowing as easy. So, We're going to dry those trees, and we're going to dry everything, and we can add our birds. And at that point, after we add our birds, we can kind of re evaluate if we want to enhance those lollipop trees or leave them as is, kind of up to you, what you decide to do. Do I love mine? Not really, necessarily, but I did want to share how the adapting part took place on this piece, and I wanted to, I guess, kind of see what you thought. They are a little round for me, I like my old school style lollipop trees, and I did add a few more birds on this one. So also, that was kind of fun and different. I'm liking the light on this one, but my trees do kind of look like they're sitting on top, and I'm not sure I'm a big fan of that. So let's add a little bit of splatter to kind of mix this up a little bit. Maybe that will help. Taking my round size zero, which is a little too small for splatters. But I thought we'd add a little bit there. And let's go ahead and get the tape off this and see what we think and see why this ended up as a bonus and didn't stay in the original class project section. I think that exploring, you know, making your errors turn into, you know, learning experiences is the way to go. So If you try some water dropped trees. I'd love to see them in the class project section. If you skip this, I completely understand as well, but I think it would be fun to see your water dropped trees or even if you don't make the water drop trees, just to see how your colors work together. All right, we will see you in the last class, very soon here. 14. Final Thoughts & How to Post: And we did it. Congratulations. I'm so proud of you. These are so much fun. I love painting these loose landscapes. I love playing with the different colors. Even if we did stick with the same composition. I think it's really fun, and it's really neat to see all the different variations that you can get by simply playing with color. I can't stress that enough, right? Different brushes, different different colors. I do highly recommend sticking with the same cotton paper, the 100% cotton paper. But gee, just by changing up these colors, you just can change the mood of an entire piece. And also, I'd love to hear in the discussions, which color was your favorite. Which one was your favorite? Which one was your favorite of mine, and then which one was your favorite of yours? Which color mixes did you enjoy painting with the most? I'm super curious. I'd love for you to post them in the projects section. So I will tell you about how to do that here in a minute after we look at these colors because I think there's so much fun, especially seeing them all lined up in a little rainbow like that. It was just a fun little project, and I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did. Even with my two errors. I still had a lot of fun. So I'd love for you to take a picture of your project and post it in the projects and resources. You click on the image and you can upload the image and you can write a little description, and then you just publish it. It really really is quite easy. You can slow this down and pause it. I'll also add a little picture of this in the resource section under to the resources. And I'd love also if you wanted to leave a review, it really helps helps me improve. And that's where I was saying, if you have a question, if you have a comment, you want to start a discussion about anything at all, feel free to reach out to me. I welcome all and any of that. So I thank you so much for joining me, and I can't wait to see you next time. Bye for now.