Painting Swiss Cows in Watercolors

1. Intro for Skillshare videos: Hello, and welcome. My name is Emily, and I'm an artist and instructor based in Madison, Wisconsin. In this Skillshare tutorial, we'll start off by learning how to paint a sky, using a really easy technique to add some white puffy clouds. We'll look at painting our cows wet on wet and then adding a wet on dry layer of shadows. And then we'll finish it off by learning how to paint grasses using a rigger brush. You'll have access to a tracing template included in this tutorial, as well as some color reference photos and printout instructions that will teach this tutorial step by step. So grab your supplies, and let's get ready to paint. 2. Supplies: Alright, so for today's tertorial, we are going to paint some Swiss cows. I have my reference photo all set up. I have my template printed onto my eight by ten inch cold-pressed watercolor paper. This is 100% cotton. This is a brand called Arches. I do have it taped on top of a plastic corrugated plastic board, taped with this is a special kind of watercolor tape called Kiwi Hub, but you can also use a painter's tape. I have my water colors. I have a variety of Daniel Smith colors, a few glasses of water, a paper towel, and then I have a variety of large and small size brushes. I have a larger quill brush. You can also use a mop brush or a flat brush for painting wetting the sky and for painting large swatches. You'll also need a medium size round brush. So I've got a round number four. This is a silver limited black velvet brush. And then specialty brushes, I do have a rigger brush. This is a size one rigger, also known as a liner or a script brush. We're going to use this for painting some of our tall grasses. 3. Sky and Clouds: Alright, so we are going to get started. I'm going to start off with my sky because I do want to paint the sky up to the tree line, and I want that to be able to dry before I do the other two sections. So, I am going to add some water to my palette. I'm using my large quill brush, and now you can use any type of blue. If you have Cerlean blue, you can use that. Or you can also use athaloblue if you have Atho blue. You can do a different color in your sky. You can either warm the color up or cool it down by adding some color to this. But I'm going to do just a simple palo blue. And now we're going to paint our sky and then use paper towel to pull some clouds. So I have my board. I picked up my board slightly at an angle. I'm going to paint first these horizontal lines. So now I'm going to do my best to kind of butt up against the tree line. Can add water to this lowest line that I'm creating if I want this line towards the horizon to be a little bit lighter in color. And now that I have kind of an even wash here, if I had wanted to add just a little bit darker of blue towards the top of the sky, I can grab a little bit of that halo blue, mix it on my plate so that I don't I don't get some streaks on my paper and then add a little bit extra to the top. Now, before this dries, I do want to lift some clouds. I'm going to take my paper towel, wrap it around my finger. And then I can use that to lift a few clouds in the sky. So I'm pressing down in different different levels. So I'm pressing down a little bit harder towards the top if I want the tops of my clouds to be a little lighter in color. And then I'm barely touching the paper towards the bottom because I want the bottom to be a little lighter. Now, every time you do a different cloud, you are going to have to find a new section of your paper towel. I'm trying to add a few clouds that are coming from the sides inward. The reason I'm doing that is because I want to kind of keep this composition. So I'll move my paper towel. Alright, and I don't want to get too complicated with this. I think I'm just gonna leave it at that. If you do have any sort of pools of color on the sides of your paintings, you might want to lift those up. The one thing that will complicate a nice wash like this, like we have in the sky, is if you have any water that's sitting on the edge, if that water starts to creep back onto your paper, it's going to create a little bit of a bloom on the edge of your paper. So, it's usually best that we do not have any sort of puddles of liquid on the sides here. Mmm. 4. First layer of foreground: Alright, now I'm going to take a peek at the foreground. I know I still have my cows here that I'm going to paint, but I want to paint the first layer of these light grasses in the front, 'cause I want to allow that to dry before I add some of the grasses with my rigger brush. So I'm gonna clean off my palette here, and I'm going to do the same thing where I'm going to grab some water in a new section using my large quill or mop brush. And this time, I'm going to use I'm gonna use a quinocratone burnt orange for this first layer of grass. Now to this, I can once I paint this quinocorn born orange along the base, I can drop in a little bit of green if I want, or I can keep the green to be just the grasses with my rigger brush. But I do want to add a little bit of color here just to kind of get it colored. This is also going to go quickly. So I do want just like I did the sky, I'm not going to wet this foreground first, but I might do a little bit of dry brushing here. So what does that look like? I might start on this left side, and I might work in section. So this is kind of a good section here by my cow to do since I've got the feet really, really close to the bottom here. So I'm going to grab my color. I'm going to go just over that cow in the background. I'll make sure that I have a really nice thick layer of color here. And then as I come down, I can use the edge of my brush and pull some of that color to the front and leave a little bit of this paper to shine through here. That is called dry brushing. Now, to this cow here, I'm going to take my paper towel and I'll just lift a little bit from that cow. Alright, now because this quill brush is so large, I think I'm gonna switch to my small brush. And I do want to go in and make sure that I'm up against my cow, that I pull that color up against my cow or otherwise, I'm going to see that hard edge. I can also take that time to add my color between the legs of my cow. Now, since we're only doing one section at a time, now, this is still wet. So we can if we wanted to, we can always drop in a little bit more of that quinocidurne, burnt orange towards the back side here. I got a little too dark. Or we can always drop in a little bit of green. So here's a sap green. I think I'm going to see what it's like to drop in some of this sap green here. Now, I do want this quinocradon orange to still shine through, so I'm not going to drop in this sap green everywhere. I'm gonna actually try to keep it closest to the horizon here, because that's where it would be darkest is at the horizon. And then I am going to take a peek kind of where the shadow is here on my cow. I can always add a little bit to that shadow. But you can see that I still have this orange still shining through. If your green got too dark at all, you can take your paper towel and just kind of lift it up. And now we're gonna move on to this next section. Alright, just like before, we'll come on in with a little bit of that sap green. Drop in a little bit of that sop green. While it's wet. And then I'm going to take a peek. Now, there's quite a significant shadow right here. So I think I will try to add a little bit darker of that green and the shadow here just to kind of place where that shadow is gonna be for me. I can do the same thing with this cow in the background here. A little bit more shadow here in the front. And then I'm going to continue on. Looks like that didn't. With the rest of my grass. And then once again, in this section where it kind of butts up to the white paper, I can use my paper towel and just kind of soak away a little bit of that so it's not so intense. And now I'm going to let that whole layer dry. 5. First layer of eyes, nose, hooves on your cows: Alright, so as we let the sky and this first layer of ground dry, we're going to start on our cows. Now, I'm going to start on the faces here, especially this face, since it's not touching any of the wet ground. So let's start off by mixing a base color. Now, we're going to start off by painting this base color over our entire cow. So when we look at our Brown Swiss cows, we're looking at, what's the lightest color that we have here. And I actually think that it's very similar to this ground color that we painted. We've got a little bit of orange undertone to it. And so I think we're going to actually use the same quinacridone burnt orange that we used for the ground, and we'll use that for the first layer of our cows. Alright, so as we take a peek at the face here, let me zoom in on this cow on the left. We're gonna start by painting wherever we see some of this brown. Now, I know there's a lot of details, and so we're going to kind of try to simplify those details. We can start with the little kind of patch of hair on the head. To that, we can always add. Once we've got that first layer, you can drop in a little bit more of that quinocrodone burnt orange kind of in the center. So we're going to do a combination of this first layer and then dropping in where we see more shadows. When we move on to the forehead here, I'm taking a peek at this kind of patch in the center. So I'll do a little dot of color, and then to that dot, I'm just going to pull some outward lines kind of radiating out from this center. Now, if you have too much liquid, you can tap your brush on your paper towel. You'll notice that it's really nice and light, and then I can go in while it's still wet, and I can always drop in a little more of that quinacradone burnt orange in the center there. Alright, then we'll go on. We'll move on, and we'll see where is the darkest shadow. So I've got these shadows all along the right side. So I'm gonna paint a shadow around. I'm gonna still leave the eye a little lighter. So I'll go around the eye here and down kind of the edge of the face up to the neck here. And then I'm going to wash my brush, tap it, and use just a little bit of water to kind of blend that out. So blend that around the center, come around to this left side. And I'll do the same thing on this left side, kind of paint around the eye here and down to the nose. So so far, we've got some highlights here and some highlights around the eyes. Now, we will be going back and doing a whole nother layer, but remember with watercolors, we like to just get our color on our paper first so that we have an idea of where our shadows. If any section gets too dark, you can take your paper towel and press down to lift up where it got too dark. Alright, now for the ears, I am going to take a little bit of this quinocodon magenta, and I'm going to paint a little bit of the ears here. So I want to add a little line of this quinacudon magenta along the edge of the ear, the outside edge. And then I'm going to take that whatever's left on my brush and I'm going to pull some lines inward. So what we're doing here is we're negatively painting. So when we take that color and we pull it inward, we're left with these little white hairs that are coming out. You can always grab a little more magenta and drop it in the center. If it gets too dark, you can dry your brush and then just lift a little of that quinocrto magenta from the outside edge. Now we're going to wait for this to dry, and then we're going to do that same idea on the inside edge using that brown. So we'll do the other ear first the same way. We're going to do a little line of quinacon magenta along the outside edge, and then pull some of that quinacridone magenta inward. Kind of following the, some of the guidelines that were sketched out. I can always drop a little bit more of that quinocrado magenta in the inside of the ear. If it got too dark, I can dry my brush and lighten it around the edge. I think I'm going to do the same thing on my other cow just because I've got this color all set. And so let's do the exact same thing here. Alright. Before we do the whole body, I want to give this a little bit more time to rest. So let's take a peek at the noses and we can do the noses. So I've got a little bit of shadow violet here that I'm going to mix with water. My opacity should be kind of a medium opacity. This is going to be the first layer of the nose. It'll be too dark if you can't see the lines on your paper anymore. So with that medium opacity, I'm gonna actually just paint the entire nose here. Now, this is where if you would like to switch to a detail brush, you're more than welcome to switch to a detail brush. And we will paint the other nose, as well. Now, while I have this color, I can do two things. I can paint my hooves. Now, if this gray gets pulled into my grass, that's okay. And then I can also use that color to paint the dark eyes. Now, to this nose, if you notice any sort of highlights, you can always come back before it dries, dry your brush off and use a dry brush to kind of lift any of those highlights that you notice. 6. Wet on wet Layer: Cow Body: Alright, let's finish on the first layer of the color coat of our first Swiss cow. So I still have that watered down color. And this time, I'm going to do it over the whole body. Now, your greens in the background should be dry enough at this point that you should be able to paint up next to it without it bleeding. However, if you start to notice it bleeding at all, take your paper towel, soak it up, and then wait a little bit until you then paint the rest of your cow. Now, I'm going to try to do this in sections in segments, just so that I can get a little bit of wet on wet details here. So I'm going to start just with the body and then the two legs. Alright. Now, before I drop in any darker pigment, I'm going to go back to where I started. Make sure that this section is nice and wet. I need to make sure that it's evenly wet in all sections that I'm working, which is why I go back to the beginning. Now I can take some of that quinacidone burnt orange directly from my pan, and I can drop it in where I see these darker sections. So I notice along the front of the cow here, it's quite dark. A little bit on the back here. Now, you notice that as I grab when I'm grabbing more quinarcadone burnt orange, I'm not washing my brush. This is important. If I do wash my brush and I grab a brush full of liquid, it's just going to dissipate with the water that's already on my paper. And I want this color to kind of stay where I put it. So I need to make sure that I'm grabbing color that is not mixed with water. All right. If any sections of your cow got too dark, you can always dry your brush and use a dry brush to lift. Now, this is going to be the first layer, so I know it's looking quite orange. We're going to add a second layer of brown on top. All right. And then we didn't add any color to the back legs. I'm going to add just a little bit of color to these back legs. I'm gonna wait for that back leg, though, since it's right butted up against. All right. And then I think we will do the body of this cow the same way. I think I am going to segment this cow similarly to how I did the other cow. So I'm not gonna do that back leg there. I'm going to do the body and then the two front legs. Take a little bit of that color directly from my pan and drop it in where I notice the darkest of colors. And then I can dry my brush and lift where it got a little too dark with my dry brush. Let's take a peek at the head of this second cow. So it's a very similar coloring, except for this little hairpiece at the top is what's the lightest in color. So we're gonna do just a solid color around and down the head. And then I'm going to go pretty close up to the eyes, but I'm still going to leave a little bit of paper to shine through closest to the eyes. And still same thing right along the nose here around the nose there is still dark in color. And where I'm noticing the darkest of these colourings is, again, the shadow is along this edge. It seems like there's more light coming from this side. So I'm going to drop in a little bit of shadow around the right side of the eye and along the right side of the face. If things got too dark, especially in the center here, I can take my brush and lift from the center. Alright, I'm going to go back to this first cow and take a peek at the face again because I wasn't able to drop in any of these darker colors, so I'm actually going to go back and do kind of the same thing that I did here, where I'll kind of wet this section. Let's go back to this other cow. I do want to drop in a little bit more of that burnt orange here on the right side, but I just need to wet that section of the face first. I still want it to be nice, wet on wet. So basically, I've got some shadow on each side of the face. It's gonna be a little bit darker on this right side. Alright. Now, I did not do the ears. And so this is where we can do the outside of the ears us now this magenta is dry. So I'm going to start with my color right up next to the face. And then I'm gonna pull a line across the back side of the ear. And then same thing. I can pull a few little strands outward. Now, I don't want to pull too far out because I do want to leave a little bit of white there. So, it's going to be the same concept that I did for the inside. Instead of pulling in, I'm going to take my color and pull out. I'll show that one more time on this side. Now, I know it looks like it's really nice and highlighted there, but I'm still gonna do this step. I think it does look really nice. So there are times when we can kind of ignore the reference photo for a little bit and add color in ways that we know will work. Now I can always make that a little lighter towards the end by pulling up some of that color with a dry brush. And I'm going to do that same exact thing now on my second cow. Now, this is definitely where you can use a a small detail brush here. Add a little line on the top of the ear, and then pull a few just a few strands in. A little line on the top, pull a few strands down. Alright, then we'll finish with the rest of the legs here. These legs in the back seem like they're a little lighter, but they still have some color on them, so we definitely don't want to miss out. And then you can always drop in darker pigment where it's attaching to the cow. 7. Adding details to Eyes, nose and mouth: Alright, so as the body of our cows are drying, let's take another peek at our eyes, nose and mouth and add some final details to that. Now, this is where you definitely can switch to a smaller detail brush, especially for the nose here. So I've got a size 40. You can use a size zero, size one. I'm still gonna use this shadow violet. This is just a nice, dark gray color. You can always use black if you would like. But I'm really not going to be using a lot of black in the rest of the painting. So I don't think I need to use black to It just might be a little too dark then. So I'm going to add another layer to the eyes to make them nice and dark. This is basically as dark of the shadow violet gray as I can get. And then when I take a peek at my nose, I notice that there's a little bit of kind of an outline along the top of the nose. So I can try to do a little bit of outline along the top of the nose, and then along the base of the nose is where it's going to be the darkest. So I can kind of fill in the base. I'm going to kind of bring that base color up. And then when I get to a section that I want to start to blend, I'm going to clean my brush. Now, I do need to tap my brush on my paper towel so it's not soaking wet. I want it a little bit wet but not soaking. And then I'm going to take the point of my brush on that edge that I want to soften and then soften and pull that water Okay. Now, I can also take a little bit of water down gray, and I can add a little bit of dots of watered down gray towards the top here, and then towards the side of the mouth. I'm just adding these watered down dots to just kind of give a little bit of shadow and texture. And then I'm going to do the same thing for my other cow. Now, I know this is darker or this is further away, so it's a little bit smaller, but it's going to be the same general idea where I can if I can outline the top of the nose using a very small, fine brush, I will. And then I'll come down to the base of the nose. I'll fill that in about halfway. I'll stop, clean my brush, tap it on my paper towel, and then use the point of my brush and blend out that edge. Same thing. I'll water down a little bit of that gray color. And I'm noticing some light gray dots along the left side here of the mouth. So I'll add a little of that and a little bit on the right side, a little bit under the mouth, a little bit above the nose. It's okay if you pull a little bit of the pigment. That dark pigment, that's okay. And then I forgot to darken up. The eyes here. 8. First layer of Tree line: Wet on wet: Now, as we let the body dry a little bit more so that we can get a second layer of color in the body, I'm going to do my first layer of the tree line. Now, it seems like the sky and the foreground are dry. I'm actually going to do this sideways here so that I can rest my hand towards the sky and not get it dirty. I'm going to mix a sap green color first. And then I'm noticing on my reference photo that it's a lot darker at the base of the tree line. So I'm finding my deep sap green and also my quinacadon burnt gold burnt orange because I do see some oranges here, and I'm going to use those two colors to.in. So I've got my sap green here. I'm using my round size four and same thing. I'm going to chunk this in sections so that I can drop in wet on wet color before it dries. So I'll go around this little cow. And I'll kind of choose maybe this top section of the head is going to be a natural area to stop. You might be noticing that all of these first layers of color are all wet on wet to begin with. And then after we finish our first layer of wet on wet, then we add wet on dry details. All right, so this section, this little segment here is wet. And so I'm going to grab some of this deep sap green, and I'll start by adding some deep sap green along the tree line, the base of the tree line to get it really nice and dark. And then I can use the edge of my brush to add a little bit of kind of dots along that tree line here. I'll grab a little bit of that quinocodone burnt orange. My brush is too dirty. Grab a little bit more. Same thing. I don't want my brush too wet, so I might tap it on my paper towel so it's not soaking wet. And then I'm going to add just a few little highlights of that burnt orange. If the highlights of burnt orange get too dark, I can dry my brush, soak up a little bit of that. Alright, I'll continue doing it in segment, so I'll do this next segment probably up to the head of this next cow. Now, as your painting gets towards this right end, just like with our grasses, we can always use our paper towel and just kind of soak some of that up along this end so that it also kind of fades out a little bit. 9. Adding shadows on the Cows, part 1: Alright. Now, while we let that dry, let's take a second peek at our cows. We're gonna add our shadow layer to our cows. And so we're going to actually use that shadow violet as our shadow layer. And I'm mixing it here. If I get a little bit of that quinacn burnt orange in it, that's okay. Now, I am mixing quite an opaque. Well, I shouldn't say it's that opaque. Let's check the opacity here. It's quite watered down. So our shadow layer does need to be quite watered down. The reason being is that we definitely want that shadow to not be too opaque. If it's too opaque, it's going to look really heavy. We still want our shadows to look nice and light. So to make it look nice and light, we still have to add quite a bit of water. Now I'm going to start on the darkest sections of my shadow. So I'm going to start on this Left cow here. Well, actually, you know what? Let's start on this right cow because he's not going to be the main guy that you look at. This one is going to be the main one. So I'm going to kind of practice on this one first. So I'm seeing right away, I've got a shadow along this right side of the body along by where this kind of neckline is. And then there's also a shadow along the right side of the leg. So I'm going to add that. Now remember, we've got our light source from this left side. So naturally, we would have this shadow cast on the right side. In the face, same thing as the right side. You can see just how watery this is. So I've got this whole right side here. I do have a little bit on the left side as a shadow. And then I notice there's a big old shadow here in the body, but we do leave a section of this neck here that's out of shadow. The shadow kind of continues through the right side of the leg. And it kind of stops here ish. Now we have it along the right side of this leg. I do have a little bit of shadow running up, so I'm going to take my brush, wet it, and use a damp brush to just kind of pull a little bit of that shadow up. Just kind of keep that edge. I want this edge hard, but the other edge doesn't have to be quite as hard. Now, if I want to deepen any of these shadows, while they're wet, I can take some of that shadow violet and drop it in while it's wet and just kind of deepen those shadows a little bit, especially on the right side of my cows. And along kind of this bottom belly section. All right, we'll go back to the belly here. Now, this left side of the leg that's gonna stay nice and bright. But the belly here does have a shadow. So we'll add the shadow here. And then where the shadow line is going to end, I'm going to kind of follow a little bit up this line here, and almost kind of where this line ends is where my shadow is going to end. And then I am noticing a shadow kind of coming up and curving here, maybe a second one right next to it to just kind of show almost like the rib cage starting there. I do notice a little bit of a triangular shadow here. Now, you're already going to be able to start seeing once these shadows start to dry, you'll be able to see that they're really not quite as dark as what it looks like when it's wet. And that's important here. We've got another shadow along the butt end here coming up at that triangle. And then once again, right side of the leg right side of the leg. And if I need to drop in any dark, I'm noticing it's a little darker the back side of the body and the back here. I forgot to add a little bit of shadow on the utters here. Now, I like how it looks with these hard edges for the shadows. I think if you are not a fan of those hard edges, I think that we can kind of soften them up once it's dried a little bit. I also notice that in the ears here, there's a little bit more of a shadow here on the ear and here on the ear. The whole idea of adding shadows here is that we're adding shadows to the whole body of our cow. We're not just adding shadows to the body, but we're adding shadows to the face. I added a little bit of shadow to this right side of the head. Okay? And it's nice and watered down. Alright. Now, let's continue on the same shadow color on this cow to the left. So, same thing. Right side of the body is really nice and dark. So I'm going to add really watered down. This is nice and watered down. My brush is fully loaded. When my brush is fully loaded and I add it to my paper, I get a very, very nice even layer. It becomes not even when we don't have enough liquid. When we don't have enough liquid, then we start to see the texture on our paper shine through. So I'm adding shadow to this right side of the leg, same as before. I can kind of come in and according to the curves of the legs. So I came in, I left a little curve here by the calf, came in left a little curve by the ankle, kind of where this foot would be bent. And before this section dries, I can go grab a little bit more of that shadow violet, drop in a little darker shadow violet here just around the head, around the rightmost side of the body. Load up my brush again and start working on the rest of the body. I have it nice and watery. It's very, very watered down. I'm kind of tracing along the bottom of the head here, but then I'm leaving this really nice bright shadow or bright highlight here by the neck. So I'm going to follow that down. And then it looks like I've got some shadow here that kind of comes across the top here. And then this whole bottom is in shadow. But it's kind of coming from the end of this mouth here over to kind of where the leg starts. Now, here I'm kind of simplifying the shadows. Dragging my brush up and kind of stopping here, seeing how that looks. I think I'm gonna have it go up slightly more. And then I've got shadow all along this right side of the leg. And I can grab a little bit more pigment and drop in where it's dark. So it's nice and dark here and the chest, kind of where the leg is connecting here. It's a little bit darker on this leg and a little bit darker on the belly here. 10. Shadows on the Cows, part 2: Alright, then back to water down. Really fill up my brush here. Now I'm coming to the face. I'm noticing the same thing here where I've got the shadow around the right side of the face. Up through the nose, it kind of comes at a point here to the nose, a little bit down. This whole right side is covered in shadow. And then I do have a little bit of shadow kind of in this little teardrop shape in the left of the eye and just a little bit along the left of the face. Now, that looks like it got a little too dark. Dry my brush. Use a dry brush to lift a little bit. Looks a little bit better. So here's where I can just kind of play around with what shadows look like on the face. And if it doesn't work, I can take my paper towel and lift it up. Add some shadow here on the forehead, kind of this hair coming out and the hair on the head to this right side. It's nice and dark on this right side. A little bit darker on the inside of this ear. Now, I went over that highlight in the eye. I still think that looks okay. And now here on the left side of the face, the ear here is what's going to be in shadow slightly. So I've got that inside of the ear and then where the ear connects to the head or there's a little bit of shadow here. I can add a little bit of shadow in that little, like, hump in the back. And now let's add a little bit of shadow on the legs here. Now, if you're trying this at home and your shadows are not working as you're planned, two things might be happening. One, like I said, you might not have enough liquid on your brush. We really do want some very watered down shadows. Ah. Oops. That happens more often than you think, actually. The other thing that might be happening is that you might be blending out your shadows too much. So, already, when we look at this first cow, when I did not blend it out, these edges, these hard edges look really nice. Um, if you blend out all of your shadows, then suddenly you lose that bright contrast. And watercolors is all about having those bright colors and those deep dark shadows. So we do want to have a hard edge with these shadows. Know that your color is going to dry lighter, your shadow color. And so if it looks a little bit intense when it's wet, have faith, let it dry a little bit. But also make sure if it still is looking really weird, try your shadows a second time on a different painting, making sure that that shadow color is really quite watery, okay? And then your shadow color could be the culprit. Now, if you don't have shadow violet, you can always use Payne's gray. You can mix your own shadow color using indigo and purple. Have it be a little bit more of a purple tone to your shadow, which would also look really nicely with the gray. I forgot to add my little shadow of a cow in the background. Is it that first layer? I don't need this guy in the background to be very detailed, so I'm just gonna add a little bit darker of that quinocradone, burnt orange on the base. Alright. 11. Painting the Grasses: Alright, so we've done our shadows on our cows, and now I want to look a little bit at the grasses. Now, using the same shadow violet, I am going to create a big old shadow here by where the cows are, and then I'm going to use my rigger brush, that's not my rigor brush to pull some estrands from that shadow. So I need my shadow pool here to be really quite liquidy. I'm going to try it first, of course, with this cow back behind, and I'm going to do section by section, I'm going to start with this shadow to the right of the body. Once again, it's completely loaded up. This is something that you can always try first before you do this on your final paper. I'm going to add a few little clumps of shadow here. Make sure it's nice and watery. I can add a little bit of that dark deep sap green to that shadow color. I can also add more of that shadow violet. So it's nice and dark. And then before that dries, I'll use my rigger brush here. I'm going to kind of pull it to the side, and I'll use whatever liquid is left in this puddle, and I'll use my rigger brush to kind of pull some grasses up. Now, when I'm pulling grasses using this rigger brush, I'm making these grasses go in different different directions, and I'm also having some longer than the others. I can add some off towards the end here. So I have some crossing over to the left, some crossing over to the right. I can have some crossing over the body, actually. So I'm going to grab a little bit darker green here. And now, while this is wet, I added some of this green to the shadow color, and I'm really loading up my rigger brush here as well. And I'm going to add a few extra. It's too dark. Of these darker grasses kind of towards the base here, pulling into this shadow. I don't want too many, though, so and if they get too dark, you know, I don't know if I really even like that, to be honest. I think I kind of just like it in wherever the shadow is. So I'll add a little bit more shadow I'm noticing more shadow here and a little tiny bit in the back here. Same thing. Well, it's wet. Use whatever's left in that puddle and pull using my rigger brush. If I need to soften up this lower edge of the shadow here, I can take my paper towel, kind of soften up the outer edges of the shadow. Then I'm going to make a really water down. I go add a few little extra. I think the reason why I'm not really liking this yet is because I don't have any grasses anywhere else. So I'm going to kind of add some more grasses to this section here. Keeping not too many grasses towards this right side. And I can kind of do these grasses almost in, like, little clumps. Now, you can either pull up or you can turn yours upside down and you can add some grasses upside down here. The majority of these grasses we want towards these shadows here, okay? And then just a few little extras outside of the shadows. Alright, now, I'm going to do the same thing in the shadows of my other cow here. So I'm gonna mix more of my shadow color. That's that shadow violet. And then I'll add a big old pool of shadow violet to the right of my cow. Now, this pool, the lower line here, the lower edge of the pool, I'm gonna see what it looks like to not have it be an even edge here 'cause I think I did this edge a little bit too even of an edge. Maybe that's what I didn't like about it. Add a little bit more liquid, add a little bit of that deep sap green. Drop that in. And now use my rigger brush, and I'll pull some grasses up out of the shadow here. Now, if your grasses out of the shadow here are looking a little weird, add more grasses. Sometimes if we only have a few grasses coming out, that can make it look a little bit more awkward, if you will. And then we can also add a few grasses coming from the bottom in. We can take a little bit of a jump here from that and add a few little extra grasses outside of that big old shadow. And then add a little bit of shadow to the right of these legs because we know that there's some shadow there as well. And now, any of the grasses to this left side, I do want to add some grasses. I don't want to leave this totally down, but I am adding quite a lot of liquid to this shadow color and adding some of my grasses to this right side, sticking kind of close to my cows. Now, if this is your first time doing these grasses and you're not really a fan of it, um, keep at it. Don't have this be your last time trying this technique. The more that you do it, the more confident you get, and then the better that it looks when you're done. Now, if the shadow here on the ground is too dark and you wanted to add a little bit more shadow on the right side of your cows to kind of deepen this shadow to kind of have it match that shadow. You can also do that and add another layer of shadow so that it's not so that it feels a little bit more connected, I should say. 12. Second layer on treeline and final details: Alright. And now that we've added some texture to the foreground, we can go in and add if there's time, you can go in and add a second layer of color and texture to these trees in the background. You can either do that by using the edge of a round brush and starting for sure at the Horizon line. And then like I said, it's still very watered down. It's not crazy dark of a color. So this brown is the same shadow color that I used for the shadows here with this shadow violet mixed with a little deep sap green. And I will paint kind of along the bottom edge of the tree line. And then as I come upward with my trees, I'm going to add, like, little almost blobs using the edge of my brush. So these blobs are going to be a little bit larger in color or sorry, a little bit larger in size. You can't be larger in color. And now, these blobs are going to get smaller the further up you go. So I'm not going to really add that many blobs to the very top of my tree line. I just want to kind of give the illusion that there's some harder edge shadows there. So I'm just painting along the edge of my cows here and then adding a few blobs towards the top. Same thing. This layer, we want to keep as a hard edge. So we don't want to blend out the edge and all. If it starts looking weird to you, it could be because your color is a little bit too dark. So it's still quite nice and transparent, but it's still a hard edge. If you're not liking how that's looking, you can always go in and lift a little bit with your paper towel, especially towards the top of the little tree shrubs so that you can lift up and have a little bit less color there. All right. If you had needed two final details, if you had needed an extra little p of darkness in the eyes, you can add a little extra darkness in the eyes there. You could always add a little highlight using some whiteqah. However, I don't think it's super necessary. We'll let this dry, and then we'll take the tape off, and we'll have a finished painting.