Snowy Winter Watercolor Scene: Paint Step-by-Step, Exploring Atmospheric Color & Texture Techniques | Will Elliston | Skillshare
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Snowy Winter Watercolor Scene: Paint Step-by-Step, Exploring Atmospheric Color & Texture Techniques

teacher avatar Will Elliston, Award-Winning Watercolour Artist

Watch this class and thousands more

Get unlimited access to every class
Taught by industry leaders & working professionals
Topics include illustration, design, photography, and more

Watch this class and thousands more

Get unlimited access to every class
Taught by industry leaders & working professionals
Topics include illustration, design, photography, and more

Lessons in This Class

    • 1.

      Welcome To The Class!

      3:38

    • 2.

      Your Class Project

      1:55

    • 3.

      Materials & Supplies

      3:22

    • 4.

      Coming Up With a Composition

      8:16

    • 5.

      Starting the Painting

      7:28

    • 6.

      More Under-Layers

      1:54

    • 7.

      Painting the Sky Part 1

      3:43

    • 8.

      Painting the Sky Part 2

      4:03

    • 9.

      Painting the Trees Part 1

      3:32

    • 10.

      Painting the Trees Part 2

      3:05

    • 11.

      Experimenting with Colours

      4:50

    • 12.

      Using Thick Pigment

      4:02

    • 13.

      Adding More Trees

      3:34

    • 14.

      Painting the Hut

      4:03

    • 15.

      The Other Hut

      4:08

    • 16.

      Making Corrections

      3:28

    • 17.

      Making it Pop

      3:28

    • 18.

      Adding Highlights

      3:55

    • 19.

      Final Thoughts

      2:02

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About This Class

Join me with this snowy winter scene, learning expressive watercolor techniques in a fun and relaxed style! Whether you're new to watercolour or already have some experience, you'll be able to learn something new with this class, all whilst ending up with a nice painting you can hang up or gift to someone. This style of painting doesn't require strong drawing skills either, it's all about having fun, you can paint as expressive or as detailed as you wish. 

 

I'm very grateful for you joining me here!

I’ve been painting for many years now, taken part in many exhibitions around the world and won awards from well respected organisations. As well as having my work feature in art magazines. After having success selling my originals and 1000s of prints around the world, I decided to start traveling with my brushes and paintings. My style is modern and attempts to grasp the essence of what I’m painting whilst allowing freedom and expression to come through. I simplify complicated subjects into easier shapes that encourages playfulness.

You'll Learn:

  • What materials and equipment to need to painting along
  • How to sketch out outline for the painting
  • Basic technique to complete your first painting
  • How to avoid common mistakes
  • Choosing the right colors for your painting
  • How to blend colors and create textures for different effects
  • Making corrections and improvements
  • Finishing touches that make a big difference

_________________________

Try this class to explore your creativity...

When enrolled, I’ll include my complete ‘Watercolor Mixing Charts’. These are a huge aid for beginners and experts alike. They show what every color on the palette looks like when mixed with each other. Indispensable when it comes to choosing which color to mix.

Don’t forget to follow me on Skillshare. Click the “follow” button and you’ll be the first to know as soon as I launch a new course or have a big announcement to share with my students.

Additional Resources:

Music by Audionautix.com

Meet Your Teacher

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Will Elliston

Award-Winning Watercolour Artist

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Transcripts

1. Welcome To The Class!: Hello, everyone. My name is Will Elliston and welcome to my Skillshare class. Today, I'll be guiding you through my painting of a snowy winter scene. Whether you're new to watercolor, or already have some experience, you will be able to learn something new from this class. I'll be going through all my essential techniques, so even if you're a beginner, you'll see how to best approach painting snowy scenes. Join me whilst we explore a variety of fun and expressive techniques. I've been a professional watercolor artist for many years now, exploring many different subjects, from wildlife and portraits, to cityscapes and countryside scenes. I've taken part in many worldwide exhibitions, and I've been lucky enough to win awards from world-respected organizations such as Winsor and Newton, The International Watercolor Society, The Masters of Watercolour Alliance, and the SAA Artist of the Year Award. I also have collectors that buy my paintings around the world. Watercolor can be intimidating for beginners, so my aim is to allow you to relax and have fun learning this medium step-by-step. Hopefully, by the end, you'll surprise yourself with a nice painting. If this class feels too intimidating or too simple, please check my other classes as I have them available across all levels. My approach to watercolor starts off loose and expressive with no fear of making mistakes because we're just creating exciting textures for the underlayer. Then as the painting goes on, we'll add more details, bringing the painting to life and making it pop. I try to simplify complicated subjects into easier shapes that encourages playfulness. Snowy scenes are particularly fun to do with watercolor because we don't have to add white paint for the snow, we just preserve the white of the paper to become the snow. I've chosen the scene that is adaptable for different levels of experience. You don't have to paint it as detailed as mine if you're not comfortable with it. We'll explore how to create different techniques, choose colors that go well together, and how to build the atmosphere in your paintings. When you enroll in my class, I'll give you the high-resolution image of my painting to use as a guide. Today's focus is about painting rather than drawing. I have included templates you can use to help you sketch out the drawing before you paint. I'll also include my color charts, which are an invaluable tool when it comes to choosing and mixing colors. Throughout this class, I'll be sharing plenty of tips and tricks. I'll show you how to use mistakes to your own advantage, taking the stress out of the painting and having fun. I'll explain which supplies I'll be using so you can follow along exactly. I'll also cover how to choose and mix harmonious colors. I'll be splitting everything up into short videos so it's easier to take in. You can also pause at any moment if you want to take more time. If you have any questions, you can post them in the discussion thread down below. I'll be sure to read and respond to everything you guys post. Don't forget to follow me on Skillshare by clicking the Follow button at the top. This means they'll be the first to know when I launch a new class, post giveaways, or just have an interesting announcement to share with my students. You can also follow me on Instagram to see my latest works. If you'd like to create your own snowy work of art all whilst learning fun and exciting watercolor techniques, please click enroll as I'd love to have you in my class. Now let's begin. 2. Your Class Project: First of all, thank you so much for enrolling in my class. I really do appreciate it. We're going to learn a lot about watercolor whilst painting this atmospheric snow scene. Try not to be intimidated by the scene as I will break down my process into simple steps. It's best to watch the whole thing through first, just so that you're better prepared for what to do. Then give it a go and try painting it to your own pace, referring to the class again for reference if needed. You're welcome to copy my drawing and follow it exact or experiment with your own. I will put my painting in the resource section so you can use it as a reference throughout the process. There is also a template you can use to trace and transfer it onto your paper. Don't feel guilty about tracing when using it as a guide for learning how to paint. It is important to have the under drawing correct, so that it does not inhibit your ability to practice and learn the watercolor medium itself. Whichever way you use this class, it would be great to see the outcome and the paintings you create in this class. I'd love to give you feedback, so please take a photo afterwards and share it in the student project gallery. You can find the gallery under the same Project & Resources tab. On the right, you'll see a green button that says Create Project. Tap that. Once you are there, you will have the option to upload a cover photo and a title and write a little description. I would love to hear about your process and what you learned along the way. Once your project is uploaded, it will appear in the student's project gallery. You can view other projects here. I'd highly encourage you to like and comment on each other's work. We put so much time and effort into creating our paintings. Why not share it with the world and help support each other along the way? Now that you have a good idea of this class, let's get stuck into it, starting with the equipment and materials I'll be using. 3. Materials & Supplies: Let's go over the materials and supplies you'll need to follow along. We'll start with the colors I use. Unlike most of the materials we'll be using today, it's a lot to do with preference. I have 12 stable colors in my palette that I fill up from tubes. They are cadmium yellow, yellow ocher, burnt sienna, cadmium red, alizarin crimson, ultramarine blue, cobalt blue, cerulean blue, lavender, purple, viridian, black or neutral tint. At the end of the painting, I often use white gouache for tiny highlights. I don't use any particular brand. These colors you can get from any brand. Although I personally use Daniel Smith, Winsor, and Newton or Holbein paints. Let's move on to the brushes. To keep things simple. In this painting, I'm only going to use a small selection of brushes. First is this mop brush. Mop brushes are good for broad brushstrokes and filling in larger areas or washers. But they also have a tip for some smaller details. They are one of my favorite types of brushes. Next is this, a Escoda Perla brush. I use various sizes, but for this painting, I'll use Size 8. These brushes allow for more precision because they have a finer tip and last quite a long time. For even more precision, when painting final touches or highlights, for example, I use a synthetic Size 0 brush. All brands have them and they're super cheap. This here is a sword brush or a rigger brush. It's quite long but thin. It's only used for very small details, much like the Size 0 brushes, but it holds more water and pigment, saving time and effort refilling. The only drawback is it's more difficult to control as it's more flimsy, and that's it for brushes. You're of course, welcome to use your own favorites as well. Onto paper, the better quality your paper is, the easier it will be to paint. Cheap paper crinkles easily and is very unforgiving, not allowing you to rework mistakes. Good quality paper, however, such as cotton base paper, not only allows you to rework mistakes over multiple times, but because the pigment reacts much better on it, the chances of mistakes are a lot lower and you'll more likely create better paintings. I use arches because it's what's available in my local art shop. Next, some various materials that will come in very handy. A water spray is absolutely essential. By using this, it gives you more time to paint the areas you want before it dries. Also, it allows you to reactivate the paint if you want to add smooth lines or remove some paint. Lastly, masking tape, and this of course is just to hold the paper down still to the surface to stop it from sliding around while as we paint. Also at the end it'll maintain a very nice clean border, and that's everything you need to know to paint along. 4. Coming Up With a Composition: I'm going to be using two pencils to come up with this composition. The first one is this traditional pencil that has a 4B lead inside, which is a nice soft lead so that we don't need to worry about rubbing out any marks if we make mistakes. It can just allow us to be free to come up with simple shapes to build our composition. Then I'll be moving on to this mechanical pencil, which also has a 4B inside lead to fill in the details when it comes to that stage later on. There's nothing more intimidating than a white canvas. The first thing I'm going to do is just fill in a rough horizon line. It doesn't need to be correct. Just to get rid of the whiteness of the paper giving us a starting off point. I'll probably have something going on here, a hut, I think, I usually have a hut in winter scenes and then maybe a secondary hut here. Just keeping it simple. Just two circles at the moment. Maybe we can have trees roughly coming down there and something else here. Even though these lines won't be obvious in the main image, it's just a good compositional tool because it will allow the painting to have visually more movement, even though you can't see these lines in the final image. I'm going to have something here, some pine trees because it's of course, a winter scene. Loosely marking in the roof of the hut. There's some people here, two people maybe. You can have reference images of the elements you want to paint. I've got a few references of images of huts. I'm just forming a composition around that. See the way I hold my pencil. I'm holding this in a very loose manner so that it can be very fluid and circular. I think for this beginning stage of mapping out the shapes, we're done. I think I'm going to change to my pencil and holding like this not like that so that I can get into some details. Starting here, I'm going to just do rough pine tree shapes, the outlines of them to begin with. That's the tree outline done. Let's try and work out how we're going to do this hut. I'm going to leave some white here for the snow. Let's have this hut coming down here the roof at least. I'm making sure these building lines are perpendicular because they're man-made structures. All the trees can be organic and a bit more free but anything that's man-made like a building or a vehicle does have to be a bit more constructed. A window here. I'm planning out this image in my head. I think there's going to be a glow of light coming from this hut and the rest of it will be very dark to create a nice contrast with the snow. Using Zs or Ss to imply perspective is a useful technique too. You can practice that in a sketchbook just drawing out S shapes that gradually get bigger and bigger to imply depth. Let's have a person here, two people. It doesn't need to be very detailed. It's just implying that there's going to be people there. But I don't want the people to necessarily be the center of attention so I'll just keep it minimalized for the time being. Now I'm going to add quite a few details just for the sake of the people who want to do a more detailed drawing, but this painting doesn't have to be as detailed as I'm going to do it. You can do this painting quite loose. Whatever style you're used to, you can attempt it at your own pace. I'm just doing some grass, various grass or twigs poking through what will be the snow. These bits of grass can get a bit shorter as another way to imply perspective and depth. The grass is quite long here, it's medium, and then it's short here. Then another hut. Trying to keep a simple perspective for the hut, nothing too detailed or accuracy even, some rectangular lines and boxes just to imply wooden hut-like shapes, I guess. It doesn't need to be that correct. Few circles for glows, little lights. Because out of context, this might look a bit strange, but I'll put an image of my final painting on the screen every now and again, just so you can see where the context of what I'm doing lies. I have some whooshy, I guess you can call them clouds, and I'll have a bear tree here. Its lost all its leaves. These are quite abstract lines but I'm not actually drawing anything in particular, I'm just drawing lines that imply space and depth. To draw the tree, I'm just going to draw a main branch and then following that up the other side. Then maybe it separates from the main branch and creeps too and we got a lot of other branches coming from that one. 5. Starting the Painting: Before we even put brush to paper, let's have a look at the reference image. You can use my finished painting of this one to look at where the lightest areas are and that's going to be the snowy roof, and the snow on the ground, and also the sky. But with the sky, I'm going to layer it in with the trees. I think the first thing we're going to paint are the roofs, the snow on the roof of the ground. I'm going to make some bluey green color because I think that's nice color for a snow shadow. All we're doing is putting a light tone here, we don't want to put much pigment. I think that's it for that roof. We can always add a bit later once it dries if we don't think it's dark enough, but I think that's fine. Little bit darker this one. I still see the line there, making sure that is not disappearing. Then this side of the roof is going to be a lot lighter, because that's going to contrast with the sky behind it. Maybe a couple of salt granules there too. I'm just going to pull away some pigment here, I just think it's a bit too dark. This is why it's important to watch. Well, not necessarily important, but it's a bit better to watch this through to begin with if you're following along step-by-step. Because a lot of the times I do corrections or make mistakes that you wouldn't necessarily have to do if you watched it with hindsight. Now to paint the snow on the ground, I might pre-wet some areas, using a tissue to pick up the splatters that go in areas I don't want them to go, first because I'm just doing quite a lot of spotting and I'm going to use this sheet just to cover some areas. It's purply blue. I moved to a bigger brush, get darker here. I will be quite expressive here, just quite creating various textures by sticks of splits of pure water. Just mixing around purple, blue, leaving some white gaps every now and again. Few splatters of yellow oak I think. Use either tissue to pick up any water that's flowing off. I flick because it puts this pigment down in a more organic way. By organic, I mean it looks a bit more natural. If I use the brush, it's difficult to mimic the randomness of nature. Even though it was quite dark the snow have filth, but when it dries it will dry a bit lighter. Also when we add the darkest darks, the trees and the huts, that also will make it look lighter by contrast. You can try and manipulate a sense of perspective by adding some S-shape or Z-shape lines. Always using the tissue to draw out excess liquid. That's why it's good to have your painting on a bit of a slope, because it brings the pools of water down and you could just drain it off, because if you don't, the pools will be created somewhere in your painting and they'll dry unevenly. Now I'm going to add few more sprinkles and I'm going to wait for this to dry. It might take a little bit longer to dry once you sprinkle salt on so you don't have to. The salt is only very subtle and I tend to do it just for experimentation, is very hit or miss. It's a bit of a risk to do it. I'm going to use a hairdryer to speed this up. 6. More Under-Layers: With salt, it could be difficult to tell when it's truly dried. If you try and rub it off before it's dried it will smudge. I've been using a hairdryer to really make sure it's dry. I use a knife to just scrap it off. Try and get rid of all of it because you don't want it left on there damaging your brushes. The next thing I'm going to do is create the glow from the hut. To do that I'm going to mix an orange. I'll mix it on the paper like I do a lot of times. Just put in a bright yellow then some red. Because obviously, red and yellow make orange. Then brown. Brown is actually an orange. It's just a burnt orange. That's what burnt sienna is. I'm going to start putting some burnt sienna in there. Then I'm going to use a tissue, roll it around so there's a small point and then just dab it somewhere in the center, just for one bright light in the middle. Then we'll paint around that later. While that is drying, I waited a few minutes, I'm just going to add a few more lines. I've made sure it's dry enough so that the lines will completely spill out. 7. Painting the Sky Part 1: For this guy, I'm going to use my mop brush. I'm going to start here and work my way across this. We're going to use similar colors to the snow at the bottom with blue and purple, a bit of yellow thing going on. It's obviously going to be darker at the top, and then light as it comes down. Whilst it's drying we're going to add different times, various times we're going to add some trees. Depending on the time that we add them, they're going to fade out. Obviously, the ones that fade out more will be more in the distance and the ones that are closer will be crisper. I've mixed the colors that I plan to use for the sky. I've got some blue here, some purple, a bit of yellow ocher. This is what was remaining from the snow, but also here I've mixed a greenish-bluish pine tree color when it keeps on drawing will add the trees. You have to prepare that because it's all a big rush when we start painting in the sky. I just covered these, the main part here and I just left the trees and the sky, but now I'm just going to use my water spray just to moisten the paper. I also hold this my hand ready for when I do flickers and I'll have a tissue close by for if there's any accidental splatters. I did my first stroke. I can see it's a bit more purple than I'd like it, so I'm going to add some blue to that. You can draw it down. You can flatten it a bit. Put more purple here. If you think it's going to dry, you can spray it. I want it to be fully white there, so do that. It's easy to overwork the sky. When painting sky, you got to think in advance. It's easy to look at the sky when you first put down a line and you think that's not right, but give it time. It should dry much differently to how it first looks when you put it down. 8. Painting the Sky Part 2: I want it to be lighter here so I'm going to just use a tissue to draw surrounding then spray it again. More blue up here I think. I splash it also because if I put a brush stroke, it will be too much. Now I can stop tilt it back up again. I'm going to just put a few trees that will just melt into the background here. I'm not even putting the whole tree just a few tips or peaks. Right here I'm going to try and bring a border here. Well, I have a Cloud here that's using this to do. This color is quite dark but I'll think you'll find as it dries it'll lighten up, especially as we put the darks of the trees here and the huts. I don't want to overdo the sky so I'm just going to finish off by bringing it down here. I might add a few more splats as it dries, but I'm going to use the hairdryer to speed up the process. Once it was drying, I figured I might as well just fill up the sky here, so I'm going to reactivate that part. Tree. Probably a bit too much there so I'll bring that around. Doesn't matter if it's messy. This will only be a subtle thing in the end. It's just the next step will be painting on top of this, so I just want to get this under layer completed first. Now I'm going to let this dry. 9. Painting the Trees Part 1: Now it's time to paint the trees, which will come down to the roof on the ground here. To do that I'm adding very thick pigment. It looks black but it's actually just ultramarine blue, purple, and a bit of green. I'm just setting up the painting so that when we come back with water later I can allow watercolors do its own thing. If I had to simplify my method, do a few words, it would be just to set up the painting so that I can allow the watercolor to do as much as possible. I use this piece of cardboard or plastic to make sure my pigments are very thick and dark. I never put black on here, but it looks black because all the colors mixed together and create that black. I'm using a dry brush, I'm making sure my brush is very dry, so the pigment just creates a bit of a texture, and these textures just apply the leaves that are on the trees. Now here is where the magic starts to come in. It's going to apply some pigment. I'm going to use purple, but I'm going to bury it each time I go back to my palette, maybe I'll pick up a different color. I'm just going to let the pigment interacts by itself with the water I'm putting down. Then I'm going to bring it right to the edge of this roof. You can spat some water in there just to help the watercolor interact. You can use my color charts to see what color to make the trees. Color charts will be in the resource section. 10. Painting the Trees Part 2: I think we're going to make it flat because I want some of this pigment to go uphill. It's easy for your brush to be too wet. You have to draw out some liquid out when trying to achieve dry brush strokes. See, so it's too wet. That's why I have a little towel next to me or tissue. If you suck all the water out, and the pigment is still too light, you just need to make sure your pigment is thicker. That's why I use this because it allows me to have a thick pigment, well, so do dry brush. I struggled a lot at the beginning with trying to do dry brush because either the pigment was too light or too wet. To recap, we tried to take that edge of the hat. You see how that's looking very white now. A few minutes ago, before we painted that, it looked like it could be a bit too much. This is drying now, I can add a few lines that will just burn into it, bleed. Trying to show you this, how I use this. I use this rather than my palette because the palette has lots of pools of water and I don't want this to be watery, I want this to be thick. Don't be scared of using thick paint. You create interesting textures by waiting until it's 90 percent dry and then going over it again. 11. Experimenting with Colours: I can't overestimate how important, or overstate how important the color charts are, because just the knowledge of what your colors can do makes life so much easier. You can put a color that is completely out of place, and just by knowing what its opposite is or what it mixes with on the color charts, you can correct that. For example if I put a red mark there which is completely out of place, there's no red on a tree like that in nature. But I know that green is the opposite of red on the color charts. I can just wipe that over and it grays out. Then you can see how the sky is looking like now and the snow, whereas before it looked like it might be a bit too dark. Let's get back to the dry brush for the tips at the top. Think as it comes over here, I'm going to have it go a bit brown. Then because I know my color charts, I can balance that color out with a lavender. They look well together, we do a figure of eight. Just to move areas of there to there, and areas of there to there. This is all about having fun. Experimenting which colors go where there's no strict rule about it. Just creating a variety of different textures by being quite abstract. All these colors mixed together actually create a gray up close, you can see so many different colors are in there. But when you just look at it by squinting, all these colors are quite grayed. Of course, gray is made up of every single color. That's what gray is. I'm aware the snow is coming into play here. We're going to have to bring it down here. But I think this could be a checkpoint, and by that I mean, I know this tree is going to be darker. I could overlap that later. I know there's going to be lots of texture down here that we can go over as well. Just roughly. Bring it down to this horizon line. Before I use the hairdryer to completely dry it off. I'm just going to use a few of these thin lines to mimic some of the trees as it blends out into them. Now, let's use the hairdryer. 12. Using Thick Pigment: Now I'm going to go back over here and just start like we did with the trees adding the dark bits. I'm going to add some dark bits to the house. By adding these marks so thickly now, I think they'll make the painting a lot more interesting when we go back over them later because it's an idea of the color scheme as well. Now this might be a complex painting with a lot of different techniques, but hopefully you can still learn a lot from it, even if you think it's a bit intimidating. Two people here that I'll leave to deal with later. Even though this painting isn't aimed for beginners, I think beginners can still learn something from it. Creating a few lines there for perspective to a depth. I'm going to create a shadow here. That's too dark. That's okay because I can use some water just to weaken it and bring it out. Some shadows here in the distance just to create a bit of depth. It's a bit too much, great, so that I can create some glows inside this house too. Using red, then coming over with yellow. That runs very strong, so we're going to be even stronger with the yellow to balance it out. So yellow ocher. Most of this, 99 percent of it will be covered in black again, not all black, but a dark pigment of some kind. Painting to where the snow arrives. It looks a bit too colorful at the moment, but that's okay because we will tone it down when we come with the black. Again with a thick pigment again. 13. Adding More Trees: I'm going to start painting this tree. Few types of thick pigment as always. A bit too dark, so we're going to add a bit more water. I think I want to add a bit more texture to this roof. On the other side of this hut. I'm going to paint the background of this figure. That one can be dry brush texture. Because there are a few more dry brush strokes. Some snow ridges. These are few dots to help with the perspective. 14. Painting the Hut: Now I'm going to paint this hut. I'm adding burnt sienna, thick. Burnt sienna, which is reactivating what we'd put down before. Then, the opposite of burnt sienna is ultramarine blue and I'm using that to contrast it and between the both of those, it'll make black. Adding a few drops of ultramarine. You can see [almost looks black, but it's not. Black is just ultramarine and burnt sienna. Start mapping out that window here where the glow is coming from. Taking lavender here, which is cobalt blue, cadmium red, and a bit of white. Cutting out shape of these figures. You can always tidy them later with gouache. Just like to say, I haven't actually used black yet. It's all been mixtures or other pigments. You rarely have to use black itself because as you can already see, burnt sienna and ultramarine blue already go so dark. Maybe these, now it's dried a bit. I can integrate these people a bit better to the background. Don't want them to look like they're fully stuck on. This bit might be a bit tricky. Trying to paint these panels in, leaving a few white gaps in between. I think the first few I can go on with gouache at the end so you don't need to worry about that. 15. The Other Hut: Now while that's drying, I'm going to do this one over here. Adding a bit more definition to the snow drifts. After reviewing that, I think it just needs to be a bit darker and a bit tidier. I'm going to go over it again. Now, I going to do some trees here. Like always, good to start with some dark pigment. Starting with the main branches and then we'll come off them to create the smaller branches later. I can do a few flicks of water actually because I want the branches to be too clean. Maybe slightly some autumn leaves still on the trees, so I splatter a hint of them. I'm using my rigger brush for this. It's very useful for thin lines. Are too thin ones here. 16. Making Corrections: Two leafless trees go up here. Before getting too carried away, I think I'll let it dry. Take a look back and see what the next step can be. I'm going to add a bit more of a curve here on the roof. I'm going to wet that area up there and draw a little curve. It needs to be a bit darker here. Not sure what the reasoning. I just feel. That's what I feel. Adding a few random black marks adds a little bit of definition for some reason. It's a little trick even if there are nothing in particular. Some twigs coming up the ground. Let's create a few more weave and patterns in the snow. I think we need to make the snow look a bit whiter. In order to do that, we have to add a few more darks like this to indicate where the shadows are. 17. Making it Pop: This is dark but if I do a few spatter like that, wait a few seconds, then rub. You get a bit of a few light pops underneath. So we waited a bit and there we go. You have to wait for it to activate the paint about 10 seconds. While you're waiting you can do other things, like run a line down there. Distorting those figures a bit because they're a bit too obvious. Quite like the idea of these branches or these twigs or bushes that are poking up here. Take a few more of these areas where my wet canvas, wait a few seconds and then rub. One big tree here. It is a bit too thick that light when decision to do the tree there. So I'm going to take that away I think. 18. Adding Highlights: Next I'm going to take my white gouache. Just do a few highlights. Just a few dots in the right places can imply a lot more detail than you actually put down. We can use a bit of dry brush right here just to really pop the highlights of the snow. I could have put back in these panels. I can even put it on top of these trees we put down. When you start reaching the final stages like this, it can be hard to know when to call it done. But you can start to be aware of when it's happening just because you start looking for things to do that aren't really necessary. What I tend to do when I reached that stage is just to disconnect for the painting and come back to it later. If there's nothing that's absolutely vital to do, then I'll call it done. I think that's what I'll do. I'll take the tape off, see if there's any more corrections to do and then we'll sum up the painting. 19. Final Thoughts: Welcome back. Now this painting is finished, let's have a close-up look at it. I hope you have a painting of your own to look at as well. You may have found the snowy seem to be challenging in some parts and that's completely fine. Because after all, we're here to learn and it's by pushing ourselves that we become better artists. Watercolor is an elusive medium that can have a mind of its own. In that respect, it can often be frustrating to work with. But the key to painting well, it's not so much to fully control the medium, but to manipulate it in a way that allows it to do its own thing and to form its own unique, captivating textures. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. Even the best masters make mistakes and create paintings they're not happy with. What's important is that you actually gave it a go. If you'd like feedback on your painting, I'd love to give it. Or if you'd like any advice related to watercolor, please share your painting in the student projects gallery down below and I'll be sure to respond. If you prefer, you can share it on Instagram tagging me @willelliston, as I would love to see it. Skillshare also love seeing my students work. So tag them as well at Skillshare. After all that effort we put into it, why not show it off? Remember, please click the Follow button up top so you can follow me on Skillshare. This means you'll get a notification as soon as I publish my next class or have important announcements like free giveaways or sharing some of my best student artwork uploaded to the project gallery. Thank you so much again for joining me in this class today. Please leave a comment below in the class discussion area if you have any questions or comments about today's class. If you had any subject, wildlife, or scene you'd like me to do a class on, by all means, let me know about it in the discussion section as well. If you found this class useful, I'd really appreciate getting your feedback on it. I hope you learned a lot and are inspired to paint more in this wonderful medium. Until next time, bye for now.