Skillshare Live: Painting Natural Textures With Watercolor

1. Introduction: Art can be a really powerful tool to just help you observe what's around you and help you develop some gratitude for things that you've seen a million times but never really stoop down to look at. Hi everyone. My name is Rosalie Haizlett. I'm an illustrator. I'm from Appalachian Mountains. I focus on the natural world with my work. A lot of my work is informational and helps translate scientific or educational information into digestible, beautiful visuals so that people can understand a little bit better how the world works. In my free time, I enjoy diving into the textures that I'm seeing in the plants and animals around me and creating this large watercolor abstract paintings that are a little different from the work that I do. So today we're going to be looking at ways that we can look at the natural world through a new lens where we aren't so much focused about depicting exactly what we're seeing, but we're more focused on looking really closely, noticing full details, full textures, colors, and then translating some of these photos to a little abstract painting. We'll be looking at a photo that I took of a waterfall that could easily be its own full landscape but on its own, but instead we're going to notice some of the rock textures that compose this waterfall. You're invited to paint along with me, and you don't have to be very experienced with art or water color to get something out of this class. I hope that after you take this class, you start to look a little more closely at the plants and animals and like in that you maybe walk right by a rated park or even in your backyard and that you start to think about the world as just being endless possibilities for artistic inspiration. Something to note is that this class was recorded live, so I got to interact with the Skillshare community while I was painting. All right so let's get started. 2. Finding Abstract Art in Nature: Hi, everyone. Thanks for joining today's live class with Rosalie Haizlett. I'm Tiffany Chow, I work on Skillshares' Community Team and I will be your host for today's live class. Rosalie, we're so excited to have you here today. What are we going to be doing with you? For today's class, we're going to do something a little bit different. For most of my life, I just have loved painting in a realistic way and I still do. I still do that for a lot of my work, but I've also in the past couple of years been enjoying abstracting what I'm seeing outdoors to make it a little bit more interesting and this is something that I do if I have a slow week with work and I have a little over reached time, I'll try to do some personal paintings and often they are these super zoomed in, abstracted textural paintings of what I'm seeing outside. It's a little bit new for me, but it really cool because I used to go to art museums and see abstract art and I was just like how the heck do people come up with these ideas and just didn't totally make sense to me? I thought it was cool looking, but I just didn't know where they got that inspiration. It has only been recently that I've realized that a lot of abstract work comes from what people are seeing, they're just breaking down what they see and simplifying it and blocking in different colors instead of adding all the details. We are going to start by looking at some nature photos and I'm going to show you what these landscapes look like when you zoom out and then we'll zoom in on that and I'll show you how you can see them through different lens and you can make something really unique even though on the surface you might see one thing, you can break it down further. This is a photo that I took in a state park while I was on a hike recently. When I took this photo, I thought this looks beautiful landscape to paint. Then I watched closer and I noticed that there are these mountain laurel flowers here and so I decided to zoom in on those. I noticed that they make this awesome geometric shape and then these like mirror tubes coming out from every direction. When I zoom in on them, they almost don't even look like flowers when you look at them close and I really liked that. I decided to paint it on a more zoomed in scale. This is it, totally abstract, but it just showing you how you can take something and zoom in and show out different interesting things. That was one. Another painting that I did recently was this field of cotton grass. Cotton grass grows in a lot of boggy areas. It's really cool because it just looks like cotton glowing in the field. Again, I almost painted this full landscape, and then I thought, oh no, I looked at it a little more closely and see what I can find. I cropped my photo, looked at it up close, and then I painted this. This was so funny because instead of the cotton grass being small and just like a subtle carnivora landscape, it became the main focus, and I was able to show all the cool colors that were overlapping the grass and catch the movement of the wind blowing into the grass. I also have a couple of sketchbook, sketches to show you. Like sometimes I do landscapes like this, and then other times I like to do textural sketches like this one. With this one, I actually took my sketchbook outside, laid it against a big rock that have this liking texture on it. My goal is to make my sketchbook disappear into the background, which is a really fun challenge for yourself. It's pretty difficult, and you might have to spend a couple hours trying to make it happen, but that was a really big fun little project. This one, I laid my sketchbook against a rock that had barnacles on it of the Coast of Maine, and tried to make my sketchbook disappear. This is similar to what we're going to be doing today. Here is a photo of a waterfall that I saw recently, and I thought it was beautiful. I stood in the middle of the waterfall to get this picture, and I decided to go on a little hunt to try to find different textures. As I was crossing the stream, I looked down and I noticed this orange awesome rock that had all these different light blobs that were really cool looking. I kept looking and I found the texture and the water itself was bubbling and churning, and had all sorts of cool white highlights and there's just so much happening there. This one I liked because it looked almost geometric, like some of the way that the rock had broken off of it. For me that looked cool and modern. Then this is one that really caught my eye and these are all textures found in that same waterfall. But until I started looking for textures, I don't think I would've ever looked for these [inaudible] textures. But because I've trained my eye to look for texture, now I see them everywhere I go. With this one, I really like to, I thought that the peaches and they're like cool [inaudible] blue, so really lovely, so I decided to zoom in more, as I've liked to do, and I noticed there are so many dots, and sharp lines and there's some algae that's coming up through to give some green hints and there's just a lot of cool stuff going on. Then I zoomed it in even further, and this is what we'll be painting today. This is a tiny section of this big rock that was found in this big waterfall. But we're breaking it down into something that's really small but still have so much interest. Can you remember where or when I guess, the interest in the patterns and the textures started to come into play, or was there something that prompted it? Yeah. I think about two years ago I moved to this place in West Virginia that has lots of interesting wetlands and bogs, and I was just thinking about how the wetlands, I feel like most people don't like go on vacation to see wetlands, or like think they're very beautiful. You don't see a lot of paintings, or bogs, or swamps. But as I was going on hiking trips that were near these wetlands, I started to notice really cool details on what I was seeing, and I started thinking about how as a whole it's not very attractive. It's just like a field with a lot of water in it, but when you look closely, then you start to see the beauty that's hidden there. I think that's when I started really noticing the details. 3. Colors & Materials: First, I'm going to share with you the materials that you'll need to follow along with this class. I have a sketching pencil, and you can use any sketching pencil. I have two paint brushes, but even if you have one that's fine, if you have 12 that's fine too. These are watercolor brushes though and that's helpful to have as opposed to other brushes. I have a paper towel and I have an eraser in case I make mistakes which I'm sure I will. I have a cup full of water for watercolor purposes obviously, and then I have a pallet of homemade watercolors. These are specifically earth tones, but I also often use all different brands and kinds of watercolors. I have my tube watercolors here, like Daniel Smith, and Kaufmann, Winsor & Newton, and all sorts of brands. I don't have a particular brand or watercolor that I prefer, just use wherever I think will work best for each piece. I have a little palette that I'll mix up my paints in, and then I have a couple of sheets of watercolor paper, and this is Strathmore watercolor paper. It's a really good beginner brand to work on. First thing that I like to do before I start a painting like this is, I like to make a little color swatch palette to help me familiarize myself with the colors that I'm going to be using throughout this process. I'm going to do it on this little sheet of paper, and I'm going to get one of my brushes, and I'm going to put water on it. I'm going to just start noticing five or six colors that I know that I'm going to use as I bring this painting to life. I'm noticing right away that there are some miced peachy yellow colors. I'm going to go and find a light yellow color. I'm just going to bring it over here, make it a little swatch. Next I see, there's a slightly pinker version. I'm going to put some red on my brush and mix it into my palette over here. I've poured yellow into that. This will be a reddish yellow color. I'll just make a little swatch over here, and this doesn't need to be exact at all. What's really liberating about painting textures is that you don't have to try to make anything looks 3D. You don't have to make anything look realistic. It's really just like interpreting what you're seeing and being inspired by it. We can add colors. We can take away colors. I think when you're drawing realistically, you can't exactly just leave off legs on a bird when you are drawing it. But with an abstract textural painting, you could totally leave out something, if you don't think that it adds to your composition. Feel free throughout this process if a section of this looks too busy and you're like, I'm not really feel that, just leave it out. There's a lot of freedom with this practice. I think that's why I like it, because a lot of my time is spent making things look exact and realistic, so this and alternative to that where I can be a little bit looser with what I do. I'm just adding in some reds that I'm seeing around me. It's dark blue dots. There's a pinky red, it's like rust red. Then definitely some dark blues. To make a dark blue, my magical combination is my darkest blue with my darkest brown. To lighten the color, you're always adding more water, and to darken it, you're just adding more pink on your brush. Then definitely want to add in a medium blue here, so I'm going to go back to this blue and just add a lot of water to lighten it up. Cool. I'm sure that as I go, I'm going to find more colors, but for right now, this just gets me started with what I'm seeing on the surface. 4. Sketching Your Design: Now what we're going to sketch out the general shapes that compose our painting. I'm going to start with my sketching pencil, and I'm going to come over here and just lay it beside my iPad. In the future, if you just have a phone or a tablet or you want to print off a photo as your reference, any of those will work. I'm going to start with my pencil and just try to find some the ways that this is breaking up the whole composition. I'm noticing right away there's a diagonal line that's cutting right through the middle. I'm just going to sketch that lightly and not try to make it exact. Then it swoops down over here. Then I'm noticing, there's another little section that breaks up here with all of these jagged lines and there's another section up here. Then I think I want to start adding in some of these big blue blobs. I'm going to add one right here and I'm actually going to make it look a little bigger than it is in real life because I really like how these look. There's a big line and then there's a slightly smaller one, and then a slightly smaller one. Then there are some blobs that are connected, they're maybe four here. It was really hard for me when I was looking at this, not for the first time, it was hard for me to determine what was happening with this wrap. I'm not sure if these colors are built into the rock or it's some sort of algae or the like that's growing on top of it. But whatever it is, I really like the way that it looks. Then there's a ring of a bunch of different blobs around here. I use the word blob a lot. I'm going to just continue adding lot's of little blue dots. Where I see these crevices and the rock, I'll just lightly add them in. I don't have to follow these lines exactly when I'm going to my paint, but it just helps me to understand what I'm looking at a little better. Right now it looks like a two-year-old's drawing, but that's what's fun about this. Before this session, I was like, "Should I practice this first and make sure it's going to turn out well?" Then I thought, that the part of the process is you're experimenting and that's what makes it really fun, so we'll see how this turns out. But it's also a good lesson in, when you're doing these sketchbook exercises, it doesn't have to be beautiful, it doesn't have to be frameable. When I did these big pieces, it took me a full week. These quick sketch book exercises are just meant to help us see the natural world in a new way. Once you have most of your pencil sketch complete, then we can start adding some paint. 5. Painting Blocks of Color: Now it's time to start painting and I'd like to block in my first layers of color. I think we'll start with light to dark. Today I'm working with a wet and dry technique. There is obviously water on my brush, there's water in the pigment, but the paper is completely dry. I really like this technique because it allows me to build up my layers. A big part of painting textures is just adding a layer and letting it dry, adding another layer, letting it dry. I'm just going to start out with a light yellow color, the one that we mixed up earlier. We're going to add a lot of water too because this section is a really pale yellow. I'm just going to block in this whole area. I think that this practice has especially been helpful for me this year because I'd had some interesting trips planned and I had high hopes for new series that I was going to do based on an artist residency in the desert. I was going to do all of these desert botanicals and that was all canceled due to the virus and so I've been having to really push myself to see things that are right in my backyard or in the park down the street to keep myself feeling inspired. With this, you just never run out of things to paint because you're always looking at things in a different way. You could paint the same waterfall from 20 different angles and it will look totally different each time if you're looking closely. I'm spreading the yellow through here. I'm going to add a little bit of that reddish yellow mixture up here. This is the blocking end phase where I'm just trying to get some heat on the page. Don't overthink this section. Just put some things down. There's definitely a little orange block down here. The next layer that I want to do is a light blue-gray layer, it's a slate color. I'm going to go to my blue and then just add a lot of water to my blue. Then to make it gray-blue, you just add a little bit of brown to that blue, which makes a slate color. As I'm blocking in this layer, I want to take care not to put my paint right next to the layer that I just put down because then it'll all merge together and that's when water color gets really muddy and icky. If you leave a little white section of paper in between those layers then it won't spread onto each other. Or if we had more time, I would just let this first layer dry and then go back and add another layer. Roselie, there are a few questions coming in from the audience about the pencil lines. Are you planning to leave them? Will they still be visible when the painting is finished? These ones, because there are so many crevices throughout this painting that are dark, what we're going to do for one of our final steps is take our smallest brush, which I have this little one. Then I'll go over all of those lines with a dark blue color and that will hide the pencil lines and make it look more clean and finished. Thanks for that sneak peek. You'll notice that I'm avoiding these blobs right now because I just want to make sure that I'm not letting everything run together. I'm just doing this one, slate gray here right now. I'll also often bring a micron pen or another permanent pen with me when I am painting, especially when I'm painting in the woods. I'll do my first layer. I'll go over my pencil lines with that pen and then I'll add the water. I wonder if it's hot. But today I just wanted to show you how I built up the color with watercolor alone. Just mixing up more of that blue-gray with blue and brown. There's more of that blue-brown up here, so I'm going to add a little bit there. You'll notice that every time I mix up a color that I want to be roughly the same, it turns out a little bit different, but that's just the nature of watercolor and that's what I really like about it, because it works so well for painting an actual world because there are so many nuances and color and variations. The fact that just the process lends itself to those variations is pretty fun. There's some blue-gray over here. We can have a little bit of a white border around the edge of my page, you don't have to do that. Sometimes it just adds a nice little clean look. I'm starting off pretty light and pretty soon I'm going to get very bold with this. This is when it'll start looking like not a three-year-old did it. Hopefully, that's the goal. Even though I do this for a career, and have been painting my entire life, there are oftentimes when I just take a risk in trying something new and you never know how it's going to go. If you find yourself having to throw away a painting after painting, that's totally normal and even professional illustrators have that problem too. I'm going to add a little bit more, let's see, there's a little bit of green over here in this algae area. I want to make sure that I don't forget that. Using, I think it's called earth green, perfect. I really like this palette because it's actually made from pigments from the earth. It's perfect when you're looking for earth tones for your watercolors. There's a little bit of green here. Here you see blocked and layered. You can touch it to see if it's almost dry. Won't really hurt anything if you give it a little touch. It's drying pretty quickly because it's so hot where I live. 6. Adding Details: So now, let's start adding a bunch of details to make this look really realistic. So now, I think I want to go in with a pretty dark tone just because I think something that holds a lot of people back with watercolor is that they try to keep everything really light and muted because they're afraid that when they put down paint, they won't be able to fix their mistakes. But I often find that if you start off light and then pretty quickly in the process add in some dark shades, then you'll start to develop your contrast really early on and it helps. Helps just bring together your painting pretty quickly. So I'm mixing my darkest blue and a dark brown together. I'm going to go in with this big blob here. I'm just going to [inaudible] these other blobs. While you're filling in your blobs, I can pass along a couple questions? Sure. Well, there's a question around, if you used a water soluble pencil, would it blend in with the watercolor and become part of the painting? That's a great question. It would. Watercolor pencils, they will merge with your regular watercolors. I don't often use [inaudible] I am drawing really lightly than to add more pigment than I think in those lines. So I tend to only use a [inaudible] sketching pencil and then just try to go over those lines with dark shades, but you totally can and I know a lot of artists that do that. Wonderful. Thank you. When you are in the woods painting, how long does it take you to finish one? That's a great question too. With the lichen painting that I showed you in my sketchbook, that one took approximately two hours or maybe three and then the barnacle one was funny because I am not from a coastal area, it was my first day in Maine and I wasn't even thinking about how tides will come and go. So I was sitting on the beach painting this barnacle rock and partway through, I got flooded out and so I had to come back the next day. So things like that will happen where it's going great and I'm sketching something and then a rainstorm comes and I'm just like, okay, well, I'm going to take a picture of whatever I was painting, the reference, and then I'll finish this at home. But at least you started out observing this plant or animal from life and getting that experience and that will really add to your painting. So at least give it a little bit at a time, of course. Thank you. Okay. I'm just continuing to mix up dark brown, dark blue, and filling in all of these little spots. When I'm observing fractures in nature, I like to think about what these fractures would look like if they were a pattern on a shirt or a sofa. Just thinking about how everything that's been designed was inspired by a designer or an artist, and they were inspired by something and a lot of people are inspired by the outdoors. So you wonder when you see a shirt that has a cool texture on it, did an artist somewhere see a rock and think, oh, that could be cool on a texture? You just never know. So it's fun to think about. All right. Well, there is a lot of these dark little dark spots. I'm just going to quickly put those in. You can also do this with houseplants. In March and April, when I was firstly grappling with the fact that I wasn't going to be able to leave my hometown for a while, I just got restless and started painting my houseplants. But instead of painting the whole plant, I decided to zoom in on them and paint cool angles and full little details and it made me appreciate my houseplants more too. So I think this practice is all about savoring and delighting in the micro details that are all of interest. Okay. So this is with all of my blue blobs or most of them in there. Then I think because we don't have a tongue-tied bed and I'm going to go ahead and add those dark blue lines. That will start to bring together the piece a little bit more and once these lines are done, the crevices, then I'll show you some techniques like paintbrush sibling and the slater technique that will give the impression that you spent forever on this piece, even though we only did this in an hour. So those are some techniques to look forward to. But right now, I'm go back to that magical dark blue, dark brown combination. I really use this all the time because I try to avoid using black paint because I find that, and I've been told by all of my teachers in the past that it can make your printing look flat, since most dark shadow areas have points reflected in them. So I just did accept that nice dark blue, dark brown combination. So now I'm going like me, my little brush and I'm varying the line weights so in the sections where two of these bedrock pieces come together, I'm going to add a little extra shadow. I'm fleaking out my brush a little bit here and there so it's not one solid boring line, but it has some extra interest. I'm just loosely within my reference photo to follow these lines down through here. Then I'll bring it up here. I think auburn is starting to make this painting make a little more sense. With these thin little lines, you just want to make sure that you don't have too much water on your brush because otherwise, they can get a little bit messy. Okay. So this is what we have right now and you can see it's starting to look like the reference photo a little bit. So that's cool. It's really fun when you pick from life and you can hold up your painting right above the reference photo and seeing it blend in. It's very satisfying. So a few of these little lines and then we can start adding some of our tiny textures. 7. Adding Tiny Textures: Next, I'm going to show you some tips for taking our painting, adding a bunch of little textures, so that we make it look like we spent hours developing these details. Now, I think right here there are so many little dots within this bigger blue dots and so I'm going to start adding those. I'm going to put a lot of water my brush mix together dark blue, dark brown. Then I'm just going to do a lot of tiny dots just not over thinking it but quickly layering all these dots. A lot of people told me that my work is very detailed, and it is. I spend a lot of time on it but I do have some tricks that make it look more impressively detailed than I put the time in for. One of these tricks is just having lots of little dots, little lines. You can use these dots and lines on rough surfaces like this or on like tree bark. Some of these places I'm noticing that the dots melt together and it gets more of a solid shape down here. I'm going to blend some of these dots together. Now I'm going to look around now that I notice that it's happening there it's probably happening in other places. I do see that it's happening up here, its a bit more dark there. Sometimes it helps to squint and look at your reference photo and then look back at your painting and try to determine if you're getting the value right. The value is just like the light versus dark. I definitely need some light gray [inaudible]. Black pits a little bit of gradient too. I'm seeing that that gray is following this whole line through here. I'm going to add more up here. See there's a little bit here and there's some in this corner. I'm going to actually switch to my bigger brush. Sometimes I get going with my tiny brush and it takes way longer than it should then I realize I should have switched brushes. Now I'm going through and I'm continuing. That's the cool thing about this you'll notice that something is happening. I noticed that there's some shadow down here, not even shadow but just like a blending of that sweet blue. Notice you start to see it throughout your subjects, so I see in this corner and a little bit up here. In order to keep that textured look, I'm going to add in some of those dots up here, just really lightly and try to blend in shadow areas with the dots. Now I'll get my smallest brush and go back to mixing up this dark blue, dark brown and adding in some other dots here. Just all over the place. I'm also seeing some horizontal lines, so I'm going to put those in. That's another little secret is that I often put little lines in. [inaudible] Some of them are horizontal, some are vertical so this is where we are right now. This little piece. Now I'm seeing that there are some dark sections in this yellow block that I haven't picked yet. I'm going to actually revisit these big dots to make them extra dark. I'm using that same combination just going over them. Because as the watercolor dries, it will inevitably lighten, which is frustrating because you think that you just putting this big bold layer and then it lightens up really fast but you just go back to it with the same color. You put some dots up here. Then up here I'm noticing there's a little section that has some reds in it. You can really see that crumbly rock texture here. I want to make sure that I bring some vertical lines and then some horizontal lines. Little details like that. As you just continue to look back and forth between your painting and your reference. You have to make it look realistic. It's realistic but at the same time it's pretty abstract because you could show this to someone and they be like, "Oh, what is that?" But you know what it is and it's fun because you can tell people in nature, that's not something that I just came up with my imagination. You could look and find these like the softwares. I'm seeing that I forgot a few of these blocks up in this corner, so I'm adding those. Something you want to look for, when you're trying to find a texture to paint in nature is balanced. I chose this one because I liked that there is this section here that had not quite as much detail but it had these big blocks to balance the weight of everything that's happening down here in this lower section. Try to think about balance and making sure that there's not like tons happening one section and then it's like really boring in another section. We've got a question on the transitions from the dark to light areas. How do you get the soft transition versus more firm lines? That's a great question. The soft transition happens in these sections. That happens when we add water and merge things together and then the harsh transitions, like when I added these dark crevices, I made sure that the background was totally dry first and then I added wet paint on top. Because otherwise it'll bleed out and it'll be less crisp. I really like the combination of some softer areas like these and then some very crisp lines. Great, thank you. Cool. In this little section over here, I'm going to use brown, this rich brown instead of the dark blue brown to add some texture to this section. I'm just seeing some of these organic little lines. Well I can add some of the dots. This practice is really relaxing for me. I think sometimes when you start doing art for a living, you are used to having to have good results with every time you sit down to create. But when these they are my personal work and it's just a time to look for cool things that I want to paint outdoors and then paint them for myself in my sketchbook. You don't have to show them to anybody unless you want to, which by the way, you should share to the class projects if you want to cause I'd love to see them. But sometimes it's fun to just have part of your creative practice just be your own and not be worried about sharing it with a lot of other people. Here I want to add a little bit of softer lines. You're just talking about, so I'm just adding water to my brush to blend these together some of this pink that we haven't put down as dots. Something else to think about as you're developing your composition is it's nice if you have some warm tones, like I have some oranges in here. It's nice to have balance with those warm tones because that's what the eye is going to look at. Because I have these orange sections here, I'm going to make sure that I include these little orange sections that are over here, even though they don't exactly fit on my painting. I can just add a little bit of orange up in this corner and when viewer looks at your piece their eye will travel around the page instead of just landing on those form sections and stopping. I'm actually going to bring some of that orange into these other sections too for a little [inaudible] This is what we have so far. 8. Finishing Touches: To bring our piece together, I'm going to look at my reference photo one more time and I'm going to notice any final details that I could enhance, any colors that could be deepened to really make our piece standout. I was adding some wet on wet [inaudible] and I want to explain those to you a little bit. I have just added some little bit of orange throughout here and it gave me a wet surface. Then as I was adding some of these little dots, it was spreading out. I actually really love that effect. So if you'd like to do that, just wipe your surface first and then you add just a little drop of pigment and it will spread organically. I think for one of my last steps, I want to add some bright blue because some of my gray sections got a little bit too gray. I'm noticing a lot of bright blue in here. I want to boost up the color on that a little bit. I am going to get one of my brightest blues, which is a Persian blue. Then I'm going to go into this blue section over here and just make sure that I do it justice and don't think it looked too washed out. During this [inaudible] to add a little texture [inaudible] I think that did help. Looks a little bit more [inaudible]. I want to go to any other sections that could use a little blue boost like over here and up in this corner. Then for my last step, I want to go over these [inaudible] that I put in with this dark blue and [inaudible] because I'm noticing that one of these crevices have more blue in them and I need them a little bit too brown. I'm going to add some blue to them to see if they will stand out where they split and we are going to find out in a little bit. I am [inaudible] it there. This is just something that I learned to do in one of the last steps to increase the crispness and make it really old and [inaudible] is just to go back and revisit my darkest areas like these crevices to make sure that they're well outlined. Now, when I slit, it matches the intensity of my reference. This is what we have right now. It's coming together. Just painted myself by accident. I'm going to do a couple more of these little blue accents. I think that will be good to go. So I am [inaudible] over here in this section. I forgot to add the blue [inaudible] over here. I [inaudible] faster for now. I feel excited about this little painting. I feel it is fun and weird and quirky, and that's exactly what I was going for and doesn't really look like anything, but that's okay because we're just looking closely at what's already there and trying to document it. 9. Bonus: Peek in Rosalie’s Sketchbooks: There was a lot of love for your sketchbook paintings that you showed at the very beginning. Folks are wondering if you could share what brands sketchbook that you prefer to use, and then maybe also give us another little look into those likened paintings. Yeah, this is a field artist's sketchbook. It's a good made quality mixed media sketchbook. It's funny because always I'm getting new sketchbooks and so I don't like complete them at the same time. This has work from two summers ago when I was visiting my sister in Berlin. Then it has work from visiting a friend's house. It's just all these personal paintings that not many people see, most people just see my nature illustration work, but I also just really loved capturing my worlds. This was in Jordan. I've shown you a few of this. This was in the Wadi Rum desert in Georgia. There was actually a camel there. I was just painting this cool rock formation and all of a sudden this camel watching my shot and I freaked out. I couldn't even paint because I was so excited. This is Petra and some goats that were posing for me in Petra. All [inaudible] arthropods sketches from the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History. I do some landscapes structures and actually had a brand-new Skillshare class coming out in just a couple of months. It's going to be about zooming out. Often when I travel to new places, I like to try to understand what I see first from background perspective and then I like to zoom in and look at the tiny details in the natural world. This one, this fall beyond that crow. These are fun little lines and you can see these little color palettes studies. I showed you how I do. That is something that I just always start my paintings with. I also often start with a written journaled observations on the back of my sketches. Here are some algae on the beach and this is just a pen and ink drawing. On the back I have notes on color, texture, pattern and environment. I often do that little journaling exercise before I start my painting just as part of my way to tune into my Saturday. Here are the barnacles. I have a couple of more. This is a mountain range near my house, but I do really recommend sketchbook. I also like Utrecht sketchbooks it was my supplies right here. This is an Utrecht sketchbook. This is fun because you can do big wide landscape. You could have the landscape go over the whole two pages. 10. Final Thoughts: Thanks so much for joining us today. I had so much fun. I hope that you did too. So I love to see what you create as a result of this class. So if you would like to upload your painting to the Project Gallery, then we can all see what you made and be inspired by your work. If you feel you'd like to try this technique again after this class, but you want to use your own photo, you can totally take your own photos, zoom in on it like I showed you how to do, and then do your own painting. I'd love to see that as well if you want to upload that to the Class Projects that'd be really nice. If you'd like to stay tuned on upcoming classes that I'm going to be releasing, you can head over to my Skillshare profile page and check out what's happening there. Thanks so much everyone. Bye.