THE OLD RED BOAT

1. THE OLD RED BOAT - INTRODUCTION: Hello, and a very warm welcome to my online watercolor class. In this video, I'm going to show you how to paint this lovely old weathered red boat that's been abandoned in the marshlands. And I'll show you how to use artistic license to convert this rather dull reference photo into a more lively and colorful composition. It's a wonderful subject, just perfect for radiant, luminous watercolors. It might seem a bit daunting at first, but you're going to be able to watch over my shoulder as I guide you through it every step of the way. It's beginner friendly, even if you've never touched watercolors before, or if you're an experienced artist, looking for some different ideas. There's a magical feeling you get when painting with watercolors. And once you know the basics, it is easy. Anyone can do it. Like any other skill, it just takes a bit of practice and enthusiasm. We'll be using the wet on wet technique to create a lovely soft ethereal sky. I'll show you how to use sandpaper to get a weather defect. In fact, it's jam packed with watercolor techniques, tips, and tricks, and I know you're going to find it really inspiring as we take an artistic journey into the marshes. We've included a copy of the drawing in the project resources section so that you can download it and trace it, and then not worry about the drawing because this is a painting class. I am a professional artist, author, and tutor, and over the years, I've sold a lot of work across the world and helped hundreds of people to learn more about watercolor. Art is my absolute passion, and I truly believe that painting is hugely beneficial for everyone. You can see examples of my work on my website. My style leans towards impressionistic and contemporary rather than photorealistic. I like to explore loose approaches that bring out the color, light, and essence of my subjects. I've tried to replicate this across all the many other videos that I have on Skillshare. Please don't worry if your painting doesn't look exactly like mine. Lowry never worried whether he looked like Van goths or Picasso's. We all have our own unique style just like our fingerprint. And with that understanding, it's time to get on with the painting. 2. Materials, drawing. Paint sky, hills, water and inside boat. Wet-on-wet and wet-on dry.: Hi there, and a very warm welcome to my online watercolor class. Today we're going to be painting this old red boat Nestlin in the marshes. I'm going to be sharing lots of my favorite tips and techniques with you, such as how to paint the lovely soft sky, the weathered texture on the old boat, and the grasses in the marshes. I know you're going to love creating this painting, and I'm sure it will put a really big smile on your face, too. You can either watch the whole video through and have a good at the painting afterwards, or you can paint right alongside me as I guide you through it. Now, regarding my materials, these are the ones that I'm using. But if you have different colors, then don't be afraid to use the ones that you've already got. Most of my paints are either transparent or semi transparent, which will allow the white of the paper to shine through. And this is what gives watercolor its wonderful radiance. I tend to keep opaque paints for when I want to cover up the underlying paper or layer of paint. Now you can see that I've kept the drawing very simple, minimal detail so that we get a nice, loose, free flow painting. And I've included a copy of the drawing in the project resources section so that you can download it and trace it, and then not worry about the drawing because this is a painting class. To start off, I'm using the wet on wet technique to paint a lovely soft sky. Now, there are two main techniques in watercolor, which is the wet on dry and the wet on wet techniques. The wet on dry technique is simply putting wet paint on top of dry paper or painting on top of paint that's already dry. And this results in a stronger color and a more defined edge where the paint ends, and the paint will only go where the brush takes it. So you have much more control with this technique. The wet on wet technique gives you less control. First of all, you wet the paper with clean water and then apply wet paint on top of the wet paper and let it spread into the wet wash. Now, this results in a lovely diffused effect with soft edges. And because the paint mixes into the wetness of the paper, the color is diluted. You can see that that's exactly what's happening now. I've pre wet with my hate brush, the whole of the sky area, and then dropping in now some cerulean blue. And it's a process of osmosis, really, where the wet on the paper is soaking up the color from the tip of my brush. And because the paper is so wet, I'm getting these lovely soft drifts of blue, no hard edges and leaving some space in between for the white clouds. And yes, you do have to work quickly for this technique because once that paper starts to dry, I will no longer get these nice soft blends of color. If you spend too long painting the sky, using this technique, it will just become muddy, labored, and overworked. So if you haven't used this technique before, I suggest you try it out first, practice it on a piece of spare paper, and just judge for yourself how long it takes before the paper dries and you start getting those hard edges. Now, I am keeping it pretty much a blue and white sky, but I'm adding a little touch of naples yellow here just to add some variety to the sky and give it a little bit of a sunny feel. Of course, you have to be careful when you are painting yellow where there is some blue because there's a danger that if you overlap the colours, you'll get a green, and you don't want that in your sky. So I am being mindful to place that yellow in the white areas and not overlapping onto the blue. To add a little bit of stronger color and depth to the sky, I'm adding some cobalt blue in a few areas over the top of the cerulium. I'm not covering the entire cerulean color, and because the paint is still wet, the papers still wet, that darker blue is blending nicely into the underlying wash. And then the other thing that I like to do to encourage the colours to flow and blend into each other is pick my paper up and give it a good old shake. And that's a lot more effective than using your brush to drag the color backwards and forwards into each other, get a much softer, gentle appearance. And then I can have a look at it, see if I need any more touches of this darker blue anywhere, just to emphasize the cloud areas as well, getting underneath those. I think I'm just going to add a little bit of yellow to my central area. The color has started to sink in. Watercolor does tend to dry 20 to 30% lighter than when you first put it in. And the paper is starting to dry now, so it's time to stop and not overwork it. Now, to paint the distant hills in the background, I've added a little touch of indigo to my cobalt blue, and it's a very watery consistency about the consistency of tea. It's quite a small shape, so I'm using a small brush with a good point, which enables me to make some interesting edges along the top row of this background. There might be houses, there might be trees. It's very abstract. It's nothing particular. It is important, however, to get the bottom line of this row horizontal, completely straight. And as you can see, I'm adding a little bit of stronger indigo along that bottom horizon line to strengthen it and give it some depth. Now, if you don't have a steady hand to paint this horizon line completely flat and straight, you could use a piece of masking tape, put that along the bottom edge just below the horizon line, and then you can paint your little hills and trees and distant background. And then when it's dry, remove the masking tape, and you'll have a perfectly straight line. There is a little bit of a danger when using masking tape, however, on a painting, that when you do remove it, it can tear the paper if you're not careful. So I do prefer to just take my time and just paint straight off with a brush. If you do remove the masking tape, if you use a hair dryer and just blow the warm air underneath it, that will help to remove it without tearing the paper. I'm sticking with my blue colours to paint the inside of the boat. And this time, I'm using the wet on dry technique, so that's wet paint on dry paper. I'm not pre wetting it first. So I'll have much more control about where the paint goes. So that's mainly cerulean blue, cobalt blue, and I'll be putting some little touches of indigo here and there as well. I'm thinking about which areas are darker in shadow, such as under the seats, and that's where I'll be putting my darker blue. And I'm not covering every square millimeter of it. I'm leaving little touches of white in between here and there, in between the color because it is an old weathered boat, so even the insides of the boat will be peeling and rough. I'm using darker color just underneath the lip of the boat and also either side of the struts. The upside of painting an old weathered and abandoned boat like this is that you don't have to be too careful. It hasn't just come out of the showroom, so it's not in pristine condition. And if you make a few little raggedy strokes here and there, that actually will be in keeping with the character. If you do add any paint somewhere and you don't want it, you can just use a bit of paper towel to dab it off or use a damp brush, a thirsty brush to lift it off. And that's as much as I need to do at this stage. I will be adding a little bit more color, a second layer later on. To paint the water, I'm using the same colors that I use for the sky because these are the colors that will be reflected in it. So serlem blue, cobalt blue, and a little touch of that naples yellow. Now, I'm dampening the area of water, not wetting it as much as I did the sky. It's more of a damp sort of wetness. I'm going around the areas that are going to be painted green for the marshes later, but I'm not too worried if I get a little bit of color going over them, because everything is a bit mixed around this area, you've got the water running into the marshes. I'm starting with my lightest blue, the cerulem and just stroking in some horizontal shapes for the water and again, leaving quite a bit of white in between where the clouds are reflecting into the water. In fact, I am keeping the area of water quite light in tone because when I come on to paint the boat later on, that is going to be really quite strong, and it is the focal point of the painting. And we need a nice contrast when painting. We need some harmony, but we also need some variety. So to get a nice contrast, I must keep the water quite light against the dark tones of the boat later on. Just as when I painted the sky, you can see that by using this wet on wet technique, I'm still getting these nice, soft, horizontal strokes, blend of color in the water. And again, I'm being mindful to add my yellow into the white spaces between the blue. Strictly speaking, the yellow should be immediately beneath the yellow that's in the sky, but that would be under the boat, which we can't see. And we do need to put a little bit of that yellow color somewhere else in the painting. Wherever you do use a color, you want to give it a little bit of harmony by adding it in another place. So I am adding it off center just to keep that balance. Now I'm bringing the blue into the smaller areas between the marshes. Again, you don't want to overdo this, a few little touches here and there, still leaving plenty of white in between. Using my cerulean blue, adding a little bit of the cobalt to darken it, and even a little touch of the indigo here and there just underneath where the marshes are sitting. Whilst I've been painting the water, the blue color that I put in the boat has dried, so I'm going back in now with a little bit more of my darker indigo color just to emphasize some of those shadow areas a little bit more. A I'm happier now with the added definition of those shadows and darker areas, so it's time to let it all dry and move on to the next step. But. 3. Paint boat exterior and its reflections in water - first layer. : I've started this section with a little bit of information on tonal values because these are what will really give the boat its three D rounded appearance, and they are extremely important in any painting. So you might want to just pause the video for a moment and have a read through. Although the boat is going to be a very vivid red, I do like to give it a yellow undercoat because I find that most reds tend to dry a little bit on the dull side, a bit flat, and giving them that bit of yellow underwash gives it a bit of energy, a bit of a zing. I'm using handsome yellow light, which is a bright light yellow and quincadon gold, which is a darker richer yellow. So I'm using those intermittently. I'm starting off with the benches inside the boat and the little struts. I'm using quinacaron gold for those because the inside of the boat will be a little bit more in shadow than the outside. The paint is quite watery about the consistency of tea, and I'm keeping the tone a little bit darker on the left hand side and lighter as it moves towards the right. That's particularly on the benches. You can see on the right hand side, they are much lighter than on the left. And now I'm stroking the color over the outside the exterior of the boat. I'm using some light yellow in some places and the quin gold in others. So again, adding a little bit of variety to inject a bit of zing and interest into this underlying wash. But because I'm painting quickly, those two colors are intermingling and blending into each other. So I'm getting some lighter tones and some mid tones in the yellow. Whenever you're painting any shape, you do need to think about the tones. Where are the light tones, the mid tones, and the dark tones? And it's that combination that will give any shape a three D sort of rounded effect and help to make it look more solid. And just as I did when I was painting the inside of the boat with the blue colours, I'm leaving little bits of white, unpainted paper here and there. Again, that'll help to just give it a sort of a rough weather defect. I'm just adding a few little touches of blue that I used earlier to the lip of my boat around that top edge. I should have probably done it earlier, but better late than never. I've got a big juicy pool of cadmium red, which I'm now dropping in to the left hand side of the boat. And you can see that the underlying yellow wash is still wet. So I am now painting wet and wet and it's blending and mixing nicely with that yellow underwash. The consistency of the red paint is a little bit thicker than the yellow. So although it is blending, it's not moving massively. I can still control it. And it's just moving softly towards that central area. In other words, the thicker you paint is when you apply it to a wet underwash, the less it will spread. If you apply very watery paint into a underwash, it will just flood the area. But if you have, say, a slightly thicker consistency of paint, it won't flood quite as much. I'm imagining that the paint will have worn away a lot more on that lip of the boat going around the top. So I'm just adding little touches of red in and amongst the yellow and blue to give it, again, a more sort of worn appearance where the red paint has probably peeled off under the strong sunlight. I want the left hand side of the boat to be darker in tone than the right hand side, where it's more in the light. So I'm now adding some darker red, zaring crimson to this left hand area. And as you can see, I'm not blocking it in as you would do a children's coloring book. I'm adding little touches of this zaring color here and there, so that again, I get a sort of a mottled look, a mottled appearance in these two colors. Okay. And when I go over to that right hand side of the boat, I've picked up some more cadmium red, the lighter red, and using that to again stroke that across the boat exterior. I'm mostly using horizontal strokes because the planks of wood that have been used to make the boat obviously are going across horizontally. So it helps to convey that again by using the same horizontal brush strokes. Having said that, I am using a few downward ones, a few downward strokes here on this left side, because where it is more in the light, I want it to look as though the red paint has peeled away, and it's leaving some of that yellow underwash. I've got a few little areas of white that I've missed, so I'm just adding a little bit more yellow into those. So that's that yellow showing through underneath the peeling red paint. Having completed the red boat itself, we can now turn our attention to painting the reflections of it in the water. There are many different ways that you can paint reflections in water because it may vary from a fast rushing stream, a calm lake, a raging storm or just a shallow puddle. In addition to the objects surrounding it, water will also reflect the sky color above it, clouds or sunsets and any objects below it, minerals, silt up, pebbles and microscopic life on the waterbed. Unlike a shadow, a reflection will always appear directly beneath what is above it. Reflections are not actually in the water, but on its surface. So the reflection wiggles following the movement of the water. In general, you first pre wet the water surface with horizontal strokes to create a smooth base. And then using colors that are softened and a little bit more diluted, dulled than what is in the reflected object, paint vertical and horizontal brush strokes to mirror the shapes in the water. For added realism, leave small gaps or use a dry brush to create shimmer effects or subtle highlights and then gently layer horizontal strokes of lighter or darker shades, where you need to represent ripples or movement and light on the water's surface. So essentially, we are painting a mirror image of what is above. And as you can see, I've started off with the yellow, the handsome yellow light, and the quingld yellow colours and painted those in the reflections first. And now I'm adding in the cadmium red and a lazarin where those are placed in the boat above. The yellow and red shape that I've painted immediately to the left of the boat is actually not so much in water, but it's reflected color from the boat onto the wet grasses. I'm painting all the reflections quite loosely, using horizontal strokes in the main and keeping those quite loose and broken to represent some of the ripples that will be breaking up the water surface. Immediately below the boat, there is a long thin shadow area of color. Now, I'm putting the yellow and red on to start with, but I will be putting the darker color in a future layer later on. I'm adding a little bit more lazarin crimson, the darker red, just at the top edge of this reflection that I'm painting now where it's immediately underneath the grasses, so there will be the shadow from the marshes just sinking into that reflection. A 4. Paint boat exterior and its reflections - second layer. Intensify tonal values.: The boat is really starting to take shape now. I've got some nice light tones. I've got a mixture of medium and medium dark tones. But what's missing is some really strong darks that will just give it that extra zing. This section of the video is about doing exactly that. You do need to be a little bit brave and go for it. I know that sometimes people do find it a bit scary to add some really dark darks. But if the painting is looking a little bit bland and lifeless, then it's really not finished properly, and you do need to intensify those darker tones. I'm strengthening the dark torn just below the lip of the boat going all the way around underneath that edge. And then also into the interior, particularly between the struts and below the benches. I've got two pools of paint in my palette I've got a pool of indigo and a pool of indigo with a little bit of black mixed into it. So two very, very strong colours. The mix is thicker than what we've been using. So around about the consistency of single cream, and because I'm painting using the wet on dry technique, in order to blend some of these dark colours, this dark paint into the underlying wash in certain places, I'll be using what's called the blending and softening technique. Blend and soften a hard edge, you need to use a clean damp brush to pull the paint away from the hard edge and blend it softly until the colour disappears into the white of the paper or the underlying wash. You may need to clean and dry your brush and repeat the process several times in order to get that gradual gradation of color until it disappears into nothingness. It may sound like quite a simple technique, but in fact, it is quite a difficult one to master. So do practice it because it will make a massive difference to all your paintings. As you watch me painting along in this section of the video, you'll see that I use a mixture of hard and soft lines. So some of them I'm painting and leaving alone, not softening them, but wanting that extra definition. And in other places, I'm using that blending and softening technique that we just looked at in order to soften some of the hard lines into the underlying wash. I'm going to just let you watch the rest of this section as I paint along, but I'll add some annotations here and there, where I think I need to point something out. And I'll pop back in at the end of this section just to round it off. An an k I'm starting to wrap up this section now, but I'm sure you'll agree that being brave and adding these really strong darks has made a massive difference to the appearance and structure of our lovely red boat. 5. Paint grasses and marshland in a loose, impressionist style. : I'm going to paint the foreground marshland and grasses in a very loose impressionistic style. The focus of the painting is the old red boat. So I don't want to have a lot of detail in the surrounding areas because that will just detract from the main focus. I've got the two yellow colours that we use for the boat still in my palette, so that's handsome yellow light, a light yellow, and quin gold, which is a darker golden yellow. And I've also mixed up some green appetite genuine by Daniel Smith. Now, if you don't have that color, you can use any other green that you have, or you can mix some greens with different blues and yellows. But if there's one color that I really do recommend that you indulge in, it would be this green appetite genuine. And the reason for that is that nearly all other greens don't granulate. They give you a very flat, smooth surface. But the green appetite genuine does mottle it does granulate. So you get this lovely mottled variegated foliage effect without really having to try. It is a bit on the expensive side, but a little goes a long way. And you can add yellow to it if you want a lighter green, or you could add ultramarine or even indigo if you wanted to make a dark green. So it is quite versatile. Now, you can see that I've used my two yellow colors to paint the area above and behind and to the left of the boat. That paint is still very wet, and I'm just adding in little touches of my green color here and there. The consistency of the green is a little bit thicker than the consistency of the two yellow colors that are used. And that means that although it's blending and softening into the yellow underwash, it's not flooding it. It's staying pretty much put, but also diffusing slightly into the underwash. And then I'm adding a few little touches of burnt umber. And while that paint is still wet, I'm using an unwound paper clip to just flick up some of that paint to represent small individual grass shapes. If you don't have a paper clip, you can use a cocktail stick or a pencil or the points of a very small brush. The thing that you need to be careful of is very similar to when we did the very small cracks on the boat. You don't want to make these grasses all flick up in the same direction or the same width. If you look at grasses out in nature, you'll see that some of them lean towards the left, some towards the right, some straight up. So they're a little bit higgledy piggledy, and that is how you want to flick up the strokes to mirror that. And you don't have to put in too many. The viewer's eye will fill in any empty spaces. Whilst I got some of this brown color on my brush, I'm just going to wiggle in a few random shapes onto this small white area where the boat's name goes. Doesn't have to say anything particularly just a few random abstract squiggles. And then back to working my way around the boat. And I'm adding some dark green. I've added a little bit of indigo to my green color for this side of the boat, and I'm just painting that very loosely over this left hand side. The grasses are a little bit nearer to us here in the foreground, so I'm just using my rigger brush to flick up some more grass shapes. So these are a little bit thicker than the ones that I painted earlier in the distance. A rigger brush is a very useful addition to your brush set because it's got very long thin hairs. And because it has got long hairs, the brush holds more paint than a normal brush would of that size. And so you don't have to dip it in and out of your paints as much. As you can see, I'm not painting particularly careful. I'm using lots of random shapes here, and in fact, quite a nice things happen. That red shape that I painted earlier as reflected color is almost turned into the appearance of a small rock. And this is how things happen in watercolor. Sometimes you get these happy accidents. You didn't mean to do something, but you let the watercolor have a bit of free in and do its whole thing, and nice things happen. I I'm continuing to work around the boat and underneath it, painting this grassy marshland with my two yellows, the handsome yellow light and quin gold, and my green and a little bit of burnt umber. I'm using the same process, putting the first color on wet paint on dry paper. And then when I drop the other colors into that wet wash, I will get a nice soft blend here and there, and I'll get some hard edges, so a nice mixture. There will be some darker shadow where the edges of the marshland meet the water. So I'm adding a little bit of burnt umber around those edges to give that area some depth. When you paint in this loose impressionistic way, there's really no set recipe or procedure for doing it. A lot of it is intuitive. So don't worry if yours doesn't look exactly like mine. It's really not a problem. Just try and go with where the watercolor takes you, and you can even put in a few extra clumps of grass wherever you think it might suit or leave bits out. It's your painting, so you can improvise on this as much as you want. I'm going to carry on with this process now, filling in the rest of the marshes and grassland, and I'm gonna let you watch the video alone. And I'll jump back in again when I start to do something new. An Thank an an 6. Final touches: use sandpaper and white paint. Add some birds to balance the composition.: I'm using a small piece of rough sandpaper, and I'm just going to rub it over a few areas on the boat to roughen the paintwor up a little bit and increase its weathered appearance. The sandpaper, we'll just catch on the little bumps in the watercolor paper, and it'll leave behind this sort of distressed effect. You can also use sandpaper in this way to add highlights to water. So if you've got any areas of blue that are too strong in your painting where you've painted the water, then just skim over with a bit of sandpaper in the same way that I'm doing now, and you will reveal some lovely little highlights on it. The area behind the boat is looking a little bit dense, so I'm just spattering on a little bit of white gouache or you can use some white acrylic. If it's too bright, just dab it off with some paper towel to knock it back a bit. But that just injects a little bit of energy and interest into some of those dark areas and kind of gives them a bit of a lift. Okay. There's quite a lot going on on the left hand side of the painting. So to balance the composition, I'm just going to add a few little birds to the right hand side of the sky. Now, it's a good idea to pencil them in before you paint them just to make sure they look right and you've got the right number and in the right place. And keep them small. We don't want any albatrosses flying overhead. I mixed a little bit of indigo with some burnt umber to make a dark gray, and I'm using this gray color to paint the birds instead of a pure black. If I was to paint them black against this white cloud, it would make this area the highest area of contrast, and that would distract the viewer's eye from the boat, which is what I want to be the focal point. I The danger now is that you can be tempted to add more birds or more grasses, more marshland, and you begin to start fiddling and overworking it. So I'm going to call this painting finished. I do hope you've enjoyed this painting and that you've learned some tips and techniques along the way that you can incorporate into your own paintings. And why not pop it into a mount and a frame, and you'll be amazed how good it looks when you do that? If you've enjoyed this video, it might encourage you to have a look at some of my other classes. I've got lots of lovely subjects loaded with more tips and techniques to help you with your own exciting art journey. I'd really love to see your own finished painting, which you can upload to the your project section. And if you could just take a moment to leave me a short review, that also would be really great. In the meantime, thank you for joining me, and I look forward to seeing you next time Happy painting. 7. THE OLD RED BOAT FINAL THOUGHTS: Well done on completing our lovely old weathered boat abandoned in the marshes. We've covered quite a few different techniques as you've been following alongside of me. Instead of just copying the reference photos, we've used them in a more loose and imaginative way. Use the wet on wet technique, putting wet paint on wet paper. We used the wet on dry technique, putting wet paint on dry paper. And we also looked at how to paint reflections in the water. And we considered the importance of tonal values in a successful painting. We added some final touches, including adding a few birds in order to balance the composition. And if you've enjoyed this video, do have a look at my other classes on Skillshare, which are packed with more tips and techniques to help you on your own art journey. I would really love to see your own finished painting, which you can upload to the your project section. And if you could just take a moment to leave me a short review, that also would be really great. In the meantime, thank you for joining me, and I look forward to seeing you next time Happy painting.