Simple Watercolour Sunsets: Painting Luminous Scenes with Six Strokes

1. Introduction: When painting sunsets, did your colors look muddy or lack vibrancy? And does the fear of losing control hold you back from embracing lose watercolors? If any of these sound familiar, fear not. You can paint sunsets in just six strokes. Yes. That is right. This class is here to help you overcome those common challenges and paint vibrant expressive sunsets with confidence in six intentional timed strokes. I have spent countless hours capturing the beauty of loose and expressive sunsets in these three sketchbooks. Hi. I'm Omar. I'm a skeptic artist, illustrator, and author of G the Flow Painting. My art has appeared on greeting Scards, textiles, and packaging all over the world, and I've had the pleasure of working with major brands from the BBC to Unicef. In this class, I'm really excited to share my top tips for creating expressive vibrant sunsets with ease. We're going to dive into the essentials with four warm up exercises, including juicy brushes, mastering the water to pigment ratio, and looking at warm and cool pigments to really make those hues pop. And there was going to be interpreting and simplifying reference images. I have prepared four full length demo videos, starting with the basics and moving to more advanced techniques. So whether you're a beginner or an experienced watercolorist, there's something for everyone. It's all about being in the moment, painting with intention, and letting the colors dance on the p. By the end of this class, you'll be able to embrace spontaneity in your painting process, letting go of that hesitation and create dynamic compositions that really capture the essence and beauty of a sunset. Let's get started on creating those breathtaking sunsets right now. 2. Your Project: Thank you so much for joining me. I've designed this class to be a springboard and an invitation for you to explore your own sunsets in a way that truly excites you. I hope the foundational techniques and insights I'm going to share will equip you with the tools and confidence to embark on your own unique sunsets journey. Use these skills as a starting point to discover your own personal style and create sunset paintings that really resonate with your own vision. My approach to painting sunsets is loose and spontaneous, emphasizing interpretations of a sunset rather than aiming for strict realism. I feel this method allows for a more expressive and personal connection to the artwork, capturing the essence and emotion of a sunset without being confined by precise details. Six stroke sunset is a game I invented for myself, where I could create small quick pieces using just six intentional timed strokes. In my sunsets game, you can make six separate strokes, as long as each time it doesn't leave the paper, that still counts as one stroke. And I want you to view your six stroke sunsets as a game for several reasons. Ewing this as a game will help reduce anxiety and take away from the pressure of trying to be perfect and allow you to enjoy the process and experiment more freely. Games often involve trial and error, and it will help you develop resilience and a positive attitude towards mistakes. Seeing them as learning opportunities rather than any kind of setback. The challenge requires careful planning and execution, as each stroke must be deliberate, almost tactical, and intentional. The playful nature of this game can help you stay focused and present. This practice has been incredibly useful for me as a way to produce art easily as possible in a short space of time, which is ideal if you have a busy lifestyle. Just to be clear, this class will not focus on copying photos. While photographic references are provided, you are not expected to replicate them exactly. This class emphasizes using them as reference for inspiration rather than strict guidelines. Instead, I encourage a looser, more interpretive approach. Perfection. This class is not about achieving flawless polished artworks. Embracing imperfections and spontaneity is encouraged as they often contribute to the charm and character of the final piece. There are no rigid rules about how a sunset should look. The sunset police are not going to come after you. This class is not going to be me saying, use Cadmium orange to paint this part of the sky and then add red here. Eventually, I want you to make decisions about which pigments you use and where you use them in order to interpret the photos, so you can paint sunsets by yourself in future. Your project is to create a sheet of six stroke sunsets in watercolor, using the techniques I'll demonstrate in the videos. Please upload at least one or more sheet of six stroke sunsets, at least two or more of the warm up exercises, and also your thoughts on the process with lessons learned and any challenges you faced. It would also be useful to include the brand of watercolors and the pigment names you used for the sunsets. For this class, you can use any of the royalty free high resolution images that are available as a PDF. This file is called Sunset references for OMAs class, and is available to download under the Projects and Resources tab. Just click on Download Resources. Also available to download is a PDF for watercolor pigment biases, for reds, yellows, and blues, which you can also access under the Class Resources tab. This is going to be really useful when we talk about color theory. When you're ready to upload your class project, head over to the Projects and Resources tab and hit the Create Project button. First, give your project a cover photo and a title to really make it stand out. Here, you can add the contents of your project, including your photos and the text to reflect on the process and what you found interesting. When you finished, adding your content, it, publish. You can come back at any time to edit and add more to your project. I know it can be really scary putting your work out into the world, particularly when you may be using techniques that are new to you. But I would encourage you to be bold and share so that I can give you feedback. Please take a look around the project gallery and drop a few likes and comments on other student projects too. If you've enjoyed this class, then please leave a review as it helps other students find this class, and it would really help me out. In the next video, we're going to go through the tools and materials you're going to need for this class. So when you're ready, join me there. 3. Materials : Let's start off by going through the suggested materials you're going to need for this class. So the materials list is pretty simple, but I do urge you to try and get the highest quality watercolor paper you can find. You can either use loose paper like this. I'm going to be using a mixture of Dala rowi. This is the aquifine range, and I buy it in massive jumbo sets like this because I often just do loads of tester sheets, especially for a class like this. And this is A four. It is 300 GSM and co pressed. Other watercolor paper you might consider is, let me get rid of these. I'll show you these later. If you look carefully, these edges are gummed. And because we are going to be using quite a lot of water, the gummed edges will keep the paper flat as it dries. This is the sugarcane paper from Hanam, and it's 290 GSM, and it's 30% cotton with 70% sugarcane fiber. This is quite a new product. You don't have to go out and get this. I just really enjoy using this at the moment. Otherwise, you can work in your sketchbook. These are various sketchbooks that I've painted in, and I'm going to show you these in the next video. This little blue one is by Stillman and Burn, and I only filled the last few pages, but I did rather enjoy it. This is their beta series, and it's a soft cover with 270 GSM paper. And the other sketchbooks that you saw me use were from Hanna Mul. This one is the watercolor sketchbook. It's coal pressed, and I like to use A five because with the sunsets, I've been painting quite small. You can use the 100% cotton watercolor sketch book. It's coal pressed and A five, and this one is 250 GSM. It's absolutely up to you, whether you want to use loose watercolor paper or a sketchbook. These are the brushes that I love to use for almost all my watercolor sketches. These are by Jacksons. I've got a variety of sizes, but it will depend on the manufacturer, what size you get. They all seem to vary. And this one in particular is the S 777 series, and they just hold so much pigment. I will talk more about this in a later video. This one, even though it looks relatively small, it does a tremendous job, and this is the brush that I give out to workshop participants. I also want to show you this larger quill brush by Windsor Newton. This is a synthetic squirrel. When we do the larger sunsets, I like to use this brush because it's just you're going to see how much pigment and wash it can hold. If you don't have coil brushes, please don't worry. You can use normal watercolor round brushes. I would recommend using a brush that is larger than a ten. This one's a 14, this one's a Cpman, and this is a dalla rowi. It will still hold a fair bit of pigment, but please make sure you use the larger size brushes. For the watercolors, I do recommend getting a student grade quality watercolor set. This is by Windsor and Newton. It's their Cotman, and please make sure it has two yellows, two reds, two greens, because I'm going to talk more about this later. It was really going to help you out. So you can just have student quality. This is the professional version. This mixture of Windsor and Newton. And also, I've started using Schinky. I will talk more about pigments in a little bit. This is my usual set, but however, I do want to show you my setup for sunsets. Although I normally use the pans you just saw. Whoops, I have found that using the tubes of watercolor is a lot easier for sunsets, and I'll show you why something else you're going to need is a palette. This is my present one. And as long as it's got a little well and somewhere to mix it, In this version, you can use the lid, but I am going to talk a little bit more about why I've changed things up in this one. Can just use a palette like this as well, and a white surface like this is going to be really, really helpful for one of the warm up exercises. If you don't have any palettes like the top two, you can use a large white plate, but you must be careful not to let the pigments contaminate each other. Other things worth having is washi tape. I often don't use washi tape, but I found with the sunsets because I wanted to divide up the page because we're just trying various sunsets out. This type of washy tape was just absolutely perfect for dividing up the page into smaller sections, and I just got these off Ebay. This one's a little bit thinner. And I'll show you how I use these later. A few odd items is something round. You can use a compass or have a small round plate, and maybe a small mug because we want to be drawing around them with a pencil for one of the warm up exercises. Other brushes that you are going to need are very flat or very big brushes. At some point, we are going to need to cover the paper in just plain water, and we want to cover that paper really really quickly. So I've got this one here, or I've got this mot brush here, and just find the biggest brush, basically. Finally, you are going to need two jars of water. I've only just started using two jars of water and it's an absolute game changer, especially for sunsets, and I'm going to explain a little bit more about why that is. To keep your sunset colors pure and vibrant, it's crucial to use clean water for painting. Here's some simple tips. Use clean water in your jars and on your brush to maintain the purity of your colors and to prevent muddying. The two jars of water contain clean water for rinsing your brush, and the other is for adding clean water to your paint, and this prevents dirty water from contaminating your other colors. Using only one jar for clean water ensures it stays freer from pigment residues, although it probably pick up pigments as it goes along. And the other jar can be used to dilute paint, adjust the color intensity, which I'll talk about, or to wet the paper without introducing any unwanted colors or textures. A separate jar for rinsing brushes ensures that any excess paint is removed from the bristles before you pick up a new color, and this will keep your colors pure and accurate, allowing you to achieve the desired hues. Keeping your water Giles separate gives you better control over all your color mixing. And this clean water will help you maintain that lovely clarity and brightness of your colors, which is essential for capturing the mood and atmosphere of sunsets. And we really want to keep those vibrant colors to evoke the warmth and brilliance of a sunset sky rather than using muted or dull tones. 4. My Examples and Six Stroke Sunsets: In this video, we're going to take a look at quite a few different examples from my own sketchbooks and how they've evolved over the last few months. This is Sketchbook number 34. I started it in December 2022, but I probably did this about a month later. This is 100% sketch book by Hanna M. And these two images appeared as prompts for Landscape art, and you just used them as inspiration. Personally, I think the colors are a little bit muddy, especially here. This section, I think is all right. There's a nice bit of transparency there. I don't think overly enjoyed it. I think I was too fixated on making sure the sunset looked like the photograph. And you can tell that I've overlooked it when I start adding white posca to stuff. So, that's example number one. Just a few months ago, I had a consultation with a lady from Florida. And we have an hour together. So we did a warm up piece. She gave me photos of her daughter in a boat, and then she gave me this sunset in her locality. And when she presented the photo, I thought, Okay, L et's find out a little bit more about painting sunsets, and I believe I think this one is a much better attempt. If we look at them side by side like this, I just think the colors are so much cleaner. There's a lot more vibrancy here. I like the fact that I could see this round sun. It gave it a lot more context, and the silhouettes of it might have been a family with children playing in the sand against this bush here. It just works much better. At the time, I was recovering from COVID, but this really caught my attention because we were able to paint this in about 35 minutes, which I thought was pretty good. And I'm going to show you some more examples. This is Sketchbook 47. It's another Hanna Mul and started filling this up with landscapes, but I decided I wanted to do a lot more sunsets, and these photos were from Mariana, the lady that I did that first sunset with, based on her photos that she sent through afterwards. And I just thought, Oh my gosh, I'm onto something here. This one, in particular, I just really love. It just so much more loose than anything that I've done before. And hold on. I'm afraid my sunsets are all over the shop. So I did these versions. I've written down here. Harizon Line needs more emphasis, 25 minutes, all of them. So I've got a feeling. I might have painted these simultaneously. It is the same scene. And, you know, this is quite early on in my Sense evolution. There's a lot happening here. There's a lot of colors, and I hadn't really figured out precisely what to do with my pigments. And you'll notice that I repeat the same reference image again and again. And this was a reoccurring theme for me because there was probably some frustration involved. I was still trying to make sure that the result looked like the reference photo. But it's all really, really good to do several versions, and I'm going to talk a little bit more about that later. And I would just divide up the page any old how. And they're just so so rough. And I think what you start seeing coming through. I mean, look at this one. You can still tell it's a sunset, but it's so loose. I mean, I was really, really enjoying this. They were so easy to put together. I was probably painting these like two at a time. Maybe they were taking about 10 minutes. These are from my daughter's windows. She took photos, and she said, Mummy, paint these for me. I think these are a little bit overworked because they were from her photos. And I go sort of backwards and forwards between trying to add a lot of detail and just doing an interpretation. I love the strokes here. They're just doing this, and there's a lot of movement, and I'm was thoroughly enjoying that aspect of it. You can tell that I'm starting to work a little bit bigger. I think that's the final sunset in this particular sketchbook. So we've got a variety of different sizes happening here from long narrow panels to s, small square panels to the full page, and we are going to cover this in the class. This sketchbook, Sunset 50. Hanam is a square one. I dedicated missed out the first page. I have dedicated just to sunsets. This would have been fairly early on, where I wasn't really understanding how the different pigments were interacting each other. So you've got kind of this brown purple thing happening. I am going to talk through a lot more about that. And I think this one that it's just too bitty. I don't know how else to describe it. It just doesn't read very well as a sunset. I don't think. This one is better. I like this part of the sunset. I think that I still learning about reflections in water. These two are quite nice, and this is just of a landscape. Again, two different versions of the same scene, and I really like the expressive strokes that are happening in there. This is the same scene of statue of David, overlooking Florence, I believe. Not sure which one I prefer. Probably this one, but the purples, I didn't understand how when you mix purple with Orange is going to get a little bit brown, so I will talk more about that. But the great thing is, you know, I've done a lot of this by trial and error, so I can share a lot more with you than when I was trying to paint these sunsets by myself. They do become, I think, by this stage, if you notice that, I'm probably using less pigments. I'm probably only using four colors. And I'm able to get the water ratio a lot better. And I definitely prefer these later versions. This spread in particular is one of my favorites. Although I do like expressive ones like this, this one is particularly moody as well. And it's not a very slow graduation. There's still some expressive elements in that. Well that's actually upside down. Is actually upside down. I haven't added the foreground. It would have been some sort of hill or this one would have had a tree probably here. I might go I might finish that later on. This is when I started using washy tape. The quicker I was able to paint, the more I just able to produce pretty much. And they would happen towards the end of the day once I finished. And I was literally painting these probably 5 minutes each, and I'm going to show you in my next sketchbook, I started painting them simultaneously. Before we move on to the latest one, I wanted to show you the Steelman and burn version. I would love to paint this one again because there was a lovely contrast if I can find that reference image. And I started playing around with Potter's pink. I'm not sure if I like that type of granulation, but I just love to experiment. I just love to play around really. And you'll notice that you'll notice that I'm working pretty small, and it just means that there's less area for the water colored pigments to do their thing. It's just so dramatic. Look at that. And the same here. I do love this piece as well. This sweep here. And something that is starting to come through is me leaving white space. And my son actually picked up on this and he said, you know, there's no white space in the skies, and I said, Well, this is my interpretation. This is also a really nice version. Uh, probably of a wetland. And I just love the way the watercolor bleeds into that paints gray it's gorgeous. Obviously, that doesn't happen quite like that in nature. I quickly want to show you this one as well. This is handmade. I cut up some anamul paper. This version is pretty early on. And, hold on. Let me go through it. And I wanted, particularly wanted a small sketch book. You can see, it's pretty much the size of my palm. I just felt that I could get all these gorgeous watercolor backgrounds and coolflowers to happen. If it was on a small scale, I could obviously work a lot lot quicker. I mean, these were probably, you know, only taking me three or 4 minutes. I enjoyed this tremendously. Oh, look at that. Just look at that gray and all those elements combining together. I just thought it was absolutely beautiful. And this one. I probably folded the sketchbook when this page was still wet, but if you look at that, that looks like some kind of cliff. This movement in the sky there. That's particularly nice as well. This is based on a picture of Plaston Breed tour in Somerset, and I thought that was really effective as well. These are nice as well. I mean, I do leave white space, but I also love this kind of atmospheric effects as well. Not sure about these. I think I overworked them with the trees, and this one. Although I'm using a lot of wet on wet, I used a dry brush here, and that was a gorgeous bit of texture. And towards the end, I'm literally painting these, and I think this is about the time that my six stroke sunset was conceived. This is probably six strokes. This would have been, and this would have been as well. So I've only got two pages left. I'm going to fill the rest of that up. Now, we have another Amul Sketchbook, and these really are all six strokes. By this stage. I was quite obsessed with creating sunsets and six strokes. I wasn't really looking at reference anymore. I was just making this up from my imagination. I don't often work from my imagination. So I thought this was pretty phenomenal for me. These where it's really dramatic in the sky, and you've got this bleeding happening in the foreground as well. It just really excites me. Creating these is like meditation. Again, it would be at the end of my working day, I might have had to finish off an illustration project, and I would just empty my mind by putting six strokes down intentionally. And you'd be surprised how much movement you can create as long as you are mindful of how you create those strokes. And we're going to explore that in this class. These three pieces, I actually was practicing for a trade show where I was going to be demonstrating watercolors, and it is on that sugarcane paper. And they are a lot more diffused compared to the examples that I showed you in my sketchbook. And this is scenes of Venice. They're not based on my own photos, but I have been to Venice and seen the sunset with my kids with apparol sprits. And it gives a wonderful sense of atmosphere there and there's some lovely effects going on here and this sweep. I think that's pretty gorgeous. And this is probably Rome. You can see that I've added a hint of dark blue purple up there. And the contrast of the items in the foreground is pretty prominent compared to some of my early stuff, so I feel like I'm really progressing and evolving. And I think these two I actually might have done in the show or at the show. So they're only quick because when you're trying to demonstrate, they don't want to hang around forever, so I was painting this really, really fast. And that's probably why you've got some of these very diffused effects here rather than if I was at home, trying to take my time a little bit more. But I hope you found these examples interesting as well. 5. Why Warm Ups Are Important : I've structured this class in a particular way with four warm up exercises. I really want to stress that these warm ups are incredibly important as they lay the groundwork for achieving success in six successful strokes. Much of it is learning how to keep everything super clean from water jars to palettes in order to keep your sunset super vivid. Sometimes I see beginners of watercolor inclined to skip warm ups and fundamental exercises, and I can actually tell who has or hasn't attempted warm ups from their finished piece. It may be because of their desire for instant results, or they may have high expectations and be very eager to create impressive artworks from the get go. And some may perceive warm ups as tedious or boring steps that delay the fun part of the real painting. But I really urge you to please please tackle each warm up as they are specifically designed to help you develop the crucial skills, the understanding, and the mindset required for painting like this. By starting with warm up exercises, you'll build the confidence in your own abilities and feel far more prepared to tackle the main paintings. Try not to view them as mundane or routine tasks, because even for me, preparing for this class and all the extra painting's doing, it's been really beneficial. These proprietary exercises will help you shift your focus away from being fixated on that final outcome and instead cultivate a deep presence and intentionality as you work, and also to be really patient and deliberate with your strokes, observing them, and seeing what the pigments do. Furthermore, by consistently practicing these warmups, you'll build up the muscle memory and mental clarity needed to execute each brush stroke with precision and intention, ultimately leading to more compelling and effective sunsets. Muscle memory allows you to execute each brush stroke of the sunset with confidence and precision, almost instinctively. Remember, there are no undo buttons with real water color. But in the process, I think your mind will be freer to focus on the creative aspects of your work rather than the mechanics. So much of the creative process happens in our minds, so that mental clarity will help you to maintain a calm and focused state. And as we advance to the more complex demos, some of these fundamental skills will become even more important for making deliberate and thoughtful strokes. Skipping these warm ups would leave you unprepared for the advanced stages and probably hinder your ability to create expressive artworks, which is the goal of this class. Even though I've been painting watercolor for ten years, I assumed I could just whip up a sunset in no time. But without a structured practice that you saw in my sketch books, I couldn't have created this class. Incorporating warm ups in your routine ensures that you're consistently working on improving your watercolor technique. So approach each warm up exercise with a growth mindset. Each practice session is an opportunity to grow and progress as an artist and set yourself up for long term success even beyond this class. 6. Colour Theory and Pigments: This video lesson is a basic introduction to color theory, focusing on painting sunsets using ward colors. This is not an exhaustive lesson as color theory could be an entire class in itself. I just need you to know enough to get going with sunsets. But when I understood the subtleties of watercolor bias, which I'm going to explain now, there was quite a shift from me as it allowed me to create far more vibrant sunsets. So that's why I've decided to include them here. If you remember the first sketchbook Sunset, I showed you, I mentioned that the colors were a bit off. And since then, I have learned a lot about warm and cool pigments in watercolors and how to use them effectively. I've always found color theory to be really challenging. I just couldn't understand the more finer aspects of it. I only had a basic understanding before I started painting these sunsets. What I'm going to say is, I think this is actually the secret source for successful sunsets. When you understand how your pigments work, you can use that to your advantage. It may seem that I'm going on and on about it, and I want you to create the different color wheels, but I would like you to understand how your pigments work, because that is how I found out through trial and error. I had a really basic theoretical knowledge of it, but the sunsets gave me the practical knowledge. I'm going to try to keep things really simple. Primary colors. There are three primary colors, yellow, red, magenta, and blue, and you can mix almost every other color from these. Primary colors are not pure. Even primary colors as watercolor pigments contain small amounts of another primary color. That's why the most basic watercolor sets, like the cotton set, I give out in workshops, come with two of each primary color, two yellows, two reds, and two blues, color bias. Most water colored pigments have a bias, meaning they lean towards one of the other two primary colors. For example, some reds might lean towards orange, which is warm, while others lean towards purple, which is cool. Let's take a quick look at these pigments. We have lemon yellow, which is very bright and cadmium yellow, which is a little bit more orange and muted. Next is cadmium red, needs a bit more. And then a lizar in crimson. When you mix that up, that almost looks like a deep pinky purple. Wh that brush. We have ultramarn on the left and fallow blue on the right, which still looks a little bit green to me. Now, we need to see how lemon yellow mixes with the ultramarn. Mixing secondary colors in ward color involves combining two primary colors to create a new hue. Here's a quick runthrough. For greens, you mix yellow and blue, and you adjust the proportions to create slightly different greens, and for orange, you mix, red and yellow. In theory, you would mix red and blue to make purple, but we are going to talk about that in a later video. Color theory may take time to understand, but if you're a visual person like me, I hope the following demos and exercises will help by seeing and practicing how colors interact and blend, you'll gain a deeper, more intuitive grasp of these concepts. 7. Colour Theory: Warm Up Exercise 1 Part 1: A. In this video lesson, we're going to be making three different types of color wheels using just cool watercolor pigments, just warm watercolor pigments and a mixture of warm and cool pigments. I'm also going to talk a little bit about purples and violets. Do remember to download the pigment bias PDF for the most common blues, reds, and yellow pigments. It's also worth noting that there's only one blue that is considered warm and that's ultramarine. There are a few blues that are considered neutral, so it's probably worth using them for the mixed color wheel. This exercise is where you're going to need the small plate or bowl and your small mug or something smaller to draw around. Just going to pop this over. And I've got a piece of watercolor paper that is going to fit both my circles in where we are going to try out warm pigments on this side and cool pigments on this side. Hopefully, it will make a lot more sense in just a moment. So just draw around that really quickly. And on this side as well. Try to place it roughly in the middle of this bigger circle. Okay. So for the warm pigments, I've got cadmium yellow, Windsor red and ultramarine. Ultramarine seems to be the only warm blue. I've tried to research it, but that's the only one I could find easily. And I like to have a palette, either like this, or let's say one like this. And I like to put the pigments in every other slot, let's say. Again, it is to make sure that the pigments stay really, really clean, really something that I'm going to be banging on about throughout this class. Just keep those pigments as clean as possible, your palette, your brush, and your water. I'm going to get some water and just make this yellow into kind of a milk consistency, and place it in the top of this circle here. We are not going to get really beautiful graduated blends here. So there's the yellow section. Wah off my brush. I have got two pots of water, and let's pop it in the red, and that's going to be a third of the way down here, let's say the 4:00 position. Is just going to be rough. I've seen versions of this type of chart where it's being divided up very equally into, I don't know, like, 12 sections, but you don't get sections in sunsets. So I want them to blend together, and that's going to give you a much better idea of what these pigments will get up to in real world scenarios. Make sure you wash your brush carefully. Okay, we are going to mix some of this yellow with some of this red equal amounts, and oh, that's probably a little bit more red than yellow than orange really. Doesn't matter. We're just going to add a bit more yellow to that. And blend it in. Luckily, that yellow is still kind of wet. So that's as much blending as we're going to see happening, which is absolutely fine. Don't try to over blend it. That's going to be another theme. Just leave things alone, let the pigments do their thing. Now, gosh, I'm going to have to put some yellow in here because I want to mix up the yellow with blue. Going to pop it in this section here. And put that in the middle, between the blue and the yellow. You know, it looks really rough and reddy, but. I'm just going to add a little bit more blue to this and blend these two sections together. It's really rough. Please please don't think that you are trying to make a beautiful blend because that's not the purpose of this color wheel. The purpose is just to see what your warm pigments do. I'm just going to blend that together. There we go. Good, good, good. Now, we have got some of this red with the blue. I'm going to have to pop some blue in there because I've already contaminated that other blue with a bit of yellow, and that's something that we have to be mindful of. And you've got this kind of thing happening. It is kind of a dark purple. I am going to talk a little bit more about purple in a moment. But that's the result I'm getting. I'm going to add a little bit more red to that. Help it blend in this circle and then mix up the rest of that blue and blend it here. When this is dry, we'll have a proper look at it. But let's move on this side, which is going to be our cools. We are going to have lemon yellow, opera rose, and Windsor blue. I just want to show you what my two jars of water look like. They're a little bit murky. I'm going to have to change them before we go onto the cool pigments. Clean water. Okay, so starting off with the yellow again up here. You'll see straight away. Well, it's a lighter yellow in hue, but it's kind of almost luminous as soon as I put it on. Okay. That's yellow. Et's try this opera rose in the 4:00 position. I need a bit more on my brush. Oh, gosh, that might be a little bit too much. Oh, God. Bit heavy handed there. I was going to say, when you do these color wheels, do have a good puddle of kind of milk consistency, water color. The ly way I can describe this opera rose again is a bit luminous. But it has its uses. Now let's move on to the Windsor blue. Okay. So I think I'm going to mix up some of that pink with the blue. Pop it in this section here. It doesn't really matter which order you did it in. I know I did it in a slightly different order for the warm color wheel because they'll just blend anyhow. And that makes a much nicer purple. I think could do with a little bit more pink just to blend these two edges together. Good. Okay. I'm going to have to use more for rose for the mixing up with the yellow. Oh, look at that vibrancy. So pop that in the middle of these two and just blend these edges in. I'm going to have to include a little bit more yellow pigment here, I think. And just a little bit more. Okay. Now we have to blend. I'm just going to pop some in there. Some yellow with the blue. And I place that in the middle between those two here and start blending this end into the winds of blue. And other end needs to blend in with a little bit more the yellow. And you can see the difference even before these two color wheels are dry. There's a whole load more, I could talk about color theory. But this is just an overview, and we only want to look at the color theory in the context of making sunsets, especially this end here. You don't have to worry too much about the greens, unless you want to add maybe a foreground, but it would probably be a little darker. Anyhow, you can see how the warm yellows, if you decide to go with warm or go with cool, is going to be up to you. They have this half anyway. There is some lovely graduation, and it blends really nicely. However, if you look at the difference between warm pigments and cool pigments. It is just so amazingly varied. You don't have to use perrose, but I have been using it a lot. And it is just so vibrant, especially when you mix it with lemon yellow. You've got something similar here. You might be really inclined to go with a set of warm pigments. And that's entirely up to you. Ordinarily, in my normal everyday watercolor work, this is the type of hues that I'm often drawn to. However, when it comes to doing sunsets, I love this. And it is a personal choice. There's no right or wrong. And I would like you to pick a set of pigments that work for you. However, we do have to be mindful of what will happen if we start mixing cool colors with warm colors. And also, we have to talk about purple. Let's look at that next. 8. Colour Theory: Warm Up Exercise 1 Part 2 Part 2: I've already drawn the circle for the mixed pigments. And for this color wheel, we are going to be using Indian yellow, which is warm, and vermilion, which again, is warm. But the blue is clean blue, which is cool. It'll be interesting to see what happens. This may seem like quite a lot of preparation, and you guys are just wanting to get on with the sunsets. But I really want to talk about the importance of trying this out. Please don't skip it as there is still loads to learn here. By trying out these different combinations, you'll see how warm and cool colors interact, which is incredibly useful for both sunsets and still lifes and even landscapes. Exercise is going to help you understand color relationships, and it will enhance your own connection with your materials. So just take a few moments to play with your colors on this wheel. I urge you to please give it a try because it's a really valuable step in understanding how your colors are going to work when it comes to painting the real sunsets. Remember, this Cotman set. And I said there's a reason why student grade watercolors come with two of every primary color, two yellows, two reds, two blues. Now, this is the corresponding watercolor set, but one that I'd been using in my workshops. So we've got the same again, the lemon yellow, cadmium yellow, Cadmium red, crimson, French traarn, and this is fallow blue. And we're going to use this to create a mixed color wheel. You absolutely don't have to create two mixed pigment color wheels. This is just another example that I wanted to show you to see what outcomes there could be. So, I think we are going to try lemon yellow, crimson. That's cool. And that's cool and the ultramarine, which is warm. I wanted to show you what these color wheels would look like with student quality watercolors. In my previous versions, I was using professional grade paints. Student quality pigments still pack a lot of oomph. And I do give these out at my workshops because they're fantastic for learning. Of course, you don't have to create another color wheel. But if you did, that is double the amount of info at your fingertips. You'll see that even with student quality paints, you can still achieve really vibrant dynamic results. So don't underestimate them as they are great for practicing and understanding those color relationships. Let's see what beautiful combinations we have got here. Let's take a peek at this page of mixed pigments. We have Indian yellow vermilion and Serli blue. There is some weirdness happening down here. I think the cerlian blue may be granulating. I don't use it that often. It's a new pigment for me, and, you know, it could have its uses in a sunset. I'm not entirely sure I like what's happening with the red, but as I keep saying, we are going to talk about purple in just a moment. Now, this is the one where I used the Cotman watercolors, and we have the lemon yellow, crimson and ultramarine. And they're really quite nice, actually. The ultramarine is warm. And where it mixes with the lemon yellow, that's pretty nice as well, and where it mixes with the crimson. It's not too bad. It's quite I think, you know, it could have more uses within a sunset than I'm thinking maybe this mixed palette here. Like I said, it honestly is up to you as long as you know how your pigments behave, and we will have to be mindful how some of the if you are going to include blue, how it might behave with reds. I do want to say a little bit about using purple in the sunsets. If you have a quick flick through this sketchbook, you know, I do have some purples happening here. I want to show you a particular example where I didn't understand what type of purple I was using. I am mixing, a purple with sort of an orange red, which probably would have been a warm pigment. And it's become quite muted. And that was something that got me sort of thinking, what is going on here. And If you look at my later sunsets, I have probably gained a better understanding about how the purples integrate within sunset. And I'm now starting to understand better about putting cool pigments with cool pigments. And it's, much better here. We've probably got a a very light opera rose with a purple happening there. And the graduation is much more Although subtle, we don't have that sort of brown thing happening here. I'm going to show you some others. I know these are probably, I did these in just a few seconds, and I have a much better understanding. But something else you need to note when you use purple is, if it starts interacting with yellow, like this example here, you are going to end up with brown. Moving on to this one here where there is a lot of purple and pink. I might have overdone it a bit. But because I had gained this understanding, I was able to let the pigments really shine without getting that brown mutedness coming through. And so in my later works, not the aurora, I think I am a lot more successful in integrating that purple, but I do want to give you some extra tips about purple. Going back to our color wheels. We have the cool and the warm, and you will see that there really isn't a great purple happening here between the ultramarine and the winds are red. This is a lot better example where we've got opera rows and winds are blue. Yeah, you can try mixing that up. You know, in every sunset, and further examples here, it's opera rose and Teran blue. And vermilion and ultramarine, you end up with this. It's beautiful, maroon, but I'm not sure it would make the best sunset, maybe a foreground color. That's something that could be useful. Same again here. We have the opera Rose and Winds of blue, and this is Vermilion with ultramarine. And the purple isn't great. You know, It seems that red and blue should make purple, but it doesn't always seem incredibly obvious. So in order to bypass this, I've just taken to buying lots of different purples to try out. And another thing that I didn't realize was some of these are warm, and some of these are cool. Right. Let's take a look at these purples. We have got Windsor violet, permanent move, also by Windsor and Newton. This one is brilliant purple by Shimin Ke, and Qin purple. This is a brand new one for me that I've not tried before. Manganese violet. And I want to try these out because you have to be extra mindful when you are putting it with a yellow. Before I start this exercise, please don't go out and buy five different purples and violets like I did. I just think it's really important to show you the range that's available, and you don't have to mix your own purples because that could take a really long time and you get inconsistent results. So this first one is Windsor violet. And I would say that is a cool purple. This permanent move is probably warm. I have tried to incorporate this in my sunsets, and I didn't realize it was warm, so it gives some very odd results when you mix it with cool colors. That one that I've just put down is the brilliant purple by Schminke. I think it's on the cooler bias. This one next to it is the Qin purple, and I think that's quite cool as well. Now, this one is Manganese violet, and I can't work out without really getting involved which end of the spectrum this is on. So we're going to use some yellow and orange to see how these purples are going to react. I've loaded up my brush with yellow, and I'm just swiping it across all of these purples and violets. And if you observe this once it's dry, you'll see how they've interacted, and you can tell already that some of them are going to create a murky brown. So the next thing that we're going to try and do is create an orange using the yellow and pink and see how the purples react to this. When we come to paint the sunsets, we are going to have to be super mindful not to place purples next to yellows and oranges because certain effects are going to happen. In the other warm up exercises, we are going to put some of this into practice. 9. Water to Pigment Ratio: Mixing colors in watercolor involves more than just combining pigments. It also requires adjusting the water content to achieve the right consistency. Typically, water color is painted from light to dark, or or from transparent to opaque. You start with more water for lighter, more transparent layers, and use less water as you add, more opaque details. This simple concept is fundamental to watercolor painting. So let's take a quick look at why knowing about this is so important. Color intensity. Knowing how much water to add to your pigment allows you to control the saturation or brightness of the colors, ensuring that they are vibrant and luminous, which is what we want in a sunset painting. Adjusting the ratio allows you to achieve that balance between transparency and opacity, enhancing that impact of the sunset sky. Control over wetness. The water de pigment ratio also affects the wetness of your brush and paper. Controlling the wetness is crucial for achieving various watercolor techniques, such as wet on wet washes or wet on dry details, fluidity and brushwork. Adjusting the ratio also influences the fluidity of your brushwork, which means that the higher the water content, the more fluid your brush strokes will probably be as it's able to glide across the paper more smoothly and expressively, which is really essential for capturing the dynamic qualities of a sunset sky. Mastering the water to pigment ratio is something that many people struggle with. But it is a skill that will improve with experience, practice, and experimentation. A game changer for me was when I was introduced to an analogy about viewing water consistency as tea, coffee, milk, cream, and butter. This idea was first introduced by Joseph Dupwck, a renowned watercolor artist. In his book, mastering atmosphere and mood in watercolor. He explains how to manage paint and water to get the desired consistency and results in your painting. This is one of the illustrations that he had in his book. He emphasizes the importance of knowing how wet your paper and brush are. The interaction between the wetness of the paper and the brush can create different effects, much like different times on a clock. He describes the five levels of paint brush wetness and four levels of paper wetness. You really need to understand your particular pigments, whichever brand of watercolors you use, and how they work with your paper when you vary the pigment and water content. Consistency is determined by the ratio of water to pigment in your mix. So I'm going to be adjusting the water content to achieve the right consistency. For this demo, we are going to look at the paint brush wetness, which relates to the consistency of your watercolor wash. So we're not really looking at value or transparency, although that will come into it later. I've written down tea coffee, milk, cream and butter, and I'm going to demonstrate to you how I am going to mix up this cobalt green, show you the different consistencies. I keep emphasizing the consistency. We're not looking at the value at this stage. Uh, it's really for you to understand whichever brand of watercolor that you use, whether it's Schmiky, or Windsor and Newton Darla Rune to see how your paint behaves when you add a certain amount of water to the pigment. Now, this one here, is probably t consistency. I only added a tiny, tiny drop, and you can see the brush move through that pretty easily. So I'm just going to pop this along here. And you can see it's incredibly bright. It's probably only about 10% pigment to the water, so we're going to add a little bit more pigment to this now. You can see the consistency, even in this palette has changed. And that's one of the major things that I look out for when I am mixing colors. And it is so important to understand how your particular pigment works. And so you get an understanding for it. I'm using Schminky, but other pigments will behave differently. And I need you guys to start learning how your materials work. That's why we are doing so many warm ups. Now, I've added a little bit more, I think I might just a tiny bit more pigment to this because it's milk consistency is probably 50 50. Sorry, 50 50. So it's 50% pigment and 50% water. We have this happening now. Now, cream. This is double cream. I think in the US, you might call it heavy cream. So the thick the thicker cream. Maybe a little bit more than that. A lot more than that actually, if I'm really trying to get that double cream consistency. And you can see how much thicker it is compared to the others. Now, for the butter consistency, it is really what comes straight out of a tube. If you don't have tubes of watercolor paint, don't worry about it. Just try to understand this consistency here. I have got a little bit of water on my brush, but it is pretty much this Each combination of the different levels of pigment to water results in a unique effect, and that is what we're going to explore in our next warm up exercise. 10. Water to Pigment Ratio: Warm Up Exercise 2: For this video lesson, we're going to focus on exercises where we adjust the water content in relation to the pigment to achieve the right watercolor consistency. Just wanted to point out something M two waters look like this, and this is just too much pigment in there, so I'm going to go and change these before I do this warm up exercise. Start off with the brilliant opera rose, and we're going to do exactly the same where we are just getting a feel for the consistency so that you know how your brush behaves and how this pigment feels and looks firstly on your white palette, or your plate, or the lid of your watercolor pan. So you've got your lightest value there, and something to be aware of is how much that wash will move around in your palette. And that rate of movement will very slightly at each stage. That's the next one. And I think we're still kind of in the weak T. This one is very weak at the top. Suppose we're moving towards coffee now. Probably do with a little bit more pigment. And not only is the color stronger, the way your brush moves through the palette and the way this actually sort of moves in the palette is different. You can see it is moving at a slightly slower sedate pace. This is probably getting towards single cream, as we would say in the UK. I had a bit more. I'm just going to show you see how much this is moving around the palette. There is some movement, but it's not really doing too much. Bump that up a bit more. Yeah, this is definitely getting darker. I'm sorry, thicker. And I do actually use a lot of this opera rows in different consistencies in my sunsets. You'd be surprised. I will show you in the demos, how I might often use the heavy cream consistency in certain areas and when we talk more a little bit more about the wetness of the water, how that behaves. And I don't think I'm going to have room for butter, but Look at that. Okay. This is the Windsor and Newton violet. This violet, in particular, is just very, very it seems so concentrated. You only need the tiniest smidgen. I think that's already compared to that opera rose. I've definitely needed less pigment, I think. So that's very, very pale. But look at that consistency. It is very weak tea. It's literally water. I might have added a bit too much. Hold on. So this is still weak tea. Give that a little boost. That's probably getting towards more like brewed tea. Already, it just feels more viscous. I don't know another word for it. You can see how the brush just moves through that differently. When you do that to the wash within the palette, it just moves slightly slower. I'll do that again when we get to kind of the milk consistency. Oh, there again. Okay. And even more. And now, this is getting towards more like single cream. I'm not even mixing it in with this one. And I'm not going to do too much more because I rarely use this violet beyond this kind of consistency. It's just so intense, maybe I would go that dark in a sunset. If I show you this consistency in this palette here, When you put your brush through it, you can hardly see that white of the palette under there. So, these are the sort of things I want you to be looking out for, so you just have a better understanding because it really is going to be important in the later stages and the first set of demos. A warm up exercise like this may be a bit simplistic or tedious for you. But I will say, even for me to revisit, trying to understand how I could present this type of information and looking at how well it covers the bottom of the palette, and if it moves around the palette, things like that are really important. 11. Paper Dampness: Depending on whether your paper is wet, damp or dry, you are going to need to adjust the consistency of your paint. Knowing the moisture level of your paper is crucial for achieving the best results in painting your sunsets. Master watercolor artist, Joseph Zovich, in his book, Mastering atmosphere in mood and watercolor, identifies four stages, wet, moist, damp, and d. Understanding these stages will help you select the right paint consistency at the right time. This is just clean water. I'm going to paint four squares using this and hopefully, you will see the different levels of water that is on this paper. That's probably square number one. I'm going to do this really really fast because they are going to start drying immediately and I want to be able to catch the different stages so that I can point the camera in that direction, and you will be able to see what this paper is supposed to look like. Starting with this one. This is the wettest that my paper is going to get, and it's not really going to hold much more than this. You can tilt this, and the water is going to flow in various directions. And it will move very, very freely. And this one has started to penetrate this paper, but it's not sopping wet. There is still a bit of a sheen on there, And this is good for soft edge shapes and dropping one color into another, and they will mix. Now, this one here is damp. If you touch it, it's going to feel a little bit cool, and it looks dull, I suppose, and the paint will basically stick to that. And if you have too much water on your brush and you add it to this, it will be at this stage that cool flowers will be made. And this square is the one that I apply the water first. It's probably still damp Yeah. But it is getting close to the dry stage. Eventually, it will dry as much as this, which is going to be free of moisture allowing for a lot more crisper and defined edges. And if I slowly pan out, you can just make out what the paper looks like at these various stages. This is something that is going to come with experience. You will know when you look at your paper, when to add the next set of pigments or your next line, and it is trial and error. A lot of this stuff is going to be you just working it out as you go along, if you don't know, how your pigments behave in whichever part of the world you're in, you know, whether you might be in Singapore. I don't know, somewhere really dry like Arizona, perhaps. There isn't going to be a one size fits all formula here. We're going to be testing out our paper for various stages of dampness next. 12. Paper Dampness: Warm Up Exercise 3: This is where that big brush comes in because we are going to cover this entire piece of paper with clean water. But before we do that, we need to divide that into three so that each panel is going to be slightly different. This one is going to be wet, this is going to be moist, and this is going to be damp. I'm just going to write that down for you. So, let's get this water on really, really quickly as fast as you can, because it is going to start drying. And by the time you start painting this panel here, it is going to be at the damp stage, and it is going to behave se differently to this end, which is where we're going to start off. So you do need to work quickly, and I don't want you to sort of hang around too much, just create the stripe. Is really similar to the previous exercise where we are testing out the different consistencies, tea, coffee, milk, but we are now placing it on different dampness or wetness of paper to see how they react. The reason for doing this is the wetness of the paper, how much water is in the paper is also going to affect that pigment to water ratio because we got pigment to water on the brush, and I have been in workshops where students don't seem to comprehend that. I wanted to include this exercise because if you didn't know that already, it's really, really important because if you a paper is already incredibly, you know, drenched with water or different pigment. Let's say that you've already put yellow down there. It is going to behave slightly differently and the concentration at which you put. So this is probably heavy cream now onto wet. You can see already that it's behaving in different ways. So let's move on to this section here, which is moist. So I'm looking at it. It still has a sheen, but probably, you know, we've been at it for about a minute. And let's see how this behaves. I'll probably put too much on that one. It's fine. Do you remember to leave about a centimeter gap, half an inch between each one because they could spread a fair bit depending on, I think I'm running out of pigment again. You can see that already behaving in slightly different ways from the wet paper to the moist area of this paper. And I do often add pink, in particular, the opera pink to my sunsets in quite high concentration. So I think this is really important for me to know, as well. So moving on to damp where I'm looking at I'm getting down on the side. This area has dried, but this is still a sheen, but I don't want to wait around too much. I'm just going to go ahead and do it. Ideally. All of this paper should have lost that sheen, and it is starting to look quite dull, but it doesn't matter. I think you'll get the gist. And this, in particular, is behaving completely differently. The edges, you know, the edges here are soft. It's no way is it behaving like wet paper? This is probably getting towards cream cream now. Okay. I hope this is making sense to you. Let's take a closer look. This panel on the left was the one we started with. It was wet. And when you have a low pigment to water ratio at the top here, it spreads out incredible amount, and it diffuses out very, very nicely, but as you can see when you add more pigment, it starts to create these type of I don't know how to describe, it's sort of fury type edges. So it's good to understand if you use a different concentration of pigment on wet, these are the varying effects that are going to happen. Now, this middle one is moist, and if we start at the top, I wouldn't say they are diffusing out as much. The edges are still soft, But as we add more pigment, and maybe it was already getting quite dry down here, the edges are becoming a lot more crisper. And this one at the end was damp. And I said to you, this middle section here was to a little bit I could see a sheen, and you can see how the edges are a little bit feathery, but as we get towards the edge the right hand edge, the strokes are definitely crisper. So I think it's worth doing this for all your pigments that you are going to use so that you know how they're going to behave. So I'm going to carry on and do one for yellow, I think. When you are learning about various theories like this, it's very well me presenting all the information, but it really is up to you to understand how your paper reacts when water has been standing on it for 30 seconds. And then what does your paper look like after a minute? And your climatic conditions is also going to have a bearing on the results that you achieve. So it really is in your interest to embrace this playfulness and fact finding mission really, do believe that it's going to help you loads when it comes to painting the actual sunsets, please trust me. Being curious about your own results from this paper dampness exercise will greatly enhance your readiness for painting sunsets. By experimenting and observing how different levels of paper dampness will affect your painting. You are going to become so much more aware and equipped with the knowledge needed to control your techniques effectively. And this curiosity driven exploration is going to prepare you for the expressive sunsets part of this class, and you are going to be far more confident than if you hadn't done this exercise. 13. Brushes: Size, Loading, Strokes: I. Quill brushes are my personal choice for all my loose watercolor work just because they can carry so much water and pigment. I really love using them as the shape can change with the amount of pressure you apply, which gives me a lot of versatility. They do handle slightly different from round brushes and may require a little bit more skill to get used to. But please don't feel you have to go out and buy one for this class. It's really just down to personal preference. Just use a large round brush instead, number ten, 12 or 14. When painting watercolor sunsets, larger brush is really helpful for creating broad strokes and washes. It gives a lot more expressive gestural marks. And also, there's a lot of varied line width. By changing the angle and pressure, you can produce both broad strokes and finer lines, adding to that variety and interest to your sunsets. But the two main reasons for me for having larger brushes is just the amount of water and pigment. They can hold, which allows for longer uninterrupted strokes without needing to reload the brush frequently. And this helps maintain a consistent flow and rhythm in the painting process. Also, larger brushes can promote a much looser relaxed painting style, and this can help us break away from overly detailed and tight renderings. So I think it encourages a freer and more spontaneous approach that can really enhance the expressiveness of watercolors. One of the reasons I love using pallets like this for my sunsets is there is this well where you can collect your pigment. And if I move this around, you can see that I'm able to pick up loads of pigment on this quill brush. And When I do that, you've got something that's called a juicy brush, where it is glistening. And when I put this on the paper, it will release a whole load of pigment onto the paper like that. And that is what's called a fully loaded brush or a juicy brush. And a fully loaded brush like this is going to be really important for the six strokes video lesson because you want to release a rich, vibrant wash of color onto the paper and then start creating very fluid and expressive strokes. So it evokes this idea of a brush being so saturated, it almost drips. And this allows for a really luscious application of pigment. I just want to go over some of the basic strokes that I often use when performing the sunsets. Remember, we need to load up our brush, so making this puddle, and I'm turning my bristles around in it. And one that you have to get used to doing is a stroke like that. That is a fully loaded brush. It's a little bit scary if you are not used to making big bold strokes like that, especially not used to using big brushes like this as well. And It's good idea to practice strokes like this. This is just really, really basic stuff. Varying the strokes of the brush from the lightest pressure and the thinnest stroke, and then changing it midway so that it is much heavier pressure, you get a bolder mark. Another way that I like to use the brush is to hold it perpendicular or straight up from the paper, and you can get quite a fine stroke as you're only using the tip of the brush. Yeah, do take a note of where I'm holding this along the hand, also, bold stroke like that. I'm probably holding it here. But if I'm then going in with a more sort of detailed stroke, I'll hold my brush a little bit further up the handle. In the next warm up exercise, we're going to play around with everything we've covered so far, so you really get a feel for the type of strokes and capabilities of your own brush in relation to the paper that you use. I think mastering a variety of brush techniques and brush control can make the painting process a lot more efficient as you're able to learn quickly and effectively when you know how to apply your paint as intended. 14. Brushes: Warm Up Exercise 4: For this exercise, we are going to divide the paper in half. Just put a bit of washy tape all the way down the middle. And this is going to be a combination of all the other warm ups that we've done combined into this one before we start creating the sunsets proper. So it's going to be a mixture of water to pigment control and brush control. First of all, what I notice with workshop attendees. A lot of them create little strokes like this, which is fine for some aspects of watercolor, but they're very tentative, and they use the tip of the brush like that. But in order to create some of the sunsets that you've seen me do, we need to do this. Let's just create another one for you to see where this is why I use il brushes. This is how thick my il brush can get. And let's do a pink one. And I want you to play around with the thickness of your stroke. That was very controlled. I want you to do something more like that, or those run out of watercolor. We need to load up our brush, as I showed you, a fully loaded brush. And let's put one on top of there. And that's where the dampness of the paper comes in, whereas, before we were practicing just on plain paper like this, when you do that on top of yellow, that's what's going to happen. And you have to gauge that because that's how I do it. I mix up the pigments on top of my paper. Let's do a little bit more So that was just drying. If I were to put stripe of pink directly next to it, we are going to get effects like this, and I would love you to start looking at what is happening to your pigment. I don't know which part of the world you're in, I don't know what size paint brush you're using. It's up to you to really observe, to see, Oh, you know, all the pigment is running into that pink. The yellows really merging in there, and it's going to behave differently once it's completely dry. And that's the reason why I do these warm up exercises. There's so many variables. You can do strokes like that. You get that. Hold on. I need to bring my clean water nearer. Another thing you can do, so this stroke here, if we get clean water and we just push that next to it, you get that sort of effect. And if I use clean water and bring it up to this edge here, You get effects like that. It's really, really important that you play around like this. It's far more important than you realize to get to understand your watercolors, not just for sunsets, but for any watercolor technique, really. I need to add more pigments to my palette. Leave that for now because there's a lot of wetness on there right now, and I do want to gauge different things. Whoops. That is probably tea in between tea and coffee. And let's mix up a yellow, which is milk consistency. Get things like that. And let's pop a bit of yellow through there and get a milk consistency pink happening here. And that's another brush move where you vary the pressure of the brush. You can create things like that. I know sunsets are bands often, but sometimes they're not. So it's good to have different things going on. If you remember the color wheel, one thing that you have to remember move most purples, do not try to put it next to a pink that has a little bit of yellow because that is going to affect what comes out. That one's all right because that is relatively pink. But if you were to put purple, let's say here, You start to muddy the colors, and especially here, it's gone kind of dark, neutral gray. So it's the type of things we are mindful of when we are doing these type of warm ups. All right, Let's put a purple stroke up there and just add pink. That's nice. What happens if we put this purple along here? And we're just playing with the pigments. We're seeing how they're interacting inter reacting. Interacting, even though we have chosen the cools and the warms, whichever you've gone with, it's fine. You can still use this same warm up. If we add another opera rose. Oh, look at that. I love it. And you can see, Oh, especially here, you know, we did this about 3 minutes ago? It's doing this. I just love watching things like that. But what I meant to say was when you are painting, even if it's a warm up, to be mindful to really observe and take time to see what your paints are doing. Don't rush into this and think, I've got to fill this with stripes. We are watching to see what happens. This area here is ripe for a little bit of investigation, and here as well. It's just starting to dry along here. So I'm going to see what happens if I add water along that edge there. Not much. Okay, but it did take on that pigment there. How about if I put more water in this particular area? There's a bit more spread there. Okay. And I just want you to be playful. I think this is an overriding theme for this class, playfulness. Just see what happens. This is just a warm up. And I'm putting sort of milk consistency opera rows on that area of water, I've just added. Let's add some opera rose here. Just in that area there and see what happens when it's dry. Something I want to do. I'm just going to put a little bit more water on my brush is to bring it up to here. And when pigments have water, they can flow. You can see it's happened there. And I suppose it's a bit like osmosis. It goes from an area of high concentration to lower concentration of pigment. And I just want to see what happens if we continue with water just along this ridge here. I wonder if what's going to happen to this area here. It'll be interesting to see. I'm going to take this opportunity to ask you to change your mindset about warm ups if you are not used to doing them. You may think that you are wasting paper, wasting pigment or wasting your time, but that is far from the truth. In reality, you are investing in yourself and your growth as an artist. This age of social media, it is really easy to overlook the countless hours of practice and learning from failures that experienced watercolor artists, including myself, have had to put in behind the scenes. What you see online are polished finished pieces. But behind each are many studies, experiments, and lots of mistakes. So I want you to embrace all of your warmer exercises as an essential part of your own artistic journey. Really stay curious and be open to what your brush can handle. Use your brush to create really thick and thin and varied stripes and layer the purples and pinks, yellows on top of each other, see what happens. Something else I want you to practice as part of this particular exercise is adding pines gray. I use pains gray mixed up with a little bit of yellow to add a hint of, I don't think there's enough on here. Can use indigo. I'm trying to search for my pains gray. I can only find indigo, so I'm going to have to show you using indigo. But it's the same principle. Obviously, the paper dampness will affect what the pigment does when you put it on. And I just want you to see what happened. This is pretty dry. I'm just going to put a line of pains gray there. Nothing much is happening, but if I were to put a little bit here, let's move that out of the way. Push down a little bit harder on my brush and do that. You can see it's spreading out. But here, just along here, I can see that it's really, really. There's standing water on there. You're going to get a slightly different effect, and you can use that to your advantage. These potentially, if this was in a real sort of sunset, could be a row of trees or that, you know, they have the potential to become it's too dry there. Let's try there. And I want you to experiment so that you understand more, even more about how different dampness will affect the pigments that you add later on. So this is almost dry. If you pretend there's a row of trees here, they're not going to do very much because the paper is virtually dry there. I'm just going to show you one more example here. All this beautiful, beautiful effects here. I want to leave that alone because I don't want to spoil it too much, but let's take this section here. So this indigo is probably the heavy cream. They look like bushes, I suppose. But if I did a line here, which is a lot drier, there's not much of a reaction, you can paint the beginnings of hills or whatever. So play around with that as well. Now that these are dry. I want to point out some areas which are going to be so helpful when you do sunsets. We've got things like this where I've put the purple down, and I think I might have added an extra brush stroke of water, and it's created that feathery type effect and this one here. You could do so much. And you must remember, you know, how some of these effects were made. There was a lot of standing water or pigment. Before I added that stroke of purple. And so you can either make sort of physical notes in a notebook or mental notes, which is probably more what I do. And this one here, I think this already looks like a sunset, pretty much, where I've added, you know, just to demonstrate the different dampness of the yellow that was behind the ultra was the ultra Indigo, sorry? And even here when I said, Oh, I think it's quite dry, it must have been damp, but so you've still got this bit of feathering And you really just need to play, trial and error. Nothing that is going to substitute for experience that looks gorgeous. Those little clump of trees. I hope these exercises are going to be incredibly useful for you going into the next section. 15. Interpreting Reference Photos: As mentioned at the beginning, the reference photos are just for inspiration. This means they serve as a guide rather than a strict template. Inspiration is really about capturing the essence and feeling of a scene, not replicating it exactly. If you're aiming to recreate a perfect sunset, you're likely to be disappointed because the beauty of watercolor lies in its spontaneity and fluidity. These are the same sunsets that I have provided for you in the PDF, so please do download it. Of course, you can use your own sunsets. I just want to pick out a few of these and show you a few different routes that you might consider doing. For a scene like this, for example, you are probably going to want to do the whole thing. You want to recreate this entire scene. But if you're new to this, it's going to be really tough. I'm going to talk you through a few different approaches that I would consider. And one of them is basically just to pick tiny part of it. Look at some of that graduation happening in there. So let's try and recreate some of this. I've divided up my paper into six sections because these are only sort of like scamps. These are just studies at this point. First of all, what I'm doing is a close up. We have a white area here, which is really, really light in value. And then there's another light area just above it, and then over here it's orange. Let's recreate that. But down here, it's also very orange. Orange, orange, white section, and then up at the top, it's deeply, it's getting a very, very deep orange at an angle like that. I know it doesn't look like much and over here, we have some more orange happening, and I think we need to sort of merge some of that yellow into that. And I know there's a mountain in the way here. So, I'm going to try a different part. If we go towards the far right, we are getting a little bit more sort of into the deep pinks and purples. Really. So let's start off with a deep purple pink. I'm just applying a bit of water, and I think I'm going to have to apply some yellow to that. While that water is standing because it's going to create an orange. Well, that's what I'm hoping to do. Okay. So this is still the same scene. This is still the same image, but we need to darken up that right hand side. So that can be part of the mountain and here. And let's say the dark goes, now, that's starting to create a little bit of brown there. That's all right. Oh, that looks nice. That looks really nice, actually. And I can see things happening there already. Okay, so that's two versions. Now, if we were to create another version, what I see in this particular sunset is sort of yellow stripes, really. Up here, it's really pale yellow. I'm actually going to and then we have more bands of much more deeper yellow orange, I suppose here. And then here, you can add some pink coming through on the right hand side, leave a gap there. You'll notice that I do leave quite a lot of white, even though my sun says, that's not how sunsets behave. It's artistic license. So we've got three different versions of the same scene. Maybe if we were to get a little bit closer to the horizon where the sunset meets the mountain, it really is quite a much deeper orange red. And depending on the pigments that you're using, you can use that to your advantage. So I'm going to go in. Hold on. I'm going to create a little bit of space here. And I've got some of this violet. Okay. And I'm going to go back in with a yellow, but be mindful. I'm not going to try and put it amongst the purple. I just want to touch that pink there. So we've got four different sunsets. And all I'm doing is just moving my eye around this piece. If we zoom out a little bit, so we've got a pale tip, and then it goes very orange here. This is just interpretation, and there's no other way I can describe it. Sorry. My kids are upstairs. It's the summer holidays when I'm recording this. I have told them I'm recording, but hey, they are teenagers. And it goes really sort of dark, pinky purple here. And let's just do one more version. Again, an interpretation. If we zoom out and it's almost like an abstract version now, where it's just I'm just going to do like bands of color almost. Oops. There's some of that purple coming through from the other side. That's all right. I'm going to add some water, pick up some of this yellow and go back to that purple down Yes. I must be mindful that purple and yellow make brown. I need to just boost it with some of this pink here, I think. Okay. And we're going to have to wait for this to dry a little bit. I'm going to use these two examples just to vary where the horizon line is. So we can change up where we put that. And it is wholly your decision. There will be a voice in your head saying, Oh, no, that doesn't go there, or that doesn't look like that. You are in charge. So I've just used some pains gray, but obviously, I've got a little bit of yellow on my brush. I'm just going to add a tiny bit of purple to that. There we go. So there's one horizon. It doesn't have to be, you know, smooth like that. That looks really good, actually. And let's do this one here, and we're going to change it up slightly. I'm going to just add, even though, you know, there's a hefty range of hills there. And that can almost be like, if it is a body of water. Almost like a reflection. And it's not something that I planned. I just thought of it now, literally this second. If there is a man on a boat. I just do a suggestion of it and I look like a bit of a lock ness monster. I just needed to find the shape of that boat a tiny bit better. There we go. There's a man on a boat, and maybe there's a few ducks there or birds. It's the same scene, but I've just changed a few elements up, and you've got two completely different pictures, and that's pre how I go about arranging these scenes. This is what I've managed to do in literally five extra minutes since the last time you saw me painting. That's the first two. And then I have just done the same thing again, changed up where the hills are, changed up where I'm positioning them, how dark they are. And you can have so many different variations. And the secret really is just to be playful. That's my top tip. Don't worry so much about the original image because it's just a starting point. It's really, really good fun. 16. Why Repetition Helps: I want to say a few words about why we're painting more than one sunset in each sitting. As you saw in my examples, I will fill a double page with four different sunsets quite easily in 15 to 20 minutes. I've actually learned about four different sunsets in that short amount of time. Practicing the same scene or sketch multiple times, not just sunsets can significantly enhance your watercolor skills. It's truly a great investment of your time. It's great for muscle memory. The repetition allows you to refine your brushwork and control over pigment, and also your understanding of the water to paint ratios, and over time, this type of practice will build tremendous muscle memory, making each brushstroke much more natural and effortless. Every time that you create a sunset or any other subject matter, each iteration will deepen your understanding of the subject, helping you to capture its essence a lot more effectively with every attempt. Furthermore, the repeating of the same scene will sharpen your observational skills, making it far more attuned to some of the subtle details and variations. This type of familiarity with your subject is going to increase your confidence, enabling you to paint a lot more boldly and intuitively. Each iteration is going to offer an opportunity for self reflection and growth because it's always great to step back and assess what you've done. So it will allow you to see your progress and set some new goals for improvement. Please think of this as an investment in your time and a powerful way to enhance your skills leading to greater creativity and overall artistic growth. 17. Demo 1: Mini Sunsets Part 1 : These other pigments that I've been using exclusively for my sunset since I found out about the warm and cool bias. We are starting with Windsor Lemon, which I've completely run out of opera rose, brilliant purple, Windsor violet, and also Pines gray. And by varying the water to pigment ratio, I'm able to mix up all kinds of wonderful colors with this and create gorgeousness. This is how I've arranged them on my palette so that there's enough room for mixing the colors together, and they are very limited. There's only five colors. So that's something that you might like to consider. I am going to leave it up to you to decide which pigments you would prefer to use from your own watercolor set. I'm not saying you have to use the same pigments as me. This is me finding out from trial and error what I prefer and how I like to work. So I do hope that you will have a better relationship with your watercolors and understand how your pigments work. I do urge you to download the PDF, just to take a look at the sunset. There's over 40, and they're not. I don't think they're too complicated. This one is an image that I tried in this sketchbook, and with several months and lots and lots of sunsets knowledge. I want to see if I can do a very, very quick version, and this is going to be our first warm up demo of an actual sunset. I talk to you about interpretation, and you can divide up this sunset how you want. You could just do this bit here. You could we're going to be dividing up into a landscape format. You could just do this bit here. You could do this bit and this bit. It's probably going to be too difficult to try and do the entire scene. I know it's really tempting to try and do this, but we are going to tackle larger scenes later on. So I'm going to stop talking and show you what I mean in terms of Just using what's there to launch ideas. I'm going to use this sugarcane paper. It is gummed. I'm just going to turn it over like that. Get some washy tape on there. We only want to create something quite small. I know many of you would want to launch straight into a sunset that covered this whole page, but even for me, that would be quite an undertaking. So I'm going to divide this up into six, and these are going to be re, really quick. This will set us up for the six strokes later on, but we are going to spend a little bit more time thinking this through. So I'm going to use the same image, but get six different versions of it. We are not trying to copy the exact thing. And I'm going to start off with the sun. And in this version, it's kind of a peachy Danya I can describe it as a peach color. Peachy pink. But this first one, it's on the horizon line. O I need a bit more yellow on that. But I'm going to do a whole sun in this version that's only half. And just above it, there's a lot of white. Well, it's not white. It's very light in value, let's say. So this is probably like the horizon line, get it to about there. And we're asked to want a bit of yellow, maybe about here. And now, let's introduce a little bit of the pink. I'm going to make an orange. And I'm going to keep it fairly loose, and then I think I'm going to add a little bit more pink up here. So this consistency is probably about milk. And there are streaks of this pale light. That looks nice already, actually. And I once showed a sunset to my son. And he said, Mummy, there's no white streaks in that sunset. I said, it's just an interpretation. He said, there's no white in the sky. And he took it to mean, like, very literal. But I don't know if your children are like that. Okay. I could add Because this yellow is quite damp. I don't want to add anything kind of purply pink there because it's just going to muck it up too much. So let's try another version. But first of, the next version, I'm going to try with a sunset maybe more like here. Probably need a bit water on that. And in this version, there's half a sun peping up from the horizon. And I'm looking at the other colors that I can see. No directly above that, but there is already violets and purples taking place, and I'm going to be it's in this sort of area here. While I've got a bit of purple on my brush, I'm going to go back to here actually. Just add that there. And now I'm going to add the s I am flitting. Sorry. I I don't like to hang around. Otherwise, we're just going to be hanging around waiting for various elements to dry. And this is often how I work. I work simultaneously at least on two sunsets, and it gets lighter here, so I've just put some water just plain water on my brush, and that's coming down. And that Alex G just ready said. I'm going to leave that. And since I've got some of that light blue wash on my brush. I'm going to add some up here, see what happens. Now, there is actually because I just washed my brush, there was a lot of water on my brush, and it's creating this effect. So it goes back to what we were learning about how much water is on your brush, how much water is on the paper, what you can do while I'm talking about paper, I'm just going to dampen this area here. Oh, that looks nice. And what happens if I were to put a streak of pink, I think there's kind of two distinct bands of Oh, chopped a bit of the sunset off. It doesn't matter. I'm just going to round it down there and maybe here. Mm hmm. That could be quite good. And actually, if I bring some of this pink down here, Yeah, that'll do. And then get some plain water, bring it down. Cool. I do think it's missing some yellow I don't think it's quite enough um value contrast happening this. I'm going to add a bit of oops. Didn't mean to splatter it like that, but that's all part of what we're learning about all these unexpected changes. Alex jolly nice. I'm just looking on the side, and this is quite damp. So I think I'm going to have to leave it to sort of settle in a bit. But while I've got the yellow on my brush, let's do a tiny wingi sun up here, maybe. There's quite a lot of yellow on my brush at this stage. And leave a bit of white there and here as well. Okay. Oh, look at that. Look at that. Oh, I love watching that happen. It's gorgeous. Really, really gorgeous. And let's say there's more pink coming in from this side and going into the sea. If I add some purple down there quickly, I might actually. I've just seen a cloud, which is got a purple streak. It must be sort of the upper part of the cloud, which is away from the Sun or that looks nice already, as well. Can you see I get very excited about things like that? I might have added a little bit too much yellow. Doesn't matter. Doesn't matter. If we bring in the purple here, it's quite damp. I'm mindful. I don't want it to touch that yellow section. Let's say that this area here is the beach. I'm not going to try and do the beach at this stage. It it's going to do my heading. And I think it could do with a bit of I've still got ultramarine on there. Normally, it'd be pains gray. But if we did a swift line across like that, how does that look? And also, before I forget, that the longer your paint brush is in contact with the paper surface, the more water color is going to be released. So, if I it does depend on how much how damp your water is in the first place. Oh, there's so many variables, but I hope you are still going to learn a lot by doing experiments like this. That looks more like a lake than the sea. But hey, that's fine by me. That's fine. How about if we were to put plain water here or kind of merges in like that? I think I would like to go in again. This sun is kind of getting lost in the version. It's very obvious that there is this round disc in that part of the sky. I'm just going to emphasize it somehow. Maybe that's ale bit to too much Oh. If you have a little accident like that, you can use kitchen roll. Stab away some of that watercolor. 18. Demo 1: Mini Sunsets Part 2: Well, I've got that orange. Let's create another streak up there. That looks rather good. Okay, and I've got a bit of orange yellow on my brush. So let's do a large sun about here. And there's not very much on my brush. Let's get some more on quickly. Just changing the movement slightly so it's doing this. I think we need some orange as it moves away towards this side, it's quite orangey, and this side is quite orangey. And then up here is purple. Now, what I'm realizing is I'm really avoiding purple because I don't want it to mix with the yellow, but I don't think I can get away with it. I'm just going to leave that for now. I'm going to start on one which we'll have more purple in it? Can you see what's happening there? Gold. Isn't that gorgeous? Absolutely gorgeous. A, let's do one here. I'm going to try and perhaps make this one the closest to the reference image. You can tell, I am just picking and choosing. You know, you are entitled as the artist to do what the heck you want, because this is your piece of paper. Nobody is standing over you telling you that it doesn't look like that sunset. And I'm just going to repeat again, this is one moment of a sunset that a photographer has taken, and he's probably enhanced some of the colors anyway, and he's meddled with the levels and goodness knows what else photographers do. So cut yourself some slack. If you say, Oh, doesn't look like that sunset. It really doesn't matter. It really really doesn't. I don't think it does anyway. It's just a moment of time. And it's up to you how you wish to spend your time. And I don't want to be too frustrated. Right? I've just put the violet down. This is the violet. I I'm mindful. Well, I do love what's going on there, but I haven't really left very much white space, and that's something that I would like to do a little bit more of, especially in this one before I forget. So we got the purple coming in here. Maybe a little bit too much, but that's all right. Oh, looks quite good. Could I add purple here in this Oh, maybe the violet. It might be okay with the violet. It is getting a little bit dull. I might just leave that one now. Okay. It's all right. It's all right. I just thought I'd give it a go. If it's not going to work, that's fine. I'll remember for next time not to put so much yellow all over the page to begin with. And I think I'll put a little sun here. I'm going to get some water in here. Clean water. And get some yellow in there. Actually, I might put some water in here as well. See what happens. Oh You can lift. If you dab your brush on these kitchen roll. If you have a major boo boo, you can try and lift off some of the water color. It won't all come off, but some of it will come off. I'm just doing it here as well. It just tones down what's going on in that particular area. But you must take the excess pigment and water off. Okay, sorry, stop talking. Let's get on with this last sunset. M streaks towards the bottom, I think. And maybe a streak up there. Oh. Oh, that looks quite nice as it is. He's got this pink halo. Alright, I actually like that. Now, going back to this foreground area, I'm going to try some slightly different versions. Um We've got this violet here and then add the purple. Oh, it does that. That's Jolly nice as well. I don't know what that is. It doesn't matter. It really doesn't matter. Let's put the ultramarine down first. Oh, I thought that was dry. It doesn't matter. It's fine. It's fine. Darker pigment, much more pigmented, just here, I think, where it meets the horizon. The sun could do if a little bit more rounding off. But I know I've I'm not going to wash this brush. I'm going to just use a different one. We, if I can if it's going to be okay, am I going to completely base it up? If I try to, Yeah, I'm going to bals it up. Let's leave it. And now this one. Well, have I got my brush, blue? Alright. Let's go mix that up with a little bit of purple. Put that down here. Let's finish off down here and use what's on that brush. Oh, I like that dry brush coming through just here. Get rid of that really quickly. Because it's a little bit too stark then. Introduce some of that it was the brilliant purple here, so it echoes some of what's going on. And this is like heavy cream consistency. Oh, that's nice. That's quite moist, I suppose. And we have to wait to see, I'm just I'm going to see what happens if I do this. You'll notice that I am very rapid with my strokes. It's very much like this. At this stage, you don't have to be doing all this business. We're going to let this dry now and take a closer look and peel off that washy tape. Okay, would I say any of these sunsets really resemble that reference image? Probably not. But this is just a springboard to your development in your understanding of sunsets. If we were to start with this image and say, we are going to paint an exact copy of this, there would be so much frustration, and likely you are going to give up. But I hope this is going to be a gentle approach. What I really hope comes across is how playful we approached the thirst six squares of sunsets and just observing to see what happens to that pigment, I just love seeing things like that. I really do. And this one, in particular, Oh, my gosh, I am just thrilled to see things like that happening on a piece of paper. It's a low pressure way of creating and approaching sunsets, which you will take through to the next few stages. So don't get completely overwhelmed by, Oh, my gosh, it has to look like what I'm seeing in front of me. We are visual people, and we can interpret whatever we want, how we want. And I'm giving you permission to do that today. 19. Demo 2: Sunset Landscape Part 1: This is the image that I've chosen for my second demo, mainly because I have d a version of it in this sketch book from a few months ago, and I thought it was a little bit overworked. So I'm interested to see how far I have moved on. I'm using another Hannema sketch book. I'm going to put some washi tape down it, but this is just the water color version, not the 100% cotton. So the sunset, sorry, the actual sun is about here. And then you have trees silhouetted against it. It does merge into, like, a night sky, a starry sky, which I've probably got a feeling that the photographer photoshopped. Before I start on this one, because we have a larger area to cover, I am going to use this quill brush, which is the number two. In the previous demo, I was using this quill brush, the zero. And you can see that there is a fair size difference. So that's something to be mindful of as well. L et's mix up a sort of a coffee consistency for the yellow. I think I want quite a lot about here. This is going to be the grass area. It doesn't really matter. And maybe going up here as well. That does get quite pink up there. So, let's on a bit of pink. And this is going to be I suppose, Starting here, I think I need more yellow. I want it to be a lot more orange does get pinker over there, though. That's fine. And I want to be mindful to leave some white because I think that's where I went wrong in my last version. So, even for me, you know, I'm learning just what we talked about in terms of repetition. The more you Oh, Oh, I don't think I meant to do that. The more you paint, the more you learn, I do want to leave this as it is. I want to start getting more into the pink, so I am mindful not to apply too much yellow at all. So I'm going to in this version, I'm going to bring the sunset down to about here and try something a little bit different. Alright. Let's fload up my brush with pink so that I can apply it to both these versions. And that's probably a milk consistency. It sweeps up like that. So That looks quite nice, actually. And if I do the same here, I might need to blend it in a bit. There wasn't enough on my brush. I just run out of pigment. Yeah. I think I need to there's lovely pink down here. That's fine. And if we bring that down to here, that's quite nice. And, I've made that probably a little bit too orange, but that's okay. I don't want to bring in that yellow too much because I like that pink on that side. And if we sweep this orange up there, that might just be enough. And I think I do want to use some of that violet in the left hand side of each of the. That's why I was mindful not to introduce yellow because I don't want I wouldn't have wanted the violet mixing with the yellow. Oh, yes, that's very nice. And maybe like that. You can see that I'm trying to practice the movements before I make the actual stroke. Maybe another one here, or that's gone into sort of The territory I didn't really want to go to. Never mind, never mind. I'm just going to stop there with that one because I'll just get frustrated. Okay. But I can make that corner a little bit darker and maybe another stroke about there. That looks about right. Yeah, leave that and do the same here, I think. And it's probably quite pink down there. Oh, yes, that's the type of pink I was trying to introduce. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Good, good, good. I'm going to just take some clean water. There's too much of a stark difference just here, so I'm going to use the pigment that's on the page and just draw it down here. And you can see that the pigment is following the movement of that water. I think that's going to look really good. I really do need some pains gray. All right, pop some more on there. And if we mix a bit of yellow with the pains gray, you're going to get kind of a green. Oh, it is a little bit more yellow than that. But we can pop some down like that. And add. More Pines gray. And it kind of rises up. There's a tiny hill. You can see in the distance, maybe something like that. The trees. Now, I can see just here, there is dampness, so it might be a good time to introduce the tree line. No the tree line, you know. There's probably three trees there. That's what I meant. Now, that area there where I've just put the last stroke has dried. So we're not going to get much movement there. And, that's one of the reasons why I paint so far sometimes because I want to capture those random, beautiful, beautiful. I'm going to get myself a smaller brush. That's quite dry and use the pigment that's already on there to create those trunks. There is a lot of water on there. I'm going to dab that off. Might brush. You are going to have to judge for yourself the right time to add this darker pigment for that group of trees. Remember the drying rate of your watercolor is going to depend on several factors, including the warmth and humidity of the room that you're painting in, how saturated your paper might be already and how much pigment your brush is holding. So to make those trees really stand out, you are going to need cream consistency and that thicker mixture will ensure that they are going to be much more stronger and defined in value. 20. Demo 2: Sunset Landscape Part 2 : And in my previous version, I can it's somewhere in the distance. It looks to be some kind of building or some kind of structure. But when I don't have my glasses on, it does look like a man is standing there. So I'm going to draw as if somebody standing still. Does that look weird? I think I need to fill in this section here. Oh, yeah, that has made a real difference now. That really has. Okay. I've noticed, while I've been chatting away, this one, I need to work on this one as well because it's dried out quite a lot more than these trees here, which in itself could be interesting. You know, I'm always curious. And this stroke here was incredibly fast, but also incredibly expressive. And that is why I had you to practice the warm up exercises because practicing different strokes will give you better control over your brush. It improves precision, but also the ability to execute specific brush marks such as this one more effectively. Just remove. I'm gonna roll up this kitchen roll. So it gives me a straight edge and just remove this pigment in a line here 'cause I thought it was just a bit heavy. Now you've got the texture of my kitchen roll in there. Oh, that wasn't quite what I was planning. This is fine. This is fine. I can solve this. I'm just going to work it back in because what I have done is I wanted in the reference image, you can see the sunset beyond the tree trunks. And in this version, it's just this mass of green, which I'm a little annoyed with. So I'm going to try and remove some of that using a dry brush. You know, I might have a better chance here. Let's try. Let's try. Maybe it's worth a go. Yeah, I think, that's quite a difference already. And another one here and up here does need a little bit of yellow, I think. I think this one's going to work much better in terms of being able to see the silhouetted trunks of the trees. Yeah. That's good to know. When you come to do yours, let that sunset behind dry a fair bit. I think going in like that. You get two different results, and we're going to talk about this in a minute. Sorry. I crack on before it dries too much. Let's make the edges a little bit more uneven. Okay. Okay. Okay. And I do like having that distant hill. It doesn't have to be blue. I might try kind of a lilac, dark lilac. That's not so bad. Do I want to add another man to give context? I reckon so. Yeah. Okay. Do him a little bit closer to the tree. He's got very thick legs. Oh, dear. Alright, let's just try again. I think that was a really good example of when I was getting caught up in the details, even for a loose watercolor painting. It's really about capturing the essence and the mood of the scene and emphasizing the essential so that you will allow your brain to fill in some of the gaps, which will create a much more dynamic and expressive piece of art. It's the overall impression, the atmosphere, and trusting that the viewers will understand what is happening in this scene. It's embracing that unpredictable nature of watercolor and letting go of perfectionism. I've decided that these are a little bit too similar, and I actually want to lift off some of the pigment here because it's a little bit too dense, and I've got this paint brush. Try and lift off some of that. Does that make a difference? A little bit. I think I need to take even more of this pink off here and another technique is literally just to take it off using. Ah, now, now, because I've done that, I feel like I want to take a little bit off here as well. Oh, let's find a clean bit of the tissue. Ah, there's a lot more movement in that now. Oh. Okay. Okay. Overall, I am jolly, please. I think there's some absolutely gorgeous effects in there. I was a little bit unsure about group of trees. But taking off some of the excess pigment with my kitchen roll, has done a good job, and I can see that sort of the swiftness of my strokes in that hill. There is something that I wanted to point out that I realized I did with my previous version of this. It looks like I continued the yellow right down to the grassy area. I'd really like to play around with that. So I'm going to do another version. This is also an example of problem solving because I identified and wanted to address something that I had picked up on from a previous attempt so that I can create a better outcome. Going back to what I said about practicing multiple times to enhance our skills. The familiarity with the subject increases our confidence, and I feel like by this stage, I'm painting it now for actually, it's the fifth time. I'm a lot bolder and it's coming from a place of intuition. It probably would be best if I did this assessment when both of these two here were dry, but I'm a little bit impatient, and I'm very, very excited to see things like that. Oh. I love that. D know I'm whispering. So I've now done four versions of the same. So it's similar to that first demo. These are just larger in scale. And I cannot emphasize enough, the more that you do, The more you will understand the subject matter. Understand how your paint reacts, because I wanted to introduce. It was this area here where you could see that I had painted the sunset or the pigments had merged, and I wanted to sort of cultivate that, which was lacking in my first two versions. And that's pretty much how I work all the time. Um, especially as a food illustrator, I have to draw things over and over again. I really feel that each iteration offered me an opportunity for self reflection and growth. And I can see the progress and set new goals for improvement. If you've been following the class, this would have been your eighth sunset in total. And the muscle memory that you would have built up is going to make your brush strick so much more natural and effortless. Please trust me. 21. Demo 3: Six Stroke Sunset Part 1: Okay, I've got my paper ready for my six strokes sunsets. We are going to do this with intention. We do have to work fairly quickly, but we have to make sure that we are taking note of what's happening on the paper. So, let's just start this first one. A big difference for me now is I often do six strokes from my imagination. You can use any of the other reference photos, but I don't want to be too bogged down by any details for a little game like this. I'm going to start off by applying a basic round circle with the yellow. Just a basic one here. Where I'm going to st one that's still one stroke. I almost took my brush off the babe, but that's going to be one. So that's my one stroke. Okay. Okay. I almost broke my first rule. Let's mix up some pink. Tiny bit of that yellow to make an orange. I am going to place one stroke here and bring it over up to here. We almost run out. So That's two strokes. That's a little bit, you know, it's value wise. That's a little bit light. So I think I'm going to go in with a much deeper, more vibrant pink. Do make sure that you load up your brush because you want to make sure that you get as maximum color. So, this is number three. I think I'm going to start here. And that's going to go off the edge there. Okay. I might just leave that for now. So I've got three here, and I'm using what's left on this brush. I'm going to do a another sunset here because I don't want to waste too much pigment, so that's one. I actually I've still got There are ways and means of doing this. I'm going to add another sunset because I still have an incredible amount of that opera rose on my brush. So, I'm doing three simultaneously. And sometimes, you know, I work that way. Sometimes I do one at a time. It's completely up to you. I am mindful of how this is drying. So this is going to be my fourth stroke, and I'm going to bring it into here. So this is number two. And this is going to be number three. I'm going to take it around. Do I want to put it somewhere else? So that was number two. I'm going to this also needs a bit of orange in there somewhere. I'm going to put it somewhere slightly different. I'm sorry for the banging. It's my son. I've no idea what he's doing in his bedroom. So we have got three strokes, two, two. Okay. Okay, Okay, Okay. I'm going to get some plain water, and I'm going to just add some water here to diffuse that out. So that's four strokes, and I've got two left here. And I want to add some sort of a hill or some sort of a horizon. So but once I go dark, pick up a dark pigment, you know, my brush is going to be prey heavy, so with pigment. So I need to be strategic. Let's add. I'm going to add a really big pop of pink here. So lovely directionality happened there. So that was actually one stroke. I know, I did this type of movement with it, and that's absolutely fine. I think with this one, I want to introduce pink in this corner here. And if I use pink, I can probably use purple up there as well. So this is strike number three. Do I want to take it anywhere else? Okay. Good, good, good, good. Now, let's go in with some purple. We can add purple as part of the landscape down here. This will be number five, I believe for this one. But I've still got purple on my brush. So I'm just where I can put it. I have to be mindful, I don't place it anywhere where there's too much orange. So I could probably do it here and down here. Okay. And I really wanted purple up in this corner here, so I'm going to include that. I want to add some directionality, so I'm just kind of rehearsing the movement I'm going to make. Yeah Oh, I like that. Okay. We've got some lovely things happening here. Now I need to go much darker. I'm going to mix up some pains gray. So the pigment that I am using with this pains gray is cream, sort of a thick cream. Okay. That's number six for that one. And I've still got paints gray on my brush here. I want to do something different. So introduce a horizon line there. Mm. Okay, good, good, good. And here, think, I'm just going to do this. I'm going to reserve judgment on these two. I may need to go in again, but could be okay. Okay. Let's work on the bottom three. 22. Demo 3: Six Stroke Sunset Part 2: Just wanted to show you the state of my water. I am going to have to change that up before I move on to the bottom three. Remember these two have got one more stroke, potentially, I could use, and I think value wise. This one, in particular, could definitely do a little bit more pains gray just to pick out this solid body of hill, or rock, mountain, whatever. I'm going to use very heavy cream consistency of pains gray here. There's already a suggestion of a hill here. I'm just going to define this line here and press down a little bit harder there. So, that's stroke number six, and I can do the same here. But I think I'm going to do something a little bit different. I'm just say, Oh, gosh, I thought that had dried out, but already, it's like a suggestion of some bushes there on the side of a hill, perhaps, something like that. Sort of dotting about. Oh. That wasn't six strokes. Oh, you know, I'm going to get by. That's the last element that I'm going to add. Okay. Forgive me. I've slightly bent the rules there. But five of the strokes were acceptable. Okay. Let's wash my brush out really, really well. And let's get to move on with these. So I think we'll start off with an orangey version here. I'm going to need a little bit more m of this opera rose in here. I think Let's create a nice orange. And I want to start off with quite a light value. Again, I'm just making this up in my head. I think we could do of a slightly smaller sun this time round. Okay. This is still one stroke. That stroke number one, good. I'm just going to load this brush up. I a bit more pink, and I'm going to add very directional stroke here. I think I should leave a little bit of white showing. I haven't done it too much in these previous versions, but it's something that really helps. Actually, I'm going to be more mindful about leaving a little bit of white space in these two here. While I've got that pinky color on my brush, let's do another version where the suns over here, let's say, Okay. And um Do I want to work on this one as well? No, I might as well. I'm just going to pick up a bit more water on my brush. Continue this. That is a lot of standing water, but it could lead to some really fabulous effects. Who knows? Right? I said I would be more mindful of lead and white, so already filled up quite a lot there. So Right. Right, right. Let's create a pinky purple now. I have I want to introduce a little bit more purple. Where's my Brilliant purple? Oh, I've already got some here. Okay. Let's mix some up there. Okay. So this is stroke number two technically, and I'm going to create some movement here and bring it down to here maybe. Right. I want to introduce some clean water to this straightaway. This edge here is a little bit too harsh for me. So this is number three. And let's add a bit more pink here. Bearing in mind, I really want to leave a little bit more white space than I've done in the others. I'm going to One way I've described this to myself is like a continuous line drawing as long as you don't lift your brush fully off the paper, it's permissible. Okay. So that was actually stroke number two. And there is a bit of white there. So that's cool. That's cool. Now, what do I want to do here? I think I want to go with the purple again, sort of the nice, pinky purple. And maybe I'll introduce it from this side only. So this is stroke number two. This is a little bit light in value, but I'm going to have to introduce it in the next stroke because I'm not going to take this off. Okay, that will stroke number two. So all of these have had two strokes, and now I think I'm going to have to go in. This one I'm actually really pleased with. I might just leave that as it is. I don't have to use six strokes, but I can use six strokes, they're available to me. This one, I think it needs some yellow. Right. Let's pick up some yellow. I think just a pale, not anything too vivid. So this will be stroke number three. Okay. That's three. And maybe I want to take some yellow into this one as well. Where do I want it, though? Underneath. We bring it here. Go up to there and across. I think I'm going to have to this there is quite a lot of pigment on there. I'm going to have to watch that one. But in terms of this, this is how many strokes, three and three. I'm going to go in with a green mixed up with the pines gray. This is just made up again. Do I A, A. Let me think this through. But this one, I think needs something to balance out that sun there. Mm. I think I'm going to have to go in again with a darker value. Since I've still got that pains gray on my brush, Let's Oh, look at that. Look at it spreading up there because the pigments are still running into each other. Oh, they're a bit gorgeous, I have to say. I think this one on reflection. I think this needs yellow here and here. So I'm going that's going to be two strokes because if I put yellow through that blue, I think that's going to create something quite nasty. I think that was four strokes. So yeah, I'm allowed two more strokes of this one. And this one, I think it needs more, actually, let's do this one now. There's this lovely yellow coming through. So I think if we just determine where there's going to be like a line of trees or mountains, Oh, that's gorgeous. Okay, that's great. I'm not going to do anything to this one. That's really great. And I just wanted to add yellow this one on the left. Wh that brush properly. Let's load that up. And I think I want to bring a stroke down here. Oh, O, O, O, look. I went to that outer left edge. Ah. Look at that. That looks like a reflection. Oh, that's pretty cool. Notice there's this rather jagged, white patch there. So, you know what? I'm I'm just use some water and just dampen this edge here. And that doesn't make it so so solid. Wow. You know, that only took about what 16 minutes, 18 minutes to do the six sunsets. These are almost dry, but not quite, but I'm very impatient to tell you my thoughts on what we have here. Starting with this top three, we do have a beautiful background. You know, It doesn't work perhaps in a sunset setting, but I still really adore that. And if you half close your eyes, it looks like some kind of, you know, sun burst or whatever that thing you get with photos. Pleased with that extra layer of paints gray. I put at the end. I think that was the sixth stroke. This one is also really interesting. There's almost something a bit aurora like with that purple coming down. And yes, I did cheat with those little trees there, but that was the last layer, so I'm going to give myself some grace. So those were pretty good. And Remember this lot at the bottom. I said, I must remember to leave a little bit of white. And I think that extra contrast has really, really helped. I think my favorite of this three is this one in the middle. It looks like there's a volcano rising up from, I don't know, like a swamp. Um It's a beautiful shade of pink, really, really love it. This one is a little bit formless, and sometimes that happens. Maybe I should have waited around a bit longer to see what it was going to do. And I had an extra stroke I could have put there, but what is coming through really is how playful they look. They're very free. They are beautifully expressive. There's nothing over, worked about them. I am jolly pleased with those. Seriously, I am. 23. Demo 4: Advanced Sunset Part 1: For this demo, I would like to recreate this sunset with a bit of landscape in the foreground and this fence that's leading us in. We've got a bit of misty hillside in the background. And we are going to be working that much larger. So I do suggest you change up the size of your brush. This is the number four. I might also use the Windsor and Newton Professional, but I also might go back to using the smaller quill brushes for some of the details. One thing you might have noticed about the image that I chose is, I think the sunsets quite early on because the sky is still very blue. So because I'm in charge, I will create a more definite sort of dramatic sunset, and that's absolutely fine. You can do what you want because it's your sunset. So let's get some yellow on there using this big old brush and bring it down because there's water down here, I'm going to bring it down a little bit further than I normally would. And let's get some pink in there really, really fast because the day is getting warmer. And I want to make sure that the pigments keep on spreading and down here as well. Yeah. Okay, I know it doesn't look like much at the moment. And I want to make the sky above it a lot more pink. Here. And probably I want to take it into a violet as well. Maybe a few more streaks down here. And also, I can see kind of a pinky orange happening within this body of water, and even in the the hillside. So I think we might we could probably introduce the hillside just here. I need a bit of yellow in there. If I can just get this hillside to touch this area of yellow, and the lamb comes out like that and then goes in again, then comes out again about here. Obviously, I'm only doing a part of the I'm making a decision about which part of this landscape I want to include. And then down here, there's an awful lot of texture. And that's partly why I'm using such a large brush. So I can cover so much of the page quickly. And also, there's so much pigment. I don't want to get too involved in the texture. I always thought, Oh, I could add a bit of texture. No, Let's get the main points in first. This body of water needs to be added in I think I'm going to use a slightly different size brush for that. It's a pale blue. So I can still use the pines gray, but have it really dilute. Oh, probably, not that I thought I diluted it down. Okay. And um Right. You know what? You know what, I can add that hillside in the far distance. It's very, very dilute. I mean, it's very pale. Even though it's a hillside, let's be mindful of the value of it. And here it's probably darker towards the bottom. Oh, that looks quite good, actually, great. So leave that for now. I might add a little bit more up here. I said I wanted some purple in there. So let's do that now because it's mid afternoon when I'm recording this, and I have to be super fast because it's warm at the moment. Yeah, that's just dried a bit more than what I hoped. So what I can do is bring some water into this area. And I don't know if I'll be able to soften these edge Ooh. Oh, I wash that properly. Had I? Let's add some pink to that brush and see if I can soften this edge a little bit. You know, I'm just going to extend that up there. All right. All right. How about if I add a streak of pink here? Or Oh, A. Now that that looks rather good. Just add some more pink to define the sun and press down a little bit harder. So the pink merges with some of the Ah Ah. That's exactly what I was hoping for. I think I'm going to have to let this dry now. There's a lot of effects happening in there, if I do want to add the fence, but I think I will need to use quite a high pigment, and it'll probably go everywhere. So I'm going to do another version on this side. It is entirely up to you, whether you want to do a second version. I think you will find how much easier it is even at this larger scale and using this large brush, how much quicker this next version will be. In this version, I have done the sun slightly smaller, and it's going to have a lot more yellow around it. Also, I was mindful that my paint was drying quite quickly because maybe I was spending too much time talking things through. So I did a run through where I am now doing the voiceover so that I could concentrate on really letting the pigments do the work whilst the paper was a lot wetter than the previous version. And this is something that I play with a lot. I thoroughly enjoy watching these pigments mingle and just going with the flow. There's a real magic in seeing how these colors blend together and they interact on the paper, creating some really unexpected effects. And while I know I can control the pigments to a certain extent with the brush and adjusting the water ratio. And the paper's wetness, there is a point where you have to let go and allow that watercolor to do what it does best. And this type of unpredictability is part of what I love about watercolor. There's a real charm, but also challenge when using this medium. So embracing the natural flow of the pigments not only brings a lot of spontaneity and freshness, but I think it encourages me to keep on exploring For some of you, this could be a bit scary, and letting go of control is something that you may be trying to work on. But try to be open to the surprises and the beautiful, unique results that could be achieved. I want to point out, I am adding a bit more green to the foreground of this particular piece. And painting a scene a second time allows you to change things up and experiment with new ideas. Remember, you are in charge of your artwork, and each version is an opportunity to refine composition or explore different color schemes and enhance the overall impact of a second painting. So don't be afraid to make bolder choices and adjustments because it's through this type of process that your own vision will come to life. 24. Demo 4: Advanced Sunset Part 2: You can see the variation in these two, how it's kind of the same but different. And that's why I love creating two because I'm so curious. And this has to dry because still the pigments are still spreading out, but there's some gorgeous stuff happening here. There's a different type of vibe because I slapped on that final landscape fast. And the last thing I did was this area here, and I've actually still got green on my brush. So I think this is actually a good time to bring in some more detail in this grassy area down here, but keeping it loose. Oh, gosh. So this is Indigo, I expect. I want to just really be very, very quick with this brush, even though it's the number four quill brush. It's a pretty large brush. I can still create quite dynamic strokes. And actually, you know what? While I'm here, I'm going to do that fence. Oh Okay. One, there's about three that I can see. T three. There's a fourth slat or panel, I don't know. Oh, there we go. Brilliant. So this is kind of the edge here, so I'm going to add a few more strokes there and a few more tus here. Go in slightly different directions. I think I'm going to have to change up my brush. Hold on. Actually, no. I'm going to this promontory. I don't know. See, I don't know if there's some sort of a little hut or sort of bird watching hut or something, but these little structures. Anyway, I don't know what they are, but I've added them now. Looks quite good. I always want to leave it like that, actually. But I do think it would be good if I just add got my smaller brush and added details. Maybe a bit of green just to split up the contrast a bit. Oh, that's not much thinner. And this is the edge of the water. There's reeds or something. Now, I think this area here is probably kind of a reflection happening here, but it is incredibly dark, so I can't really make out very much. I suppose that gives it slightly better impression. Just add a little bit more detail down here, I think, introduce a few more grasses up against this fence. That's probably all right. Now, let's take a look overall. There's a line. It's not green. It's almost like a pinky purple. And it's quite definite. And I don't know if by adding that, it's going to help us understand that this is in the distance, cause there's a body of water here. I'm wondering if I should have walked that down lower, that almost looks actually. You know what? That does almost look like a reflection. T here, I can't really see a reflection in the image, but just the way that the pigment had spread, that's not bad. But in order for this piece of land, For the viewer to understand. This was in front of the area that we've just painted. I am going to have to darken it up a lot more. I'm using a indigo mixture of the paints gray. It's probably kind of cream cream milk, and also, actually, this land here coming round. This needs to be darker. I don't know if I've made it too dark now. Or it's just kind of very triangular. I think I need to bring that up there. Make it slightly bit more irregular. No, there's something. Oh, it's It's just a little bit too angular. I don't know how else to describe it. No, actually, that looks quite good as it is, just by doing that. Do I want to leave that? I think I just That looks quite good, actually. Okay, so I'm going to do something similar on this side. It is drying out. I'm just going to have to go for it. Very similar. I'm not sure if I I love what's happening down here, so I don't know that I want to add too much of the grass. But let's do the gate, not the gate, the fence. Oh, I'm using a different brush. That's why. I was thinking, Oh, it's it's a It's not very heavy duty. I think you know, what I've brought it too far into the middle. I think let's push it back a bit. Just dab that off. Go back to my larger brush. I think I actually, even though it's larger, I had a bit more control over it. Yeah. That's just behaving a bit better for me. I think that's all it needs, actually. Um There is a lovely misty quality here. But in the reference photo, the water goes behind there. So if I had left the paper showing all the way up to there, that would be a better indication. But it merges. Once my eye draws into this area here, it kind of gets lost. So I think we have to do the same sort of thing I will have to make this area here a lot more darker in value. So, I think I've still got that indigo on my brush. I don't want to go in too heavy. I just want to define Well, there we go. I don't know these little huts are happening there. All that look, I think that was it. I think that was literally all I needed to do. So to let the eye and the viewer know, this was in front of this misty section, which was way in the background. Do little things like that. And it's amazing how much the human eye can comprehend with not what you might think is sufficient input. You know, it does make up things for you. And that's how some of the self talk works as well, because it just fills in the gaps. There may be uncertainty about when to stop, and I think this is linked to confidence. You may still feel unsure about your skills and try to fix perceived mistakes by adding more paint and adding more details, and this can lead to overworking. So faith that you have included enough information for people to understand what you are trying to convey. Without getting sentimental, I think of both of these as like my children. They are similar, but different in their unique ways, and I actually enjoy looking at both of them. I enjoyed painting both of them, that's for sure. And there's elements that are really surprising in both I really like the fence in that one. You know, if I was so inclined, I would try to photoshop that fence into this version on the right. But it's fine, it's fine. I do think there is a beautiful, misty quality in this one on the right. Much ephemeral. I think that's the word I'm after. A fleeting glimpse. But there is still a lovely reflection in the water. And just like having children, these two have taught me a lot about how I responded to each piece, how I interpreted the reference image and slightly tweaked each piece to have slightly different outcomes, but the results, I think, are both really quite fabulous. And I hope you feel the same way about your sunsets. 25. Final Thoughts: Well, we have covered a lot in this class. I know many of our sessions were focused on the warm up exercises, but hopefully, you now see that there was a method in my madness. Those warmups were not just for painting sunsets, they're actually applicable to any watercolor scenario. They help build up your foundational skills and will improve your overall technique and confidence as an artist. I know I learned loads by painting three sketch books worth of sunsets. As a teacher, I truly want you to succeed. So think of this cars as an investment in yourself. Remember, creating amazing sunsets may not happen on the second, fifth, or even tenth attempt, and that's okay. I have the same issues as well. A one, not a destination. Give yourself grace if some of your paintings don't turn out as expected. Each piece is a learning experience, and with every attempt, you are going to gain valuable insights and improve your skills. Keep practicing, stay curious, and explore, keep an open mind, and most importantly keep having fun with your art. Until next time, stay amazing. Bye for now. Ah.