Sunset and Seascape Watercolor Painting

1. Introduction: Hello everyone. Thank you for joining my Landscape Plus. This is Bianca Rayala. Today, we'll be painting a very interesting subject where there is the sun in the picture. What we'll be learning is how to depict backlight during sunset. How to paint smooth transition of thoughts to show contrast and life. Lastly, how to depict silhouettes and reflection in water, to paint a final painting. So I'm excited, and let's get started. 2. Compostion and Pencil Sketch: Let's start with the pencil sketch. First, let's define the composition by locating the place for the main object, which is the sun. Then we place other objects that supports our focal point like the hill and the boat. Although there is what we call rule of thirds on composition, sometimes it is also necessary to break the rules in order to make the painting more interesting. For painting we will use our reference photo, which is this one. Here is our reference and inspiration. We'll practice not to limit ourselves from what we see on the image and we will try to incorporate creativity and imagination. Let's start. We will draw this skyline somewhere here. Not exactly 1/3 part of the sheet, but at least close to the 1/3 part. Then next we draw the hill. But this time creating lose outline based on the reference photo followed by their reflection. The reflection is basically a mirror view of the object. Next we place the boat on this side and the two fisherman. Remember we will place the sun somewhere here on this side. This is our pencil sketch. 3. Materials: For this sunset painting, we don't need to use many paints. In our palette, we'll be using Winsor yellow, Winsor orange, Winsor red, ultramarine blue, burnt sienna, and the Payne's gray, all from Winsor & Newton. Make sure your pigments are pure and clean. For the brushes, we'll be using flat brushes for wetting the paper and applying paint on the sheet and on large fragments like the sky and the river. Another brush that we'll be using is also an angled brush, a small angled brush for painting the hill and few round brushes with pointed tip for the details and other elements. We also need a water resistant board like this one. We will use this as the board that would hold our paper since we will be wetting both front and back part of the paper. In case you don't have one, you may use any flat board made of plastic or glass. You can be resourceful and use a board with plastic cover or the glass from old photo frame. Other needed materials are, of course 100 percent cotton paper, 200 GSM, your mixing palette, two jars of water, soft tissue. Aside from the tissue paper that we'll be using, pencil, and eraser. Once you have completed your materials, we are now ready to begin our painting. 4. Painting Light and River: [MUSIC] Before applying the first wash, erase some pencil lines with needed eraser, especially on areas we'd like to fragment. In this case, since we will put the light source, which is the sun here, we need to lighten up this area by erasing those sketches. After that, we will wet, the paper, the entire sheet both back and front with clean water and evenly spread [NOISE] the water. I start with the back part of the sheet, wetting the entire part evenly. [MUSIC] Make sure that there is no dry spot being left behind. [NOISE] We wait for the water in the front part to sip in for a few minutes before we start painting. While we think, we can prepare pigments by moistening them up using spray bottle, and ensure that your paints are clean and pure. We also put our paper on a slide angle, so the paint will flow down once we apply the pigment. Few things to remember, when painting light, especially sunlight, we can make the sun shining by making this fragment the lightest. In water color, the lightest part is a clean and painted paper. Referring to my colors study, this is still a sun. The lightest part is actually an unpainted white paper. Here, in the place on the sun, we leave the white space while all the other fragments are on this darker. We start drawing light with more water and less pigment mixture of yellow and orange, this part. Then gently and gradually adding red pigment on the orange part to get red-orange mixture. On the upper part, we add blue pigment. Once your paper is ready, we can now start painting. [NOISE] I get yellow pigment with a hint of orange, and then paint it around the sun. I intentionally left a slightly bigger gap in the middle for the sun, in order to give allowance for the movement of paint. As the paint dries up, water and the pigment tends to move in, leaving this white space smaller. We have to make it a bit bigger to give allowance for the water or the pigment's movement. After adding some orange and red, you paint the sky with gentle strokes. I paint in a light motion path, bringing the appeal and water fragments also. Lastly, we paint the upper part of the sky with ultramarine blue, and smoothly blend in the colors. The farther it gets to the sun, the darker it should be. We also paint an illusion of clouds with ultra marine blue. [MUSIC] Let the paint flow by tilting the paper, so paints would mix naturally. Before we proceed on painting the water view, check first, if the surface is still wet. If the sheet is starting to dry up, we can gently wet the paper with clean water, but avoiding the sky fragments. We continue painting the water with the same color of, the sky, so we'll be using orange. Let this part underneath the sunlight, as much as possible white. We also add red on the orange pigment, just copying the color of the sky. [MUSIC] We get a moist soft tissue, and gently leave the paint here. [MUSIC] Again, tilt the paper, so paints would move and flow naturally. [MUSIC] 5. Painting Hill, Reflection and Details: Well, the hill and the river fragment are still wet. We paint the hill and the reflection. We will be using orange branch and then paints grid and hence the color of the hill. So here being the area under the sun with orange yellow color. Then add a bit of orange at the bottom part of the hill. This time our mixture is a bit thick than our first layer. When the paint is still wet, we use again a clean moist soft tissue to lift the paint on this side under the sun on the downward direction. Smoothly transition, the burnt Jenna to paint gray to create higher contrast on the hill. It's important to work fast to avoid hard edges and to still be able to scratch some parts of the base of the hill for highlight while it's still wet. To paint the reflection let the colors bleed and flow downwards. When water fragments is dry we move on to painting the reflection by re-wetting again the part of the river and then painting with a darker tone the reflection. Using any sharp corner like a card, you can use it through scratch the paper, to create highlights, and so many things. Makes sure that the paint on the paper is still wet for you to be able to do this technique. I also added some subtle ripples of water while the surface is still wet. After this stage we let the paper dry. When the water fragment is dry, we move on to painting the boat and the fishermen using paints gray and burnt sienna. 6. Recap of Important Painting Principles: [MUSIC] Then we paint now the swamp grasses. [MUSIC] Let me finish by adding final details like roots. [MUSIC] Now we're finished. Summing up. In painting sunsets, the water is quite light because of the reflected light from the sun. The shadows on the other hand in the reflections were actually the dark ones. [MUSIC] We show light by keeping the paper unpainted. That's what we did for the sun and the reflection on water. [MUSIC] 7. Class Project: Congratulations for finishing my class. Now you're ready to paint your own work. Refer to the downloadable files on the reference section to view our reference photo, pencil sketch, color palette, and final painting for your guide. For the class project, paint the same subject that I did in the videos. Just follow the same process that I showed step-by-step. Feel free to go back and re-watch the portions of the videos that you want to review and don't forget to practice your color mix and brush exercises. I'm excited to see your painting, so don't forget to upload it on the project gallery of the class and tag me also when you post it on Instagram. I also invite you to check out my other Skillshare watercolor classes like these ones. It's my joy to teach different interesting classes which are perfect for beginners, intermediate, and experienced watercolorists. 8. Encouragement: I hope you enjoyed the video and painting light in watercolor. Just remember, we paint to escape our daily routine and express ourselves to be creative. Don't forget to share your work in my Facebook page or Instagram, and see you on our next class.