The Watercolor Painting Series - Neutralised Linear Landscapes | The Artmother | Skillshare
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The Watercolor Painting Series - Neutralised Linear Landscapes

teacher avatar The Artmother, Professional Art Teacher and Artist

Watch this class and thousands more

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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.

      Introduction

      2:39

    • 2.

      Neutralising Color Palettes

      2:47

    • 3.

      Stylisation

      2:25

    • 4.

      Composition of Landscapes

      1:22

    • 5.

      Water

      9:55

    • 6.

      Sky 1

      8:27

    • 7.

      Sky 2

      6:09

    • 8.

      Mountains

      9:46

    • 9.

      Final Thoughts

      0:50

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About This Class

Welcome to "The Watercolor Painting Series"! These series are designed the way that each class can stand alone and is complete on its own, but if you are here for the first time, this is the third episode.

The first one was dealing with monochrome botanical patterns, the second with analogous geometric diamonds, and now we are here to explore neutralised linear landscapes. Each class has three ingredients: Art theory, Color theory and a Trending Topic.

In this class we will learn about stylisation, the neutralising color palettes and the composition of landscape paintings. We are going to create trending landscapes in three topics: Water, Sky and Mountains.

The class is ideal for very beginners. These series are built up in a way that it takes a very beginner through art fundamentals which are important to understand and are essentails for creating art. As a professional art teacher, I am passionate about teaching art fundamentals for very beginners to build a stable and deep knowledge and understanding on which they can build later on.

In these first three classes, all the projects are chosen to be simple, with super simple painting techniques so that beginners can acquire the knowledge without being distracted by complicated tasks. We are focusing on painting simple shapes, brush control and color, to be able to master the medium itself with easy topics and techniques. After these fundamentals are mastered, we can enter more complicated topics as perspective, dimensions, shadows and light. These topics will come in the series later on.

So, are you ready to take learn with me?

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The Artmother

Professional Art Teacher and Artist

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Level: Beginner

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Transcripts

1. Introduction: [MUSIC] Welcome to the watercolor painting series. This course is designed in the way that each class can stand alone and it's complete on its own. But if you are here for the first time, this is the third episode. The first time we were dealing with monochrome botanical patterns. In the second episode, we explored the analogous geometric diamonds and now we are going to deal with neutralized linear landscapes. Each class has three ingredients, art theory, color theory, and a trending topic. In this class, we are going to learn about stylization, neutralizing color palettes and the composition of landscapes. We are going to create free trending landscapes in the topics of water, sky, and mountains. The class is ideal for very beginners. This series are designed in the way that it takes a very beginner for art fundamentals, which are important to understand and are essentials for creating art. My name is Alexandra Gabor. I'm a professional art teacher with a master's degree in art education and my passion is to help beginners to build a strong base of knowledge. You can find me online by the name The Artmother. Follow me on social media, on Instagram and Facebook, and join my growing tribe off more than 12,000 members in the watercolor painting for beginners Facebook group. Which is full of enthusiastic beginners. What do you say, let's get started. [MUSIC] 2. Neutralising Color Palettes: [MUSIC] Neutralizing color palettes. Yeah, I know it sounds weird, but you will get it in a second. In my own painting style, I love to use vibrant colors. By vibrant I mean really vibrant. Among my paints, I keep aniline paints, which are ridiculously cheap and actually the most vibrant paint I have ever seen, and they are intended for kids. To compensate the vibrancy, I often use colors to neutralize it, like gray, indigo, black, brown, and gold. Did I hear black? Yeah, you can paint black. There is the urban legend avoiding black in painting, mainly with watercolors because it can make your color muddy and flat, and you should mix your black with some complementaries. That's a face emoji for me because I love black and with my vibrant paint, they are absolutely not making anything flat, but rather pop and they really make an amazing effect. But you need to be able to use them. This urban legend comes from beginners tending to paint outlines for the paintings with black. Basically following the logic of drawing, where you draw the outlines and colored shapes, but not with watercolors. You need to use black as a color, not as an outlining paint. That is true, but actually with all the colors that if you mix it around like crazy, you will mix mud. So, you can use black, but in a controlled way. Back to these neutralizing colors. They give the vibrant paintings, a bit of a harmony, and I know from my teaching experience that beginners tend to use also too much color and do not touch these ones a lot. My number one rule when painting is to use not more than three different colors plus some neutralizing ones. But now we're stylizing anyways. So we're going to use more and more from these colors. [NOISE] Let me just show you. With the first painting, we are going to use two colors and a neutralizing color. In a second, we're going to use only one color and two neutralizing colors. In the last one, we are going to use only neutralizing colors. What fun! I love experimenting. 3. Stylisation: Sterilization. Sterilization is referring to intentionally simplified, and generalized visual depiction of objects, or scenes. It is achieved by simplification of line, form, color, and flattened space. I emphasized intentional because sterilization often has reasons. Most of the stylized artworks are rather declarative and, or are expressive. Let's talk about Picasso, or some minimalist painters like Piet Mondrian, who is rather an extreme example for stylizing a concept. They didn't paint the way they did because they couldn't paint. Because so, for example, at the age of 14, was able to paint anything realistically, but he didn't want to and started experimenting with stylizing some facial features in his portraits, which actually led him to success. Sterilization is often used in cartoons and animations too. Let's see the simple process of sterilition. Let's say we have a watermelon. As we said, sterilization is about simplifying line, form and color, and flattened space. Therefore, we are not going to paint a watermelon in a 3D form, only take the simple shape of a cut piece of a watermelon. A quarter of a circle, and that's right for the shape. We have some seeds, so we can simply just draw it inside as well as the color. The point is not going too much in detail again. No deep shadows or highlights, only pure red, green, and black for the seats. We have a stylized watermelon. Stylized painting style is suitable for very beginners because it simplifies the painting process. You don't need to think about dimensions, shadows, highlights, space, but focus on painting itself, mastering color, paints, and brush control, and still get wonderful results. We're going to paint three stylized landscape, but let's learn a bit about the composition of landscape first. 4. Composition of Landscapes: Composition of landscapes. There are two concepts you need to understand when it comes to landscapes. The horizon line and the vanishing point. The horizon line is the borderline between the sky and the land. The placement of the horizon line is crucial because it determines the focus of a painting. If we place the horizon line low our focus is on the sky. If you place it high, the focus is on the land. Now, if you place it in the center, usually our focus is not on the landscape itself, but something different that is placed into a landscape. The vanishing point is a point on the horizon line where things become so far away and so small that they vanish. If we have one vanishing point, we are talking about one-point perspective. If we don't have a vanishing point, it is a linear landscape and that's what we are going to deal with. We are going to paint three stylized linear landscapes and now you can write this expression up to your dictionary. 5. Water: [MUSIC] Let's start with the water. I have a 300 grams cold press watercolor paper here. I have my Winsor and Newton half pan set, a middle-size branch, a detailed brush, some water, paper towel. What I'm going to use is this aniline paint actually it is intended for kids. But it is the most vibrant color I've ever seen. This is what I'm going to use in this project. We're going to create water. As we talked about the composition of the landscape, we are going to paint our horizon line in the upper third, so that the dominance is in the water. We are going to use this color palette. I don't know if you can see it. Yes, you can see. Patella blue and sap green are going to be my two colors. I can see my dominant color is going to be patella blue. I'm going to use sap green as an additional color. I'm going to mix these two, so there will be different tones and mixtures, which will make the water even more interesting. My neutralizing color is indigo and that's what I'm going to use on the sky. Let's get started. I also have a pencil and we're going to create this round shape. Take something round and simply draw it around, try to place it in the mail. Now, we have a nice circle. Let's find approximately the upper third and simply just draw a white line. Now, what I want to say, we're going to use this style or this technique of painting that we're going to paint. We're going to draw the lines of the waves and actually fill the spaces between the lines. We're going to leave this white space border. It is a perfect technique for beginners and a weary beginners because beginners tend to be weary. Not patient, impatient. If we don't want our neighboring surfaces to bleed into each other, we need to either wait until the surface dries or leave a whitespace border. It is a modern technique and it's very cool. We are going for this. Simply draw waves and try to make them cross each other. You can see like this, second wave. They don't even need to cross everywhere. All you need is to have few waves. I missed a line here, so I'm going to make it like this. Now, I'm going to mix my colors. I'm going to mix my paints on my palette because I want them to run into each other to make different shades. For example, for teal. Now, look at this color. It's beautiful. I'm just taking the blue here and clean your brush and take sap green. A little bit here. Nice vibrant colors. Actually they are ridiculously cheap. I mean, this aniline, they're beautiful. They are not too fast. If you place it on a direct sunlight, it will fade quickly but they're beautiful and see, makes them all around. We'll get beautiful tail, wow, this is so great. I love teal so much and this paint as well. Dip your brush and try to fill these shapes. Try to keep an even whitespace border. Apart from these pencil marks. Dip your brush here and there so that you can get a variety of colors within one one. If you don't have this aniline colors, which I think you don't, don't be afraid. Just take any blue and green. But if you have the sap green and the patella blue because it really makes a nice teal. But just mix them around and just personalize this to yourself. Yes and I'm sometimes dipping my brush into the original color to get the pure blue, for example. I sometimes use the detail brush to make nicer lines at the edges but maybe I'm not going to use it now. I think we need a bit more blue here. Wow. What I'm basically doing is just filling these shapes with deep colors and it's beautiful. Now, we have our water finished and I forgot to draw the moon up here. A simple circle. I'm going to add clean pure color. I mean, from the patella blue up here. Yes. Cool. Now, let's get into the indigo. I have it right here. It is going to make this vibrant water bit more neutral. Simply just paint the sky with it. Amazing. This is our water. If you can see here, I made this water color blue in fact, which I really like, I didn't do it here but I will show you simply just put your brush into the water and just tap water. When it dries, it will just make it nice effect. You can do it on the water as well while it is still wet. Because now if I'm doing it, it will not have that effect. But this is, for example, still wet so I can just simply dab my brush into it and you can see it is making this wonderful watercolor bloom, which I love so much. It has so amazing effect. I didn't do it here but as you can see, it will look like something like this if you want. Not everyone likes it. This is the reason I didn't do it here too much. But okay. We're finished with the water. Let's see the sky. 6. Sky 1: [MUSIC] In this second project, we are going to create a galaxy sky. Yes, as you can see, we are going to use black. As for the colors, I'm not going to use the lamp black from my color palette, but I have concentrated watercolors of Dr. Ph. Martin because their black is just, very hard, to put it, thick in pigments and we'll have a really nice effect. But this one is painted with the lamp black of the Winsor and Newton Sand, as you can see, it is also okay. For the gold, I'm going to use gold, but you don't need to. You can use brown, light brown, or yellow ocher. I think it could work. As for the composition, we're going to put the horizon line low. I've painted these mountains this small so that they don't distract from the sky. Yes, I think that's all. Let's just get started. I'm taking my help again and just place it approximately into the middle. Drawing around. Yes, I'm going to draw the horizon line this low. I think it is enough here. Paint the mountains. I think that's enough. Now I'm taking the Winsor and Newton thing. I'm not going to use the analogous colors, so I'm going to put them aside. It comes with this dropper, or how to call this, in my language is called [FOREIGN] [LAUGHTER] Rub your brush into the water. I'm going to wet my mauve. Yes, I'm going to use this mauve color from the Winsor and Newton color palette but any magenta would do it. Or something violent or pink. Or you can even paint a blue sky if you want like this blue galaxy or if it is green, how you like it. This is really not about following me precisely what I'm doing, but like to try out the concepts. I'm going to put this black. It is actually like it would be ink, just that thick. I'm going to wet it. Now, put the mauve and it will mix a bit. But that's not a bad thing because my white has this red pigments in it. They made the shades of this color and burgundy shade. I just really love it. I put too much of black here, but doesn't really matter. I'm going to use the mauve down here a bit. I can use the detail brush to make a nicer outlines. Just going to mix these two together and to try to lighten it up a bit. Actually, it's gray, it's looks good. You have this part, have this pigments to the middle. Play with the shape. You can be more precise with this. But to be honest, I can't really see from the front because I don't want to put my head under camera too much. But I think that's enough for the sky, i mean the underpainting. But until it's still wet, I'm going to take this brush, this is a dry brush, it has some dust in it also. I'm going to use again white concentrated watercolor. But you can do this with any white watercolor. You need only to wet it a bit. I would need a bit clean water, but I'm just going to do this. It will make my sky a bit lighter. I will add a second layer of these stars after it's dry so that it will be more definite and not bleed into the colors. I really loved the effect this ink did. There are like this pigments that didn't water up, and they are creating an interesting texture. I really love that. What I'm going to use is to use gold, and for that, I need clean water. A second. 7. Sky 2: [MUSIC] I'm back with the clean water and what I'm going to use is this gold set of watercolors. For example, I have this one. This is for textile art, but you can totally use it. This is also gold. Or as I said, light brown or yellow ocher would do the job. Wet your brush, and I'm going to use this blue gold. [NOISE] Wet it up, so beautiful. Now I'm going to carefully paint the mountains. I might choose the detail brush that I have here. You can do this landscape without painting these mountains. I'm just painting the land, with this color or you can think of anything else like buildings, a small cityscape. My point is that our horizon line is low and we are trying to use the color palettes I've presented to you. Actually that's our point. I just want to explain a bit, what's the difference between learning from a working artist and learning from a professional art teacher. Because I've learned from both and I really know what's the difference. The artist will tell you how to paint, and what to paint, but the art teacher will tell you why to paint it like that. When you are like learning a new language. If you are not really talented, the languages, you don't catch them that quickly, learning from an artist is like watching movies or talking to native speaker. You will catch the words, you will catch the phrases, but you will not understand why you need to say it like that. With an art teacher, art teacher will tell you, it'll break the things down to its elements like for vocabulary and grammar rules and things like that. With this project I'm showing you in this course or series, or actually all my classes, is that I'm breaking down these art rules and art theory, art color theory and put it into a comprehensive curriculum. You might think that these projects are ridiculous or too simple or too modern or I don't know. But to be honest, it is like practicing to understand the fundamentals. In this class I already told you, you will understand the compositions and the neutralizing color palettes. That's all. I'm finished with the mountains. They might need one more layer of this gold because I wet it too much, but doesn't really matter right now. [NOISE] I will add this deep black again to the bottom of this painting. You see how nice and thick it is. This is why I allow the concentrated watercolors that much. Because you can do things like this with them. I can add this second layer of sprinkles up here, try to keep it on the sky. I really loved these dry brushes because it is so easy to do this with them. [NOISE] I will just make this clean. I think we're finished and I really love how it turned out. Let's just get to the third landscape. 8. Mountains: [MUSIC] In this third one, we're going to paint mountains. This is the landscape when we are not going to use pure colors, but these neutralizing colors. We're going to use black, indigo, and brown or gold, it depends what you prefer. If you don't have indigo, I'm just going to show you how you can mix it for yourself. Let's just get started. [NOISE] We're going to do the same again. Simply just put this to the middle and draw it around. Not the best, but it'll be good to go. What we're going to do in this landscape is to place the elements into the center. Actually, our horizon line will be down here, but the focus is not going to be on the sky or on the land, but rather on the mountains. This is a central composition. I'm going to draw the horizon line down here approximately and simply just draw some mountains. I'm going to put one mountain here, I will put a second one here, and I can do a little bit bigger here behind it. As you can see, I don't really need to go like smaller as I'm going far away, but the point is or will be that, my color is desaturating as I'm going far and far away. If you go out and look at a landscape, you will notice that the mountains that are far away are simply desaturated. You don't really see its color, there rather this light gray or light indigo colors. I'm going to paint the land black again and start with dark indigo and just add more and more water as I'm painting these mountains and being more lighter and lighter. I've drawn here only five of these mountains, but I'm going to add one more like here, and one more like here, and they are going to be really light. I can start, and what I'm going to do at first is to mix my indigo. For that, I'm going to need the black and the patella blue. The patella blue here, and I will add a bit of black. Let's see what it did. It's not really an integral, but it's a bit desaturated, this shallow blue. As you can see, you can mix several blues with the buck and get this desaturated like a bit greenish color, but it will be good if you don't have indigo. I'm going to use this one now to show you that it looks good, but you can use the indigo itself if you want. Let's start painting. As I said, I'm going to start with the mountains and I'm going to paint the darkest one. Now, I'm just adding more and more water and trying to desaturate. I think they are a bit dark. This, I will just soak to water up a bit. It's bleeding. They look good. Now, I'm going to paint the sky. I can paint it with gold or the light brown. I'm waiting for the light brown to show you. I'm just taking my brown and wetting it up. You should have clean water so I'm going to get [NOISE] clean water. Take your brown, wet it, make this light brown, and just go over the sky, and paint it just to really light brown. With just this indigo, or no, I have just a greenish mixture. I just really love this color. I didn't expect, to be honest, to be like this but it looks so good. Great. I might want to lighten it a bit. If I wanted lighter, I have a paper towel here, I could just soak it up. If you have too much pigment, fill up these steps to take your paper towel, soak up the water, then you can just, with clean water, go over it again and make it smoother, so that this paper towel texture can't be seen. We have a nice surface. Simply, I'm waiting forward to back, black and paint this part with black, and it just looks so cool. [LAUGHTER] See, this is what X prime parenting is good for to find these happy little accidents, mixing colors or trying out the shapes and techniques. You might find your own ways which you're comfortable with. I really love how it turned out. This was our mountains, which we created with neutral colors. I'll just summarize this class. 9. Final Thoughts: [MUSIC] Well, we arrived to the end of this class. I hope you enjoyed it. As a project, please paint at least one of the landscapes and post it into the project gallery. See you in the other episodes.