Transcripts
1. Welcome To The Class!: Hello, everyone. My
name is Will Elliston. And today, we're going to paint an atmospheric rainy street
scene in watercolor. This subject is perfect for learning how light
blooms through moisture, how reflections stretch
across wet pavements, and how soft lost edges create
mood without heavy detail. Expect expressive
washes, gentle lifting, and a few decisive accents
to suggest cars, figures, and lampposts, all while keeping the scene
calm and cinematic. I've been a professional
artist for many years, exploring lots of different
subjects from wildlife and portraits to cityscapes
and countryside scenes. I've always been entranced by the possibilities
of watercolor. But when I started,
I had no idea where to begin or
how to improve. I didn't know what
supplies I needed, how to create the
effects I wanted, or which colors to mix. Now I've taken part in many
worldwide exhibitions, been featured in magazines, and been lucky enough
to win awards from well respected
organizations such as the International
watercolor Society, the Masters of
watercolor Alliance, Windsor and Newton, and the SAA. Watercolor can be overwhelming
for those starting out, which is why my goal
is to help you feel relaxed and enjoy this medium
in a step by step manner. Today, I'll be guiding you
through a complete painting, demonstrating a variety
of techniques and explaining how I use all
my supplies and materials. Whether you're just starting out or already have some experience, you'll be able to
follow along at your own pace and improve
your watercolor skills. If this class is too challenging
or too easy for you, I have a variety of classes available at different
skill levels. I like to start off with a free expressive
approach with no fear of making mistakes as we create exciting textures
for the underlayer. As the painting progresses, we'll add more details to bring it to life and
make it stand out. I strive to simplify
complex subjects into easier shapes that
encourage playfulness. Throughout this class, I'll be sharing plenty of
tips and tricks. I'll show you how to turn
mistakes into opportunities, taking the stress out of
painting in order to have fun. I'll also provide you with
my watercolor mixing charts, which are an invaluable tool when it comes to choosing
and mixing colors. If you have any questions, you can post them in the
discussion thread down below. I'll be sure to read and
respond to everything you post. Don't forget to follow
me on Skillshare by clicking the Follow
button at the top. This means you'll be the
first to know when I launch a new class
or post giveaways. You can also follow me on Instagram at Will Elliston
to see my latest works. So let's get started and bring this rainy city to life with
confident fluid watercolor.
2. Your Project: Thank you so much for joining this class today. I
really appreciate it. Our goal is to capture
the feeling of rain, not every single brick
and window in this scene. So think in broad value
masses for buildings and sky, allow edges to
soften and wonder, and let reflections carry
color down the page. A restrained palette keeps
everything harmonious, whilst a few warm notes suggest windows,
highlights, and life. Figures are simply hints placed to balance the
composition and guide the eye. Embrace blooms, backruns, and tiny slatis as
part of the weather. This is a relaxed, expressive painting that favors atmosphere, rhythm, and glow over precision. In the resource section, I've added a high
resolution image of my finished painting
to help guide you. You're welcome to
follow my painting exactly or experiment with
your own composition. As we're going to be focusing on the painting
aspect of watercolor, I've provided templates
you can use to help transfer or trace the
sketch before you paint. It's fine to trace when using it as a guide for
learning how to paint. It's important to
have the underdrawing correct so that you can relax and have fun learning the
watercolor medium itself. Whichever direction
you take this class, it would be great
to see your results and the paintings you
create through it. I love giving my
students feedback, so please take a photo
afterwards and share it in the student project gallery under the Project
and resource tab. I'm always intrigued to
see how many students have different approaches and how they progress with each class. I'd love to hear
about your process and what you learned
along the way, or if you had any difficulties. I strongly recommend
that you take a look at each other's work in the
student project gallery. It's so inspiring to see
each other's work and extremely comforting to get the support of your
fellow students. So don't forget to like and
comment on each other's work.
3. Materials & Supplies: Before we get started
with this painting, let's go over all the materials
and supplies I'll use. Having the right materials can greatly impact the
outcome of your artwork. So I'll go over all the supplies I use for
this class and beyond. They're very useful to
have at your disposal, and we'll make it easier
for you to follow along. Let's start with the
paints themselves. And like most of the materials
we'll be using today, it's a lot to do
with preference. I have 12 stable colours in my palette that I
fill up from tubes. They are Cadmium
Yellow, Yellow Ochre, burnt sienna, Cadmium
red, Alizarin Crimson, Opramarne blue, cobalt blue,
serlean blue, lavender, purple, Viridian, black, and
at the end of the painting, I often use white gouache
for tiny highlights. I don't use any
particular brand. These colors you can
get from any brand, although I personally
use Daniel Smith, Windsor and Newton,
for Holbein paints. So let's move on to brushes. The brush I use the most is
a synthetic round brush like this escodaPurl brush
or this Van Gogh brush. They're very versatile because
not only can you use them for detailed work
with their fine tip, but as they can hold
a lot of water, they are good for
washers as well. They're also quite affordable, so I have quite a few
in different sizes. Next are the mop brushes. Mop brushes are good for
broad brush strokes, filling in large areas and creating smooth
transitions or washes. They also have a night tip that can be used for smaller details. But for really small details, highlights or anything
that needs more precision, I use a synthetic
size zero brush. All brands have them,
and they're super cheap. Another useful brush to have is a Chinese calligraphy brush. They tend to have long bristles
and a very pointy tip. They're perfect
for adding texture or creating dynamic
lines in your paintings. You can even fan them
out like this to achieve fur or feather
textures as well. And that's it for
brushes. Onto paper. The better quality
of your paper, the easier it will be to paint. Cheap paper crinkles easily
and is very unforgiving, not allowing you to
rework mistakes. It's harder to create
appealing effects and apply useful techniques
like rubbing away pigment. Good quality paper, however, such as cotton based paper, not only allows you to rework
mistakes multiple times, but because the pigment
reacts much better on it, the chances of
mistakes are a lot lower and you'll be more likely to create
better paintings. I use archers paper because that's what's available
in my local art shop. A water spray is
absolutely essential. By using this, it
gives you more time to paint the areas you
want before it dries. It also allows you to
reactivate the paint if you want to add a smooth
line or remove some paint. I also have an old rag or t shirt which I use
to clean my brush. Cleaning off the paint
before dipping it in the water will make the
water last a lot longer. It's always useful to
have a tissuet hand whilst painting to
lift off excess paint. Also, you never know when an unwanted splash or drip might occur that needs
wiping away quickly. I also have a water dropper
to keep the paints wet. When you paint, it's
important to have them a similar consistency to what
they're like in the tubes. This way, it's easier to
pick up sufficient pigment. A hair dryer is useful
to have for speeding up the drying time and controlling the
dampness of the paper. And lastly, masking tape. And this, of course, is just to hold the paper down still onto the surface to stop it sliding
around whilst painting. Also, if you plan on
painting to the edge, it'll allow you to create a
very crisp, clean border. And that's everything
you need to paint along today and even
beyond this class. Now, let's get in and
start with the painting.
4. Preparing The Composition: So the first thing to do with a drawing is to work out where
your vanishing point is. And I'm just placing it slightly
off center to the right, and I'm just drawing
in some guidelines, some lines that just go into that central point where the road meets the
buildings in the distance, and I'm working from that, so I can start drawing in the silhouette
of the buildings, very simplified
silhouettes of the car, only suggesting where the
headlights are or the wheels, not even drawing the
wheels, actually. These will all be connected
with sweeping washes. Notice how with those first
lines, how light they were, and then as I build on top
of them with more detail, more confidence, I'm applying more pressure so the
lines are a bit darker. I don't even need to use
the rubber per se because the light lines
underneath will just disappear underneath the paint. So I'm suggesting
figures on the right. Maybe just one figure
here. Connecting it all. I haven't actually marked
where the vanishing point is, but you can see all
these lines are implied and they're drawing towards
that central point. And that makes it a
lot easier to draw because everything is
influenced by that point. And you can work your way out. The buildings can just be a silhouette, like
everything else. There's not much form going on, and that will make
the wash process or the paint much easier later. So we can go over this with more detail and
start the painting.
5. Highlight Underlayers: As this scene is a
rainy street scene, we're going to use a lot of cool colors like blues and
greens and a bit of purple. And to contrast that, we're going to have
a few highlights with warm red and orange. So I'm just selecting a few windows or
lights quite randomly, actually, and just starting off with an underlayer and
we'll use masking fluid. You don't have to. In fact, you can paint the whole
thing without masking fluid. But if you're not confident
with negative painting, using masking fluid can be
an easy tool to preserve these bright colors
when it comes to the expressive part of the painting, but it's
not a requirement. So just choose a few windows, and you don't need
to be so specific. You can fill out
some of the areas. Just think of warm colors,
red, Yellow Ochre, orange, cadmium red I'm using here with a bit
of Cadmium Yellow. You can fill up whole areas, and then when it comes to using the masking fluid or
negative painting later, we can choose which bits to keep and which bits we'll
want to paint over because when we paint over this with the thick pigment
later, it'll be very dark. So even though it looks very yellow and warm at the moment, when we're using black
pigment, later on, this is what will
make it bounce when we preserve a few of
these highlights. It's also a nice way to start
the painting because it can be a bit intimidating looking at a white
sheet of paper, and we don't want to commit
to anything straightaway. So painting something
like this underlayer, which will only be a subtle
thing, an important thing, but a subtle thing and
not too complicated to do is a nice way to ease our way into the painting without
too much pressure. So on the right hand side,
I'm using pure yellow at the moment for some lamps, street lights and maybe
some large windows on this side above the
abstract figures there. You can use quite strong pigment here because although
it looks bright now, again, when we come over
with dark blue pigment, it won't look as vibrant. And you can use any
brush you want. I'm using a small one just because it's fairly
small shapes. But you can use a large one. Painting the car
lights, the headlights, starting off with one color
like a yellow, for example, here, and then we can touch
a bit of orange in there. I'm actually mixing the
colors on the paper. You'll see you haven't actually mixed any colors
on my palette yet. And to create a strong contrast, now that those first
colors are dried, I'm just adding a
few blues in there. So light blues that I want
to preserve as well. Okay.
6. Masking Fluid: So before you apply
the masking fluid, make sure your paint and
paper is completely dry. You don't want it to
be damp whatsoever, because then if it's not dry, this liquid masking fluid will go into the grain
and fabric of the paper, and it won't come out. It will ruin the texture. But I've sped up this footage of applying the masking fluid because it's less to do
with actual technique. It's purely just putting
it in the areas you want. I'm using this little
tool that I picked up from my old sculpture
clay sculpture days. But you can use a toothpick, and sometimes I squirt the masking fluid onto the
paper and spread it across. Sometimes I have a little bit of card in my hand that I put the masking fluid on and I dab it onto the paper
with that toothpick. And then I make sure it's
completely dry again. You don't want to paint
over your painting whilst the masking
fluid is still damp. Usually, it turns
transparent when it's dry. So that's a sign that it is dry. And if it's not transparent, keep on using the
hair dryer on it. But like I said, you
don't actually need to use masking fluid
if you don't want to. That's just to kind
of safety line so that you can be
expressive as you want without worrying about
painting over these areas. But if you think
you're careful enough, you can still paint
this painting, just avoiding
painting these areas. With precision with your brush. Or, of course, you can
add opaic paint at the end like gouache to
pop back those highlights. So I'm mixing my
colors here. Oranges. We have red and Cadmium Yellow.
7. The Sky: Mixing a serlean
blue in my palette, as well. But we're
painting the sky. So I'm starting off with yellow at the bottom and wetting the rest of the
sky with pure water. And it's all spread out now, so you can barely see it. But using a soft brush like this mop brush helps
with things like skies, a large brush, really,
so that we don't have to keep on applying strokes. The large brush allows
us to hold more water and pigment to fill
out an area faster, and that means it's going to be smoother, a smoother wash. So using this orange and just quite randomly applying areas. So it's just orange and
white at the moment. And the different
wet on wet areas, the different depth or
concentration of pigments, crates that feeling of depth. And now I'm using
pure Cadmium Yellow and dotting that in. Whilst it's wet on wet, it's
going to blend out smoothly. And we can bit by bit
add more pigment. You can see I'm actually
going over the sky into the buildings because
we're going to paint over the buildings with dark pigment, so we don't need to worry about painting over the buildings. You want to do that.
And at the moment, we're leaving the reflection
orange at the moment, and we're not painting
down to the bottom. I apply a nice, confident yellow drop of pigment just behind that central
building so that the sunset or sunrise is catching the edge
of that building. Now I'm mixing
some burnt sienna, which is a bit like orange to try and add some warm
clouds in there. The sky doesn't need to be super complex intricate
cloud formations. With all the other details, the sky will be
barely noticeable. Now I'm mixing in
my serlean blue. Pure serlean blue on my palette, but you can see how
I'm just scrubbing it around onto the paper. And that orange that we
had before now looks like sunlit su glowing clouds and the blue looks like the sky. We're almost negatively
painting the clouds. That's why we started with
the orange and not the blue because the blues overlapping the orange to create the
shape of the clouds. If we painted the blue first, I don't think it would work adding the orange
on top of that. It wouldn't be so harmonious. Also, having the orange as a background wash adds a kind of general wash to the whole
piece that will later complement the scene when we add the blues on top of
it for the buildings. So even though
it's subtle, we've got a little bit of contrast play with the warmth of the sky and the coolness
of the buildings. So it's actually very
abstract. You can see the sky. It doesn't really make that
much sense, but that's okay. I'm just trying to take advantage of all the colour
possibilities to make the painting as exciting as
possible without completely breaking the rules and
creating disharmony.
8. Distant Building: So now I'm going to start
mixing the main building color, which is basically a lot
of cool colors with black. Cool colors recede into
the distance anyway. But we can break the
rules sometimes. We can add a bit of warmth. And you'll see that as long as we make
sense of it tonally, if everything's connected
by one wash and the information is
not so confusing for the viewer, it
all makes sense. It doesn't matter if
there's warmth in the distance and coolness
in the foreground. This will make more
sense as we paint it. But see how I'm mixing a
lot of monotone colors now, a bit of a brownish one
here at the bottom. The one above is a
bit more purple, and we can do a bit of a
bluish one, even green. But black or neutral tint is the kind of color
that binds together. But I'm not actually using
pure black in any of them. So the sky, I didn't
actually completely dry it. In fact, I'm re wetting a
little bit on the top so that it creates a
bit of atmosphere. I don't want it even in between these buildings
from left to right, I want there to be something
above the car there. So I've wet the
top and dropped in this blue grayish pigment so that it just blends
out as the distance. It doesn't matter what it is. It could be more buildings. It could be some trees. It
doesn't have to be anything. It's just connecting
everything together, connecting the buildings
from left to right, connecting the
buildings to the sky. Even if we're painting
them at different times, the idea is to connect
everything somehow. So starting off with this
main central building, we have a kind of
warm gray at the top. And then I'm going to
use cool grays to make it more interesting and
connect them in the middle. So I used a cool
gray at the top, a warm gray in the middle, and I'm going to connect it to a cool gray down at
the bottom, too. When painting the silhouettes
of the buildings like this, I'm allowing tiny
little bits of white intact because I don't just want to completely block
it out as a simple shape. I want to keep it a
bit more interesting. So I'm using the
tip of my brush. I happen to use a
mop brush for that, but it's not important. I'll be able to achieve
the same thing with a synthetic round brush
that isn't a mop brush.
9. Warm and Cool Greys: It might be quite hard to see, but I'm being quite
generous with the amount of water and pigment
I'm putting on the paper. I'm really dropping quite a lot in because I want
it to remain wet. If my brush wasn't full of water or the amount of water I'm putting on the paper
was quite thin, then it would dry off quite quickly before I
filled everything out. And in areas that I
notice it drying, I just drop in more pigment. And you can see where I've
done that because we've got a mix of warmth and coolness. I'm dropping in some coolness right now right
next to the warmth. And these pigments are mingling on the paper in
a very spontaneous way, something that I can't control, but I can manipulate. And that's where the magic lies. And again, I'm not filling
in every single gap. You can see little white
bits, well, not white, but the light bits of
the paper beneath. And even though I
haven't consciously chosen which white
bits to really remain, it's kind of happened
spontaneously. They look a bit like
highlights on the buildings. So I'm not directly choosing
which white bits to remain, but it's the general area. It's more like the roofs or the windows where
the windows could be. It's more on the top half than the bottom half
that I'm allowing these white bits to remain. Dropping in some purple. And it still makes sense because
they're the same tone. They're the same kind
of value family. I can add purple, brown, any color on my palette, I can drop in here if I want as long as
it's the same tone. At the bottom, you can see how
I'm dropping in dark tone. And I'm doing that, of course, on purpose because that
creates a sense of depth. I want there to be higher
contrast down here. And if you think about it, how the light interacts. There's less light at the bottom of the
buildings than at the top. I have a tissue in
my hand to draw out some water where
it's overly wet, really, and I want to
control the water a bit, so I use a tissue to
soak up some of it. And I'm sculpting the silhouettes
of the vehicles below. I've got a van there,
which is basically just square As the papers drying, I'm dropping more pigment, slightly thicker darker pigment in between these white areas so that this dark pigment kind of blends around the
white gaps that we left. It's easy to overwork this area by trying to make a
believable building. But sometimes, well,
a lot of the time, overworking it ruins the magic, and that's a trap I find
myself falling in a lot.
10. Left Side Buildings: So I've given it
some time to dry. I disconnected it so that I
wouldn't overwork it anymore. And now I'm going to start painting the
buildings on the left. And this is more of a green
turquoise color as a base. I'm using a synthetic
round brush now, but quite a large one. It's technically
not a mop brush, a very large round brush. So on my palette, I mix
that turquoise green, which is Viridian,
a bit of serlean and to tone it down a little bit of neutral
tint or black. And then once I've
applied some marks, then I drop in
some burnt sienna. And again, because it's wet
on wet, it's very ambiguous. The shapes are very random, and it's almost an under layer. Well, it is an under layer. And this will help us work out where we want to apply
the windows later on. We're applying the
Burnt Sienna where we think the windows will be, and then we can choose how much detail we
want to add later on once it's all dried. So I'm thinking I'm thinking of the silhouette of
the building at the moment, and I'm connecting
this left wash with that building in the
center that we painted before. And even though we painted
them at different times, we're connecting them into a nice transition
using the tip of my brush now to add some architectural
details on the tops, maybe pylon satellites, roofs, notice with this green wash
how far down I've gone to. I've left that orange area unpainted for the
time being because that will require
some precision. But I've kind of left that
line where I've painted until it's following
the direction of the vanishing point. It's angled. It's implied. So if it dries, it'll still make sense. But because it's
wet we can carry on painting without a hard line. So that's what I'm going to do. I'm starting to reconnect, agitating that orange so that it blends quite
nicely into there. We're at a hard
edge. These pigments that I'm using Cerlean
blue, Viridian green, they're not highly staining and because I'm using
cotton base paper, I can get rid of most of the hard lines even
after they've dried, using the brush to smudge along. Been quite confident with camium yellow now
dropping it in there. It was a bit too much, using
the tissue to dab it out, putting in camium red
on top of that yellow. I'm painting around that figure and some of the
cars at the bottom, more so so that I don't
lose the pencil lines. And then as it's drying,
applying some purple on there. Again, very messy strokes. I'm not being too precious over the
strokes at the moment. Only down at the bottom where
I need to sculpt the cars. I need to think
about being precise, but everywhere else
is a bit more random. A I'm just thinking of one wash, bringing it down to
a certain point, using the water
spray to reactivate it because some areas were
drying faster than others, and I still want it
to be quite even. So I rewetted with the water
spray, some of the building. But even still, as it's drying, I can still use the brush
to reactivate it and start subtly sculpting the
buildings a bit, adding implied lines, I'm actually spending more
time on this than necessary. The main idea is just
to keep that glow at the bottom and transition
it nicely to the buildings.
11. Adding Darker Pigments: And then as it's drying, we can apply bigger,
thicker bigger strokes. Bit by bit defining where the windows are and the architectural
details are and where the buildings
meet the road. It starts off very expressive
because it's wet on wet. But of course, as the pigment
and paper starts to dry, the brushstrokes hold
their form a bit more until later on when
it's completely dry, we'll have absolute control. But it's these moments where it's on the way to
drying where we can create those elusive
ethereal brushstrokes. That's why masking
fluid can be useful because we've gone
over this section with lots of different pigments and
we haven't needed to think about preserving any of the paint below because we
applied that masking fluid. Of course, it's still
possible to do it. It just we have to concentrate even more to preserve
some of those areas. But sometimes that
actually makes the painting look more
intriguing and organic. Sometimes masking fluid takes
away some of that feeling because if I was out
painting on location, I wouldn't use masking fluid, and often it brings out this
feeling of spontaneity, this energy that is
quite captivating. So it can be fun to experiment
with masking fluid, and it can feel a lot easier, but it doesn't necessarily
mean you have to rely on it. Using masking fluid
can sometimes lead us to think that
we need perfection. We're aiming for perfection, whereas we're not actually
aiming for perfection. We're looking for the
perfect imperfection. And what I mean by that is the sweet spot
where a painting feels alive because we stop before everything
is explained. We design, we have intention, big shapes, strong value plan, and a clear vocal point. Then we allow the water, pigment and confident
mark making to introduce irregularities
that feel natural, and that's
what we're doing here. We've got the main composition, the main idea of the
silhouettes of this building, but everything else is a bit
more suggestive or implied. The idea is not to over fuss, yet nothing is random
or completely random. We have structure underneath
and freedom on top. And that all comes down to beginning with
the end in mind. So before I start a painting, I have one sentence one
sentence goal for the mood, and I try and map out the
whole painting with f values.
12. Suggesting Windows: There's a few other concepts that you can keep in
mind that are helpful whether you're painting along exactly with me trying to get a likeness or
whether you want to create something original
outside of the class. So we know the idea of
beginning with the end in mind. But also, we got to think about big shapes
to small shapes. So we block in linked darks. So all the dark shapes,
we're linking together. We're not painting every
individual building or window, we're linking it all together. And that includes a lot of
the mid tone shapes as well. And then we're keeping most of the edges at
this stage, soft. It's only at the end or
with a few selected shapes, we're having the hard edge down at the bottom, for example, where the buildings
are and the tops where the roof
connects with the sky. Then we've got to think about
decisive brush strokes. I'm loading the brush well. I'm rarely just dabbing away
with a weak thirsty brush. Unless I'm trying
to draw out liquid. I'm not scared of
applying lots of pigment and water onto my brush because I
want it to flow out. So I'm loading the brush well, placing a stroke,
and leaving it. I'm not tapping or
petting it that much. I'm kind of committing
to what it is. Whether it is good or not, we'll have to find
out at the end, but I'm not going over the
same area again and again. I might layer it, but I'd try not to overwork it. Going back to edges, you can see how as this
washes starting to dry, we're getting harder lines now. We're being a bit
more architectural. We're starting to imply window frames and features
on the walls themselves. But not in a realistic way. I'm mixing hard, soft and
lost edges on purpose. And it's these strokes
now that are melting in there to help the shapes
join whenever possible. When it comes to my palette
and the colors that I select, In this particular painting,
it's quite multi colored. I'm using a lot. It's not
necessarily a limited palette. But I don't actually see
it that way to begin with. I actually thinking
about limiting my colors to some
principal colors. Green is the main
color, I'd say now, and then we can start adding
subtle colors on top.
13. Street Light Glow: It's less to do with
the colors themselves, actually, and more to do
with the temperature. Because if you look at the building we've
just done on the left, for example, there are
actually multiple colors. It's not just green, of course, but most of them
are cool colors, except for that
glow at the bottom, and even that glow has
red, yellow and orange. But because we've thought about temperature rather than
color, so to speak, it still makes sense despite there being a whole range
of different colors in we're doing the similar
thing on this left side now, starting with a nice
vibrant orange. You can use Cadmium Yellow and cabium red to
make that orange. And it's got a soft edge
on the left side of it. But then on the
right side, we're following the edge of
the building going down, and then that leading line to the vanishing point and then down again as it
connects to the car. Once I've painted an area, much like this, I try and mess it up a bit on purpose
to make it more exciting. So I'm dropping in pure
water on purpose now. I'm letting the water run. I'm allowing blooms and backruns even because it's
a supportive area, this is not the main
area with most detail. The cars the two cars on the
right are the focal point, and the main building in the center is the
second focal point.
14. Starting The Reflections: Now I'm starting on
the road reflections, and this is a perfect example of the balance between
control and chaos. So it starts off
quite controlled. I'm painting from the bottom
down with a serlean blue, and I'm leaving
two parallel lines of the paper beneath to indicate the reflections
of the van above it. And then I use pure water to soften the bottom so
that it's not a hard edge, so it just flows down naturally. And that's the first step. Also, you see how
I've transitioned to the orange in the
horizon line too. And now we work
from the bottom up, so I'm using pure
serlean at the moment, and then dabbing in on
the paper Viridian green. I'm not using my palette
to mix these colors. And then it connects with
that area we wet above. So it's still a soft area. And then as we go
from left to right, I'm allowing those
reflections, again, of the car lights
to be preserved. And you can see
how I've actually painted orange on the underlayer to give these reflections
a bit of a warm glow. So when it comes
to painting yours, remember to add a little bit of orange glow on the underlayer. So there was a little bit
of control there with the preserving of the paper
and the order of sequence. But the brush marks themselves, the color and the placement
right now is quite random. It's not so clean, is it? You can see how I've allowed
water to rush where it goes. Applying a bit of
coolness to the sides, bit of purple to blend
into that green, a bit of blue on the
right hand side. It doesn't matter which blue. It can be serlean
blue, cobalt blue. That blue on the right hand side complements the orange above
it very well, I think. And on the left hand side, you can see how that
green and purple mirror the buildings above because remember,
it's a reflection. Now I'm swapping over to a smaller brush to figure out how to connect these reflections with
the buildings above. Applying pure water. Then applying thick blue pigment underneath so that
it runs down itself, moving to a larger
brush now and agitating the building and bringing that wash straight
into the building. Using a lot of
Viridian green now.
15. Darker Tones: Now we filled out this area
with a base of colors. It's time to go in with more bold pigments
whilst it's wet on wet. So don't be afraid to mix
really thick dark pigments. I'm using a purplish, it's purple mixed
with black, really. And I'm just dropping it in
there because I want it to be seamless where the building connects with the road on
the left and the right. We're starting on
the left, of course, at the moment, and then
moving on to the right. I'm being very ambiguous and suggestive of how
these figures are. I can just about see the
pencil lines underneath. But of course, because the
pigment and paper is wet, it looks darker than it is. When it dries, a lot of
the transparency will come back and we'll see
the pencil lines again for the people
and the cars. Working on a few
architectural details. When it comes to painting
these architectural details, I'm trying to follow a
general principle of either vertical lines,
horizontal lines. Or following the
vanishing point. So the vanishing point is
basically the central two cars, primarily the one on the left in between
the two buildings. That is the main
vanishing point. So everything basically
guides the eye to that point. So when it comes to
painting the details, I have that point in mind, and a lot of the lines
direct towards that area. Even now, I'm applying these strokes in that
direction and because of that, it doesn't really
matter what it is. Maybe it's a car,
maybe it's a shop. It doesn't matter because it just makes sense with the flow, it doesn't stand out as that
odd because it's suggestive. I'm painting the bottom
of the figure here because I want it to blend
into the background, and then later we'll
paint the top of the figure on the left
with a harder line. So we've got a nice mix of hard and soft
lines on that figure. And then, likewise,
on the right, I'm being quite wet on wet with the legs of these
figures very suggestive, not detailed at all, really.
16. Right Side Buildings: I think the glow here, that vertical edge is too hard, so I'm just going to
soften it up a bit. I want to keep that hard line with the direction of
the vansing point. I'll keep that hard line
at the bottom there. But this vertical one, I want to soften out
a bit and extend. And now we can start
the right buildings, similar as the way
we did the left, using the tip of my
brush at the top for the sharp details. Thinking about those
vertical lines and those leading guiding
lines to the focal point. I want to make sure this
line here is completely vertical because
that's what anchors the scene and gives it
a feeling of stability. If it was a wonky building, the whole composition
would feel off. So this confident vertical line here is what gives it structure, and you can use a ruler to make sure that you've
got a guide for that. And then I'm gradually
adding in some blue. So we use gray a
cool gray initially, and now we're
adding this Cerlean blue connecting it into. Allowing some white
gaps using the tip of my brush so that it blends in
with wet on wet technique. Now I'm applying
pure cadmium red into that wash and bringing it up a bit
of purple, as well. And using that to blend it into this vibrant orange down below. Trying not to achieve
sharp edges at this stage, softening up some edges. So I can lift or soften areas only if they compete
with those focal points. The ones I was talking
about earlier, the two front cars and that
secondary focal point, which is the main building. I'm being careful not to
directly blend blue with orange. Sometimes it's going
to be inevitable. It's not the end of the world, but because they're
complimentary colors, they have a tendency to go muddy if they're mixed directly. So I'm using yellow as a kind of halfway point to kind of
help the blending of them. Also, you can see
purple as well. I'm using that in between
blue and orange, too. Now I'm starting to
extend this wash down, trying to keep that sharp
edge on the left here. Paint beside and allow
that glow to remain. I'm not being too particular
with the color here, just using whatever's on my
palette because the colors on my palette have already been used other areas
of the painting, so it automatically
means it's harmonious. Painting the other
side of the car now. Now I can start filling in and adding a bit more depth
into the areas that I want. So I fill out the washls
with a kind of mid tone, and then I add thicker pigment on the areas
that I want more depth. I don't necessarily start
with thick pigment, and then I can take out as well. Now this area above has
started to dry a bit, I can have a bit more
control with this blending. So I know it's not
going to bleed straight into the vibrant areas
I want to preserve.
17. Suggestive Strokes: Let's mix a very dark color, but without using
black, using blue. You can use serlean or
ultramarine and using Burnt Sienna with that makes
virtually your own black, a nice, exciting gray that
isn't from the black paint. This is being very bold here. Again, this will dry a lot lighter than it
looks at the moment. And I'm going to use my brush to agitate the tops of these
figures on the right, because I want these to be
barely noticeable, really. Now I can just experiment
being expressive in this area, pushing and pulling
with pigment. Trying to connect it, add some vertical lines
every now and again, dropping in thicker pigment in some places to add
a bit more depth. Holding my brush at the end and using quick
sweeping brushstrokes. I can start to experiment
with the buildings or the cars on the
left hand side. After you practice
drawing quite a few cars, you can just get a kind of
feeling for the shape of them. And even if you're not
painting detailed, you can kind of use a visual language to convey
the feeling of a vehicle, even if there's no
real details there, maybe a few reflections from
the windows or the bonnet. But these details on the side
are meant to be perieral. They're not meant to be
the center of attention, so they can be quite elusive. Just suggesting the silhouette of this figure on
the left, as well. I really don't want him
to stand out that much. And later on in the painting, we'll further smudge
and soften these edges. So you don't need to
spend too much time fussing about the details
here because we're going to use a technique to give a sense of movement
to the image later on.
18. Left Side Cars: So when it comes to preparing and coming up with a
composition like this, what I generally do is
collect various references or resources that convey the kind of feeling that I want to achieve in my painting. And I do a few sketches of those thumbnail
size to begin with, just a couple of inches wide, and I work out tonally what
it's going to look like. And these thumbnail sketches only take 5 minutes
to begin with. And then I can do
another thumbnail, but this time with paint, Molochrome paint, maybe just
neutral tint to work out, again, the values
and then incorporate color and do a mini thumbnail just using color watercolor, but at a small size. And then I start to
increase the size a bit because these
preliminary paintings and drawings are so small, they don't take as much time as a full painting like this. But of course, they're much looser and don't
have as much detail. But that's not so important
for the preliminary sketches because the whole point
of them is to work out the main message,
the main shapes. The details are just bits of jewelry to add on at the end. And details by themselves
don't make the painting. So by first of all, working out the main
shapes on a small scale, then when we paint
full size like this, the details just make
sense by themselves. We don't need to plan
them. We kind of just spontaneously
figure them out. And this painting has
taken about 2 hours. But if I were to paint it again, it would be half the
amount of time because I now know what areas
I can speed up. It's all worked out in my mind. So I don't need to do as much decision
making or correcting. And in fact, a
second go will make it look much more
alive and spontaneous, less forced because
I know which bits now I can kind of surrender with and allow the
watercolor to do its thing. So whilst I've been talking, we've been starting these cars, and it's a fairly
simple procedure once we know the
drawing is correct. So we left the cars as
white blocks, basically. And I'm just allowing
a little line of white at the very
top of the cars. These lines indicate highlights, reflecting the light of the sky. And then we're bringing that blue wash basically
all the way down. And because we've
got masking fluid, we can even paint over
the lights of the cars. But if you're not
using masking fluid, you can just paint around them. On the left hand side, we're going a bit darker. These cars aren't so
detailed on the left. They're a bit more suggestive, so I'm just doing them
in one go really, being a bit more elusive and making sure to
connect them more. You'll notice that the
wash is connected. It's all one strange shape. With the two cars on the right, we're going to do
it in two passes because that's really
the center of attention, so we need to make sure
that stands out a bit more.
19. Implying Figures: Now let's go back to
the right hand side, the right buildings and add a few architectural
details to them, trying to make
sense of the chaos. Trying to correct
the tones a bit. And this is one of the
reasons why painting this a second time for me would be a lot quicker
because at the moment, I'm problem solving a bit, taking a bit of
time to work out. I could have edited away, but I think it's
important to see the full process
and that's why I suggest always watching
the whole lesson first and then painting by
yourself to work it out. I mean, you can watch
it a second time whilst you paint pausing bit by bit. But often it's
best to just watch the whole class because there's some areas that I scrub out. And if you're
painting bit by bit, a lot of it's unnecessary. So to paint the figures here, I'm implying a few
different heads, different heights,
different thicknesses, a few shoulders, just
silhouettes, some shadows. They don't really
look like people, but they fill that area. They do their job by connecting the buildings to the ground. And especially with watercolor, where it can be so spontaneous
and unpredictable, the painting that
you do might go a different direction
whether you like it or not to the one that I'm doing. So you have to learn
to be spontaneous and change allow the painting to direct you rather than
you force the painting. When I paint from my references, I'm not being loyal to them. After the halfway point or
even sometimes before that, the painting takes
on its own role, its own energy, and I use the flow of that to dictate
the rest of the painting, even if it steers far
away from the reference.
20. Architectural Details: So trying to achieve a
bit of a dry brush mark here with the
architectural points, vertical lines basically
at the moment, and horizontal lines for this front plane that
is in perspective with us is parallel to our view on these
side buildings here, just vertical lines and lines that go down to that
vanishing point. These lines help that feeling
of perspective, of course. I'm not painting them to
describe the windows, really. I'm painting them to try and
give a feeling of depth. So every brushstroke,
every detail has a role and everything else I'm leaving out
because it's unnecessary. I'm only really including what is necessarily to
improve the painting, everything else I'm leaving out. Another way to put it. If
you're looking at your subject and there's an element that doesn't really have a function in the
painting, don't put it in. If you don't have to paint every shop window,
every street light, every slab of concrete, only paint what is necessary
to fit the composition. And a lot of the time, it means basically painting from
your imagination because you're taking at
least I'm taking this painting so far away from the reference
photo that it has no resemblance to
anywhere in real life because I'm using references of buildings from multiple
different places, cars, from different places, the color scheme,
from other paintings. So it's actually a made up
scene, fictional scene. And that's the way I
learnt to paint, actually. To become so familiar with the kind of
principles of composition and elements of design
that you can create this scene from
imagination, basically. And you don't have to necessarily be able to see
it in your mind's eye. You sketch it out with
preliminary drawings. And you use that as a kind
of structure going forward for the rest of your
compositions and you tweak it depending
what your subject is. If I want to do a
painting of Rome, I'd pick a building or sculpt the buildings in the shape of that Roman
kind of architecture. If I wanted to do one
of London or New York, I'd change the
buildings that are representative of those
architectural styles, but the elements are the same.
21. Foreground Cars: Now we can start detailing the main cars, which
are the focal points, so we can take a bit
more time or a bit more thought to make
sure these are correct. So to make the windscreens a bit more interesting rather than just filling them
out in a flat color, I have them darker on
one side to the other. Then I leave the bonnet as a pure underlay to create
the feeling of reflection. Then I'm dabbing a bit of
orange where the car light is. Of course, I've
used masking fluid, so this is just to create a
glow of warmth around it. So when we peel back
that masking tape, there's not going to be
such a hard edge there. And I left a little gap where the number plate or license
plate of the car is. Then let's start connecting that car with this
forward moost car. Do a similar thing, connecting the outline and then using
pure water to blend it down. You can actually make
this windscreen lighter. Using the side of my
brush to agitate it. This bonnet has a
bit more detail. And if you look at a cart, you can always see usually
in the middle of the bonnet, there's either a little
bump or it goes down a bit. So that's what I'm doing here, creating a bit of interest to draw the eye in
to this section. Then dropping that red and
yellow paint over the top of the masking fluid
so that it blends out I was just going
a bit crazy there, so I used 30 breaths to draw
out some of that liquid. And now I'm using pure water to soften the edge of
this car on the left. And it's wet now, the pigment will blend downward softly and create that illusion of a wet road the
reflection coming down. And now with this windscreen, because it's wet or damp, rather, it's not shimmering
wet at the moment. It's just slightly damp. I can apply these thick
strokes of pigment to define some of the
shapes without a hard edge. Now I'm using a
very dark pigment, and that could be black. That could be ultramarine marking out where the
license plate is. And then on this side, we can connect it with the shadows. And maybe we can clean my brush and apply some nice strong red. Oh, see, it's bled out there
because it was too watery. So I've got my tissue in
hand to erase it quickly. Always have a tissue at hand. So I need to make
sure next time we do that that areas dry. So I'm going to wait
a bit before we add that orange again. O
22. Balancing Detail: Now that we have basically the important details
of the car done, we can be a bit more expressive. So I'm just connecting the side of the car
to the building. So the flints unified. Everything's
connected, even though they are different shapes,
they're connected. So now underneath the car, we can be very expressive. And I can always come back
with darker pigment if this red is too jarring, but at the moment, I want
to see what effects I can create by mixing this red over the white of
the paper here. Make sure you do
have a tissue at hand in case it
goes a bit crazy. Painting in a street lamp or at least the bottom half of the street lamp for
the time being. This is very thick
pigment, very dry brush. I want this lamp post
to have hard edges, almost like if you think about some photography
where the backgrounds blurred and the
foreground is sharp. This lamppost is sharp, and it means that the
details of the building behind don't need to be detailed because
they're out of focus, and it makes sense. So when painting,
building behind, you don't have to
add lots of detail. If you paint with
the end in mind, you know that by adding
these detailed well, somewhat detailed cars and
lamp posts in front of it later on, it'll
make more sense. Because if everything
was super defined, nothing will really stand out. It'll just be too
loud and jarring. The message won't be clear. Now I'm going over some
of these figures again. Just an elusive shaded area. It's just so that we're
filling in this area. Maybe we didn't even need
to add these figures. The building can just
blend into the street. But I think it adds something. Adds a certain feeling to it. If you don't want to add
figures, that's perfectly fine. It's your choice how you
want to take the painting.
23. Car Reflections: Oh. Now let's bring the reflection of this car into the composition using very
thick pigment to begin with. Pure black, really. And for the time being, I'm painting up to
the license plate. And it doesn't matter
whether the other areas dry. We're going to add
water to blend it in and bring that
reflection downwards. But we just need to paint the shadow first
with dark pigment. Don't be afraid of using
very thick pigment. You want it to be as dark
as possible in this section because we're going
to use that pigment to fill out the
rest of the area, so it will become weaker. So we need to
compensate for that. Then using pure cerlim and connecting it with that
shadow we've just done, you can see how it's already
blending down that stroke. Agitating it. Leaving
a bit of a gap there. Using the side of my brush to achieve some dry brush marks. And I'm leaving
that vertical line on the left hand side of that reflection as it is because it directs the eye upwards to that
focal point again. Now I dried the
painting completely, so it's not even the
slightest bit of moisture, so we can rub away the masking fluid without
agitating the pigment. So it's all off now
the masking tape, the masking fluid rather. Now we can paint over some
of these areas and soften and integrate those areas
in by softening the edges. Finishing off that lamp post, using a very thin brush, some dark pigment,
and then using kind of calorithic brush
strokes, some swirly bits. Because everything's quite
sharp and structural. We've got straight
lines everywhere. So a little bit of these
curly lamp posts are nice little touch a little contrast that's
not overwhelming. And by the way, you
can see how the sky, when we painted it,
it seemed quite dark. It was certainly the darkest thing whilst we were painting it because it was only in reference to the
white of the paper. But now that we've added
all this dark pigment on top, it almost looks white. So when it comes to
painting your sky, again, think with
the end in mind. You can always put
it a little bit darker than you think. O.
24. Adding Rain Drops: Those lampposts also
add a bit of depth because they vary in size as they go further
into the painting. Now we can start flicking
some splats on there, and this makes the scene
feel like it's raining, a bit more water in the
air, some atmosphere. And I'm using a very
soft brush for this. I'm not using a synthetic brush because synthetic brushes
are a bit too hard. Their heads are a bit too
hard and they don't bounce, so it's hard to splat the water. When you've got a
soft flimsy brush, the water just falls off in
a much more controlled way. And I used a tissue to
dampen those or take away some of those splats so
that they weren't so strong. And now it looks like rain. Now I'm using pure
cadmium yellow to dab a few highlights onto these areas to really
make them pop. Just a few subtle splats. Now, I've changed to pure white. So using white guash. And again, if you think of what an object
looks like it's wet, it has these sharp but
small white reflections. So I'm being quite selective
with how many I'm putting. But again, it's quite random. I'm spacing them
out quite evenly, adding a few
vertical lines here, some dots that imply
a line really. The reflections of
the car lights. Instead of drawing a line, I'm just placing dots in a row to further add to that feeling
of vertical structure. It really anchors the scene adding those verticals in there, the street lights,
the buildings. There are actually not many
horizontal lines at all, if you look at the composition, only vertical lines and lines that lead to
the vanishing point. Of course, we do have some horizontal lines
where the cars are, but they're very minimal. And even myself, if critiquing myself
at this final stage, I can learn things from it and what I would do differently, I would put even
less details into the buildings because they don't need so many lines there. Ideally, with hindsight, I would have kept the more
elusive washes intact. But the journey never
ends as an artist. There's always things
you can learn, and with each painting I do, there's things that
I take from it and try and adapt into
future paintings. And that's what actually keeps painting such an
intriguing thing, especially watercolor
because there's always more you can learn. You never reach the
final destination. You never truly arrive. You always want to
reach the next level. So just adding some
light splats of blue gouache and using a flat brush to soften
up this left hand side.
25. Final Thoughts: Welcome back and
congratulations on completing this watercolor class on
painting a rainy street scene. Today's study was
all about exploring how values can simplify
a complex subject, how warm and cool
contrasts create glow, and how lost and found edges
suggest motion and damp air. We leaned on
reflections as shapes, saved small notes
of clean paper for sparkle and let controlled
accents read as reign. These ideas translate
beautifully into night scenes, harbors and any subject where mood matters
more than detail. Remember, watercolor painting is not just about technical skills, but also about expressing your creativity and
personal style. I encourage you to
continue exploring, experimenting and pushing
your boundaries to create your own unique
watercolor masterpieces. As we come to the
end of this class, I hope you feel
more confident and comfortable with your
watercolor painting abilities. Practice is key when it comes
to improving your skills, so keep on painting
and experimenting. I want to express my gratitude for each and every one of you. Your passion for
watercolor painting is so inspiring and I'm honored
to be your teacher. If you would like feedback on your painting, I'd
love to give it. So please share your painting in the student projects
gallery down below, and I'll be sure to respond. If you prefer, you can
share it on Instagram, tagging me at Will Elliston, as I would love to see it. Skillshare also loves
seeing my students work, so tag them as well
at Skillshare. After putting so
much effort into it, why not share your creation? If you have any questions
or comments about today's class or want any specific advice
related to watercolor, please reach out to me in
the discussion section. You can also let me know about any subject wildlife or scene you'd like me
to do a class on. If you found this class useful, I'd really appreciate
getting your feedback on it. Reading your reviews
fills my heart with joy and helps me create the best
experience for my students. Lastly, please click
the follow button Utop so you can follow
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the first to know when I launch a new class
or post giveaways. I hope you feel ready to paint atmosphere with
confidence and ease. I look forward to our next class together until then
happy painting.
Will Elliston, Award-Winning Watercolour Artist
