The Church of St. Sebastian

1. Preview: Hello everyone. So the next painting project I will have for you is the church of St. Sebastian. The same depicts a beautiful spot located in rams out Bavaria, south of Germany. In the background, we can see the Alps and under the breach there's the beautiful sparkling rams, our equivalent. We'll paint this landscape step-by-step, starting from the sky and the mountains. Then we'll move on to the middle planes and we'll finish it with the church and the bridge. It's a very nice project which as usual all requires quite a lot of patients. But it's also very enjoyable to paint, especially for those of you who like to paint landscapes. We'll use many different techniques in this project. So there's a lot to learn from it. 2. Masking: Hello everyone. So today we're going to start painting this beautiful view from Bavaria, Germany. For a landscape painting, we don't really need a very detailed drawing. However, here we also have some architectural elements which need a bit more attention. I use the ruler to draw straight pencil lines of the bridge, as well as the walls and the roof of the church. Make sure to spend a bit more time on those two elements because they are actually our main focus here. And we should get them pretty accurate. It will be easier to paint if you have a detailed drawing. So try to draw the main elements carefully, especially on the church. If you are drawing freehand, make sure that the size and perspective are accurate. Let's take a look at the line drawing I prepared for you. Because it shows best how my pencil sketch looks. You can trace these lines onto your watercolor paper, but if you like, you can also add more details, as you can see, except for the building. I drew only the counters of other elements. The silhouette of the mountains in the background, the counters of the trees and riverbanks. It is very tempting actually to add more details, but I don't want to do that. My aim is not a hyper-realistic paintings, so I'm not going to paint every single leaf on the trees, every grass blade or every sparkle on the water. Of course, we will paint all those things. But we will try to find ways to depict them in a simple way. I like to simplify things if I can find solutions that will allow me to create a similar convincing effect. But at the same time will not be a hyper-realistic representation of the subject. I like realism, but I want to still be able to see that it's a painting. If you wanted to paint it more realistically, we would have to spend much, much more time on the details and it would probably take months. I also must mention that this time I'm painting on 12 by 16 size. I first wanted to paint it on nine by 12th. But when I printed out the reference photo, I thought that the church was too small and it will be difficult to paint it. I think that even 12 by 16 is a bit too small, but it's acceptable. After making a sketch, I stretch the paper because this one is on 140 pounds. I left to dry overnight and I also added masking tape around so that in the end I will have that nice white border around. We definitely have to mask out some areas. This time apart from the brush, I'm also going to use a ruling pen. It's not very important. You don't really need it. So if you don't have it, don't worry. But I will show you how we can use it here to mask out straight lines. It's a very helpful tool for this. Let's now move on to masking. I'll show you step-by-step what I'm going to mask. I'm using a Winsor and Newtons masking fluid as always. Start with a small brush that you use only for masking fluid, not for painting. After dipping it in water, rub it on a bar of soap to create that protective coat, and then dip it in the masking fluid. Start by applying irregular dots on the tree. Now, there are two reasons why we're doing this here. And by the way, in the class materials, you will find the file which will show you where exactly I'm applying the masking. So there are two main reasons why we are applying masking here this way. And notice that I'm not masking the edges of the tree, but I'm applying irregular dots within the tree shape. We are masking now two main elements. One of them are the light dots that we can see between the leaves. We want to leave some white open areas to keep the tree area. Our aim is to mask some of those areas between the leaves where we can see the sky or mountains in the background. And the second thing that we are masking out are the lightest leaves. The idea is to protect them now so that when we paint the entire tree with a darker green, we will then be able to remove the masking and apply a lighter green in those places. This will give dimension and form to the leaf masses. There is a very light green tree here, and it's a good example of the area we need to protect. We could of course, leave it without masking and paint around those light green branches. So we could use the negative painting technique. But it will be just easier to freely painting What's around without worrying about the light tree. Now let's mask the whole bridge. And here's when a ruling pen comes into play. We have a long straight lines to mask out. So a ruling pen would be the best for this. You don't have a ruling pen, just use a brush. But if you have it, you can follow my steps. First, take two pieces of paper towel and folded them like this. Place a ruler on those two pieces of paper. The idea is that the ruler should be slightly above the paper. If it was touching the paper, masking fluid would stick to it. And when we want it to move around the ruler, it would smudge the masking, set up the distance between the blades, not too thin to thick. Dip it in the masking and test the flow and the width on a piece of paper. Now, deep the ruling pen in the masking to load it and draw a straight line on the first bar of the bridge. Then another line at the bottom of the first bar. And fill the space between with the masking. To fill this space between them, you can use a ruling pen or a brush. Let's look at it a bit closer and from a different angle. So first, load the ruling pen with masking fluid. You should have a drop of masking between the two blades. Then run it along the ruler to create a straight line. As you can see, it's pretty easy to draw really straight lines with masking this way. If you are careful enough, you can achieve similar result with a brush, but a ruling pen is a nice tool to use for this. And I think that it allows us to achieve really straight lines, much more straight than if we used a brush. You may be wondering why we are masking the bridge if it's black. So we could just painted in the end with black paint and we don't have to mask it out. Well, actually the left side and the bottom side of the bridge have some highlights and variety in color. I can see some browns and even yellows there. It's a bit lighter on the left side and the bars have strong white highlight in the upper part. I thought it would be best to protect the bridge now and later. Just build the colors on it. Now let's move on to the river. On the river we can see some bigger white patches. And those are the areas that I'm not going to mask. I think I've just tried to paint around them and leave the whiteness of the paper. However, we want to create that sparkling effect. It is created by all those tiny little white dots. Of course, we're not going to apply every single dot. So billion deaths. However, we need to apply a lot of them to create a similar effect. Start by applying a bit bigger dots first, which will be the biggest sparkling highlights that will create that magical glowing effect. Next, apply many small dots so that the surface of the river was similar to the one from the photo. Here and there draw a bit longer horizontal lines to suggest maybe some ripples on the water. Here you can see I have already masked the whole bridge with the pillar. And I also applied masking fluid on the edges of the church. I also use the ruler to mask the edges of the church and get those straight lines. Now I'm just going to finish the church and then move on to the tree on the right hand side. When the horizontal bars on the bridge are dry mask the posts. Finally, I also noticed that there is a little bit of snow on the mountain in the back. So I tried to recreate that characteristic pattern with a brush in masking fluid. When you finish applying the brisket, leave it to dry. And we will move on to paint the sky. 3. Sky: Okay, so now when the masking fluid is dry completely, we can start painting the sky. When painting a landscape like this, I believe that it's best to start from the background. We can divide this landscape into three main planes. The background, which are the mountains and the sky, and this is the furthest plane. Then we have the middle distance which is closer to us. And those would be the trees on the Hill and in the middle. And it could be also the church itself. And then we have the foreground, which is the nearest, and that would be the bridge trees on both sides and the river. The further the plane, usually more out-of-focus, cooler in colors and lighter in towns it is. We're going to start painting from the sky. First, let's prepare some colors. I'm going to use cobalt blue as my base blue, and I'll mix it with Winsor blue green shade. Why those colors? Cobalt blue because it's my go-to blue for the sky, even though it's a granulating color, it doesn't granulate as much as ultramarine blue or civilian blue. It's just a beautiful light, sky blue. I'm adding Windsor blue, green shade because it's a cooler bloom. It's not granulating. And the mix of those two creates very nice color for the sky. Besides, I know that I'm going to use Winsor blue later for water and probably for the greens. And cobalt blue most probably for the building. So to keep the color harmony, I'm using them also here for the sky on a different mixing space on my palette, I'm also mixing cobalt blue with burnt sienna, which gives a muted shade of blue. And if I add even more burnt sienna, it turns almost gray. And that's the color I'm going to use for the gray shadows on the clouds. Wet the entire sky area. We're going to paint wet on wet. Go over the pencil lines with the water applied partially on the trees and on the mountains. The reason for that is because the mountains and trees will be much darker than the sky. So we will be able to easily paint over the sky color. But most importantly, we don't want to create a gap between the mountain, reach the edges of the trees and the sky. If we go over them with the sky color, later, we will have this effect of the sky that really covers the entire background. Another reason for that is that we just want to give a little bit more space for the blue to spread in the water. Make sure it covered the entire sky area. And now, don't hurry. Don't add the paint straight away. Unless you live in a hot climate and the water evaporates quickly. The idea is that if we add paint straight away, it will spread out too much because at this stage the paper surface is still too wet. We need to wait maybe a minute or two until the surface becomes drier. Normally in a wet on wet painting, we would add the paint now when the surface has that nice high sheen. But this time we're going to wait because we don't want the paint to spread so much. Pick up the blue color and apply a touch of it to see how much it's spreading. If it's still spreading too much, wait a few more seconds. Now when painting the sky like this, we are actually using the negative painting technique. We're applying the blue around the cloud shapes. So we're creating this cloud shape by painting the sky. The whiteness of the paper will be the color of the lightest areas of the clouds. We don't have to follow the reference photo Exactly. Add the gray mix of cobalt blue and burnt sienna in the middle of the cloud shape. To add that shadow. You can see that I keep tilting my painting, which can be annoying to watch. But I need to do this to control the flow of paint and water on the paper. As you can see, a paint the sky in a very, very simple manner. I don't want to overwork it. I don't want to make it the focal point, so I'm not going to work on those clouds and add more details. I want to keep it really simple as this is just the background when the paint is still damp, but it's not so wet anymore. Use a tissue to block out some of those cloud shapes. Flooding out. We'll create that nice effect of cloudy edges, which are not super sharp but are not very soft either. You can see that the paint from the sky partially went over the mountains and the trees. And that's the effect I wanted to see. Now, leave the sky to dry. I left it for about half an hour and then I use a hairdryer to dry it quickly. In the next part, we're going to paint the mountains. 4. Mountains: This guy is now dry. I think it turned out pretty well. The granulation is not visible to match, which is nice. So now we can move on to paint the mountains. Now, further mountains, we will need three shades of blue. One of them will be the same mix that we used for the sky. So I'm mix of cobalt blue and Winsor blue, green shade. Another blue is pure Winsor blue, which is that greenish blue. And that's what we need. And finally, the third bloom should be a warmer, more purplish blue. We could use our ultramarine blue for this. It would look nice and perhaps the granulation effect that it creates would add more interests to those mountains. So if you'd like, you can use ultramarine blue. However, I decided to add permanent rose to cobalt blue to get that warmer, more purplish blue. I think that the granulation created by cobalt blue is enough for me, and I don't want to add more of this effect with ultramarine blue. So I'll go with a mix of cobalt blue and a touch of permanent rose. We're going to paint the mountains using the wet on wet technique. Again. However, the reach of the mountains is sharp and we want to see that sharp line. To do that, apply the water to the mountains, but leave a small gap close to the ridge. This way we'll be able to paint the rich, keeping its sharp, but the paint below it will spread in the wet area. We will have a bit more time to paint carefully the edge and the paint will be spreading the water so it will not create sharp edges on the mountain itself. I hope this makes sense. Here I marked where I applied water at this point. So you can see that the top part of the mountains is dry. Now pick up the purplish blue and paint. That sharp ridge of the mountains. Change the color as you're going along. On the left-hand side close to the tree. Use Winsor blue because the tree is not masked out. We have to paint around the branches. We masked out this now so we don't have to worry about it. Basically, the top part of the mountain is the same color that we used for the sky, but just in a little bit darker tone, but also our warmer purplish blue. So I mix of cobalt blue with permanent rose, while the bottom part, left and the right sides are more Winsor blue. I want the bottom side to be more greenish blue because I'm now going to add any details to those mountains. However, I can see some trees at the bottom. So I just want to suggest that by using more greenish blue and that's it. We want the mountains to be really simple without any details because they are in the background. And if we start adding the details, we may quickly overwork them. At least. I know I would get cut into details very quickly. And I don't want to do that. We don't want the mountains to compete with the foreground. My painting is at a slight angle, so that painting is not sitting in one place, but it's flowing down. This helps the colors to mingle on the paper. And when gathering the excess water. And I'm lifting out some paint from the bottom part because there will be trees. So I don't want to have too much blue there. Tilt your painting to get the paint moving until it settles down nicely on the paper and stops moving. When the paint dries a bit deep, your brush in water and spider a few drops to create an additional effect. Depending on how wet is the surface. Those lighter spots will be more or less visible. They may have more or less defined edges. I'm adding them while the surface is still damp. And if it was too dry, I might not get those soft light spots. The edges of them would be a bit more defined. I liked the soft effect. This is just to add some interest. Now leave everything to dry. And in the next part, we're going to paint the trees in the middle ground. 5. Middle ground trees: This image shows which areas we're going to paint in this part. Let's prepare some colors. Are basic. Color will be a deep, dark turquoise, makes a Winsor blue green shade with green and gold. And Payne's gray mixture of those three colors creates that beautiful, deep greenish blue. Sometimes I like to keep the individual colors of the mixture on the palette. They can mingle on the palette, but I like to see each of them separately. This way, I can shift the hue along the way towards one of those colors. Wet the hill, leaving a small gap under the upper edge of the tree line. The same way as we did with the mountains. Start from the lightest area and apply green goat. Add a touch of Winsor blue to green gold to get a different shade of green. Now with the deep dark mix, start painting the hair with the trees. Create that jacket tree line on the edge. Because the edges dry. We can paint those spiky tops of the trees and they stay sharp. The aim of this step is just to cover this whole area with various shades of green. We're not adding any details. This is just a basic graded wash with greens applied the greens also on the bushes on the right-hand side. Notice that the green goes from the lighter green where the bushes catch more light to the darker green in the shadow areas. With a smaller brush, a size four, add some leaves on the edges of the bushes. Those are just random dots suggesting the leaves. Now leave everything to dry. And when it's dry, we're going to add one more layer on the hill. When everything is dry, we're going to add are just indications of some trees. Again, we will not paint any details because it's not the main subject of this painting. But we just want to suggest some tree shapes and also darken this area a bit. Spray this area with water, cover the mountains with a piece of paper and spritz the hill with some water drops. We don't want this area to be entirely and evenly wet. The idea is to have some small droplets of water which will create irregular edges of the trees when we apply the paint. So that's why I'm using a spray bottle. Now when we're adding the paint, the edges are spreading just slightly in those droplets creating this effect, reminding coniferous trees. Add the dark green in other places to paint irregular dots suggesting the foliage of the trees. That's all. I think we don't have to add anything more here. Leave it to dry. And in the next part we're going to paint the main trees on both sides. 6. Main trees: To paint the trees, we also need a spray bottle. Keep a piece of paper over the sky and the mountain areas to protect them from getting wet. Spread some water droplets on the tree shape. Again, we don't want to make the surface totally wet. Small areas which stay dry and won't receive paint will stay white. And those will be additional whitespaces between the leaves. Apart from those which were masked out. Start with a light fresh green and mix of green gold with Winsor blue green shade. Apply this green in the areas where you want to create lighter foliage. Applied the paint by just touching the surface with the tip of your brush. Try to intentionally leave some small gaps to create those light spots between the leaves. If you have a natural sponge, you could use that to you can use stumping motion of the natural texture of the sponge transferred to the paper. Maybe we'll try this in a different painting. When I'm painting these trees, I keep in mind that there are bigger clusters of leaves, bigger leaf masses. Those clusters have more or less rounded or oval forum. Others are more irregular and those firms catch the light on one side. The highlighted site is where I applied the masking fluid. So when we are painting now, let's also try to vary the towns of the greens. Apply lighter, warmer greens on the light side and darker greens in the shadows. Try to create that three-dimensional form of those clusters. Be more careful on the edges and suggest some individual leaves there. But we will take a better care of those edges later. At this stage, we're applying the main colors of the trees. We don't want to overwork the tree. So my plan is to apply the main greens now. And then in the second layer, I'm just going to add some darker leaves here and there. I'm adding more water because the paper has already dried and the paint is not spreading. While the paint is still wet, we can come back to some areas we have already painted and we can add darker green. When the main tree shape is covered with green, switch to a smaller size four brush. Now with a darker green at individual leaves on the edges. Add those leaves also on the tree itself, but maybe not on the entire tree. I personally like how the greens mixed on the paper creating those colored transitions. And I don't want to cover them with the leaves. I want to leave some of those areas. We could add lots of leaves. We could cover the entire tree with the leaves and you can do that if you'd like. But I'm afraid I might get that overwork to look. So I'm not going to do this. I like when the leaves are only suggested in some areas and the rest is created by that interplay between different shades of green. We can forget about the part of the tree that is between the bridge bars. There is actually some kind of a shared there. But I decided not to paint it as it's also not an important part of the view. Now we have to repeat the process on the tree, on the right hand side. But before we paint the tree, I think we can first paint that heel between the tree and the church. To paint it, we're going to need a mix of burnt sienna and transparent yellow. Yellow ocher would work well here too. And we'll also need some warm green. So something like green gold or maybe green gold with Winsor green. After applying the brown, trapping light green to create that nice transition between the brown and the green. Again, this is just a basic wash without any details, without any texture. We're going to add a little bit of texture here later. On the left-hand side where the heel meets the church, I'm leaving a soft edge. I call this particular type of edge or forgotten. Edge. Forgotten because I'm not going to paint the church now. So I don't know yet what I'm going to do in that area. In this case, I just want to blend the way that edge and I can forget about it for now. Later when I'll be painting the church, I will figure out what to do in that section. So now paint the tree, repeating exactly the same process as on the other tree. Spray it with water, cover the whole tree with various green shades and paint small individual leaves on the edges and on some of the branches. When the trees are completely dry, we can remove the masking fluid and reveal all white spots. Now on some of those spots we can apply light, warm green. Those are the lightest leaves that received the most light. We don't have to apply the paint very precisely on the, um, those white spots. We can make wider brush strokes that we will cover not only those spots, but also parts of the green around them. Now before we move on, let's do one more thing. Some of those white areas will become green because those are the leaves, but some of them will stay wide as negative spaces between the leaves. Now let's soften the edges of some of those spots. The reason why we're doing this is because they think that it will create that nice glowing effect. I often do this on the petals of the flowers where a cast shadow meets the highlighted area. I think when we soften the edge in a place where something dark meets the highlight, it enhances the illusion of light even more. So using a scrubber brush, I'm softening some of those edges. I'm saying softening, but in fact, it's very difficult to soften such a small area. I should say I'm lifting out some of the paint from the area around those white spots to make it lighter. Continue applying the light green under leaves. In a few areas like here. Add a darker random spots indicating the leaves. Go over those lighter areas to create a cohesive whole. We want to join the light and dark leaves so that it looks like one branch. As I mentioned, some of those light spots are spaces between the leaves. So we can see what is showing through the tree using cobalt blue paint, the white spot to suggest mountain in the back. When we use a wet and dry technique, we create well-defined marks with sharp edges. But here I would like to add some blurry spots. So I'm spraying gently this area. And now when I'm adding a darker green thumb marks becomes softer. The paint slightly spreads in the water. Add a few branches that connect those lighter clusters of leaves. And also more leaves in the shadow areas that add some interests. A bit of three-dimensional form, but it also creates the texture of the foliage. Now we have to repeat the same process on the other tree. Remove the masking fluid, and start by applying the lightest green on the leaves. I'd also the green on the bushes. As you can see, the lighter leaves have sharp edges and they look cut out because that's how masking fluid works. It creates those very well-defined shapes. We could have applied masking on wet paper and that would create a softer edge. But maybe we'll practice that in a different painting here to get rid of that strong contrast between light and dark. Just add more dark green going over some of those lighter leaves. The dark green, we'll cover some of those sharp edges. I'm again applying cobalt blue on some of those white spots to indicate Blue Mountains showing through the leaves. When everything is dry. Spray the tree with clean water and add darker green in the shadows. Again, go over some of those lighter leaves to make a connection between light and dark areas. Finally, add a trunk. I didn't wait for everything to dry and my trunk blurred slightly, but not too much because I used pretty thick paint consistency. I suggest that you wait until everything is dry and then add the trunk in the end. So the trees are finished. I'm pretty happy with how they turned out. There are not too detailed, but not to lose either. Now let's move on to the next part where we will apply the initial layer on the river banks. 7. River banks - initial layer: The next step in our long journey is to paint the riverbanks. I will divide it into a few more manageable steps so that we can gradually build those areas. Let's start by applying the basic colors. We're going to paint a wet on wet, wet the left side first. Start by applying the lightest greens, then switch to a yellowish brown. This area is generally a very busy. If we wanted to paint it really, really realistically, it would take a long time to do. We're trying to simplify such complex areas. We're applying the basic colors first, and then we'll add some details. I play Brown also on the rocks. When the lightest colors are applied, switch to a darker tones, mainly a dark green, which is a mix of Payne's gray, Winsor, blue and green gold trade to create the effect of clumps of grasses. Here, I keep in mind that a darker tone suggests a shadow and it informs about the depth. So wherever I apply a darker tone, it immediately suggests that it's a bush tucked behind the one in front, which is lighter in tone. With a smaller brush size four and a dark green. Add a few lines here and there to suggest some grass blades because the paint is still damp, the blurb, but that's fine. We just want to create the impression of complexity here. There's a lot going on in this corner. A few dark dots to add even more interest. Finally, when the paint has lost its sheen, spatter, a few water drops to create additional texture. Now let's move on to the next section. Apply here two shades of green. One a bit cooler on the left, which is the bush further away and closer to the bridge, use a warmer green with more yellow while the paint is still damp, but it's not so wet anymore. Lots of spots of dark green to create this foliage effect. Add more dots in the shadows too. Also create clumps of those bushes. If the first layer was totally dry. Now those dots would have sharp edges because we will be painting wet on dry. But because it's still slightly damp, the dots have blurry edges, which is exactly what we need. You can see that by adding lots of those dots, we can create this nice illusion of foliage. I'm using a small size four brush, because with a bigger brush, the dots would be just too big. Those bushes are more in the distance, so we need to create the effect of small leaves, dark and also the darkest parts in the back. Finally, this section on the right, again wet the area first and apply the basic colors. Under he'll use more yellowish green with more green gold in transparent yellow. The color is transitioning into browns on the rocks. I'm not making a clear distinction between the green and the brown. I want those colors to mingle. Maybe there is some grass on the rocks so the green can flow on the rocks, no problem with that. On the racks, use a light neutral brown and mix of cobalt blue and burnt sienna. At this stage we're applying the lightest color we can see on the rocks. This will be the color of the highlights that we can see in the reference photo. Finally, add a darker green to suggest the darkest shadows. Now we have to leave it to dry completely. And in the next part we'll start adding the details. 8. Finishing the right river bank: When everything is dry, we can now start adding the details. First, let's make some black. So I mixed burnt sienna and Payne's gray. Keep also pure burnt sienna aside. Now with a smaller brush size for paint, the darkest parts of the rugs. Follow the reference photo and paint the shadows. Initially, I'm using just black, but I will also vary the color to add some interest. I will use brown in some places. That's why we need a separate brown paddle on the palette. I think that shadows look more interesting when they are not painted with one solid color. But there is that color variety in them. So the aim of this stage is to paint the darkest parts of the rocks. I'm looking at the reference photo, but of course, I'm not painting everything exactly the same as it is in the photo. Photo is just my inspiration. I'm looking at how the crevasses are shaped. I'm trying to define bigger areas of shadows and generally create that rocky effect. We're starting by painting the darkest areas because they are the easiest to identify and paint. Later we will just add some more color on the rocks, some more middle value to join the highlights and the shadows. The rocks are generally finished. I will probably add some more dark tones in a minute to darken some shadows. But for now they are okay. Now let's add some grass texture to the hill. To do that, we're going to use a dry brush technique. At first I started with a flat brush that are used for mixing my colors, but I will switch to a different brush in a minute. Now the idea is to use almost dry brush and make a lot of short brush strokes to suggest that the grass texture. Here, I'm testing it on a piece of paper. As you can see, when the brush is almost dry and it has a small amount of paint, it creates that broken pattern of short lines which resembles grass. Using browns and greens. Start adding this texture on the hill. I'm a first running my brush on a piece of paper to make sure that the paint is not too wet. And I indeed can create the texture instead of a regular brush stroke. Now I just remembered that I have a fan brush, which may work even better for this. A fan brush has more bristles that are spread out and we can create more lines at a time. I'm very gently touching the surface of the paper, keeping the brush at an angle. It is a pretty slow process. It requires a bit of patients because we need to apply many, many of those brush strokes. And we're using a light tone for this. We have to build the texture gradually. Tried to vary the density of the strokes to add more interests, but also to indicate unevenness of the ground. Finally darken some of the shadows on the rocks if you need to. I'm going to add some darker tones here and there. I think we can call this area finished. In the next part, we will add some details on the left riverbank. 9. Finishing the left river bank: Let's start by painting the rocks on the left side. We're going to use the same black mix of burnt sienna and Payne's gray. But here the rocks have a different color. There are more orange, reddish brown. I think a mix of burnt sienna with transparent orange will come in handy here. Burnt sienna itself would be fine, but edition of Orange makes it just more vibrant. Again, start by painting the darkest areas, the shadows that you can see on the rugs create that base of a dark tone so that it will be easier later to judge how dark you can go with the main brown color of the rocks. When you paint the dark shadows and crevices of the rocks, change the color to our brown mix and apply it on the rocks. More black if you need to darken some areas. Paint also some lines on the water suggesting the reflection of the rocks in the water. Now squeeze just a small amount of white gouache and a piece of paper using a small brush. I'm using a Designers brush size zero. But it can be any of your brushes with a good tip. Mix the brown mix with the white gouache and paint some grass blades. You can use more white or mix white with other colors to paint thin lines suggesting some natural growing grass. I'm mixing green with gouache and with the slight opaque paint. I'm adding a few leaves here and there. It would be best to have gouache in a specific color now, because when we mix any color with white gouache, we always get a pastel look. If we had a ready-made green gouache, it would be much richer and more vibrant. But I use opaque paints only in small amounts. So I don't buy gouache. Usually white one mixed with some watercolor paints is enough. So I'm adding here some green grasses and leaves just to create more of that business. In that corner. I can see in the reference photo that some of those grasses go over the bridge. But the bridge is now masked out so we can't paint it. But later, after painting the bridge, we will add more grasses here. 10. River: Now it's time for the river. I've found the river to be quite easy to paint, so I hope you won't have any problems with it as well. There are a couple of things I would like you to keep in mind. First, remember that we have already masked out some white areas and lots of those white sparkles underwater. However, we didn't mask out every white area that we can see on the river. So now when we will be painting, we need to paint around the lightest areas that we didn't mask. Second of all, we're going to use some dry brush technique, which is important because it allows us to create additional sparkling texture. And third of all, and it's the most important thing to keep in mind. Make sure that you will be making straight horizontal brush strokes. If you make brushstrokes at an angle, at any point, the river will not look convincing, it will just look weird. The surface of the water is basically flat. It goes straight from one river bank to another. If you imagine water in a glass, no matter how you move the glass, the water will always stay flat. So our aim is to achieve that flat surface. And we can do this by using long horizontal brushstrokes from one bank to another. Before we start painting, let's prepare some colors. We definitely want to use Winsor blue, green shade as the base. Add a touch of burnt sienna to it, and it will turn into a slightly muted turquoise. We'll also need a different shade of turquoise, more greenish one, but also muted. For this one mix cobalt blue, burnt sienna, and Winsor green. This time use slightly more burnt sienna. The third color I think we'll need is a mix of Windsor blue, burnt sienna, and the green gold. This is something like an olive green, which I can see mainly on the right-hand side. Now use a brush size ten, pick up the first turquoise mix and start applying the paint from the top. Remember to leave white areas to suggest more highlights on the water. Change the color along the way. Use more green, blue, or turquoise to reflect the colors you can see in the photo. The river reflects all colors from the surroundings and sky. So we can throw in quite a lot of colors. Use Payne's gray to dark and the colors and create darker cast shadows on the water. Now when we go further down, we have to start making a longer and faster brushstrokes. We're starting to use the dry brush technique. So I don't have a lot of paint on the brush and I'm making quick brushstroke with the side of the bristles. This allows me to achieve that broken irregular brush stroke that is possible to achieve because of the texture of the paper. Those white spots will be additional sparkles on the water. They occur only if we make a quick brushstroke with almost dry brush. If you do this slowly or have too much paint, you will just make a regular brush stroke without this texture effect. Here I'll show you on a piece of paper what effect we want to achieve. Something like this. We can even use scrap paper to make the first brush stroke like this and make sure that the excess paint has been left on that piece of paper. And then we can make the main brushstroke in our painting. In the lower parts, the river has much more colors and they are more solid close to the edges. There, I use less dry brush work. There is also the darker shadow of the bridge running across the river. Use the turquoise for the shadow and darken the color with Payne's gray where it's necessary. On the right-hand side, we have lots of greens and browns, which are the colors reflected from the riverbank. So I'm basically building the colors of the river now, quite slowly and gradually as you can see, I'm skipping from one color to another, from one place to another. And I'm adding more and more colors. I'm using pretty watered down paint, very light tones, but the colors get richer and deeper every time I apply another layer. I'm also painting the reflection of the pillar. And I'm adding a few dark lines across the water. When the paint is totally dry, make sure that you're happy with the colors of the water. And if it needs some darkening, do this now before the next step, because later it will be impossible. So now when everything is completely dry, we will create that nice sparkling effect on the water. Do you remember those slightly bigger dots of masking fluid we applied here uses scrubber brush and lift out the paint from around those spots. Now, before we remove the masking, this process will create a glowing effect. I like so much and it will enhance the illusion of water sparkling in the sun. When you're finished, remove the masking fluid from the river to reveal all the white sparkles. Remove all so masking fluid from the church. And in the next part, I'll show you how to paint that church. 11. Church: Finally, we got to the main subject of the painting, the church of St. Sebastian. I'm cleaning one side of the palette because I want to work with new clean colors. I also changed my water. So as always, let's start from preparing some colors. Mix cobalt blue with burnt sienna. This mix will give us a nice neutral beige color, which will be the base for the walls of the church. I keep burnt sienna and cobalt blue on both sides of the main mix because this will allow me to pick up more blue or brown depending on the area. Apart from this mix, Let's make cell so transparent, yellow with burnt sienna. This gives us something like yellow ocher, but it's more vibrant. If you don't have transparent yellow, you can also use just yellow ocher instead of this mix. Now wet the entire church but don't go with the water up to the edges. We're following the same principles as we did when we were painting the mountains and the heel on the left, because the church has sharp edges, we can leave them dry and apply water only in the middle of the shape. This way we can work wet on dry on the edges to create a hard edge, but the paint will nicely spread in the water inside the shape. Use a small brush size four, and apply those various shades of beige on the entire church. Start from the top, carefully covering the top of the tower, and then go down changing the colors along the way. In some areas, I can even see some greens. So I'm adding a bit of that color to the idea at this point is to cover the whole building with a light tone. And later, when this layer dries, we will add the details. The walls of the church are more yellowish brown, so use a mix of transparent yellow with burnt sienna, yellow ocher. Leave it to dry completely. When it's dry, we can start working on the details. First mix some black and mix of burnt sienna and Payne's gray. We'll need a good amount of it because we will have to cover the roofs. Start from the top. There is a star at the very top. And I switched to a triple zero spotter brush because it's really, really small. Now painted the roof with the black, making sure to keep nice and clean edges. There are two openings, so paint around them. The bigger dome has a highlight on the left. I think we should create that lighter area because it helps to define the form of the dome. So first, paint the darkest parts, and then using more watered down black paint, the lighter left part of the dome. Be asked careful and precise as you can when painting those straight lines and the edges. Now I don't know the correct terms for those elements of the building, but they're alike. Simple straight ornaments which are more yellowish. So change the color to yellow, ocher or a mix of transparent yellow and burnt sienna. And paint those stripes using wet on dry technique. Paint. Also the dark window shape on the left wall. Now under window in front first apply yellowish brown on the entire shape and then add black in the upper part and try to create that nice transition from black to brown. Continue adding the details on the tower. Pick up a little bit of cobalt blue and add it to the wall. Start from the bottom side and going up, make it lighter. In the upper part. Add more yellowish brown to add that nice warm glow. I'm using a little bit of dry brush technique here to get some texture on the wall. Darken some areas and add more color if you need to. This front side that is facing us is actually in the shadows. So keep in mind that every wall that is facing towards us should be slightly darker than the walls on the left. There's also a yellowish brown stripe around the window. So paint that as well using wet on dry technique and add those three dark dots. Use yellowish brown to paint the area under the roof. And the walls. Change the color in the lower parts to more beige or blue. Now, use black to paint the darkest elements on the roof. Now let's move on to paint the Windows. Start by applying brown first. Then using a slightly darker brown tone at shadows on the right edge of each window. This will add some dimension to the windows. Few other windows with a light tone of brown and black. When this first layer dries, we'll add more details. Now use a mixture of burnt sienna and Payne's gray to cover the entire roof. Paint, also the smaller roof using a bit more coupled blue, fuel, the inside parts of the windows with black. Now using black paint also, the gutters darken some of the walls if you feel the need darkening. I'm adding more colors to the walls in the shadows to darken them. Now, what is happening between the bars of the bridge remains a mystery. I can see some buildings there. But because those are also not the main important elements, I'm not going to recreate it very carefully. What it's there. I'm just painting similar shapes, similar colors. I'm adding some greens to suggest some bushes, and that's all. To finish the Church use a black again and add some texture on the roofs to indicate roof tiles. And the bigger roof, I'm adding lines running from bottom to top. And on a smaller roof, I'm adding a few rows of dots just to create that impression of roof tiles. Add some more details if you like, maybe you would like to darken some of the walls a bit more. Or maybe you would like to add some texture to the walls. Feel free to do this. I think I'll leave it at this point. When you finish, let's move on to the last part and paint the breach. 12. Bridge: For the bridge will need are black and mix of burnt sienna, Payne's gray and also some brown burnt sienna may be a bit muted down with the black. Now using a brush size ten covered the first bar with brown. Leave a thin white and painted stripe for a highlight. Along the way, change the color to black. I'm going to paint the left side of the bridge first, looking from the pillar. And then I'll go to the right side, which will be very similar. Use black and go over the bar again to make it much darker, but leave some gaps for the brown to show through. Repeat the process on all other bars. The last bar has more light to it. I'm using more transparent yellow here. Now go over each bar again with exactly the same colors. The second layer will make them deeper. The black will be darker. When you finish the horizontal bars, use black and brown to paint the vertical posts. The repeat the process on the other side of the bridge. Now let's take a look at the pillar. There is a wide range of colors there, but most importantly, we can see a long vertical streaks that are most characteristic element of the pillar. That is what we are going to focus on. We want to recreate that impression of dark vertical streaks with soft edges. To do that, begin by applying a neutral gray mix of cobalt blue and the burnt sienna at the bottom, and then change the color to burnt sienna. We have two main colors of the pillar, and now we need to create those streaks. If we run our brush loaded with black quickly over those colors, we can create those streaks that will soften in the damp paint. Work on the texture here, gradually apply one brush stroke after another. Remembering that the more concentrated paint, the less spreading there will be. That's important when we use black here. Thick paint consistency allows us to not only paint a very deep dark tone, but it also prevents the paint from spreading too much. Add more brown, gray or black depending on the area, and gradually darken the pillar with those colors. Finally, there are two more things we need to do. The first one is to lift out some of the paint from the bottom of the edge. This way, I'm making the bottom side smoother and lighter. The very last thing is to add some grasses that are in front of the bridge. Now when the bridge is painted, we can come back to our grasses. We can use white gouache mixed with yellows, greens, and browns to add some more high grasses. I'm using here at Designers brush size zero. And the painting is finished. Now we can remove the masking tape and reveal nice sharp edge. It was not a short project, but it was it wasn't a short project, but it was really enjoyable. I hope you liked it and you will give it a go to Happy painting. Bye.