Painting a River Scene in Watercolor

1. Introduction: Hi, and welcome to painting. A river seen in watercolor, layer is filled with all kinds of surprises. The structure has also complexity and variation in rocks, trees, leaves and branches. Water is involved. It can often be tricky to paint. It can shift in tone and color depending on the surroundings. In this class, we'll be learning how to paint all the above elements side-by-side. Learning how to combine elements of a scene together by creating soft or hard edges is crucial. It creates continuity and connectedness. This is an important feature in nature. We're interactions create a sense of harmony. But how do we make those connections by using a brush and paint? Understanding how to plan and compose your painting from a sketch is crucial in the beginning, he creates a foundation, a blueprint that allows you to focus on painting techniques and detailing. There are only two main techniques you need to know in watercolor. Wet in wet and wet on dry. Both the crucial and by the end of this class, you'll feel confident and applying them to any landscape. So join me in this class. I'm excited to get started with you to show you all the best kept secrets on painting and amazing reversing. 2. Drawing: Starting with the drawing, is one of the most important aspects of painting and making sure that you've got a good planning. And especially with this scene here where we've got quite a complex looking scene. We've got all these rocks, we've got trees in the background, but mainly the rocks. And we've got the water also just rushing down over the top of some of these rocks. It's really important to plan this out so that when you start painting, you're not thinking about all these aspects and where they fit in. The easiest thing that I always start off first is I look at the big shapes and the separation between the sky and the ground down through difficult to see the sky here that I think it's even visible. But what we can separate out is where the treeline starts or where the trees hit the ground and where the grad is. Kinda of having a look through the scene. I can almost say that it's about a third of the way through. You can see all the way in the back where those trees with the orangey, yellowy leaves off in the back, they finish off just around a third of the way through the page. So about two-thirds of the page, we basically all of these rocks and this stream of water coming through, but we've got a little bit of those trees in the background now. There's a bit of leeway here as well. You can change it up, you can lower that further down if you want to make the trees more of a, a piece in this particular scene, I'm going to try to keep it somewhat faithful to the reference photo. So I will add in that line roughly about here. Okay, so again, about a third of the way from the top of the page, I want to make sure that there's enough of those. I want to make sure that there's enough of those trees as well because you I think they just create a lot of interests with the color. Go ahead and just put in a bit of a line like that. Notice when I'm drawing as well, I'm using like the edge of the pencil and I'm holding the pencil near the end, I will actually draw a little bit darker for your benefit. Normally I draw pretty light, but just with a camera, I will draw a little bit darker so that you can see what I'm doing. So the ego can see that line roughly about a third of the way. In this case, it's actually a bit more than a third of the way, but it doesn't matter. Let's have a look now. I know that there's a whole bunch of these rocks in here. And we can start off probably by just creating some of these leaf shapes that are closer to us. So we've got a tree runs up like this. You just get that in. Just comes out of the scene like that. There we go. Just to this shape just running up like that. We've got another tree kind of running out as well. I mean, down here. There we go. It's another tree there, like a tree trunk or what? Have you got a bit of a branch coming off to the left there as well. We've got a tree also coming over here. The great thing about natural landscapes so that you can really just pick and choose what you want to include, exclude the branches and everything like that. I don't have to be perfect because trees come in all different shapes and sizes, so there's no need to overthink it at all. Although this area just kinda be an orangey mix in some greens in there as well to keep it, keep it looking interesting, but I do want to preserve some of these beautiful warm in here. I may even emphasize a bit more coolness and the water is in greenish type of color here, but I will perhaps potentially adding a little bit more blue in here. Already. In this stage of the painting, stage of the drawing, I'm thinking about different compositional aspects and thinking about how I'm going to, I'm going to follow through with the painting. So I think it's really important to spend your time with the drawing and do some of that thinking already so that you've got a bit of time later to focus on the other aspects, mainly the painting. So you can see here there's just these larger bundles of trees, foliage here in the background. Okay. I like that. You've got another tree coming out like that. Again, this is pretty simple because I don't want to make this drawing. Again. This is more of planning. Some of these trees. You can notice them. They're kinda coming in on a bit of an angle just branching over to the left. I like that sort of that feature there it's written notice not so much of an angle as I've drawn it. You've got a few more here. There's one coming up like that. Let's just get something like that in there. There's one there's a few more in the background. And look how quickly I'm drawing this in as well. I'm not spending all day trying to work this out. I'm just picking out a few trees that I like. And later on I can just add in some more. Okay, but just having a couple of them that are a little more detail does help. And I'm also creating some negative shapes for later with a bunch of these tree trunks. I think just making sure that you leave them white. And then you can add in some more colors and stuff later on or just leave them white helps contrast against the background. There's all these little twigs and things you can see. I'm just coming in from the side here. This is interesting. Again, a lot of this stuff I'm gonna be doing with the brushwork. Okay, but let's go here. Let's sort of getting some of these rocks as Iraq here. There's one here like that. I'm just spending some time planning this one out. As we get closer to the foreground or the midground really that we're looking at at the moment. Notice that the rocks just start to increase in size. The light as well seems to be coming from directly above or perhaps above to the back. So you notice there's actually the shadows cast over the front of the rocks. So you need to keep that in mind as well. Let's have a look some more rocks here. You can make them a bit more exaggerated as well, just like a trunk, a tree trunk that's fallen into the ravine and put that in quickly like that. Some more rocks and look at how they overlap as well, making sure that you've got a sense of continuity. In these rocks case. You've got just this bit here, this one joins onto this other rock here like that. And you can even just start doing a little shading. And that helps. Just, that already kinda helps you start planning. So I always like to do that. A little bit of shading Here, here. Larger rocks over on this side as well. Of course, one of the biggest rocks that we have is over here in the water. I'm gonna just draw the one behind it like this. And then you've got this larger section here and again, loosely basing it on that reference. This large one. Look at that. It's like just start off simplified down. What does It's kind of like, it's almost like an oval shape on this rectangular overly. Think that just start drawing the bit that's in the light first. It comes down and tapers down to a smaller point here. And then we've got a share shadows. The in front of this rock, there's a white, lighter colored rock here. Okay. I have not left enough room here at the bottom. But that's okay. Because because I made that tree line a little bit further down. Another rock here at the base and another one, of course here as well. Just kind of overlapping, overlapping shapes are so important because they create the illusion of depth in a painting. So you need to make sure that you have that portrayed. Here we go a little jaggedy bit then sort of shadow again from that rock because we've got the light source coming from behind. A bit of shading like that. Just to save yourself the trouble later from having to figure out what's what is in front, what's not. And you know, you can just get that in with some watercolor is pretty dark. There's a bit of texture on top of that rock, but I'm not going to bother too much with it. The main thing is get that outline of that rock in fairly accurately. Especially when you're dealing with shapes that are closest to the front. You do want to make sure that you're spending more time with the detailing. Okay, because often you'll find, if you make everything in the foreground a little bit more detailed. Again, it just helps with that depth perception. And this also does happen when we look out into scenes and we're looking out to a mountain range or something like that. You'll notice that as you move to the distance, things get more blurry and less detailed. So we need to portray that as well when we are doing our paintings if you want to maintain a sense of realism. So there's another rock or something. This one is so well, but it doesn't matter. We can always change it up a bit later. Again, some of these rocks here is really big rock and you can see there's some water and some white sort of gushing water behind there. And let's get this other rock coming out like that. This is a darker rock there. Alright. The point is, don't over think it there. Don't ever think it's just getting a shape that looks like a rock and carries over into the background like that. This big one I think is really important because that's the centerpiece of the scene and you've got all this water coming behind it as well. This can be interesting line with the water. We're going to have to leave a bit of the white on the paper so that it just looks a bit more, a little bit more realistic. So I'm going to turn out sort of pencil in roughly where the water is hard to exactly put place it. But you can see here that's maybe a bit of where the water starts rushing down. Here. Got larger rocks over on this side as well. I've been messing around with some of these rocks here. On the right-hand side. I may just quickly drop in a few more like this. We can just figure this out later on as we go. Um, no big deal. Again, just smaller ones here really helped add to this detailing and overlapping as well, overlapping quality. And I always try to look at the reference and pick out a few rocks that look at touch different because I tend to repeat the same shapes over and over. If I'm not careful. In nature, you don't get often these types of scenes anyway, you might get a general repetitive structure, but all the rocks are different in shapes, so they vary slightly. So to keep things interesting, you gotta do the same thing as well. So there we go. I think that right-hand side looks pretty good for a plan. And let's work on this left-hand side and we'll do this quickly and hopefully get started soon. There we go, the big big rock, but it's kind of sitting up the top there like that. There's a rock here, these slabs of rock, interesting. I like that. Bit of darkness underneath like that. And then here we've got another kind of a white edge rock or something coming out in front here. Rather than looking at the atom is rock. So just look at them as shapes and the tone, whether it's light or dark. It's the most important thing. Like a tiny little bit of water falling down like here. This is kind of an angular type ROC looks like it's got a darker shape here. Like that. You can figure this out. A lot of this on the way, but just getting a few bits and pieces like that does help. Okay. Then you got to just darkness underneath in here. There's like a platform there and a bit of water running downwards there as well. I'm a bit more of like a little bit of water running down here to more water. This sort of hits like a rock here and a bit of water coming down. There is a larger sharp edged rock here with another one here in front like that. There we go, again using the shading technique. There. Another one here in the water. Let's have a look. There. You go. These flats, sort of rocks here in the water. A lot of them are obscured with water just rushing over them. The difficulty, I think in this scene is getting that motion of the water. It's going to be tricky, but I'm going to show you how to do that. And a lot of it requires just a bit of self-control in letting. Leaving those white bits of white paper. And cute because some more rocks here and they kind of just join up and they sit on top of these ones. Okay. It doesn't have to be perfect. Just get that. A few of those little shapes in here. Here's another one there. You've got these rock sitting in the water. Okay. As well. There. What what else do we have? They kind of go up a bit further. There. Another slab, larger slab over here. Okay. There, there. We are pretty much done with the drawing. I'm just going to emphasize this tree here. Because I think, again, like I said, having a few trees that just look a bit more detailed. And this is really just a guide for me to cut around that tree later so that I don't miss out on it. It really helps. I think that's pretty good. I think that's pretty good for a drawing. Let's go ahead and get started with the painting. 3. Painting Light: To start off, I always like to get in all the kind of warmer colors. And that includes the slides kinda warm from the rocks. It's very subtle, but these bits of lichen and brownish colored, maybe even yellow ocher colored rocks as well, but mainly the leaves. So we've got a lot of a lot of that foliage there, which is orangey yellow in color. And I've got a couple of mop brushes I'm going to employ such as these two little ones here, can probably going to use the smaller mop brush to begin with. And what we'll do is, I'm just going to begin with a bit of quinacridone, red, orange. If you just use any orange that you've got. This is very vibrant, so I like to mix in a bit of yellow ocher in here. Remember at this point of the painting, you're really just trying to get in a light wash. So concentration of paint I'm using here is mostly water, 80 per cent water, if not more. And just drop it in like that. Nothing can do in this stage. You can just tap that brush on like that and look at that. And you can create these little impressions of leaves, very quick little impressions. I know it seems a bit haphazard, but really it saves time and it just creates some different at different looking shapes in here. Okay. So a little bit of this tapping and if it goes down further into the rocks, no big deal. Just let it, let it do its thing. But I find these tend to dry a little bit differently and create some interests which I like. So continue on. Don't forget back here as well. There's some bits and pieces. This can be really messy and I don't do this all too often actually because it goes all over the place, but, um, I think it makes a difference just a little bit. And of course we're going to start putting in like larger shapes of these, which you call it these leaves. So I'll just drop it in like that. And the reason why I'm doing all this warm stuff versus because if you start putting in all the greens, you're going to very easily lose sight of all these warmth. So I tend to drop this in first and then work around it with the greens. We're just going to be darker than this Brown's as well in here, bits of gray. What else do we have in here? Really just this, even perhaps a bit of coolness that I could imply, like I could add in a tiny bit of purple for some of the darker areas. It's not there, but of course, like having some cornices I think would look nice, just helpful. Having a contrast in there. So there we go. Just dropping in some of this paint. This is all just, as you can see, quite quick, little sporadic bits, bits of paint, and I'm dropping it in very quickly as well. I'm not spending all too much time doing this because I find with enough with these nature landscapes, the more you start fiddling around with all of this stuff, it just becomes just starts looking unnatural. She could just go with it, go with the flow. Bit more of this stuff here, bit more orange, a little bit more yellow. Okay, drop that in here. K. Let's see where else can we put some of this here as well? Just maybe near the water, maybe the trees. You can see here that they're starting to come down a bit. The more hansa yellow, this is a kind of a vibrant yellow and I'm missing some of this stuff. Tiny bit of this vibrancy here. More water with that. I'm here, Okay. Here. Bit more vibrancy, bits and pieces. It doesn't look all the same. More yellow in here. Hansa, Yellow. Great color. To increase that vibrancy. I used to use it too often actually in my paintings in the beginning, putting in Hansa yellow everywhere and it would overwhelm my paintings with just too much vibrancy. These days, I tend to just try to simplify and use less colors in my work and focus more on the tone and the story that I'm telling. I find that freeze my mine up to to work on the scene. There we go. Just a bit of color there. Okay. So it's all starting to, start to slowly come together. Of course, one of the things to do as well as we did talk about the green. So I can pick up a bit of that green. I've got some here run out. It's a bit of just a bit of undersea green because due to that drop that in there in the sky. I'm just indicates some of that foliage or whatever in the background. Um, let me see if I can put it in a bit of cerulean with that as well, just to subdue it a touch. Here. I'm just trying to keep this fairly light as well and blend it with some of the orange. Okay, so we've got, of course, bits of whites in there, but also a bit of a contrast between the orange and the green. And I love how these two colors granulate nicely as well. Creates a kind of like a seamless integration. Just like that and cutting around some of these trees. I just wanted to get it in another color maybe for the trunks of the trees. But what I'll do as well as just continue on with this idea that I had of the orange, yellow and stuff. I might put a bit more in here, forgotten. Forgotten some of that. Just a bit more like that. Sometimes you find them. You got to work it out along the way you would like, okay. I think I could do with a bit more yellow here. It'll be a bit more yellow there. The paper, if you notice, is still wet. And due to that, you can continue just going into this scene and add little changes, little modifications here and there, like that. And just continue on. If it's starting to dry. What I tend to use is also a little spray bottle that helps to keep it alive. But I'll go up, go down and let's just, let's just see what this does. This undersea green here, perhaps a tiny bit of blue, a little bit of this cerulean blue to drop in here. Because it was, I know there's not really much of a sky in the reference photo, but I'm having some coolness here is going to help me to contrast a bit with all this warmth. And you're going to find, as the paper starts to dry off, you can cut around this orange. But I want to make it quite smooth here in the background first. And again, just light. Again, you're using mostly just water. You want to see those pencil marks going through there, like that bit of green in here. Here, here. Here. Read more here. Okay? So they start to come together. I'm only there, but at the base of some of these trees, you notice some greens in here as well. It's important to integrate, integrate everything together. Here. I'm just putting a bit of cerulean as well to dull down that green, just subdued a bit, so it's not so not so dark. Sometimes I can pick up a bit of this grayish color here. There's also I've got a bit of brown and a bit of brown in there is going to just change things up a little bit like that. Why not just drop that in? And it could be shadows, a little little indications, hints of darkness in there like that. Good. Okay. So let's go ahead and work on these rocks. And again, quick indications of the rocks, I'm just going to pick up bit of white. This is just a tiny bit of buff titanium. And I'm dropping that in with some of this some of this color which is Brown. Do you fight? Okay. I just want to guess Sandy rock color. Let's start maybe with that one. I might change it. We can put in a bit yellow ocher as well. Okay. Just as long as you've got a kind of a weak, warm color, you don't want it to be too warm, like in the background trees, but you certainly do. I think you'd want a bit of warmth in there. So I'm just sort of alternating, putting in a bit of yellow ocher and a bit of this brownish color that I mixed up. Okay. We're not worrying about the shadows of these rocks or anything like that yet. We're just trying to put in color on the rocks. Just trying to put in some color here. Knowing that these start going up into the background, touch there as well. Don't be afraid to leave a bit of white in places. That helps. Okay. Funny enough, a lot of this starts to come out once you put the shadows in. But for the time being, don't worry about the shadows. Just look at getting in a little bit of light color there. Okay, Good. Continue on. What else do we have? We've got more here. There's even some really light colored rocks. You can see just right above here that I can indicate like this. Okay. Darker rocks as well. Can pick up some little bit of darker paint and adding a little bit of that. But I think you'd be, you'd be best off, especially if you're starting out learning this type of stuff, would be best off just going quite light in at this point. And then I'll show you how to add in some more of the dark bits and pieces afterwards. You look at that just rocks and things. More brown. In this nice warm, some warmth in there. You're going to need that. Burnt sienna is a great color as well. Look at that. That's a nice kind of burnt sienna soil color. Okay. A bit of a nice wash over the top like that. This rock here is kind of like a much warmer, lighter color there. There. Okay. Notice I'm just referring to things. Warmth or the colors and just warm or cool because I don't I'm not too concerned really of the color. The exact color anyway. You got this this is that tree branch or whatever log cutting across like that. There there's another one like there as well. Really all in the background. It's just rocks and water. I like to do these rocks first and then you put in the water because otherwise, if you do the water first, it's just going to start blending onto the rocks and you lose track of where everything is. But looking at how the scene that we've got here, a lot of it a lot of it is really just cutting around the water where we've got some some of the stream running through the white parts. Okay, so let's go ahead. And again, I'm just trying to these Roxanne quickly so that we have something something in there quickly is dropping a bit of paint in there with more brown. Good. Okay. Good morning Here. Okay. Yeah. So let's start with some of the water. And again, I think being able to cut around is gonna be really important here. I'm gonna be using a smaller brush. For smaller brushes, maybe the mop brush. And this one here. So it's a number eight round brush and just a mop brush. Right? Let's put in, I'm going to mix up a bit of this greenish color. Another thing you can do here as well while you have some time. I know this area hasn't completely dried yet. I pick up this rigger brush and I'll just pick up some neutral tint, bit of brown and neutral tint mixed together. And you can just drop in indications of branches and stuff like that. Trees. Often the distance that you might want to indicate like that. Okay, Just all the way into the distance you can, you can do that and that just creates a soft kind of impression of those branches because this area is already wet as you can see. So you're not gonna get a huge amount of spread, but it's still going to move around a little bit so that those trees don't look all too stuck on. Okay, So basically one of the few times that you can do this. So I tried to maximize that as much as I can. And actually this tree, I'll leave a tiny bit white bit of white in there as well. Okay? But for example, look at some of these ones here. There's just so the branches are very, very dark. And as you move towards the foreground, that's something you're going to have to keep in mind as well, just making sure that you increase the contrast between shapes in the foreground. And also just work on extra little bits and pieces here that I might just drop in a bit of gray or something here and getting the branches, tiny little branches like this Here. Let's see. It's getting a few more. Holding that rigger brush at the end. It just makes it so much easier. I'm not I'm not interested in fussing around and getting all these little details in it. It kind of bugs me really to spend too much time on that, but a little bit of that. Just kind of like branches coming in, of course. I think afterwards what we will do is just work on getting some more contrast in here with some gouache or something like that. Another thing you can do is you can scratch out branches while you're in this area. So I can use a little blade. This is kind of started to dry and so you can do this type of thing. Scratch out a little bit of highlights like that through here. A little bit so that there have we done everything, we've done the left-hand side, anything we want to add the grid that rigor again, wherever it's gone. Okay, Let's do some here. This is a bit of the brown on that tree, bit of that brown. Why not just add some of that ONE quickly? There? He had just a touch of that light washer, that brown. I'm leaving some of that white as well on the tree coming down like that. And again, looking at some of this darkness that I might be able to infuse in here and create some branches going across in here. That's probably a bit too dark, but that's okay. It will fade off later. There we go. That just connecting up where the whitespaces are, making sense of those whitespaces. And connecting them a bit with the foliage. If you really look into the background, it's really quite complicated. You've got all this stuff going all the way up into the sky and we don't have time to do that. We just want to get in a few little strokes like this. The rigger brush is great for this stuff because you only just implying bits and pieces there. Because you don't want to make it too complicated or detailed because that's going to bring forwards those trees. So keeping it nice and light, really help you out here. Just always remember that. Good. I think that's looking okay with the background. Let's work a bit on some of this stuff on the foreground again, you can just go in there with that little blade and scratch out some bits and pieces if you'd like. The water, that's the important part of it. Now, I will start putting in, let's put in some green, little bit of green and a little bit of turquoise mixed together. That's trying to figure out what kind of color we can add in here. Okay, Let's drop that in. I may actually make the water potentially a little bit darker than the reference, but let's just see how we go. Some of the rocks just cut it around a bit to them like that. A little bit more of this cerulean color as well, because we do have a little bit of that blue in the sky just up the top there. So having some reflection of it would be nice. Okay. That just cutting around these rocks like that there. And making sure we're leaving some white in here as well. This is gonna be important, just making sure that we're not coloring everything in. Okay. Water is a kind of a greenish brown color. And just popping that through like that. We know over here there is some white water. So I'm going to just cut around a bit there, leave that okay. That it will look down over this side bit of butter, that darkness in here. I'm here. Okay? Of course, I find that afterwards you can use a bit of gouache to bring back some of that water. Okay. But I'm kind of get their spray like effects. What do we got here? There's a large rock and you can see it just start off like around here. And then underneath it's just white. So I don't want to touch that. But I do want to emphasize these rocks a bit more. More here, here. Darkness under some of these ones as well. Okay. Let's start darkening some of these rocks. I've just got some gray here on the palette and bits of brown. Around here is where we were playing around with this rock. And I'll use a smaller round brush as well. I've been painting almost everything with this other brush, which is basically a basically a mop brush. But for something like this, you can use a look at, this is just a small round brush going around, just cutting around this rock here. It might be a little early, but I'll just make do with that here. Okay. Let's see if I can just getting a little bit of softness there as well. Here, that water here as well. This can be a bit of like a little fall, bit of water coming downwards. This bit of water coming down here as well, just leaving some white. It's all indications really. What she leave out a lot of time in these, these paintings tends to be more important than what you paint in darkness. Bit more here. Okay. I'm good. I think what I'll do is I'm gonna give this a quick dry and then I'm going to go over and finish off the rest, get in the water. I think getting the I'm getting some of the shadows and stuff on the rocks. So it's just a really quick dry. 4. Painting Shadows: Okay, let's continue on. And I'm going to start putting in some really dark contrasts. Neutral tint, bit of brown, even a bit of purple. I think it would be nice, just cool things down a touch. And I can just work on, say, this rock here. Let's see if I can get in some bits of darkness on the rock like that. Yep. Here they're showing that previous wash is really important as well. So look at that, just cutting around that rock, especially that rocket the front like this, to bring it out of the shadows like that. Sometimes if you just work with these nice sporadic brushstrokes, although they're not as accurate. They tend to look more natural when you're doing landscapes like this. Because if you start getting too precious with everything with landscapes, then you fall into the trap of making things look to, to sort of stuck on edges like that. What else have we got? Kinda cuts around that one. There's a bit of a something here, so it will look underneath this rock. We need to just indicate the bottom of that rock as well. Like that bit here. Just sort of mashing my brush on the page to pick up a bit of color. This darkness, okay, here, here, the darks are going to be so important because they basically just bring up the light. There. There is a, oh, here we go. There's a, this can be a shadow underneath this rock like that. And then bringing forth these two rocks underneath like that underneath. You notice how dark it sort of gets near the front of the scene as well. And you can start merging a bit of greeny color, greeny brown color here in the foreground. To combine the two together. Okay? But of course, leaving bits of whites in here as well. That's important. Good. All this stuff here is just going to be water rushing down and I will potentially add a bit more gouache to emphasize that further. Okay. I just don't want to get rid of all that. Water. Does look a bit funny at the moment, but I'm I'm thinking you'll be fine once we get to the end stages of this. Here, shifts some of this color over to the left like that. And again here this is where we've got a bit of water just rushing downwards and it's kind of just white in there. So I don't want to mess too much with that area. Just leave that. Let's focus on the rocks. Bit more on the rocks, bit more purple. The shadows of the rocks is like here. Look, there's a bit of that shadow for one of them. In here. You've got a bit of darkness as well. And this is where that, this smaller round brush really becomes handy. Because if you don't have a smaller brush like this, It's very difficult to get here in these little details. Let's put in a bit more green in here underneath that, a bit more on here. Okay. Bit more darkness. Let's see. What else have we got? Rid of? Shadow for this rock here. Some here, beaten here perhaps. Just kind of helping outline some of these rocks. A little. Okay. It's like a tree trunk here as well, just to beat a darkness at the base like this here as well, just imply bit of that shadow. Okay? The thing I like to do is just see if I can join some of this on to a branch, retrieve something out here, just dry off that brush and then continue just bringing that up or something like that. It could be a tree, it could be who knows what. But I'm joining some of this darkness here on. And this is just creating an extra layer of detail in the trees off in the background, some sharpest stuff. Going on because you've got all this really soft, softer looking shapes here in the background. But of course, you've noticed in the reference there are some sharper looking shapes as well, sharper looking tree branches and things. But keeping them, keep them pretty light as well. That's the main thing because that's going to help to push them back. If you start getting a bit too too dark, just make sure you keep tissue and new and lift off. A bit of that paint will save you. I'm using a pretty large brush for this, but I'd recommend you use maybe like a rigger brush or something like that. If you're not confident with this particular stage because you don't want it to look too harsh. Sharp. But I'm controlling that edge, that tip of the brush very, very carefully and making sure that I'm not pushing too hard as well. I'm just layering, putting little bits of details. Having that persistence and the faith that this will work out once we're done. Okay? Sharpness contrasted with softness and the opposition of those two. I'm hoping, will result in something better than either of them alone. He began to look this little rock or something here in the background. All it takes is a little touch there that, that can be the bottom of the rock like that. Like that. Again, I've got what I was saying for leaving out. A few things will really make it look better. Now, I have not painting every single detail in there. And letting the viewer, the viewer is mind filling the blanks that touch a touch you in the background. If it's too sharp and starts to look a bit funny, I always just touch it off. What we'll look at couldn't join it on to a tree or something here. There we go. There it's like a tree. You can see there's like a branch or a trunk there That's pretty dark. So I can just join that on this continuity. Not just darkness and then it stops over sudden it goes up and then fades. So this is a little trick I do. It's hard to really explain exactly what I'm doing. It's after some time that sort of comes naturally to you, but you're getting like you carrying some of this darkness upwards and making it making it fit in a bit better. It doesn't just stop all of a sudden. Like a very sharp contrast. Let me go look at that. Because certainly getting there slowly, but surely we aren't getting there. Let's have a look here on the left-hand side. What do we got to do this a lot. Start again with some shadows. The darkness here underneath the rocks. Here. Again, it's not rocket science in terms of getting every little detail of that rock which just leaving a bit of a sliver of white on top like that. Okay, like that. Here, there's another bit of darkness in here. In here. These trees and things you just need, sorry, not trees, but these rocks need to be really sharp at the base because they kind of stick out of the water. You can see the water just coming down over the top of them. More darkness, bit more brown or whatever. Here. Here. Here. That's a bit of water coming down as well. So again, I am just playing it by ear and remembering that the shadows underneath, okay, of course, and shadows underneath. Here. You got to be the shadow for this one as well. But a darkness like that, that they always look a bit funny before they've dried. So don't fret. Wait until later. You see what I mean? Worst thing you can do is start fiddling around too much with them and thinking, Oh no, I've painted that too dark or what have you. It will make sense afterwards. Once we have the rest of the details in. There, we go a bit more. Here. Look at that just, again, just playing around with these shapes and getting in extra darkness underneath the rocks. Here. Here. There. Okay. I like that. Start putting into maybe a few rocks further out in the water like that. That semi rocks. But just paint the shadows, look at the shadows where they begin. And I get a bit of that color in there like that. Okay. Separation between the light and the dark of these rocks. Okay. What else do we have? A few more bits of rock or something up to top like this. They just overlap with each other. Larger rock here like that. That underneath this rock, we're going to have a little darkness in here as well. Just feather it off a touch like this. I'm Peter, darkness underneath here. Okay. Just vertical marks like this. Good. Just a bit more water here. Like a little bit more darkness here in the water. And I'm using some kind of greenish color. Very watery though. If you notice all this really dark bits, I've used. Less water. Less water. Then as we've gone into the water itself, gone into the water itself, we have got lighter wash, so I'm using larger concentration of water to paint. Just going to reshape this rocket touch and make it look a bit more. Just be more realistic or something. You can do this forever. I mean, you can just sit here and continue on this path for Avalon you want. But I don't wanna do that. I want to get this out of the way. I'm going to just start doing this tree bit more. There. There's just not enough tree shapes in here that I think you need to imply there. Now this shave another tree or whatever, like a branch reaching upwards like that. This joining part where it kind of the rocks join onto the trees. Quite crucial so that it looks a bit more natural. So what I just tend to do is I just repeat this rock structure or whatever coming up here a little bit. Here, There's just a bit of darkness or whatever doesn't have to be perfect or something like that. Bit of color in there. And also like to use some gouache afterwards as a bit of a finishing touch. But I don't want to rely on that. And I recommend you don't either. Because you need to use you need to know how to use gouache and a very sparing manner and I'll show you how to do that. Okay. That we've got quite a bit going on in here. I'm just seeing what else can we do to really bring out bits and pieces of the rocks and stuff like that. I do feel like it's looking more and more like what I want to portray. Slowly. Feel like you have to add in all the dark bits as well. Just yet you can go ahead and alter it later on down the track and just put in some more. The another thing I really want to do is just some more darks, darker bits in the background, perhaps like this. Like a tree shape, like just connecting up to the rocks, touch, creating that sense of continuity. And just especially in areas where we don't have much contrast like here, I didn't realize there's just not much of a contrast between the ground and the these trees in the back. So I've just redone some of those trees dark and the bid up the back there. Okay. So I'm gonna give this a quick dry. Actually, before I do that, I will just play around and add in a few more details of this tree. So like I said before, I feel this is lacking in just a touch of detail here. Especially this tree where it's so close to the front. The foreground, having a little bit more color in there, a little bit more darkness is going to be perfect. Even this one here you notice it's just not strong enough. They're just a bit more something like this and there's actually some branches and stuff coming in. We've enough from that left-hand side, it's very, very subtle. But I might actually leave that up to the gouache afterwards. Another thing I might do while I'm here, I might pick up this old, our old round brush. And I'm going to start putting in little bit of orange or something here in the background. A little bit of orange, but like a bit of maybe a bit of yellowy orange color. And emphasize again some of this, some of these Blake leaves. Okay, I'm using an old brush because it just creates these splotches of sporadic looking paint that's just not to organized. But this extra layer of warmth on here, you notice the leaves not all so soft in the reference photo, the leaves. This certainly a lot more sharper in some areas of the painting. So I want to get in a bit of that, a little bit there. Especially here, look at that. There's just little bits and pieces that you can drop in. This will help somewhere in here as well. Some of them just sort of overlap here. Here. It's tapping technique also can be good. Let me pick up a bit more of this paint, bit more of that yellow, a little water and just tap through barriers. Again, that sort of brush. Just hopefully it's all kind of mixes and mingles together to create another layer of complexity over the top of what we have. If it looks too weird or two, sticks out too much. Just get a spray bottle and just give it a quick spray that will help it melt in a little bit to the, to the background. But this can also be done with some gouache. Later on. I'm just having a look. What else do we need to potentially add in here? I don't think we need anything else. Now, especially with the water. We've got some of this. I'm just going to just put in a little bit of the dirt. This is marks on the edge and the top of the water to imply some directionality of the like that. Okay. Let's give it a try. 5. Finishing Touches: Okay. Some finishing touches and did mention gouache before. Let's squeeze out a little bit of that gouache on the palette. I'm gonna be using it just with a little bit of water and watch and a brush that I use. Let me think. Maybe I can start with this mangled kinda round brush. And I'll see if I can just get in a little bit an indication of some of the waves and stuff. You can see them just crash over the top of these rocks. But little bits have the water coming through like that. Okay. You've got to use this sparingly. I find like if you almost one step away, one brush stroke away from making it look funny if you're not careful, try to do it quickly as well, not be too precious with it. The water coming down like this. I'm going to be coming off in the background, maybe splashing on the rocks in the distance. Just an impression of what is happening back there. Okay. Here are some of the water may be flowing The downwards like this. That trust trying to join this on. It's tricky. But having that dry brush, if you notice a little bit of that dry brush that's going over the top of that rocket kind of helps to imply that. We'll try a bit here as well. See, look at that dry brush like a little stream of water coming over the top of that rock. There's some maybe coming over here as well. Just get a little few little bits and pieces like that. This bit of water here. Just a bit running downwards there, here. Little bit in here as well. Just use dry brush, dry that brush off. But pickup the gouache and try it off a little bit so that you get these skipping motions of water because the the brush skips over parts of the paper. Okay. It's joining onto the rocks is so important. Just trying to find bits pieces even here, look at that. This is kind of like bits where it just joins on this water. Here. I'm there. That it's a white here. Here, but here in the front as well. Okay. Starting starting to look like something. Okay. I don't wanna make it too obvious, but a lot of the work was already done just by leaving out the white in that previous wash. Okay. Good. So I think that's looking somewhat decent. Let me just shape this rock a little bit more. I will have to again, just fix up bits and pieces. This directionality of the water. See how I'm putting, making the brushstrokes look like this movement in the water. It's tricky, but it's worth it once you get it. Okay? The only thing that you can start to think of ways you can bring back some highlights or what have you. In some areas. They talk a little bit about before using some gouache into this background area. I think I'm going to continue with that same notion or use some white gouache and mixed with a yellow, maybe a bit of orange. Okay. And let's see what we can do. Can we get in a few little bits and pieces to say, try more orange. I want it to be like a really light orangey color. It's tricky. Like that. Just a little dabs of color in areas. You just got to be careful with this because you can start removing the beauty of the watercolors if you're not. I really want to vibrant orange, but it's hard. It's very, very difficult. But we can get an a few little splotches here or they're here and they're bits and pieces here. Some more. It's just try some more over here. Okay, kinda like contrasting bits and pieces. Okay, oops, that's too much there. If you do that, just remember tissue you can lift off. Here's, well, I've started to incorporate a lot of this opaque bits of opacity, opaque watercolors in my work because it adds an extra dimension on top of the watercolors in a way, combining them but not overdoing it. You can see really helps. And it means that you can not worry about cutting around and focusing on the wash, the intricacies of cutting around everything. And just focus on getting a good wash in. And if you miss out bits and pieces like some of the light, you can just do this because go over the top. So I know some watercolors and not so keen on this, but I also know a lot who are. So I find it's just so much easier as another layer of dimension on your paintings. But as I said, be careful. I want to don't want to turn to wash painting. Okay, we're getting there. Great. So I think the final bits, really now I'm just going to see if I can add in some highlights of some extra highlights, awesome branches or something coming in from the side like this. So if I just pick up the color and look at adding in, um, some branches or whatever. I don't want to overdo it, but just going over the top of what we've already painted. There, you might get some more here. Just a bit more on the tree. For example, you might think to yourself, Hey, I want to get some more branch like structure is coming off. You can do that. Just pick up your paint and drawing those branches. Painting those branches, I mean, here. Keep going on and doing this forever. Some point I've got to stop. What I'm just trying to do is get in as much of these little contrast as I can. So she in some of the areas where we've got really dark shadows, it's weird. Look at that the rock is directly next to the water, the stream of water here. Okay. Just thinking there's a bit here that could be reintroduced back there like that. You think wash better that gouache again? Yeah. Okay. And that's finished. 6. Class Project: Your class project is to draw and paint your own river landscape. This can be the scene featured in the class or based on one of your own photographs or scenes you've observed outside. You can also refer to the scan drawing and painting templates attached below, which will allow you to trace the drawing if you choose to do so. I recommend drawing the same. Freehand. Drawing is an important step in improving your painting skills. It provides you with an opportunity to compose and plan your painting. Once you've finished the drawing, usually watercolor steps and processes included in the class demonstrations to complete your painting.