Refreshing Art: Painting a Misty Morning with Watercolors

1. Hello Welcome: Welcome to today's relaxing watercolor session. I'm thrilled to have you here for this peaceful journey into painting a misty morning scene together. We'll begin the class by discussing about all the art supplies that we're going to need. Then we will begin painting our class project. The main class project will be painted in three layers. The first is painting the background sky and the mist, and then background pine trees. Later, we're going to paint the foreground trees. Whether you're a beginner, or someone just looking to indulge and unwind in some artistic self care. You're in the right place. In the next 20 to 30 minutes, we'll explore a watercolor landscape that captures the serene beauty of a Misty morning using eye catching colors. Hi, I'm Sekuta, watercolor artist and teacher. Have been teaching on Skillshare for the past four years, and I have 37 classes so far. And as always, I'm very excited to welcome you into this new class today. Without further delay, let's get started. 2. Materials : About the art supplies. I'm going to talk about the papers first. This is arches, 20 to 20 centimeters block. These are 100% cotton papers and 300 GSM. So you can use any cotton paper that you have, make sure it is 300 GSM so that you can put more layers onto your paper. Now, coming to the brushes, I have already, if you have seen my classes before, you know that I use very simple and basic brushes, basic shapes I mean. So this is a flat brush. I use this for initial wetting of the paper. And I have, and that brush was from a Dawnci. And I have silver black velvet brushes. This is number six round brush. I usually use this to paint small, detailed subjects like pine trees, as you can see in the final class project. To paint detailed subjects, like these trees that you are seeing here, it's important to keep a few extra small sharp brushes. These two are called rigger brushes. They're extra sharp, and both are from Dawnhi. I usually use these brushes to paint any detailed subjects. For example, you can see these pine trees with very sharp branches. I usually paint these with these two smaller brush, and this is silver black velvet, number 14 bruh, round brush, and I use this to paint the background, the mis scene. Yeah, these are all the brushes that I have. For today's class project, you can use any brush that you have, but make sure you have these basic shapes, the flat round and rigger brushes. In the next video, we'll talk about the colors. I'm going to reveal all the colors that we're going to be using to paint the class project. That is all about that supplies. There are a few extras, and these are very common. You might be having them already, a water jar, masking tape, and paper towels. They are very important as well. So I think that's it. In the next video, we're going to discuss the colors. I'm going to see you there. M. 3. Colors: Is arches block, so I don't have to use any other extra board. So for this block, I have put this masking tape around the edges. Now I'm going to show you guys the colors that I'm going to be using today. So this is Cenllar, ds in purple color. You can use any purple shade that you have. And the second color is indigo from the brand called White Knights. The last shade that you saw is Pines gray, again, from the brand called White Knights. I'm going to take these colors onto my palette now. I am thinking to create an unique shade with a mix of these two colors, indigo and purple. So it's going to be an interesting color. Now, also use the pines gray, and that shade is already on my palette, so I haven't taken any extra. And that is all for the colors. Let's move on to next video. 4. Background Misty Scene: Now that we have sorted out the colors, let's begin the class project. So I'm going to start by wetting the paper with clean water. As you can see, I'm using my Dawnci flat brush. Make sure you're adding the water evenly. I'm just going to remove all the extra water with a paper towel. Now I'm going to take a little bit of indigo and dax in purple. I've already told you that we're going to mix these two colors together and create a very light purplish indigo color shade, as you can see here. Color is quite light in shade because we are painting the background. And for the foreground, we're going to be using a bit of darker shade. So I'm going to add this color on the top of the paper and at the bottom as well. L et's blend these two together, and make sure you're not adding any color in the middle. That's very important because we are creating a misty scene here. Paper is still wet. Let's add one more layer because that one was quite light, and we have to build this layer by layer. Again, add the color on the top and at the bottom, but not in the middle. One more layer because this is still looking light in shade. What a color is usually built up on layers? Sometimes your landscape will be completed in a single layer or sometimes even it takes three to four layers. It's completely up to you, and it also depends on the intensity of color that you decide to paint. One more thing about the layers is, if you're using a good paper, layering should be done easily. But if you're using anything less than 300 GSM or 100% cotton paper, layering can be quite a difficult task because your paper will not hold up so much water and the paper will become muddy. Try to use 100% cotton paper with at least 300 GSM. I'm going to darken the bottom part of the paper because that's supposed to be land. And from there, the trees will be placed. So that has to be a bit darker than the top part. So I'm going to take lots of indigo for this. Now, let's paint background trees. So since they are in the background, they have to be very light in shade. I'm going to take a very light shade of digon purple mix, and this is a Tawnci bruh rigger brush. So keep an eye on the shade of the color. It has to be very light. And it's okay if your paper is dried up. We're not painting any background scenes, the trees. So you can use a dry paper as well. And this is a perfect shade. Come now, let's paint the trees. Can see how light the shade is, and this is a pine tree. I'm just outlining the shape. You don't have to be very detailed about this since these trees will be in the background. Paint, at least of these of these trees. To create more depth, I'm going to paint one more layer of background trees. But this time, I'm going to make the color a little bit darker than the previous shade that we have taken. Again, I'm gonna add four trees here as well. Well done. Now I'm going to wait for this layer to completely so that we can paint a few more trees in the foreground in the next dio. 5. Foreground Scene: A step is to always check whether the paper has tried up or not. Mine has tried. So now I'm going to start painting the trees in the foreground. These trees, especially on the foreground, has to be sharp. For that, we have to take a very thin brush. I'm using my dawnci rigger brush. And the trees here should be in darker shade compared to the one that we have painted in the background. I'm using pines gray with a mix of indigo. I'm just deciding where to start first. I'm going to paint the first tree on my right. These trees, we are painting wet on dry. So your brush is wet and the paper is. So they have to look very sharp and very detailed. You paint wet on wet in watercolor. The subjects will not be very detailed to look at. For example, we have painted these trees in the background. As you can see, they are very blurry to look at. So that's how they have to look because they're in the background and are covered in the mist. This is exactly how it works in nature as well. When you look at a picture of a forest, you can see that the trees in the background are very light in color and also very blurry as well. But the trees in the foreground are very detailed and also darker in shade. O I'm going to paint the rest of the trees, and I'm going to be using the same color, that is the mix of indigo on pines gray as well and the same brush also. I tried to add things that are quite unique to my paintings. For example, as you can see, the shape of the tree here is not straight, and that's very intentional because nature is very chaotic. It's not in order. O For the third tree, I'm going to just add a big tree branch. I'm not going to add any leaves like I have added before. Now, add one more tree over here. One tree over here as well, and it looks quite bigger. So again, add trees in different shapes, do not add all of them. Do not paint all of them in the same shape or size. M. I looking quite plain here in the middle. So I'm going to add a few tiny trees. So I'm not following any reference picture. I'm just making this landscape up as I go. Go to add one more tree without any leaves here in the middle. L et den this foreground up a little because the trees are quite darker, so I'm going to have to match up the intensity. I'm going to platter some indigo indigo pine scram mix with my car brush. That is all for today's painting. You have to let this to dry completely, and in the next video, we're going to remove the masking tape and we're going to finish up the painting. That's a last step, removing the masking tape. I'm going to see you guys in the next video. 6. Finishing Up: First step is to check whether the paper has tried up. Mine has tried, so I'm going to remove the masking tape. Since I'm using this arches block, I have to remove the paper using a cutter. I'm going to do that now as well. If you're not using a block, you can skip this step. You don't have to do this. You just have to separate your paper from your board by removing the masking tape. For those who are using the block, be careful while using this cutter. It's very sharp. So we are done, and there you go. You have your class project. In the next video, I'm going to talk a little bit about this entire class and what we have learned so far, how you can use these techniques in your future paintings. Do not skip it. I'm going to see you there. 7. Conclusion : Finally done with our class project. I hope you guys enjoyed the process as much as I did. Let's briefly talk about what we have painted in the last 30 minutes. Class started with painting the background sky and foreground with very light value of the colors. Then we have moved on to painting the background pine trees. One of the main things to remember here is when you're painting a background scene, use very light shades because they are in the background and they look very light in shade. You can also observe this in nature, especially in forest photographs. Later we have painted the foreground pine trees. Obviously, they should be in darker shades as dark as it can get. I have used mostly pine scray for this as you have seen in the class project. That is all for this very simple and very brief morning mystery scene painting. We have used two techniques in this class project, Wet on Wet, wet on dry. With this, you can paint any of the mystery scene of your own using any reference picture with the same process. And if you have completed painting this, you can post your project in the project section below. And if you have any doubts, you can start a discussion as well. So yeah, if you like the class, please consider leaving a review, and then I'm going to see you guys in the next class. Thank you so much for joining me today.