Paint Realistic Terra Cotta with Watercolor

1. Introduction: My name is Jessica, and I am an artist in Santa Fe, New Mexico, where terra cotta clay is just everywhere. I'm also a gardener and a sketcher. And so I have drawn and painted so many terra cotta pots and explored the color variations in the clay and had so much fun that I want to share some of that fund with you. In this class, you can hardly go into a garden or garden center anywhere and not encounter materia cotta pot. They're wonderful. They're useful. They're beautiful. The color range is amazing in their everywhere in my last skills, your class about drawing and sketching simple spot illustrations. You might remember that we talked about what a wonderful role spot illustrations play in sketch booking to illustrate the stories were trying to tell, and we also talked about some images being iconic, so they carry with them a whole lot of ideas and associations that make them, you know, pictures that are worth more than 1000 words because they have so much to say. The terra cotta pot is an icon. It's unbelievable. It's eight stands for growth and for spring and for gardening and for flowers and for seed planting. And, uh, would you might wish for. I mean, it just carries wonderful, um, baggage, if you will, of goodness and rebirth and newness. And we love it. Since I first started this sketch booking habit back in 2003 or so, and I was working in molds, kina sketchbooks and the mediums your media could use were really limited. But whatever I was using, I used terra cotta pots as spot illustrations. These right here, done in watercolor pencil and pastel, used with a cut of stencil that I cut myself. Um, I started teaching sketch booking in 2006 online, and one of my most popular lessons was the creation of a garden that was a container garden because it was all terra cotta pots to some of the spots were very simple that I've used over the years in my sketchbook like thes fantasy flowers. They're not really flowers there fantasy flowers, but they're real pots. And so I used these in a lot of different pages to represent a lot of different things. And so your your pots spot illustrations can be really simple where they can be more elaborate. This is something I sketched in a garden and an herb firm in Fredericksburg, Texas. Andi, I was I was there in December and I thought that the garden would be not very schedule, not very attractive, but I was very surprised because all of the pots were there and all of the empty containers , and there was a whole story about that winter garden that would never have been told during the spring or the summer. The sketch is also from there, and, uh, this'll was a still life that I did not arrange with a lot of terra cotta pots sitting around a birdbath with, of all things, the big cactus pad in it, sort of the opposite of the water that should have been there, right? Very interesting, though in the pots bring the color and the brightness and a lot of the story. Sometimes I use terra cotta pots in a riel serious art way. This was this was still a sketchbook page, but it was about turning over a new leaf, and it's just turned into a painting in my sketchbook, which is something that I do, and I run a big Facebook group about doing is final our final paintings in book form in sketchbooks. And so this is like that. So we're going to learn how to draw in how to paint wonderful terra cotta pots, and our project is going to be to create a whole sketchbook spread of a lot of pot spots, everything that you can think of to do with the terra cotta pot you can put on this spread and posted in the project section so that we can all share are different ideas. Our supply list is the same as all of my skill share classes. I have put a PdF print out in the project section. It and the supplies are also listed in the project section. I haven't added anything new to that list this time, so you should have everything that you need on hand. So let's get started. 2. How to Draw a Terra Cotta Pot: So one of the most gardening of gardening things is a pot of flower, of hot, and the most ubiquitous of those is a terra cotta pot. Everybody loves them in the color of them is wonderful and all of that. Now you can look at a terra cotta pot from side, and you congrats very easily by drawing two parallel lines and then instead of straight, they can be straight at the edges. But instead of that, sometimes they're a little incoming there, and it gives it a little better look. So it's not really a rectangle. It's Ah, what is that? A trap is annoyed that could be and and set in from that corner of the agile little bit is a sign of the pot, and with a little practice, it's not too tricky to get them to be the same. Now, this is one point perspective. We're looking right at it from the front, so I have gone ahead and drawn my first couple pots here that are not looking straight at decide. They are looking down a little bit at an angle, which is more interesting and more common way to be looking at something anyway. And I'm gonna show you how I do them. And again instead of struggling with difficult oval idea, I just think about toilet paper room. And for those of you haven't taken my other classes, that's kind of a joke. But since we can all draw the top of ah, toilet paper roll, we have no problem with these round things. Okay, so we start with our oval, our little lines that come down and in a little bit, and then this line here is going to be not straight across. It is gonna parallel this one because we know that those lines are parallel to each other. So this one is looking around to us. This one is gonna look around to us as well. And the science will be just like they are above, But the bottom of the pot again. Well, echo that same curve that we have going on there. Okay, this and this are a little bigger because they're closer to us in this. Okay, so our point of view now is appearing kind of looking down on them. I am going to do something a little different this time. I'm going to skip the ink. I won't apologize for skipping the ink this time cause it's gonna be a fun kind of style for us to work with. But I am going to apologize for a couple of audio things and one of them a couple of people . Only a couple of people have said that I might be able to improve my audio on some of my classes. And really, it's not my audio. Have a great mike, and I don't have a great voice during about seven or eight months of the year, and it's because I have great pollen allergies, and so I do the best I can. My other choices to only only make classes for a couple months a year, and that doesn't work for me. And it won't work for you, probably either. In the other apology is about your hearing an air conditioner in the background. I have that as low as I can have that, but my studio is a greenhouse, and it's the middle of July in Santa Fe. So having the sound of the air conditioner is probably better than having the sound of me panting or or dying or something from heat exhaustion. So I'm not gonna do every lesson with I mean every part of the video with it on because it's cycling. But, um, it's just a necessary evil. So let's just make it white noise and forget about it. So I'm going to use paint this time to define my lines instead of ink, and it's kind of fun. We're using our apply heavily and lift technique, and when you do that, you create all your values, and the darkest values will end up defining the edge of the object. And this is a perfect subject to show you that, and we're going to work with some natural earth tone kind of colors. Terra cotta has a range across the board of, um, tones and yellow nous and orange nous, and you never want to go to orange. But basically you're talking about the area of a raw sienna, Burt's burnt sienna and yellow joker. So if you want to look in your water colors for relatives of those colors, you'll be all set 3. Painting Pots Dark: I have a set of ah, mission gold pants here, But you're wonderful. Find a way. You can see the brilliance of the color and they have honey in them and they they're just really great. But I'm gonna try a couple of combos for you so that you can tell the difference. And you, If you have a basic paint set, you are going to have a yellow ochre and you're gonna have a burn, Seanna, and you can just start out there. The other thing I'm going to be showing you is a light red, which is a mission gold color that I adore. It's a real warm, burnt sienna and and a really in yellow on that one. And we're going to see the difference in brightness and and ah, range of earth tone and you pick what you like. But I know that a lot of people are gonna have these. I'm just going to use these as an example of how you can brighten up your terra cotta. Um, another combo that I love too uses a Quinn quinacrine and rust and a Quinn gold as the Lightner. Also, nickel azo yellow is kind of if you took, um, yellow car and you just, like, turned the lights signs. And that's another combo that could be really, really nice. So I have my A paint chart, so I know where these colors are. I have my little water, these things, little water things and some paper tell at the side. And a key to my style of of lifted painting lifted watercolor is that we do section by section and what that does. It defines each section individually, so if you have something the same color next to something, the same color, they're going to stand out has two different planes because you painted them separately and let them dry. It's tricky. It's a really good thing. You'll see. I put a drop of water from a bottle like this in the two pans I'm gonna use. I much prefer it to misting a paint palette. It's just neater, and you're only getting wet. What you want to get wet and not making a mess by not knowing that something else got well . So I put just a drop in each of those pans in my lifting technique is already like anti traditional watercolor because It goes from dark delight instead of building up layers of washes until you get to dark and never had the patience for that. So I came up with this, and I also don't get into many watercolor societies. But that hasn't ever bothered me in my life. So it's all good. And so I'm not only going to start from a dark application of the pain in this case, I'm going to start with the darker of the two colors. So if you recall, we are using a burnt shayla and a yellow color. And so I'm not starting with Eola Walker and adding in the shading of the burnt Sienna. I'm going to go the other way around. You're going to see how this works to. I could chat while I'm doing this, but you probably rather just pay attention. So I am getting paint and a milk consistency. Not cream, not skim milk, not water, but enough color that we have like a whole milk consistency. And also, you know, the pain that I use. I always use really high end watercolor, and I always recommend that students go as high end as they can because if you want to learn to use watercolor, you have to know what watercolor does. And you're not gonna know what watercolor does if you using cheap paint with, uh, with no flow and with very little pigment. And unfortunately, that is the truth of most student grade. There are a couple that I really like that I feel are good enough. And ah, that's Academy by Graham Barker and the, um Cottman by Windsor Newton. So what I've done here, So I have a pretty, pretty heavy application of faint on there now. I'm going back in. I'm cleaning my brush. I'm damping it off on a paper tell, and I'm gonna come back in and move my paint. This is so great with granulated paints. I really, really like it. Daniel Smith has a lot of granulated paints, but Daniel Smith dries up so fast in my environment, this just drives me nuts. So I use a lot of honey based pains. The mission is that Ingraham is that, uh, there are a couple other ones. Okay, so what do I have now? I have defined this whole led not lead, but collar of this pot and I'm gonna let that dry. Okay, that's pretty dry. It doesn't take very long here. And, um, I'm gonna pick up. The paint is still wet. That's another nice thing about honey based paints. Is that the re wet so easily And they stay wet this time. I'm going this direction. I'm painting this section of the biggest section of the pot here, and I'm going this direction instead of Thea Crosswise way that I did color just because it fits the form a little better. So I'm doing the same thing again. I have deep color turned sideways in order to make sure that I take care of that line at the bottom Nicely. These air studio tricks that aren't worth their weight in gold. When you sit in one position and you try to accurately draw a line or apply paint in every direction from the one position, you're just asking for trouble. Your hand doesn't want to contort, and it's going to get even with you if you make it do that. So I have the pain on here and it's kind of going right direction. I am again gonna clean my brush, and I'm going to go back with a damp brush. It's not right, it's just stamp. And I'm going to start to pick some of this up. Now I'm picking less up is I get over here because my highlight area, the light is going to be coming from just in this area, mostly. So I want to pick the most up from there and allow some dirt to stay over to the right and also toward the rim and the bottle. I'm turning the book to do just a little blending as I go. And you know, this isn't something you can do instantly. It's gonna be a lot bigger mess for you when you first start out. But I've been doing it a really long time, and it is really just about doing it in nudging it in, looking for nuances. And I want a little more is this is still wet. It wasn't I couldn't get away with us. I want a little more shadow over here and I want a little softer blender there, and I'm just letting you see this whole thing so you can tell that you can make watercolor do a lot of lovely things, but you gotta know when to get out. Now I'm starting to lose a shine here. It's starting to get a little bit dry. I'm going to stop and I'm gonna let this dry. 4. Painting Pots Dark Pt2: So while my first pot was drying, I went, I had, and I tried a couple of other colors on the other two, just so I'd be able to show you at the base color. I put the dark on first, and this one is a mission gold color called Light Red. And it's really read Burnt Sienna. Kind of that. You can see. It's a lot hotter, a lot warmer over color. And then over here I have Quinn, Russ, quinacrine and rust, and I'm not sure what the brand is. I have it in one of my little glass pallets, but it is, um, Ingraham. Probably. Anyway, they're all dry now, and it's time to show you how we go about the highlighting or the warming part of this. So I'm putting another drop into my yellow joker for our 1st 1 and I'm lighter than the coverage before, especially Yellow Worker. You have to be careful because it's opaque more than most watercolors, and so we want a kind of a light wash of that, maybe, like watery. And then when I come over here, I am just gonna put that little wash later, right over the top and right away you see its rapacity. We're not gonna leave it like that, though. We are gonna do our thing and and, uh, cleaner brush, damp it off and come back and pick that up. Look at how beautiful that IHS if that golden looking got now to your terra cotta, Now it's wet. Uh, until when it dries is going to be a little less, Chloe, but it's pretty glowy, and so I'm gonna try it on the bottom here. I ordinarily would wait for this to be totally dry, but I left a dry edge there, so I should be okay. So, again, going in and getting a light little wash of the yoga, You know, you can see it. I think it's a little more on camera. I don't want too much capacity. And I'm gonna come over here and I'm just gonna wash over the whole saying that dried and I'm adding all kinds of light here. And especially when I go and pick that back. Now we have just a lovely glo honor terra cotta and too much right there. I'm gonna have to take a little dot of burnt sienna back in their signal. Life is never perfect. So if you freak out every time something goes goofy and watercolor, you're gonna do a lot of freaking out and just get used to a little ways to help it out. And I don't want that line to be so efficacy. See what I mean? There. I gotta get a little more now and just make it sit just right there. And I might do that again after this drives or even by the end of the time that we put things on here on the other two because I picked up too much. I hit that with the light brush and bang, I got a highlight that I don't want Okay, I on my light red I'm gonna use We're really in a really and I don't know you say yellow. It's kind of a light, your Loker. And again, it has some opacity. And so you've got to be careful with it. And I am just got a watery kind of ah rendition there, and I'm gonna rinse my brush, make sure it's just damp. And this is the number two a round brush that I'm doing the blending wrath and I'm using this side of it. So it's more brushy and not really the point wasn't right enough there. I want some more blend. I got my brush, Little damper, and then I don't really want to look like their stripes up there, okay? And I'm gonna pick ups a little bit for the rim and go. I'm not covering the whole thing. That's trying because this Stearns gill is could be too much in a big, fat hurry. But it's going to give us a nice orangey look to this pot. Like I said, you don't want to go to orange. But some terra cotta parts parts are orange er than others. And so this one looks like turned out like a kind of an old one, some age to it. And this one is like, newer and or injure and brighter, and you can go through all the pain. You haven't find combos to combine and see what kind of richness you can get. So for the Quinn rust, I am going to go over with Quinn gold. And that again, I think, is an M. Graham. But many manufacturers make both of those colors, and you don't have to have them both in the same manufacturer. You have to have him at all. But if you have them and you want to try this experiment, it's a fun experiment, okay? And a ticket back up. Well, see, that's nice. That's a no sonny version of this. Like turning the lights on in there. And so this just goes to show you that there is a lot of variety in terra cotta clay and a lot of variety in wire color, earth tone paints by manufacturer and even some variety within the same manufacturer. And by putting your dark on first and lifting your highlights and then doing an over glaze of a brighter color, you come up with a pretty complex look here, and I'm gonna pick it up so you can see it better than closer and make a comparison. So I don't know if your taste would run to the darker over here or the redder or the more yellowish on the right. I don't really have a favorite because I just combined terra cotta colors and all my spreads. Now the inside of the pot is the same clay as the outside, but sometimes you just keep it a little darker because it's a little bit shaded from the front side. You just assume the front side gets a little bit more light. So I have my burnt sienna here, and I we don't see enough of the top of this one to see if there was any dirt in it at all . So I'm not going to come back with yellow on this one. But I am going to use my pickup method to give it a little light in the middle there, the corners would usually stay in shadow, and the light up here would be darker than as the pot goes down, because this would be casting a shadow on it. So I'm just gonna do a little bit tweaking to make this tiny bit more realistic, to become a little more shadow here and down here and in here. And when I just poke with the with the point of the brush there, I'm just I'm tweaking, trying not to move pain, but not to move it much. And I'm happy with that. And then in some parts, if you are seeing into it a little more, you will see dirt. And so I'm going to grab my pencil here, and that would be another like it doesn't have to be perfect. It could be wiggly, but another line like this one. So this is my dirt here, and this is gonna be my back edge of my pie. And this one. I'm gonna have the dirt go across here. You can also have a pile of dirt. Come right up. Like that to me. Makes a cute picture too. But anyway, so after painting my room, I'm going to get a deeper brown and go in and paint the dirt. I'm gonna do the two things separately and let them dry. I'm not going toe under paint the dirt like some people would do the clay color on this whole area and then over paint the dirt. I suppose it could work, but I want the color difference to be more obvious. And so I'm not going to have the clay colors showing through the dirt. So here's how it looks with the back edge painted in, and ah, not much highlight. I just wanted to leave it plain, and I'm not now going to go in with a darker brown for dirt, and you could make that out of anything I usually use. See Pia, because it is a dark brown and it's got kind of a black to it. And that's kind of how soil is if you're using good soil in your pot. So I'm putting a drop in the sea via water. And again, I'm just going to get a milky consistency. Just getting enough color happening on the brush. Make it nice and dark and you're going here. Paint my dirt, and that makes it front edge. Stand out nicely, too, and that is an oval within the oval. You can tell that now, right? We had our over we drew for the top in this. Now creates another oval inside of that in the c p. A. Is, it lifts nicely, too, so that it doesn't just look like a black hole. It looks like actual dirt in there, and I'm using the point of the brush to smooth that definition line of the of the front of the pot. Now, on the Quinn hot over here, I'm gonna use that same CPO for my dirt. I did want to point out that when you use quinacrine in rust and quinacrine and gold, it could go on very streaky, you know, in this part of it, and you're going Oh, my God, what am I going to do with that? So when you first go on, wash your brush and you're going to come back with a damp brush, have it be a little more damp. In that way, when you go into full with it, you're going to start to float that pigment, and it's gonna start to even itself out. Otherwise, it looks to show brushstrokes. But just keep go. Don't go back with what with a wet brush. More than once, you next to the next time, go back with your regular damp. But that first time, if it's a little bit wetter, you're gonna have more luck in smoothing that pink color out. But the other thing to remember is that terra cotta pots a rustic and there's always some kind of texture going on, and it's always pretty interesting 5. Add a Plant: So I have my dirt. I have my pot. I need what I need. A plant. Or so that's what usually goes into these, and you can. You can be realistic because these pots air realistic where you can be playful and combined the two styles. It's all good. Um, I was just going to point out how we might just do our leaves intensive as well and not use ink. You remember from our other spot class, we knew how to do the branches of leaves. But I want to show you how we can define the leaf with paint and no ink. But unless you're really, really accomplished, you do not want to be using a paintbrush to draw those two stems. Or maybe you do, but you might not end up too happy. So this is a permanent. It zig greater, and they've just continued most of the colors. It's a great permanent marker, not its pigment. It's not after, huh? That you could use a Sharpie or Pippen. It's in color, anything but I'm going to take care of that issue about how my gonna make that line right. By using this instead, then I'm gonna paint my leaves in my lifting method that's going to define their edges. So no need for ink. I'm back with my mission paints again. I had put them Raymond a minute to go to get out of the way, but and I love the greens that I have here, but I am going to work this time with hookers because hookers has a wonderful, um, ability to lift in, therefore, define, which is what we're trying to do here. Still got my number to brush. Gonna be using it more delicately, more use of the tip. And again, I'm not going to use a real thick paint, but but one was enough to have some major color. If you have real thick paint and you're not going to stay in the lines, and if you have real thin paint, you're not gonna have enough color to make this definition. But I'm just gonna paint my leaf shapes. Some people would do this with a single stroke, but I want more definition, and you can go to quite a few of them cause they're away from each other. Well, this one really isn't something again trouble, But what can I say, all right, and so that's on there nicely. And then I'm gonna wash my brush and damp it off and pick up highlight and but picking up highlight in the middle of the leaf. The other thing I'm doing is defining the edge of the leaf. See, that was a little light there for defining, because when I went to pick it up, there wasn't that much difference. So it's all a feeling, and the other thing is, it's just my environment here dries really fast. And you probably if you live in a few more human place, you could pick up more easily. Let's see, we don't have to use any ink on those, either. Sometimes that's a really big relief. If you have a subject that this can work on this way, you be because you don't have to deal with whether the incline is gonna blob or whether it isn't. But you know it doesn't have to just be flowers or leaves in a terra cotta pots 6. Dark Pot Color Reference: This is a scan of the three pots that repainted so far. And I did this so that it would be they would be larger for you to see the nuances of the color change. And also, I wanted to note for you, uh, what colors were used on these particular pots. So are the number one will be what the base coat was. The first color I put down in number two will be the one we put over it. And so on are pot number one over here. Our number one coat was burnt Sienna in our number two coat over top Waas yellow. Okay. And both of these were Mission Gold brand. Now, I tell you that because you will find that every manufacturer have a little difference in there Verne, CNN and Yellow Ocher. Even though their common colors that are most paint sense, you'll see a big range of different. So this was what happened with the two of them. Admission gold. Our middle pot was also the base coat was a mission gold color, and it's called white red. A red light can't remember right now, but you'll get it. But might also be spelled L A T. That I can't remember that either In our second layer was painted with, Really? And and I don't even know how to spell it. Uh, yellow, but it's kind of Ah, you know, ogre lightened up of it. And both of these again were mission gold. Okay, there are third pot was done with the corn Akron on colors. And I believe that the brand was Ingraham. Um, I pal. It'd them without a color charts. And so that's why I don't know, but again, l number of manufacturers make both of these colors on. Um, you confined them easily and see what they do. Okay, so number one layer on this was Quinn rust and the overcoat on this it was Quinn gold. And in this view, you're able to see up close and personal. The differences, some in Israel interesting, more yellow. And this is more rusty. And this is definitely more red. Even a an orange cast to it in our leaves were hookers grand, and, uh, that was also mission. So that was our first practice run 7. Painting Pots Light: Now, on this next page, I drew three more pots so that we could just play. And this time I did think them so that we don't have to take that into consideration when we were gonna apply paint and I inked him pretty sloppily. So again is just play time. We just want to see what a little lighter set of colors might dio. And so this time we're going to reverse what we were doing. And we're gonna put the lighter color on first on this first pot here. And, um, I switched paints just so that you can see the difference in, um, look at this burnt sienna and look at this barren Sana. You see, this one is so much later. This is a Cotman render Newton Cotman. It's ah, student grade. So we're gonna find out what happens if we put Theo Loker on first. And then we do a little shading, if you will, with the burnt sienna. So I'm putting a drop of water in each of those. I'm gonna grab my same number to brush and dip it in some water and work on the pain. Get a milk consistency. This again this is your broker. So this time we're going on first with this nice and what? Okay. And I'm gonna do our thing. I'm gonna come back and pick it up, so it's a little more interesting. I'm making sure the whole thing is wet. And there's a reason for that. Ranching, blotting and coming back to pick up were highlighted values. It was in the side of the brush again. Like, could it be for this works out pretty well when you get over here. Because usually if you really look at the shadow on one of these, there will be this kind of a little turn. There is because of the color sticking out a little bit so still that still red and there got in here, and you and you could find parts of the garden center that air this color to say Good. Nick, just stay there if you want to, but I don't want to. So I am going to work in while still wet, going to get a little bit of my, um, burnt sienna here and dab Gonna get the pain. And I'm dabbing on a paper towel here because I don't want a bunch. I don't want too much. And I'm gonna run right along our shadow areas without Verne Tiana and our shadow areas around both sides under the rim and along about him. Now I'm gonna get the paint off my brush. You never come back in and play. And we were playing on that first run over there. This just given us a whole different look, but it's still all kind of wet, so I'm not in too much trouble yet. And I just complained that shadow in from that side of it just a touch more. And sometimes I block my brush and I don't wash it off. This is like if you want something real subtle to go on, like right now, I was just in here, and I just wanted to move that shadow out. But I didn't want to create a big, hard line or a big difference. Um, I might not rinse my brush and just let the color kind of wear off. And it doesn't make such a harsh difference that way because there is still a little tiny bit of color in the brush. So you get that really nice. Um, graduated shading while we wait for that one too dry. We're gonna try something even trickier on the next one. And that is I'm gonna put the shading in first by using a watercolor pencil. It's so I have Ah, this is a car in dosh and it is called Russett or sanguine and Ah, and that is a burn Shana relative. What I'm going to do is I'm gonna put that color in dry on this pot and I'm not going to be very heavy handed because heavy handed makes in really good watercolor pencil heavy handed mix for, ah whole bunch of paint floating around once you with this. And we don't really want that because we want control over what we're doing. Or at least we want to think we have control over what we're doing. But what I just did with his pencil, as you can tell, I did what I did later here with the paint I was working wet into wet with the burnt Sienna into the yellow Joker. This is going to be interesting here because instead of wedding this with water, water, brush or whatever, I am going to wet it with a wash of the old poker. So I'm going to grab this little glass palette here, has its space in it just so that I can make sure that when I say wash, I mean wash and I don't have to think of a paint. I want the color from the old poker, But I'm also thinking I'm using the, um, the wash of your Loker as I would use a water brush to activate a watercolor pencil. So I'm not sure what will happen, but I kind of have done stuff like this before. Something not too worried about it either. I'm going to start in the empty space in the middle so that I make sure I get this yellow ocher color going on. And then I'm gonna let go in two. Where my burnt sienna watercolor pencil iss and you see it melting there. And this is a lot like working went into web. There is a pretty big difference between the personality of a watercolor pencil and the personality of watercolor. The watercolor pencil is not as persnickety about making a hard edge or making a spot where you don't want it. Um, we've been yet ID with you before and you saw that there was just more control to the pigments. A little heavier. Ah, grain. It's floating in a different binder. It's not a gum Arabic binder. And so your control is actually better. You still have lift. Well, it's what? Later? You don't have a much You have a little later. I'm going to make that just brighter right there. There we go. We got a whole different, more of the sunset. Kind of terra cotta. Look, I mean, I know this is drying and I need to get out of here, so just being a little bit of a perfectionist now, I'm a 8. Painting Pots Light Pt2: because repetition is 9/10 of the law. That's not how that goes. And I do know that I'm gonna do the collars in front of you to even though it's a repeat performance, it's good to see it happen again. It's so fun to teach watercolor live our live on camera because you don't know what is gonna happen. I don't care how many years you work with this media. There is always that fun and scary aspect of the medium that it does have a mind of its own . It's sort of like a my dogs air Siberian huskies and we take him to obedience school and they flunk because, Bill, you know all the other dogs will be sitting and looking at the trainer and my daughter be sitting, which will be facing the other way, and they just they have a way of surprising you because they have a mind of their own. And I think I have those dogs because of the watercolorist, and the behavior is just really a lot the same. You just don't know they're just can be a quirky thing. That happens and you go, Oh my gosh! And it's often it's running, but most of the time there's a wonderful spontaneity to that. Um, that other paint doesn't have other paint. You put it down in, it sort of sits there and does what you want. Like some dogs air like that. You know, I meet other dogs that are trained, and I Wow, what is that? That obedience thing that stay where you tell him to do what you want. Todo It just doesn't happen at my house. So again, I went in, went and rut with my second color. I'm still fooling around with it because I want a little more over here that can Onley fool around with it for so long before I'm gonna be in trouble. So I'm going to stop. No. Your shadow area on your collar is gonna pretty much match the shadow area under here. It's a little different cause it's on a different edge. A different plane, You know, this is sticking out further. Uh, this way. Done. The bottom. Yes. Seem getting in trouble here because I let it go out there too far. But I'm doing this right in front of you because what's gonna happen to me is gonna happen to you, and you may as well see where you could do about it. And I'm gonna stop. No, I'm not. I want a tiny bit of the the reddish color and that side, Teoh. I'm now taking the rush worry back and barely touching with the tip so that I don't make a lot of trouble. Anyway, like that, I'm going to stop on that one. And then I'm gonna grab this pencil, and I'm going to put the shading where I want it on this again. Light, she don't lead to much color down and a little bit along top a little bit along with the bottom here and most of it over here. And now I'm gonna use that. You'll Loker wash to do the wedding again, starting in the middle where the pencil is not and working into the pencil to melt it when she melted it. You have the whole idea going on that you have over here, but a little more controllable. I'm just gonna quit there, and I'm going back here and noticing. See what the little Diggins did to me. Now that is just a tricky wicket to try. I have a brush is barely damp. And I am just basically poking at it with the tip so that I don't make a real Web spot that's gonna move Pigment make trouble for me. So the the effect this one is very similar, but this one with the pencil, uh, I was going to say it looks lighter, but actually, I'm not sure that's true. I like both of them. No. And for our insides were gonna be kind of a deeper version of the same thing. So I'm gonna go in with the the deeper younker and be adding the little shadow area from the burnt Sienna, just just in the corners and just along the bottom there, where the pot goes in and the shadows going to dip with it. You're never gonna look a terror kind of pop the same again area. I like that. Okay. And so on this one, I have to add that dry for So here is just a little furthering for the shadow going down and a little more on the two corners here. And then I'm not going to use this light of a wash to activate that. I'm going to use a little deeper wash of the of the longer so that we keep the backside darker and it's got the whole thing. Well, now and they don't really get to light. I still want it darker than the bottom. But I wanted a little white later off here. Then it is as it goes down into the pot. Okay, so that's those two for this one. We're just gonna just do a sloppy, uh, just blob on color thing. Like people like to dio, um, people will tell you that I'm congenitally unable to do loose, and they're right. I can do it. I don't end up liking it for myself. But this will be a real experiment for me to fool around that with you looking on because it is not my forte. 9. Light Pot Color Reference: So here's our scam of our lighter, okra based pots and again as a reminder for you. The 1st 2 are really, really similar. Uh, what was different was the shading on. And you can tell the relationship between the burnt sienna and the yellow car is just a little bit different. That's a little smoother in the water color and a little rougher in the colored pencil. Okay, this is Cotman Brand that's a student brand by Windsor Newton, and anybody can afford it. And I love that little box of 12 that's just, like goes in my pocket when nothing else can. And I don't want to think about anything. And so we have the yellow Oakar and we painted that on first. And then while it was wet, what's called a wet on wet technique, we added in our burnt sienna around our shading areas and let it blend. We played with it ad nauseum with the point of our brush to get their asses much blunders. We wanted as much lifted highlight as we wanted. So burn Sana and, uh, here we had actually the Cotman, you know, Oakar was second and the first thing that we did, we applied a, uh, What color was that again? It was a russet wire colored pencil that should have been to They're not really watercolor , you know, their water soluble. But it's easier to say watercolor. The reason they're not watercolors. They they are not based on a a gum Arabic binder, different binder. And that's where they move separately or differently on the page. So, uh, we person put that down dry in our shadow areas. And then we came in with a young poker wash to do to be our wedding agent for the water soluble pencil. And then we did our blending. Now an option to that approach would be to use a pencil for your yellow crus well, and you would be putting that down first dry. Then you would be putting You're burnt sienna down dry, just like we did over the top of the paint, and then you'd blend with a plain water brush. That's a look that's very similar to this, uh, more controllable because the Roker is a pencil and not, um, not water car. So it's another experiment for you to try, and this again was a Cotman on the paint and the pencil was current Dash, which is my all time favorite water soluble pencils, got creamy lead and just like it's not led. Of course, it's got a creamy core, and it just goes on beautifully and it wets and just weeks up beautifully. Okay, In our third example, we used what I call pal. It'd Martin water our water color markers. Uh, pal, it'd I'll say h 20 here. So you're alcohol markers or your permanent markers will not work. But we put them on a panel it otherwise known as a little cutting board. We picked him up with the water brush and we tried to be loosened our application. This is about his looses Jessica ever gets. But it's not that I'm proud of myself. I got some hard lines going on in there, you know? And someday this one maybe come for me, Come for me is like it. You get a nightmare, but I kind of like this. So you never know 10. Terra Cotta Pot Spot Tour: what we're going to do now is really fun. We're gonna take a little tour through pages from many, many different, um, sketchbooks of mine and, uh, these air blown up pretty well. So you'll see. My neatness factor really isn't as neat as it looks from a distance. I've got some sloppy going on, but I try to hide. It is best I can, Uh, this 1st 1 is just a little garden vignette, Uh, and you'll notice three different paint colors on here. One was based on the poker. The other two were probably our second and third or our first and second on the pots that were based on the burnt Sienna. And I was probably using some hooker's green on those leaves. Two cassettes. Would I do that? Whole been yet ng of the sky and the green grass was done. Aziz, we have learned to do with that water brush in the lead of water soluble pencils. To put that in. This isn't really a pot, and it is. It's, you know, these airs all spots, so they're taken off of different pages and therefore there are parts that shouldn't be there, but this is a bowl, but it's a terracotta bowl and, ah, with the cactus in it. And again, this probably was done with the light red. I'm thinking, because if I don't even know if I went back within a yellow towns on this one, it doesn't look like it. Really? Your Loker inside for the cactus, potting soil or sand, you can have weird plants to I picked these up from I think it was a flow public it Flow magazine publication, and I was into this look at one of their illustrations and do something of my own trip. And so I loved these plants. They had They weren't in terra cotta pots, but they are now again. I got a really reddish tone going on, and so it was probably in the light red. Or there are some confections watercolors called apple, and I can't think of the other one, and they have that same thing going on a little more opacity again. Notice the inside of the pots or shaded the deeper you go in there lighter at the top. But overall there is. Are there darker than the outside of the pot? Ah, succulent that I killed I could dio I could do a whole sketchbook on succulence I have loved and killed. I don't know. I live in the desert and I have an English country garden and they're all happy. But the things I'm supposed to be able to grow here, I think I water him too much. Anyway, this terra cotta pot is obviously done with the yellow ochre base and shading with the burnt sienna. Again. The ground and the sky here were done after the middle of the painting or a sketch and done using a water brush and using the lead of watercolor pencils as a palate, and that has been shown in several workshops of mine on skill share. This was an experiment. This was all done in confections, watercolor and confections air like they look like a hobby. Paint they're not. They're artists grade, but they're marketed by scrapbooking kind of companies. And so there were Do you have to buy a set and it's hard to get a replacement, Pan Baba blah. But what is really cool when I love about them is their as if watercolor and gua sh had a baby, so they have more opacity than watercolor. This is from the experimentation sketchbook and turned out pretty horribly. But I had these pencils that I got, um, forget who made them. But the lead is several different colors. And so the more that you used the colored pencil, the more color, different color, Surely down. And I didn't I didn't like it. I was trying to fix it or something. And so I used an acrylic paint 10 to do some outlining. I think the whole thing turned out weird. The brand is Kolinahr, and they're called Tri Tone, and this is dry. I didn't do anything to you. I didn't paint over on this one. I painted over them with watercolor, and I just didn't work out very well here. I didn't paint over them at all. I left him really rough. It's way too grainy of a look for me, but it might appeal to some people. And it's a weird a fact that you can get with those pencils because all of the colors that you see her in the same lead as you turn the pencil of color changes. This was a test of that nomad, uh, travel palette thing. Everybody saw it. It was so darn cute. Everybody bought it. The pain itself just doesn't have any punch at all. It's sort of like it's a peerless watercolors wannabe. By that, I mean, you know, a die paint that is delivered in a peerless is delivered on a piece of paper that could be wet, and the pain can be picked up. Um, this comes in this wonderful little palates. Elongated palette. Now, while these little wings come out and it's so much fun, but the pain is awful, and you can see that here, um, the pot was done with what we're used to with a yellow car and burnt sienna, but it's very dead. Doesn't lift. Well, it's cute container. I wish you could refill it with something. Here's me being really sloppy. I have to love. This is probably the only thing I ever drew that was really sloppy. And I liked it. So I was testing, drawing with a black color race pencil and then just loose watercolor over it. And this was really loose watercolor. And, you know, I went Wow. Okay, it has an appeal. Is just like it's not me. So I'm not sure what to think about it. That's why all the pencil is left to didn't even clean it up. This is I got a big pen. Original orange barrel. I learned about it by a gal named many Small who has wonderful YouTube videos. But over in Europe, there just a dime a dozen and they're starting to be more prevalent in the US, But they weren't. You had to order box of 10 from England, and it's a big stick pin. But the ink, the point is fine in the ink is waterproof. And so you can do the real scribbling, sketching, um, without fear, smearing our you know, it dries really quickly and so on. Um, I am just totally unsure about the pot color. And I'm thinking that instead of starting with yellow Oakar, I actually started with raw sienna. That's another color I use, but only one of pots gonna have a real brown, earthy cast that is dirt by the shovel. It's not my best dirt, and so it looks a little more like maybe the dog left it, but that isn't what it is. Just so you know, this one watercolor marker and big 10 and pencil. Um, and sloppy, This one I don't like very much. But it does have interesting heard lines and and color blend non blend things. This had ah, ogre base in a I think it was both a raw sienna and a red lighter light. Read the reddish, um, color toe. Wake up the raw sienna that I was using Teoh to, uh, shade the yellow okra. This is Ah, big pin two and a watercolor brush and watercolor markers. This is like we just did, uh, but it was inked with a big pin and really scribbling, and so was the writing. I can't like it, but, you know, I don't know, maybe grow on me. This one. I don't remember. It looks like it is probably a combination of water soluble pencil and confections. Watercolor. There looks Quashie. The pot has lots and lots of texture, which tells me that it could well have been the confections water card, because they have lots of texture. I love that about them. This was a more serious page. Um, and it wasn't serious and subject that I just I loved how I was cleaning my garden. And in one area, Some terra cotta things were just laying together, just like they look here. And they were very different colors of terra cotta. The bird and the flower were Mexican sculptures that were done in a really dull, very, very dull burnt sienna and very little high lining. So you can see I went in with very little yellow brightening agents the pot. I wanted to stand out against that. So I based the pot on the yellow poker with the shading from the other colors. This is a full page and, you know, one of my sketchbooks you can stack the pots to and, um and that's a fun thing to do. The trick is that you draw the most inside pot first. No matter if you're going up or down the most this case, it would be the one that's sitting on the ground and you drop the whole thing, and then you draw the 2nd 1 over top of it, and you erase the part of the 1st 1 that you wouldn't see and you build a whole stack that way, and then you don't go nuts trying to figure out, you know, uh, make sure you erase the first the part you don't see of the 1st 1 before you put the 3rd 1 on, then you're lost. But anyway, that's how you make a stack of these. You can make him right side up, or the way they are here. Upside down. These were some fancy terra cotta pots down at a bed and breakfast in Tubac, Arizona, and I was staying there and I was sketching on the porch looking at the garden. And this isn't really the way the three dimensional leaves looked on the pots. It's sort of the way I faked it for interest, and I wanted it to be sticking out of the frame, which meant that it couldn't be too flat, either. This is mostly burnt sienna. It's lifted, not very much yellows attitude because they were again. It was Mexican terra cotta, and it was very deep in color and again from the same garden. This was a much looser sketch of another couple pots that seem milk and ah, the one on the right was sitting on some yellow ocher rock, which was really neat and in. In hindsight, I'm thinking that I should probably have added. Some yellow occur to make that blend, but now it's not too late. But I probably wouldn't go back and do it again. This is really loose for me, so that completes our slideshow of my my spots with pots, and it's time to move on to our project. 11. Our Project: now, when I'm making my classes and making my lesson pages, I don't necessarily use them for my final project page because I don't always have what I want to have it in the right place. But I'm showing you my project page that I did on terror kind of pots because I want to show you how much there is that you can dio now. It happened that I used ink on this page, but you hardly can tell because the paint has done a sing over the top of it. But the point being the terror kind of parts is so useful for everything and so fun, and it doesn't have to be just plants or flowers that you put in them. And I saw something in a gardening book and I don't know. It's a big pair in a terra cotta pot, and I thought I like that. So I did it. A lot of times. You stick your tools in a terra cotta pot. These are very, very special rocks in my life. They're called Sunshine Stones, and they came from a stone yard in Santa Fe that's long gone, but they have all kinds of earth tones and reds in them. And I use, um I could never replace him. And I know it's so I use them over and over again and fountains and I clean the salt off of them every winter and use him again. Um, pots don't have toe always just be sitting somewhere like on a shelf. These these parts up here are the straightforward ones we were looking right at. Um, I have seed packs in this one, and there's actually a flower here. Some matchsticks come to light a candle, have a candle sitting in women. That is really kind of a cool, decorative thing. You can dio and, of course, taken hang ah, in to back Arizonans. They're awesome, like gateway thing to one of the shopping areas, and it has a bunch of these hung upside down as bells. So there's another idea. I haven't tried that in my life, but I have seen it. There are a lot. Um, two years ago, I think it was some. Robbins made a nest in one of my terra cotta pots, and so I remembered that, and I put a bird's nest in this one. They said this one on a chair. I looked chairs, love the paint chairs and this over here I just made a stack and for for reasons of layout . I had some plants coming up through the bottom for reasons of lay out reasons off. I really like unusual thinking, you know, in parts don't grow out of that, and usually so I thought I would make them do that's so hopefully this page shows you that knowing how to draw on Tanna Terra cotta pot, you got a lot of miles that you can use in your sketchbook in your garden sketchbook. And it's always really pretty. And remember that orange and blue are compliments, and so using blew through. Terra cotta is using a complementary color scheme, and that's why you get a lot of a lot of brightness in a lot of excitement. Visual excitement's. The other thing is that some of our terra cotta pots we were making them reddish and ah, red is red and green are compliments, so you can get a whole lot of visual brilliance going on on your project page. So the project is to make it just really simplistic, taken entire spread of your sketchbook and make it totally based on terra cotta pot spots. Do anything that comes to you. It could just be fun. It can be stupid. I mean, you could put a toilet paper roll in a terra cotta pots and say, That's where you store your extras. You know, um, that was in this stupid carry it, but it's something I might do anyway. Add your your things you learned in your other classes in your other spot illustration. Class with me at the elements like branches and leaves and plants and skill share has, I don't know how many 1,000,000. It seems like classes on how to draw different little botanicals and plants and cactuses and and all kinds of things that could logically go in a pot. If logic is your strong point, um, you can sit them on anything that can be the straightforward ones, and you could do an entire page of them with a different thing. In every pot, you could pretend it's your pantry on your keeping. Everything you keep in pots is just a lot of ways to turn your imagination on, and I'm just really eager to see what you come up with because it's fun. And so what did you learn in this workshop? You learned how to drop pots. You learn some pretty good secrets of mine about applying watercolor and being able to tweak watercolor and being able to add a second color with control and, um, just lots of good stuff. How to draw an upside down pile of pots. It's just a lot of background info, but most of it mostly it's for fun. And so I think when you finish your and you can have all the different colors of pots to, you can have met ones that you make up. I think when you finish your project, spread your love it because it it can't not be happy. Uh, it's all about happy and so have at it. Have fun and please post what you do to project so that we can share and smile and share a smile until next time. Take care and stay well