Travel Painting for Beginners: Watercolor the Tetons

1. Travel Painting for Beginners: Watercolor the Tetons: One of my favorite ways to travel and hike is to bring my painting supplies with me and create this really beautiful moment of stillness and creativity that I can keep with me always the best souvenir. Hi. My name is Colby Bloom, and I have been teaching watercolor and creativity and mindset work for about eight years. I love finding new ways to share creativity with people, whether that's through my books, through online courses or through in person adventures. Recently, I went on a watercolor painting trip to Grand Teton National Park, and I had so much fun that I just couldn't keep it to myself. So this class is all about learning how to take your watercolor on your travels, paint out in the wild, using some reference photos and videos that I took on this adventure to the Tetons. Look, even as a professional painter, going from painting in my studio, at my kitchen table, you know, wherever is most familiar to painting in the wild, painting plain air, which basically just means out in the open air, it can be really frustrating, especially at first. That's why this class isn't only focused on painting some really fun scenes from Grand Teton National Park. It's also going to break down three easy, doable methods for travel watercolor painting, even if you're a beginner. First, we'll break down all the supplies that you need, including supplies that you might think you need, but you really don't. And then we'll go over some watercolor sketching techniques when you're actually sitting outside because painting outside is different from painting in your studio, and it's good to have those things clear before you actually get started. Then we'll get started on our projects, three scenes from Grand Teton National Park. Each of these projects has a really simple hook that will make painting the scenes easier, not only during this class, but also as you go to fill your own sketchbook with your own travel watercolor adventures. Whether you're a beginner painter or you maybe have some experience with watercolor and travel painting, but you're looking for even more ways to explore experiment. This class is hopefully going to help you feel like a real artist when you're out in the wild and actually use those painting supplies instead of letting them gather dust in your pack. Plus, it's a fun way to wander through a beautiful place like Grand Teton National Park without even having to leave your house. So, what do you say? Want to join me? I'll see you in class. 2. Class Projects: Hello, my friend. Welcome to class. I'm so excited to paint the Tetons with you in watercolor and to hopefully teach you some really easy techniques for you to take with you on your travels so that even if you're not traveling to Grand Teton National Park like I did, you can watercolor the world to your heart's content. In this video, we're going to talk about the projects that we're going to complete through this class. We're also going to talk about the techniques that I'm teaching you about travel watercolor painting. The first thing I want to talk about is the term plain air painting, which you may or may not have heard. Plain air painting refers to the style of painting where you are sitting outside, painting what you're looking at. And plain air in French means in the open air, and that's exactly what we're going to practice. The reason I'm talking about it is because plain air painting can be super intimidating. And especially if you've never done it before, the most important thing to remember is it is different from painting in the studio. Even if you have tons of experience, painting landscapes and animals and flowers and all sorts of scenery that you might encounter on your travels in your studio, that doesn't always equate to, you know, take into account the different context of painting in the open air. Now, we're going to talk a lot about this. How my biggest philosophy for plain air painting, for travel watercolor painting, especially for a beginner, is to lower the bar, is to make the bar simply painting outside. It doesn't matter what you paint. It doesn't matter how high the quality is. It doesn't matter what the skill level required is. In order to successfully paint plain air, then the goal is to get paint on paper while you're sitting outside. That's it. Now, if you want a few really easy kind of anchoring techniques to help you a little bit more, as you are sitting outside and thinking about what to paint, that's what these projects are for. So in this class, we're going to talk about three different ways that you can approach plain air watercolor painting specifically with a sketchbook, specifically with minimal supplies in order to make it totally doable. The first technique has to do with composition, and I'm going to give you a really easy shape to look for in the wild that will help you paint mountains and tree lines and help you bring movement and interest to your sketches and will help make sense of all this information that's happening around you. The shape I'm going to give you is a zigzag. Our first project is looking for a zig zag in the wild. This is all of these projects are based on reference photos that I took while I was in Grand Teton National Park, and this project is going to focus on locating the zigzag, putting together the layers, using plain air watercolor painting techniques. The second watercolor planar painting technique that will help make your sketches feel doable and also fun is to focus on only one subject. So when you're sitting outside, you're sitting on a log, you're sitting on a rock. You're looking at all these beautiful scene, all this beautiful scenery, all these beautiful plants and animals, it can feel really overwhelming because you're not exactly sure what to paint or even can paint everything. And the secret is you don't have to. You don't even have to paint anything to look realistic. You don't even have to paint the whole thing. You can choose just one. And that's what project number two is all about is sitting in a scene, picking one subject to paint, only one and then experimenting with it, relieving yourself of the requirement to make it look realistic or to even, you know, make it look exactly like the thing that you're looking at, and just using the world around you more as inspiration to fuel your creative explorations, as opposed to, you know, a standard that you have to meet. For Project two, I specifically chose a subject that is usually intimidating for me, flowers. And we're going to look at, again, a real reference photo that I took in Grand Teton National Park. But instead of painting the actual scene, we're going to use the subject as inspiration for mark making, for adding some ink to our sketches and just generally having fun. Finally, project number three and technique number three is all about, again, making it simple, simplifying all the information around you so that you can actually find a scene that's doable, even if it's vast. And the way that we're doing that is a two pronged approach, okay? The first prong is to zoom in. When you are looking at a big scene, when you're looking at a big scene, it can feel really overwhelming because you're not just looking at a photo, right? When you're sitting in the middle of all of and it's easy to feel so small and for everything to feel so big and to feel ill equipped to paint that, right? So one of my best pieces of advice, something that helps me actually put paint on paper, is to zoom in. And that can literally be with a camera, right? That can, like, you're opening your phone and you're zooming in to make the scene smaller. So you're zooming in, you're making the scene smaller. And this is what I mean, right? Well, if we look at the reference photo that we're going to use for this scene, it's a vast field filled with bison, filled with mountains. And in order to make it doable, we're going to zoom in. So these bison that are in the reference photos look, you know, way smaller in the picture. But when I zoom in, they look bigger. And then I can more easily scale what I'm painting, and it feels easier to paint. So we're going to zoom in. We're going to make it even more simple than it has to be. And then we're going to apply that also to the subjects that we're painting. We're going to zoom in, make it easier, make it more simple, and relieve ourselves of the burden of having to include all sorts of details. We're just going to focus on simple strokes on making it look like a painting, not like a photograph. Alright, to sum up, the three methods that we're going to use in order to anchor our watercolor sketching practice while we're out in the wild are, number one, looking for zigzags, and we're going to use that zig zag kind of composition tool to layer all the different layers in any kind of mountain scene that we're looking at. Two, we're going to paint one subject only and use that one subject more as inspiration as fuel for creative exploration. And three, we're going to zoom in and then make it smaller, right? Zoom in and then make it more simple so that big scenes that feel really overwhelming can be doable and fun. Okay, that about wraps it up, my friends. I'm so, so excited to get started painting with you, and I will see you in the next video. 3. Mindset Check: Hello, my friend. Before we start painting, let's do a quick mindset check so that as we are, you know, learning these planer painting practices and also preparing to actually go out in the wild, you can have the kind of confidence that will help make your experience the best that it can be. So, the first thing that I want to talk about is, you know, we kind of mentioned this in the previous video, but plan air painting, when you're sitting outside in the open air trying to paint everything around you, that's a lot more information than you would get from looking at a reference photo. And the thing about brains is that when they get too much information, when it's information overload, your brain is working overtime to make sense of everything. That means you are spending energy on just being calm and figuring out, you know, how to access all these painting these painting skills that you may be already have that you would normally spend on refining your technique. So that's one of the things to remember about the difference between studio painting and plan air painting is that plane air painting always requires more energy because your brain is working overtime to make sense of all the information that's happening around you. That is why it's so important to remember that the goal of plane air painting is not to paint these, like, beautiful masterpieces. The goal of plane air painting is to paint outside. That's it. All you have to do to make it qualify as plain air painting is to be outside and paint. That's all. And, you know, maybe you want to paint something a little more refined than just swatches on your sketchbook. But even if that's all you manage, you still were a plan air painter. You still did it. And I always like to start with some kind of, remember, this is about the process spiel because it is, right? You're not out there to prove that you're some kind of master painter, and if you are you're going to be disappointed. Like, it's going to be a really frustrating experience. But you don't need to be a master painter, to be a plain air painter. You just have to paint outside. That's all. And so you can go into if you can go into it with this mindset of giving yourself permission to lower the bar, right? To make it so easy to actually succeed at plain air painting, you're going to do it a lot more, and you're going to find so much more joy in it. The second thing I want to talk about is to remember that every single time you are painting, even if it's just, like, in your house, on your kitchen table, right, every single time you put paint to paper, you are practicing courage. It's not just that you're growing a skill, right? Which painting with watercolor is definitely a skill, but you are also growing an emotional skill in that you are practicing, doing something uncertain, doing something that's scary, doing you know, you're practicing courage every single time you paint. And when you paint outside where the people are, that is so much more courage. It requires tons more courage to do something where some random person might be watching you, right? Or even if it's like if it's very remote, even if the circumstances are you are still alone, doing it in a different environment where from what you're used to, that also requires even more courage. And so when you're painting outside and you're getting frustrated, which, by the way, you probably will, and that's fine. Whenever especially when I first started, but even now, like, when I plain air paint, it is just generally more frustrating than painting in my studio because of the context, because of the bugs and the wind and the discomfort and the hunching over, and, like, all of the people passing by and, you know, making comments or whatever. It's going to be way more uncomfortable. And so going into it, knowing that it's going to be more uncomfortable than if I was painting painting at my house or in my studio, it helps me to remember that every single time I paint outside, it's practicing courage. And if I instead of making, like, painting the goal, if I just remember, like, I am practicing courage right now, that makes me feel more emboldened. It makes me feel more able to do what I'm doing. And it makes me proud of the work that I'm putting in, even if my sketches turn out very messy. And that kind of leads me to number three, which is, especially if you're gonna paint in national parks. You know, I went to Grand Teton National Park for all of these projects. Especially if you're gonna paint in national parks, you're going to people are going to find you, right? They're going to find you because it's so interesting when you're hiking and you stumble upon somebody else doing something really interesting and cool, like painting, right? And if you are one of those people doing a really cool and interesting thing like painting, people are gonna stop you and they're going to look over your shoulder and they're going to ask what you're doing. And you don't have to talk to them. That's fine. But one important thing to remember because your inner critic is going to do its best to make you think that this isn't true, right? Your inner critic is going to do its best to convince you that they're judging you, that they're looking at what you're painting, going like, Oh, that's cute for a kindergartener. But they're not, okay? I can almost guarantee you that 99 out of 100 times, anybody who stops to look at what you're doing, they're rooting for you. They want you to succeed. They think what you're doing is very cool, and more likely than not, they wish they had the courage to do what you're doing, maybe not to paint necessarily, but to, like, do some kind of creative thing out in the wild because it is so empowering and fun and exciting, and it makes life magical. And so anytime somebody stops you, anytime they might not even talk to you, right? They might just, like, look over your shoulder. But anytime somebody's looking over your shoulder or you're feeling the eyes, right? You're feeling the eyes on you. Just remember, people are generally rooting for you. They think it is very awesome, very inspiring, that you are out there doing the thing, and you never know. One of them just might, after a conversation or after watching you feel like, Wow, if they can do that, maybe I can do that. And it's just it's such a wonderful way to feel connected to the world, not only, you know, nature, but also other people in the world without necessarily having to spend so much emotional energy, like, building lifelong connections, right? So yeah, people are generally rooting for you. I promise their thoughts are not nearly as judgmental as yours are. And so if you can take that with you, it's going to be a lot easier to sit out and just do the thing that you love to do. Okay, to sum up those three kind of mindset reminders, the goal is to paint outside. That's it. That's the bar. If you have painted outside, then you have then you are a plain air painter. Number two is that every single time you paint, you're practicing courage. So even if the goal isn't to paint something, if the goal is just to practice courage, you will have succeeded. And then number three is people are generally rooting for you. They really are. They think that what you're doing is amazing, and the truth is they're right. Alright, enough mindset stuff. Let's get painting. 4. Travel Painting Supplies: Hello, my friends. We're going to talk about watercolor supplies to take with you on your travels, on your plan air painting adventures. If you take one thing away from this video, it's that you do not need very much supplies. You don't need all of the paint colors. You don't need all of the paint brushes. You don't need the biggest, most fanciest sketchbooks. In fact, taking more supplies is going to be a hindrance. It's going to make it harder for you to paint. That's because, as we've discussed at length, and we'll continue discussing at length, painting outside plain air painting when you're in the wild, on the scene. It's so overwhelming already. And so having to make decisions requires executive function. Like, making a decision requires you to have energy, brainpower to decide what's important. And if you can already make those decisions before you even get outside, it's going to make getting paint to paper way faster. So, and this is coming from I tend to view myself as, like, a watercolor maximalist, right? I have tons, tons of art supplies that you can see on my desk, right? So I am definitely not a person who is an advocate for you never, ever buy tons of art supplies, 'cause that would be hypocritical of me. But when it comes to plan air painting, the thing that I have discovered through trial and error and through my own experience is that when I take very few supplies, I am more likely to paint. So with that said, let's take a look at what I recommend for you. Like I mentioned earlier, especially if you are new to travel watercolor painting to plan air painting outside, more is not always better. In fact, smaller and fewer supplies are going to ensure that you actually put paint on paper. So piece of the first tool that we're going to use is a sketchbook. This is a watercolor sketchbook. It's by the brand Hnomule and notice how it's a really compact size. Now, you can get smaller than this. But the reason I wouldn't recommend going much larger than this, especially if you're just starting out and especially if you actually do want to sit outside and paint is because making everything smaller just makes it less overwhelming, right? So we have this 100% cotton. These are the projects that we're going to do throughout this class, right? And then a few other projects that are from my own traveling adventures in other places. Um this is the sketchbook that we're going to use. It's 100% cotton. It's not quite as thick as other watercolor papers, but that makes it excellent because it dries faster. So this sketchbook is depending on your climate. But generally, a watercolor sketchbook, like a sketchbook bound like this with watercolor paper, is probably going to dry a little faster than you're used to, especially when you're sitting outside, and that is good. We want that. We're going to talk about why a faster drying time when you're sitting outside can be helpful in an upcoming technique video. So watercolor sketchbook, watercolor paper. You can have a sketchbook with mixed media paper. I just recommend that your thickness is at least in somewhere in the 200 GSM range. Uh, so you definitely don't want the thickness of, like, printer paper, but you don't have to necessarily have it be as thick as, like, 300 GSM. You can have it somewhere like mixed media paper would be okay. So watercolor paper, sketchbook. Then you want a compact watercolor palette. So this is a watercolor palette filled with, like, handmade watercolor paint that I got from one of my favorite brands case for making. And then the palette itself is from another small business brand called art Toolkit. This is very slim. It's made of metal. And so that means it's magnetic, and it can stick to if you have a magnet that you want to stick, like this sketchbook El that I'm going to talk about has magnets on it, so I can stick that on it. But even if you don't have a magnet, the slimness of this palette makes it so that it's very travel ready, right? So you can travel with it. You can slip it in your pocket. And it makes painting really easy to have these really slim watercolor pans. One thing about watercolor paint and selecting which colors to bring because this is always a question I get. One of my favorite things to do when I go plan or painting, when I go travel painting is to take a limited palette and think about, A, you know, how can I arrange colors so that I can mix any other colors that I might not be able to take with me? So, making sure you have a set of primary colors in your palette. But also, B, how can I make my painting experience very unique, very memorable? And one of my favorite ways to do that is to use paint that I don't actually use as often when I'm just in my studio. So when I go travel painting, I almost always use, like, handmade paint that I've purchased from another small business. Feels more meaningful, that feels really special to use, and that I might not always pull out when I'm in my studio. Because remember, what we're doing when we're travel painting is we're making a creative memory, right? We're putting our creativity inside these memories that we're already making. And so using supplies that feel really special can be one way to do that. So that's my little spiel on paint. Next, let's talk about brushes. These are water brushes. You may have seen them before. They're called water brushes because they're paint brushes with the water already in the barrel. And there's a whole video showing you how to use these, so don't worry about that. You might be intimidated. You might have already decided that you hate them. A lot of people have trouble with water brushes, and I definitely did when I first started using them, but they are my absolute favorite for travel painting. And like I said, there's a whole video where I show you how to use them, and all of the paintings that we are doing in this class are with water brushes. So those are the most important things sketchbook, paint, waterbrush. The other things are helpful, not necessarily, like, essential. Well, I mean, I would say, I guess, the towel is kind of essential, right, unless you want to use your clothes or something. But especially when I'm travel painting, I buy, like, a bunch I buy tea towels, and then I just cut them up into little strips, and it makes it so easy to carry with me. Some people I know when they're travel watercolor painting, they like to purchase, like, a terry cloth sweat band or something to put on their wrist. I haven't done that yet, but that would also work. You could use just like an elastic band on your arm to put this under or I will show you my setup and how I use it in just a minute. So make sure you have a towel, and I like to have binder clips. So these are like, more like heavy duty, right, like clips. But the binder clips, especially are to like they're there for a few different reasons. You can use them to only keep your paper tat, like if that's something like you're not really using them for anything else except just keeping the paper really clamped on there, right? That is a super helpful tool whenever you're painting planar. It's also binder clips are also really helpful if you're trying to paint travel like be travel ready, right? Like, you can simultaneously keep your paper taut and also just, like, clip your paint onto your sketchbook, like, the side of your sketchbook that you're not using. Similarly, you can do that with the Te towel. You can just, like, slip that on under there. And then, even if you don't have this handy little sketchbook El that I'm going to show you, you can still have a pretty portable travel ready setup. Just holding this in your hand and then doing your painting, right? And then having your towel there and your paint, and it's all mostly compact. Um another handy thing that can be a fun way to also make a little bit of memory when wherever you're traveling is I like to in most gift shops, they're going to have some kind of little ceramic dish. This technically was labeled like a ring holder, right? But any type of dish that is made with ceramic is going to make an excellent palette. Bonus points if, like, look, this has, like, a little mountain. I actually purchased this in Grand Teton National Park because I thought it was just really inexpensive and also fun and memorable way to not only, you know, have a souvenir to take home, but also an artsy souvenir that I actually use. And this travels with me in a lot of my planer setups. So having a little ceramic dish, an extra mixing palette can be handy. And then I also have a micron pen. So a micron pen is like this is waterproof ink, and we're going to use this in a couple different ways throughout the project. But especially when you're painting quickly, pens can be an excellent way to add detail and to just have, you know, bring in an extra element when you are working with watercolor on the go. So a watercolor pen, a micron pen, and then some tape. So this is Hallbn soft tape. But basically, if you have washi tape, if you have masking tape, painter's tape, any kind of small compact tape, it's not necessary, but it can give you these really crisp edges that can be useful for whatever useful for providing a level of satisfaction, even if whatever you've painted feels a little bit, you know, mediocre. So tape is handy, and I think that about wraps most of this up, except for Dan turin. This is called a sketchbook El. It is another small business item from an artist that I really like. It's linked in the supplies list. All of these things are linked in the supplies list. But let me show you how to use this. So like I said, you don't need this, but it is so handy. Um and ever since I purchased one about a year ago, I have been using it all the time. So basically, this El has a little notch in here, right? And so you just slip that in the binding of your sketchbook, open to whatever page it is that you want to paint on. And it doesn't you don't have to, like, go to the back or anything. You just, like, slip it in the pages. And then you take the clamps and you clamp the sketchbook on either side. And clamping it on either side will make sure that the sl stays put. Mostly. Yeah, it's going to stay put. And then because these are magnets, you can stick your metal palette right on the magnets, and then these are little holes that you can stick your paint brushes in. She has different lots of different versions of this. So there's a bigger one. There's one with a big hole right here in case you have a little cup, like a travel water cup that you want to travel with. You can also set that extra mixing palette right there. So this is a sketchbook sol. El meaning it's just, like, a handy, you know, almost portable tabletop that you can use whenever you're trying to sketch. So that's the setup. That's how you kind of arrange everything together and get yourself ready. Remember, the point of travel painting is, you know, you're sitting on rocks, you're sitting on trees, you're sitting on park benches. And absolutely, you can kind of set all this stuff up, like, on your lap or you know, if you have a table, you can maybe have more space, but the more you can use the clamps, use the sketchbook El to, like, make everything all in one place. The easier it's going to be and the less frazzled you're going to be. So that is those are my thoughts about travel supplies. Again, all of these are linked in the supplies list, and let's move right along to the next video. 5. How to Use a Water Brush: Hello, my friend. In this video, we are going to have a demonstration for one of the most intimidating pieces of art supplies out there, the water brush. And, you know, I use the water brush to paint all the projects in this course. Whenever I plan or paint just for my own personal creative practice, 99% of the time, I use a waterbrush. But when I first picked up a waterbrush, which, by the way, we kind of talked about this in the supplies video, but a waterbrush is a paint brush that has an empty barrel, right, an empty handle that you can put water in, and it, uh you know, it's self watering, basically. So you don't have to travel around with a water cup all the time. And when I first used a water brush, you know, some eight years ago, I was very confused. It seemed a huge hassle. Like, why would anybody even want to use this? And I didn't pick it up for a few years. Then I started messing around with it and experimented with it on planer painting, and now it's my favorite tool to use when I'm out in the wild because of the convenience. Now, is it going to be as, um you know, are you going to have the level of finesse with a water brush that you would with one of your fancy paint brushes? No, definitely not. But when you're plain air painting, you're in the wild, right? It's not about finesse. It's about the experience. It's about accessibility. It's about making it doable without having to worry about things like giant jars of water. So, let's take a look at the water brush. There are three things that are important to practice, think about, remember when you are working with a water brush. The first thing that we're going to practice, that's probably the biggest question that I get is, how do you get the water out? I think that. This kind of speaks to a more overall question of, how do you control the amount of water that goes on your brush that you can use with your paints, right? And the simple answer is, you push down with your fingers in order to squeeze the water out of the tube, right? So we're just going to push down on the barrel. One of the first things that I would recommend even before you travel anywhere is to practice with these in your studio. So you want to get comfortable using these supplies in a comfortable place so that you're already comfortable with the supplies before you're in an uncomfortable place, right? Okay, so squeezing really hard is going to push out drops of water, right? And I'm just squeezing them onto this pallet for right now. So squeezing really hard is going to push out big drops of water. So the first thing we're going to practice is squeezing really hard to get out big drops of water. This is going to be handy for you for when you want to create big watery washes, right, for when you want to create, like, gradients or you want to or you're just kind of messing around. So I am and this is like the medium size brush. So bristle the bristles are kind of big, right? So I have a lot of water that I got squeezing by squeezing really hard. And if I want to continue squeezing really hard, like, if I want to get my whole paper wet, then I'm going to paint and squeeze at the same time. So painting and squeezing at the same time is going to make sure that I'm getting lots of water on my paint brush. So, you know, painting with a water brush is tricky, just because you have to remember multiple things at once, right? You're not only focused on, like, what you're painting, you're also focused on how much water is coming out and how you're controlling that. And the way to do that is by squeezing the barrel, right? Squeezing the barrel of your water brush. Now, one question you might have is, like, what happens if you squeeze so much that you run out of water? Because this was nearly full by the time I started painting, and, you know, I put so much water on here and in here that now it's half gone. Well, we're going to talk about that in one of the other technique videos where we talk about, you know, plain air painting, plain air watercolor sketching techniques. But one thing to remember is that you actually don't want big swatches of water like this all the time. You want to preserve your dry space as much as possible. And so you're probably like, you're not likely to use this much water all at once. But also we're we're practicing painting small, right? We're practicing painting a little bit at a time. So even if this water doesn't last you very long, it's at the very least going to last you like little small paintings that would fit in this compact sketchbook, right? And then in between sessions, you can go and fill up the water brush again in the bathroom or with a water bottle or, you know, wherever you might find that. So water control is pushing really hard. I mean, pushing really hard on the barrel to get tons of water out to make it really watery and get that nice, like, watercolor texture, right? So, what happens, though, if you want just a little bit of water, right? You don't necessarily want giant fat drops, and you want to kind of control the amount of water that's on your paint brush. Well, the way that you do that is I would recommend, like, squeezing to get enough water so that you can see it on the brush and then maybe using your towel to you know, to catch the water if you don't want it to fall on your paper, even though that did fall on my paper. Like, use your towel to catch the water, and then just pay very close attention, like, squeeze just enough to get the water to soak into the bristles. And this is one of those things that will take practice. Like, it's one of those, I don't know what your hands are like. I don't know what your water brush is like, even if you purchase the exact same one that I have. So it's going to require a lot of curiosity and practice on your end. But I promise it's possible to get just enough water on your bristles so that you can create thin ish lines. Like, again, we're not in the studio. These aren't like the super high quality paint brushes that you might be used to, right? But they're not terrible quality, either. And if you practice and with enough precision, so like getting enough squeezing just enough water into the barrel that you get the bristles wet, right, but not so much that it's, like, leaking everywhere. Then you can make these paint brushes have the level of detail that you might be used to with paint brushes in your studio. So just takes a little bit of practice, and also a lot of self compassion, a lot of readjusting expectations to remember that, like, this is a different tool from your regular paintbrush. This is a different tool, and painting outside has different goals than painting in your studio. When we are player painting, our goal not to get the most perfect painting, at least not at first, right? Maybe that can eventually be your goal. It can eventually be your goal to uplevel your technique. But for right now, the goal is to just paint outside. That's the goal. And so by making the goal so small, you give yourself more room to be messy, to not know what you're doing, and have that be okay. And that's the first step to you actually being able to get to know what your supplies are. Okay. So the next question that I often get asked with a water brush is, how do I rinse it off in between, right? So, like, say I have especially a color that's, like, highly staining, right, like indigo, right? So, I mean, even before then, can you do the dry brush technique with a waterbrush? And the answer is yes, you just kind of have to use your towel to make sure there's as little water on the brush as possible. You can definitely get those really cool dry brush strokes. It's just gonna take a little bit of experimenting with. But then what happens when you want to get like, you know, yellow after playing with indigo? Well, you squeeze your brush, and then just kind of blot it on your towel until it goes clear, especially if you are really paying attention not to, like, mix different colors together, then you're going to need to use that water to kind of, you know, rinse it out, but you just squeeze until it comes out on the brush and then on your towel, you blot it out just like that, and then it's clear, and you can use it. Um, one thing to note about water brushes is that these bristles can handle a lot more than your in studio bristles. So typically, with round watercolor brushes, we like to be nice to the bristles, right? We don't want to, like, ruin them. These are heavy duty. These are supposed to be used in a way that you know, takes into account the elements, takes into account your circumstances, takes into account that, like, you might not be able to use the same level of precision that you're used to. And that's okay. So don't be afraid to get down and dirty with these bristles. You're not going to ruin them. And even if you do, like, even if they get kind of bent out of shape or whatever, you can always, A, reshape them. And B, remember that we're painting loose paintings and maybe a ruined brush because you've used it a lot, right? You've been really heavy handed with it. That might just make you have a greater ability to create texture and to create really interesting shapes with your paint brush. So it's really okay to actually use this paint brush to make it, you know, to be overzealous, even with it and make all sorts of fun art that you can. So the very last thing that I want to talk about is, okay, how do I refill it once it's already, you know, once I've used it. And the very quick answer is most water brushes, you can just unscrew the head like this. And either you can go to if there's a bathroom or something where you are, then you can just stick it under the sink under, like, a pretty low flow and wait for it to fill up. If you have, like, a little water dropper with some kind of water well, water droppers can be really helpful because you can just, like, stick the water dropper inside, and then it fills it up that way. Or you can have a water bottle and just, like, pour it over the side knowing that a bunch of water is going to spill out, but that's not the point, right? You just want to capture enough that it kind of fills up to the top and then screw it back on. Then voila. All good. That is a very quick tutorial on how to use your waterbrush, hope that it was helpful, and I will see you in the next video. 6. Painting a Single Subject: Hello, my friend. In this video, we are going to take a look at how to go about watercolor painting in a sketchbook on plain air, right, when you are outside in the wild and there's a subject that you want to paint. So the thing about plain air painting with watercolor specifically is that because you are, you know, exposed to the elements, it's going to be different. The way that you go about putting together a sketch, putting together a really quick representation of the thing that you're trying to paint, very different from the way that you might approach it in your studio. So we're going to talk about those differences in this video and in the next video. This one is specifically about how do you go about piecing together the different parts of a sketch or the different parts of a scene when you're trying to paint one subject. Okay? So, when you're trying to piece together the layers or the elements of one subject and, like, what order to put everything in, what methods you might want to use, we're going to talk about kind of my go to strategies in this video. So if what you are painting is a scene or parts of a scene, right, elements of a scene that mostly has a subject with detail, then when it comes to planar painting, because dry space is the way that we create detail, right? We want to focus on giving ourselves broad details very first before we paint the background. So the order is subject first, like broad, detailed subject first. And then we can paint the background details, and then we can paint the on the subject details a little bit closer. And let me just like demonstrate that a little bit better, right? So, like, say we're painting a flower. Say we're painting some kind of flower. We see a flower, maybe it's yellow, right? So maybe I'm just like, and remember, when we're playing our painting especially, we're just painting loose structures, loose marks, right? I'm not going for specific detail here. I'm just painting loose marks. And this is a very generic kind of flower, right? I'm not actually looking at a flower, but say I am, right? Say I am. The first thing that I'm going to do is think about Okay, since I'm painting a subject, like, the main point of this painting isn't really the whole scene, or rather, even if it is a scene, one very specific subject is the point of the scene. I'm going to focus on a broad outline or a broad, like, block in of the subject first. So that's going to be the flower. And then the stem, right, if I have a stem and then maybe also some leaves, right? Just a block in meaning, I'm not focusing too much on very specific details on the actual subject. I'm just blocking in the overall structure, the overall colors, and then letting my paintbrush add little details as it goes because, you know, notice how on the leaves, I have little skips in between in the paint, right? Texture that's created because of the way that my paintbrush worked. Is that texture actually what I see in real life, it doesn't matter. That doesn't matter right now because when we're plan or painting, the goal is to paint, and if it looks somewhat like what we're painting, then we've made it, okay? So we want to do the broad blocking of the subject first. And then because some of this paint might be a little wet, we might not be able to add little details on top of it just yet. So we can paint the background now. And the background could be anything from, like, smaller subjects to even just a general overall you know, color that I'm painting around around the flower, around the subject, right? Like, it could be the scene. So it could mean you're focusing on other parts of the scene that are not touching the flower at this point. Or it could just mean I am painting around the flower, to have some kind of background to place it or just to give myself something interesting to do while I'm waiting for these parts of the flower to sketch. Because remember, another thing to consider when you're plain painting is that we're not really planar painting to have, you know, these gorgeous paintings at the end. We are planar painting because it's fun to do while we are wherever we are. It's a fun way to remember whatever travels that we are going on. It's a fun way to It's a fun and meaningful way to incorporate creativity into, you know, whatever memories you are trying to create. And so sometimes you need to look for opportunities to you know, make whatever it is that you're doing fun while you're waiting for elements to come in your favor, like waiting for this flour to dry so that you can paint more details on it. Because like, one of the most important element here is that you need to have dry paper in order to paint details, right? If you have wet paper, then the paint with watercolor, it's going to just bleed everywhere, right? You're not actually going to be able to control it. And so that's one of the reasons why with plain air painting, instead of painting like in tons of layers on top of one another, we are more careful about what part of our painting is dry and when and thinking about dry time all along the way. So I started with the blocking of the subject. Then I painted the background behind the subject while I'm waiting for the subject mostly to dry, right? And because I'm in my studio, the painting isn't drying, so I'm going to do a little cheat coat and just dry this as if I'm sitting outside. But if I were actually sitting outside, it probably would be mostly dry by now. So the flower is dry. And now the last thing, once we've painted, like, the blocking of the subject, we've painted the background elements, whether it's a scene, or it's just, like, a kind of a larger swash, like a general background color, right? The last thing is we're going to add smaller details. And when you add smaller details, typically, they are darker in value. So meaning they are darker colors because that's going to help give us shape, and you're not using as much water when you are grabbing your paint. So, I am going to get some more of this yellow, but I'm not using tons of water, so I can make sure that this yellow is a darker value. And I'm just going to add, like a little lip on top of one of the petals here. Just like that. And then maybe another one over here. So we're having we're adding little details onto the flower by adding darker contrasting values onto the petal. And this is only possible, right? If this was dry, then it would bleed all over the place. But this is possible because the paper is I mean, if this was wet, it would bleed all over the place. But because this is dry, and when you are player painting, your paper is going to dry faster than if you were in your studio, it's possible to add these tiny little element, these tiny little details on top of it, right? So with flowers, if you add slightly darker value on top to give the petals some shape, you can also add slightly darker value to the leaves, like on one side, to give the leaves some shape. So if I just do maybe the leaves and the stem, like a little bit of shadow here, a little bit of shadow here. It doesn't have to be perfect, right? This is just practice. And then maybe I want to take some darker color and just add a little bit. To the center just like that. And there we go. There's a planar, there's a painting as if the main thing we're painting is the subject, right, where we started with the block in. Then we did the background details, and that could just be a big swash of background. And then after the block in is dry, which hopefully that was happening while the background while we were painting the background, then we can add some details right on top there. And one last thing that you can do is, especially if you're painting plants, I mean, you can do it without plants, too, but especially if you're painting plants, a really fun thing to do is to take your pen, a micron pen and make it super sketchy. Sketchy, meaning just, like, sketch right on top of it on top of the details that you just painted. And especially if you want to use your pen to, like, darken up the dark parts or add details that you might not have been able to add fine details that you might not have been able to add with your paint brush because these water brushes are difficult to control. Or if you've painted a really messy sketch and you just like, I just want to have fun at this point, making scribbles on top of what you've painted is a really fun and easy way to lean into being messy and just make it messy on purpose. And so that can be a fun way to relieve yourself of the requirement to be perfect while you are out in the wild, painting outside and already worried about different circumstances happening. So this was through tutorial as if you are painting a subject, right? Like one subject, one object or element is the main thing that you're painting. And in the next video, we're going to talk about how you would use these similar techniques, but if maybe you're trying to capture layers instead. So I will see you in the next video. 7. Painting Layers in a Scene: Hello, my friend. In this video, we're going to talk about how to approach putting together a watercolor sketch on plain air when you're out in the wild, when it's a scene, okay? So in the previous video, we talked about how to use dry space, how to use different, you know, different layers and piecing together different parts when we're just focused on one subject. In this video, we're going to talk about some of those same elements, but putting it together, putting together a scene, right? So a scene, meaning different layers, specifically for this class. It's layers of mountains or layers of trees or just layers of landscape and how you might put that together to compose a really beautiful scenic view. But using all of the resources and taking into account all of the limitations of painting outside. It might seem pretty straightforward. And one very important thing to remember about layers, especially landscape layers, if typical rules are applying, right, is that light lighter layers, like light value, meaning colors that have more white in them, right? Those go in the back, okay? And darker layers or more vibrant layers, those go in the front, Layers that are behind, especially if like you're painting mountains or something or layers of trees or anything like that. The layers that are far away and in the distance are smaller, and they look more blue and they are lighter in value, okay? And then the layers that are in the front are darker in value, more saturated, so you can see more vibrant colors in them. Um, and yeah, they're more vibrant. They don't they don't look as muted because they're in the front. And so that's just kind of typical across the board. But how do you capture that when you're worried about maybe your layers all blending together, right? Like, how do you capture layers of mountains, say, when you're nervous because if you're playing or painting, you don't have time to, like, paint one layer and then let it dry, then paint another layer and let it dry. Well, one thing that might help is if you put together some kind of just very loose sketch. So let's just say we have a little loose, like, zigzag mountain range going on here, okay? So we have, this is a background mountain. We'll have the background mountain be right there. I'm making this up. Okay. So this is the background mountain, right? And then it slowly gets bigger and bigger and bigger. Now, if I were to paint I want to paint the background mountain, so it is, like, really light, very watery, right? And so I'm making sure I have tons of water on my brush and in my little palette and then I'm just going to paint the background mountain within the areas that I've set out, right? And the reason that I put this sketch in is because normally, if I were in my studio, I might recommend, I would recommend painting the background and then letting this dry and then painting this layer. But what happens if maybe you don't want to let it dry or you don't have time to let it dry, right? Well, one benefit to having like a quick even just with ink, right? Just a quick sketch or kind of being able to see what the natural movement of the layers are in your mind is you can jump around. And the only rule that you need to remember is that if two layers that are wet are touching each other, they're going to bleed into each other. And that's because of the wet on wet technique, right? Paint that is wet is going to bleed into, um, anywhere else that it's wet if they're touching. So if I don't want my layers to touch and I'm painting outside and I'm trying to paint all this at once, then I would jump around. Instead of doing like, a very linear back to front, I would jump around to wherever there's another dry spot that isn't touching this dry spot. So I'm going and so I'm going to have to mentally kind of calculate and maybe, you know, putting together a little color palette off to the side will help with that, right? So there's, like, the lightest color swatch right there. Then I'm maybe going to add just, like, slightly darker slightly darker colors to it, right? And then the darker and more vibrant I get, the closer to the front I'm getting. And so if I have a little color palette then I can kind of mentally say to myself, Okay, so if I'm skipping this layer and I'm jumping straight to this one, then this is about the color that I want, right, about the color scheme. And another kind of important thing to remember, like, if you're painting mountains and you're painting layers with the mountains, it's not only jumping around layers to make sure you're using the dry space. It's also using the dry space effectively to create texture, right? So, I'm very intentionally not pushing down on my water brush all the time because I want to leave some of this texture, especially if I want to create, like, a rocky kind of texture, then what that looks like is very intentionally not always pushing down to have water come out, but sometimes letting the brush just naturally create some of this texture. And again, this isn't necessarily going to look exactly like what I'm actually looking at when I am playing or painting. I'm not trying to copy what I'm seeing. I'm trying to take inspiration from what I'm seeing, okay? So we have this layer now, and maybe I want it to be just, like, slightly darker to make sure it's slightly darker. And so I'm going to add a slightly darker paint, especially along the bottom to add some depth to it. And then I can go ahead and paint this middle layer in between all of those, right? So I can go back and kind of capture that mid value. And that's one of the reasons why having a tiny little mixing pal like this can be so handy. And then I'm just going to kind of carefully make sure to paint in between the layers. And once I have this, like, wet layer down, this is a good opportunity too if I wanted to add some, like, interesting elements to it, some interesting color blends. While it's wet, I can go ahead and just, like, tap in some colors to just have some interesting shadowy textures while the painting is still wet. And then my final layer, as I'm jumping from layer to layer, right? 'cause I'm not going back to front, I'm trying to go from dry spot to dry spot. And so here's my final layer, and it's the darkest. So this is, like, indigo at its darkest, and I'm being pretty heavy handed with my paintbrush, right? Like, my bristles are kind of taking a beating, but that's because I really want this texture, right? I really want this dry brush texture, and that's okay, because the bristles on this travel paintbrush are supposed to kind of take a beating. Um that's what they're for. And so I'm also going to take some of this indigo, and just to add, you know, another interesting element to this, maybe along this ridge here, add some trees. And it looks like the layer on top, like, the layer above this is still kind of wet. That's okay. So my trees are a little bit blurry, and that's fine. If I'm painting in, like, on plain air, if I'm painting outside in public, sometimes that happens, right? Sometimes the layers don't dry. At the rate that I want them to, and that's going to be fine because I'm not painting to capture this perfectly, especially as a beginner. I'm painting to practice courage. I'm painting to practice painting outside. So that is kind of how you might approach painting a layered painting, like painting a layered scene. And it doesn't and it's the same way, even if you're not painting mountains. It's kind of in your mind thinking, Okay, the back is where the lighter things are going to go, the front is where the darker, more vibrant things are going to go. And I'm going to kind of piece together how to get, like, put those puzzle pieces together without making any of those sections touch because dry space is a really hot commodity because dry space is how can keep the layers separate and distinct so they don't just all run together and how I can capture little details like texture and trees. And so giving myself time to let different parts of the painting dry while still working on other parts of the painting, that's going to be really key to managing these layers all at one time without, you know, the nice, cozy conditions of my studio. So hopefully this was helpful and we'll help prepare for the projects. We're going to get even more practice practicing both of these styles, and I can't wait. So I will see you in the next video. 8. Project: Colter Bay: Alright, let's get started with our first project. And we are going to practice looking for a zigzag. If you are out in the wild, especially with mountains and trees and hills or, you know, various elements of a landscape that are kind of layered together, one easy way to find, you know, a scene or a reference photo or anything that feels doable to paint is to look for a zigzag. So as you can see in this scene, this is a view from Colter Bay, which is, like, a lake in Grand Teton National Park. Wanted to find a zig zag, which I did with the layers of mountain and then the trees and then the lake. And then the sky behind it also contributes to the zigzag, right? When you're trying to layer mountains and trees and lakes all in one scene, a zigzag is usually pretty easy to find. And so we're going to talk about how to put this sketch together, and hopefully this can fuel your own inspiration. Alright, my friend. Let's start sketching. So I'm going to prepare my sketchbook, and for this project, I think that I really want to use some tape. So I'm going to pull out some washi tape. It, it doesn't matter what kind of washi tape you use. It just matters that it's, like, kind to paper tape. So I'm using some washi tape to just give myself a little border. So I'm going to put the tape down and then fold the tape underneath. And I'm doing side side and then bottom top so that all of the pieces of tape aren't just, like, stuck to each other. And a bonus of using tape. This is the only project that we're going to use tape for. But a bonus of using tape is that especially if you make it a little bit extra long, right? You can kind of fold it underneath, like, over the side of the sketchbook so that it's extra taut. But especially because I like to use binder clips, right? We can still keep it taut by, you know, lamping down the side of the sketchbook. And then I like to put a binder clip in the middle binding also just to make the sketchbook extra stable. This is important, especially if you're putting the sketchbook on your lap or something like that, and just makes it possible for you to keep painting even when the terrain feels a little bit rough. Like, the circumstances aren't exactly, you know, ideal. So let's start painting. This photo is of a scene in Grand Teton National Park. This is Culter Bay. And the first thing that I'm going to paint, well, the first thing I'm going to do is to look at all of the layers, and then I'm going to decide what layer do I want to dry first? I want to dry I want the mountain to be dry first because I want to paint the trees over the top of the mountain, right? So I've already identified the zigzag. I've already identified that, like, the mountain is coming in from the left, and then the trees are coming in from the right, and they're layered on top of each other. But I want the mountain to be dry first. So I'm painting that first. And I'm just eyeballing it. I'm not even putting a sketch in. I'm kind of seeing, Okay, I think that the mountain is starting basically from the top from, like, half of the page down, and I'm going to paint it a very loose triangle. That's it. I want it to be pretty light value, so there's lots of water there. It can be handy. To have a ceramic dish. It doesn't have to be ceramic, but just, like, some kind of dish to help you get some of that watery paint, or you can even push down just a little bit on your water brush to add more water onto the watery mountain ridge that you just created in order to kind of create more white space. The thing about this mountain specifically, is it seems like there's, like, some sun rays peeking over the top of it, right? And so you could add some slightly dark while the mountain is still wet, add some slightly darker paint. So add a tiny bit of indigo to your blue, right? And just, like, paint around some of that light space or use your water brush to push away some of the paint to just create a really, you know, subtle kind of contrast to make it appear that maybe there's a glow on the mountain, not necessary, but something fun that you can, you know, experiment with. Then I'm going to leave that mountain alone and paint the sky. I will also want the sky to be dry before I paint the trees, right? So I'm painting the sky, and I'm grabbing sky blue, just like a light blue. I'm starting from the top, and then I'm pushing down on my water brush as I'm, you know, putting laying strokes down onto my paper, I'm pushing down on my waterbrush to get more water out to make my strokes pretty smooth. But the closer I get to the bottom, the more water and the less paint that I'm using. I very intentionally want there to look like there are some clouds. So I want the top right hand corner. I want that to look darker. And then to my strokes to be to just kind of fade into white space. And I can do that by having my paper be a little bit wet. And I can get it a little bit wet by pushing down on my water brush to release some of the water onto the paper. So I'm just going to kind of tinker around with this using, like, loose, wavy strokes, right? I'm not trying to overdo it. I'm just trying to add a little bit paint so it's darker at the top and then gradually fades a little bit down toward the bottom. As you are sitting outside, your paper is going to dry a lot faster than if you are sitting inside, just for the record. And so that's something to keep in mind. Next, while I wait for the mountain and the sky to dry, I'm going to paint the first part of the lake. So I'm using some really watery paint because when we're layering water, especially if you're painting water, you're going to start really light and then gradually grow darker using zig zags to make it look like there are waves. So I'm adding a bunch of water because I don't want my light layer to be too dark. And especially on that left hand side, the water is lighter, right, on the left hand side. On the right hand side, where the trees are, it's darker. We can see lots more shadows. So I'm keeping that in mind. And I'm painting this lake. The lightest part I'm painting all of it, the lightest part, and then I'm gradually going to get darker and darker. So I'm adding a bit I'm adding a bit of, like, blue green or, you know, indigo, whatever. I'm adding a little bit more um a color blue color to that mixture so that it's a slightly darker value. So it's not quite that light watery anymore. And then I'm doing really choppy zigzags. I'm doing really choppy zigzags, and notice, like, I'm sitting inside as I'm painting this, and even with this sketchbook, the paper dries pretty fast. I'm leaving that top, like, the top part of the leg, especially on the left hand side. I'm leaving that mostly light. And then toward the bottom, that is where it's okay to be a little bit darker. Now, this is still just the mid value. Using zig zag so that I can still get some slivers of that light space underneath. But this is still not the darkest it's going to be. And if you don't have a smaller waterbrush, if you only have that one size, that's fine. But this is where if you have that smaller size waterbrush, it could be handy to trade because now I'm going to paint even darker waves on top. And having the darker I get, the smaller I want the zig zags to be and so using this water a smaller water brush can be handy for that. Now, I'm going to paint the darker waves even before I paint the trees. And I'm going to kind of loosely in my mind, say, Okay, this is kind of where the trees are, but I don't it doesn't have to be equal. So these are like the shadows, right? These are going to be the shadows the shadow reflection, basically, the reflections of shadow of these trees on the lake. And it doesn't have to be perfect, but I do kind of want them to be generally in the shape of the trees. And I'm painting these first before I paint the trees because I want the lake to dry in case I decide I want to add a few more waves on top of this already. So I just painted some slightly darker blue on top of that for shadows, for the trees, and now I'm going to focus on painting the trees. Now, the trees are going to be similar to everything else we've painted. The sky should be dry by now, so should the mountain. And I'm going to paint these trees light to dark. So I'm going to paint them all like this really light layer, and then I'm going to use dark after to come back in and add depth to the trees to make them look even more realistic. So, again, this is a sketch. This is very quick. I'm just using really quick, like, blobs, basically on either side to loosely give myself the shape of a pine tree. And I know that these trees really these trees are kind of like the main subject, right? These are kind of the hero of the whole scene. And so I do want some of the I do want some detail on these trees. Now, am I going to have enough space or enough wherewithal to paint very specific detail on the individual trees? Maybe not. So instead, what I know I can do Is, you know, kind of intentionally make the trees themselves, give like contribute to the overall shape, overall zig zag of the composition that I'm trying to make, right? So I want it to be varied. I want different sized trees. I want the trees to be different shapes. But I'm giving myself because the trees are kind of like the main, the most detailed, but still contributing to this zigzag shape, I am using kind of an outline of the trees to form this layer first. And I want the trees. I don't want any of the trees to be exactly the same height. I want them to look like they're kind of going up and down. So not only are they contributing to this, like, horizontal zigzag with all the layers, but also adding, like a vertical zigzag, right, where the trees are going up and down and up and down. Kind of like, you know, like a graph. So I'm painting in this lighter green. The thing with painting in the lighter green that is so important to remember. Otherwise, you could get caught up in all of these details is that most of the lighter green, it's going to be covered up with dark. And so, really, we're just using the light green to give almost, like, a silhouette, like an outline of the tree, right? And another really important thing, especially if you're struggling with painting trees like this where you're starting with the trunk and then just painting like blobs on either side. Leave white space. One of the biggest tricks in order to make sure that your trees actually look like trees is to leave little bits of white space in between the branches. The white space is going to give you the detail that makes the branches look sharp, that makes the branches actually look like evergreens. So that's one of those important, it doesn't really matter what the blobs look like, but it does matter that you leave little bits of white space in between the blobs so that you can give them shape. So now I'm going to add the darker green, and I added I did that same grain, but I added a bunch of indigo, and I actually made it, like, way darker than I needed to. One of the reasons why I only like to paint on one side of the sketchbook is so I can use the other side for, you know, to scratch paper, basically. Now, when you start adding the dark, I would start toward the bottom of the branches so that you leave the top light and then the bottom part dark. And Or generally just knowing, like, most of this is going to be dark with a little bit of light green that I'm letting peek through. And then just using that same back and forth, almost, you know, again, zigzags, right? Zigzags to fill in the branches so that you have little slivers of light green but mostly that dark green. And having those little slivers of light green, even if they're not exactly where you think they should be based on the reference photo, it's still going to snap together to give these trees depth. That's another thing about the zig zag. That's why I'm featuring it so prominently in this project is when in doubt paint a zigzag. When in doubt with a composition, make things go up and down in a varied way or side to side, in a varied way. The zigzag is one of the most naturally occurring shapes that you will find basically anywhere. And so keeping that in mind is enough. It's enough. When you're sitting down when there are bugs everywhere, when the light is too bright, or when it's a little bit chilly, you're not sure what to paint, it's enough to say, Can I find a zigzag? Let me paint that. And you'll be able to paint something really cool. And like I'm showing you here, it's not just in terms of the composition, right? It's in terms of adding depth and adding contrast throughout the elements and the layers of your scene. So now that we have the trees painted, you could even go back and add in a slightly darker layer. And when you do the, like an even darker layer, you don't really need as much. So with that mid dark layer that we added, right, we added kind of a lot. We covered up almost all of the light green. But if you're going to add an even darker layer on top of that, which especially if it's like nighttime or evening time, like, the trees that you're painting are cast in a lot of shadow, having three layers that you're gradually starting light and then getting darker can also, you know, be really effective in making these trees pop. And making these trees pop against all of this blue, all of this, like, really luminous, like, watery blue is an effective way to make the zig zag work, right? Because all these subtle lines coming together and then the trees are popping up against everything. So now we have the trees. The trees are pretty much done. I'm going to add more shadows. And again, we we painted the lake first and the shadows that initial layer of shadows first, specifically so the lake could dry so that now I can go back with a slightly darker indigo and do some more zigzags underneath the trees to be the reflection shadow of the trees. So that we have you know, so that we can just kind of anchor the trees in the actual scene. But we're still leaving behind some of the light space, right, some of those that medium and light value from the initial layer that we painted here. We're still leaving behind little slivers of that because we need that contrast to actually give this scene shape. That's the whole point of the zigzag is to help you remember, Okay, how do I leave behind little slivers by painting a little zigzag? That's how you leave behind little slivers of white space. And once you do that, you can kind of go back in and say, Okay, are there any more, you know, detail things that I might want to add? Maybe some of the reflection in the lake, I want not to just be blue, but maybe some of the reflection, I want to be green. Maybe I want to add in a little bit more like detail to the foliage, right? Like, maybe we want some little pieces of grass poking out from the lake as sometimes happens, right? You can see some reeds poking out, or may and this is especially true when you're trying to sketch with paint. You start with big blobs, and then you add in sharper details after. So like, you can add in sharp points to the pine trees to the evergreen trees once you've got your big block in. But a big important thing to remember about plain air sketching, about watercolor sketching, especially, and if you're keeping it small like this, right? I done is better than perfect, and simple honestly is going to be so much better than detailed because it's doable because you can feel good about everything that you can accomplish rather than everything that you missed. And even if what you created was a hot mess, taking off the tape is, oh, so satisfying. So that's one of the best reasons why I like to sometimes use tape for my little sketches is even, like, at the very least, I know I'm going to be able to pull off a really crisp, clean edge, even when, you know, circumstances are not ideal for me to be painting and to have a steady hand, it's going to be really great. So I hope that you had a lot of fun with this sketch. I hope that it was, you know, I chose this scene specifically because I just thought that it was such a fun representation of where to find the zig zag, not just in terms of composition, but also in terms of how to use your paint brush and what shapes to create in order to emphasize the contrast between light and dark and to give movement to whatever it is that you're painting. And, of course, make sure to write down where you were, what time it was, any kind of notes you want to remember. That's going to make this sketch, your travel sketch, even extra special. So thank you so much for painting with me, and I will see you again in the next video. 9. Project: Wildflowers: Project Number two, for project number two, remember, we are going to focus on one subject and use that one subject as inspiration for our own creative exploration. So this idea is really helpful. This method of planar painting is really helpful. If you get super overwhelmed by everything you're looking at when you sit outside, still want to use those elements for your own inspiration. So in this project, we're going to take a look at these beautiful reference shots that I got while I was in Grand Teton National Park of plants and flowers. And instead of painting an actual scene, we're just going to experiment with one subject, using marks, using different tools and mediums and having fun, even if it's not, being super realistic with it. First things first. I in deciding between painting, like, landscape orientation, horizontal or vertical, I decided vertical mostly because the flowers themselves are vertical. Like, they're the lining the shape that they give off is very much, you know, reaching toward the sky and very thin lines and curves. And so, anyway, that's just kind of my reasoning for choosing this vertical orientation. And before I actually put painted paper, I do want to take a minute to mix and prepare the things, you know, prepare my tools. If you're trying to mix colors, and especially when you're trying to experiment, there's, like, one of the vastest ways to be frustrated is when you don't have mixing space. And so taking some time to just, like, wipe off some of the paint to clear the way so that you can mix new colors, excellent idea, even when you're out in the wild. It doesn't have to be perfect. You just need a little bit more space. So with these flowers and the palette, the specific palette that I'm using, I don't have purple that, you know, is the exact shade that I was hoping that is in this scene. You don't need the exact shade in order to paint. That's fine. And it's also okay to experiment. I think that when you're color mixing, one of the most important factors is, are you having fun? And is this helping to stoke your curiosity? Because remember, the whole point of this project is we are using the scene, we are using the subject. We are using this, you know, these objects out in the wild as inspiration for curiosity, as fuel to help our creative adventures. So I mixed a little bit of purple, and now I'm just kind of starting by painting the petals that I can see. And I'm doing blobs, essentially, right? And I'm doing kind of quick, intuitive strokes loosely in the shape of some of like in the shapes that I'm looking at. And you might look at that and say, Okay, but what shapes are those? And to that, I say, there is, that's the point is you don't really know what the shapes are. These are called organic shapes. Whenever you're painting a shape that is not, you know, like a geometric shape that's not like a rectangle or a triangle, it's just organic, meaning it's a shape you can recognize, but it doesn't really have a name because it's in nature, right? It's found in nature. Um, trying to look for to find organic shapes is a really fun way to use sketching with watercolor when you are out in the open air because then the goal is not to paint something so that it specifically looks like what you're painting. The goal is to just see if you can find some shapes. So I kind of did that. I pieced together the shape of this flower using these, like, organic blobs, right? And I did it with that lighter violet first that I mixed. And then because we paint from light to dark, right? We paint the light layer first. And then we add a dark layer to add contrast, to add depth to whatever it is we're painting. I added a tiny bit of indigo to that violet, and I added shadows like underneath all of those petals closest to the stem. That was kind of where I see the shadows playing out, but also it's generally, you know, a decent place to put shadows whenever you're painting flowers like this. Next, I added a little bit of red or brown to the mixture to paint a stem like in between. Whenever you're painting flowers or you're trying to sketch flowers, especially wild flowers like this, right, where there are lots of little petals altogether. Um whatever is in the front, so you want to paint that first. Whatever is in the front, you want to paint first, and then paint the layers behind it because we can see the petals and the petals are covering up the stem. So we don't want to paint the stem first because then the stem might show through the paint when we eventually paint the petals. So when you're painting with watercolor, that's kind of an important thing to keep in mind. You want to paint you're painting front to back, even as you're painting light to dark. Ah, okay, so now I'm trying to paint the same kind of flower, but in a slightly different way this time. Remember, this is all about experimenting. I'm not trying to capture this scene. I'm trying to find multiple ways to capture this one subject, right? The flowers and the leaves. And so the first time around, I started with just the petals. The second time around, I'm kind of giving myself a little sketch for the overall shape of the entire flower. So it was kind of like a cone, right? Like a long skinny, um just a long skinny shape with, like, two circles, two half circles encasing each other, and then adding the petals on top of that. So adding the texture, the details on top of that overarching shape. This is another way that I like to sketch when I'm trying to figure out how to sketch with paint one single subject, right? I give myself, like, this is the general shape that I see the entire thing making, and then I'm going to fill in that shape with the details. And again, you can see what the details are because of the different values, right? We have the lighter vile and then also the darker violet. And those are kind of intermixing with each other. And when you're sketching, remember, your paint is gonna bleed together, and that's fine. As long as you have at least a little bit of white space between your strokes, then you're going to still be able to capture some of that detail. So now that I've painted two flowers, I thought I would try experimenting with the leaves. So I can see some leaves that are kind of, like, long and skinny and flowy. So I'm getting, you know, just kind of like a dark green. Doesn't even matter if it's exactly the right shade. I'm just getting a dark green and painting long skinny leaf shapes by painting two lines next to each other, like two curves that meet at the top to form the top of that leaf. But then the two curves will help me use negative space to form, basically, like the vein of the leaf. And especially with these leaves, what I notice is they're really curvy. There's a lot flow to them, right? And so I don't want to just paint straight leaves. I want to give them a gentle curve. So that's what I was experimenting with, right? Now I'm going to try some more flowers, and I'm using kind of the same techniques, but maybe I'm trying to paint bunches, right? Like a bunch of different flowers. Just with some loose marks, you know, kind of loosely in the shape of what those flowers are in the light value. So the light value has more water in it, and then adding some dark value on top of that to add dimension. So this is, you know, the same kind of thing that I did with that very first flower, but I'm trying it in lots of different ways. Another technique as I'm doing this is to instead of trying to paint, like, entire flowers, just use the marks, right? I'm saying, Okay, maybe I'm going to deconstruct this flower. And because I know I'm not painting a specific scene, right? I'm sketching out in the wild. I'm just trying to have fun, with whatever is right in front of me, maybe what I'm going to do is just put a bunch of these elements all on the page and just have my goal be to fill up the paper, right to fill in the white space. And so my first initial sketches, right, the first flower, the first leaf, all of those were kind of, you know, drawing more inspiration from real life. But then maybe, as I continue on with this sketch, if my point is to use the subject as a starting point, for more exploring, then I'm just going to fill in the space with whatever I see with whatever feels like fun for me, right? So I'm going to look for some more shapes. I started I painted some petals kind of scattered around. I see some kind of, like, some of the leaves in this photo are making this almost like a star shape. So I thought, why not? Why not try this kind of star shape with the leaves and see how that goes. And, you know, having that kind of mindset is exactly what makes these sketches so fun because it turns out those, like, star shaped leaves super messy, didn't love them. If I had decided that I was trying to make a scene, it would be really easy for me to get frustrated at this and be like, Oh, my gosh, I'm ruining everything. But because I intentionally made this a sketch, because I intentionally made this, I'm just exploring with different elements of things that I see as I'm looking at this scene. Even though I might not like some of the things that I'm making, arranging them together by just challenging myself to fill in the space with little marks, right? It makes it a fun experience, and it makes it basically impossible to ruin, because as long as I'm filling in the white space with more paint and marks that kind of, you know, look like those curves of the leaf or the little blobs of the flower, then I'm using elements that Are in there, right? It is working. It is a success. Now, I really wanted to use that turquoise color that I'm painting with right now. So that was more of like I'm feeling really inspired because these are fun colors, and I think turquoise would go really well, not even necessarily because I see it in the scene. I don't, right? I'm just trying to fill in the white space and, you know, give myself ten or 15 minutes of really enjoyable painting time as I'm sitting out in the wild. Now, I'm saying this to you, especially the reason that I used this reference for this technique is because painting flowers, especially painting flowers in an actual landscape scene, probably some of my most frustrating projects ever. And so if you want to be more comfortable painting flowers, start with this. Start by deconstructing the elements. Start by just exploring with all the different shapes that you see, all of the different shapes that your hand makes, even if you don't even see it, right? Because the goal here is not, again, it's not to be a camera. The goal here is to use your surroundings, use nature as fuel for your own creative explorations. And that might mean not even painting what you see, right? That might just mean letting any and all thoughts that come into your brain as you're painting be good thoughts that can allow you to have a really meaningful creative adventure. So I started by, you know, just writing down the notes to say, This is where I was. I was at Culter Bay. This is the date, right? Whenever you're travel sketching, it can be really fun to make notes of the things that you're doing. But then I decided, hmm I wonder if I could use this I wonder if I could use ink to kind of make this even more interesting. And one of my favorite things to do with watercolor is using a micron pen like this to kind of just outline some of the shapes, not even all of the shapes, just to add a little bit of depth, you know, like shading almost, like, along the side of the stem or just outline a few of those tiny little petals, tiny, you know, little flower parts that make up the entire flower. So we're not trying to outline all of the subject here, all of the object here. We're just using ink as a way to add little details that we might not have been able to add. With the paint brush, especially when you're using a water brush, right? It's really tricky to be able to get super detailed precise marks like this. So using an ink pen either before or after you've already painted can be a really effective way to add those details and to further fuel your creative exploration, because I think that a combination of, like, only a few details, right, only a few of the petals are outlined, only half of the leaf is outlined, it can be a really fun way to kind of tie everything together and make it very obvious that this is a sketch made by a human. So I hope you had so much fun with this project. I think it's a really great way to make painting doable and accessible, even if you're overwhelmed. And I will see you again in the next project. 10. Project: Grazing Bison: Finally, project number three. In this video, we are going to practice the third method that we talked about, which is to zoom in and make it smaller and more simple, right? So we're looking at this really scenic view of some bison in a field with the mountains behind. It's very beautiful, very overwhelming. I was actually standing on the side of the road when this happened. When I took these shots, it was very overwhelming, and it was intense. And we're going to practice taking a big scenic shot like this, potentially, like using your phone or some other, you know, method to actually help zoom into the scene to make it smaller. In this case, we're zooming in and only taking, like, a sliver of the reference photo, right? Just like a sliver of the shot, zooming in so the bison are pretty big upfront. And then keeping it simple by relieving ourselves of the need to make any of these subjects particularly detailed, right? They're kind of blocky. It's mostly just values and short simple strokes. And I'm going to walk you through how to paint that scene. And then hopefully this will also help you remember when you get to an overwhelming scene like this in your own travels, you're allowed to zoom in and make it smaller and just paint, you know, a little sliver of the scene, and that will make it so much more doable. Alright, let's get started. We are going to open up our sketchbook, and because we're trying to do, like, a little sliver of this scene, I thought that it would be fun to have it be vertical orientation. So just to keep the book a little bit more taut, I put the binder clip right in the middle, like, on the binding to give me, like, more of a flat surface as I'm painting. And I'm probably first, what I'm going to do is kind of paint the bottom scene most of all, and put that on the bottom half of the sketch. And then if I feel up to it, I can paint the top half of the sketch. So I think mostly what I'm trying to paint are the bison and the house. And then, like, the trees and the mountain, the sky, that can go on the top half if I feel like I want to. So I'm going to start with a sketch with ink, and I know that you might be thinking, why would you start with ink instead of pencil? And the reason that I start with ink instead of pencil when I'm out in the wild, especially is because I'm trying to go fast. I'm trying to very intentionally be loose, give myself lots of space to be messy. And when I'm sketching something like an animal, where it can be overwhelming, right, to get all the details right. Painting with ink reminds me that actually simplifying the shape. So notice how I'm doing kind of short but confident strokes, right? I am doing just like a line here and a line there, and they're kind of angular, right? The shapes that I'm making these bison, it's almost like I'm painting I don't know, like a hexagon or a rectangle. Like, I'm not trying to get specific curves. I'm not trying to get very specific details. I'm using short, blocky strokes basically to make a blob, right? So I have the big blob like the bigger part of the body is bigger, and then the head is kind of smaller and lower. And those are the only factors that I'm taking into account as I'm sketching. So I painted those three bison, and I very intentionally painted three, and I painted them kind of going up in a zig zag. Notice how the biggest one is on the left hand side. Then I have the medium one on the right, and then up is a very small bison that's kind of just like a dot. And then the cabin that I'm doing just, like, a very quick sketch very blocky, like a rectangle for the house, a triangle for the roof, a few rectangles for some windows, like, very quick, loose, doesn't matter at all if they're detailed, right? Very quick sketch. I very intentionally organized the objects in this way to make a zigzag, kind of, you know, going back to what we talked about in the first project, where if you're ever worried about composition, if you're ever thinking, I don't know how to put this together, zigzag is, like, the easiest tack. So we're starting with a sketch, and that's all I'm sketching for right now, especially because I'm giving myself an out, right? I'm giving myself I'm saying I only have to paint the bison in the house. If I want to paint the mountain, then I can. But for now, just the bison in the house. Now I'm going to start by painting the bison first because I want them to have a chance to dry in case I want to maybe put more details on top of them. And when I'm painting subjects, right, we start with the lightest color first. So where on that bison is the lightest color? Well, kind of at the top, right, where the highlights are, especially in that front in the largest bison at the front. And to me, it looks kind of yellowy orange. So I went for, like, an orange brown, and as I'm painting this, as I'm mixing my colors, and I'm doing the whole thing, this kind of like orange brown, and then I'm going to layer on the dark colors on top of that. As I'm, you know, layering on this orange brown, I'm using lots of water by pushing on my water brush to get the paint to get more water into the paint directly on my sketchbook without necessarily needing to use the ceramic palette to hold all of that water. And I'm painting the whole thing, knowing that probably only portions of the orange are actually going to show at the end. Now I'm going to do the same thing for the middle bison. That one's going to have less highlight than the foreground bison will. I'm also, you know, while I'm doing this drawing legs coming out, like, painting legs coming out in the shape that I can see them, right? The front bison, the legs are kind of more straight, like more angular, and then that middle bison, they look curved in the back. This is also an important time to note that while you are on the scene, sketching something is not the time to critique your technique. It's not the time. Right now is the time to get paint on paper, and it doesn't matter if it's messy. That's one of the reasons why the sketch is blocky and messy, and it's in ink, so I can't do it over again, even if I wanted to, right? The sketch is in ink because that's what I'm working with because the goal here is not to paint perfectly. The goal is to get paint on paper. So now I took some of that like that dark brownish red, and I added a tiny bit of indigo to it to get more of like a dark brown so that I can start painting in the shadow. Now, when I started painting this bison, I thought, I'm going to be a little more intentional about making all this texture, and, like, you can wherever it's hair, you can add little jagged strokes to kind of imply that there is, like, fur or hair texture going on. And then I kind of checked myself and thought, you know I'm just going to make this so simple, right? So simple. It's okay if there are a few strokes where, like, I'm using negative space, right, to show the orange underneath for highlights. I used the light layer first, and then that dried, and now I'm doing the dark layer on top and how the strokes that I use are going to determine the kind of texture that the light layer has to make it look like hair, right? So that's why I can use kind of short, swoopy, choppy strokes if I want to make it look like fur. But I also am checking myself to say, Am I putting too much detail into this? Am I making this too complicated? Is it going to be easier for myself if I just kind of make this smooth strokes? And this is about the time where I'm thinking to myself, Yeah, I think that's about all of the detail that I want. So now I'm going to add some, like, darker orange. So I added some, like, warm yellow to that red color that I had to get this dark orange and to kind of blend in the dark brown with the highlight, because while the highlight is definitely lighter than the brown, the contrast with, like, the really, really light orange was still you know, the contrast was still a little bit much. And so I added some slightly darker value to it just to kind of blend those in. And I stopped trying to be super detailed with my strokes and just embraced being choppy, embraced being having really simple strokes and focusing on, okay, what is it that I'm actually doing? Right now, what I'm doing is I'm adding dark values to give this shape more shape. And the most important thing is to keep the dark where it's supposed to be dark and to keep the light where it's supposed to be light. So as long as I'm doing that, then I'm doing it right. And it's okay if these Bison don't look quite like Bison. It's okay if I hold it up to the photo, and I'm like, Wow, these look like a child painted them because I'm not trying to be a camera right now. I'm trying to be a painter. And especially if you are painting this out in the wild with all the elements going on, all you're trying to do is have this experience where you are watching these real life wild animals, and you're trying to replicate them or at the very least capture the essence of what it was like to be in their presence. And that's the most important thing. So, as we're painting these subjects, we're keeping it so simple. We're starting light, and then we're gradually getting darker. So I did the light orange, then I did the dark brown. And as we're looking at the bison, right, the top of the bison are lighter, the bottom, where the feet and the head are like the bottom of the body, where the belly is, those are the darkest. And so I added a little more indigo to my brown to make it even darker than before. And this is the order that's going to make it easier whenever you are watercolor sketching, whenever you're plain air watercolor sketching is remembering that you want to paint light and then medium, and then dark. And the darker you get with your value, the less paint you're going to need overall. Now, I started again. This is I kind of was trying to add even more detail to this bison and make it look, you know, use negative space, meaning I am painting with dark value intentionally leaving behind light values underneath to create detail. And that can work really well. And also, there is definitely such a thing as overworking your painting. There is such a thing as spending so much time on the details that you forget to have fun, right, that you forget that you're painting this whole scene. And especially if you're painting a whole big scene like this, right? I'm painting this bison. I'm trying to follow the pattern that I set initially, where the top is lighter, the bottom is darker, and I'm just generally using really simple strokes to imply that contrast, right? It's easy to forget. Oh, I'm also trying to paint a whole scene. I'm trying to paint these bison in a field. And so I don't need to make them super complicated because actually, if I spend all of my energy and all of my emotional resilience on the bison, am I going to enjoy painting the rest of the scene around it? And the answer is, maybe not. And so you kind of have to balance how simple can I make this? What details do I actually want? And then how can I juggle all the things that I'm trying to paint? Okay, so we painted the bison. That third bison, that's just like a lump in the background, right? I basically painted it just one mid to dark brown, right, in the background. That doesn't need to be any more than a lump. And the nice thing about your eyes is that especially when you put all of these things together, it's going to fill in the blanks. So then I did the light layer of the cabin, just a really light value indigo with lots of water. And then I'm letting that dry. And now that I've painted these subjects, I'm taking a lighter green, still using a bunch of water, but I'm taking a lighter green, and I'm just filling in the background space. And I'm painting this right now because I know that I'm going to want to paint in some details like grass on top of, like, these whiter expanses of green that I'm painting around the bison, right? Um, and so I want to give this field a chance to dry, basically. But I also want it to be pretty watery. So I'm picking up this green, and I'm also squeezing on my water brush while I'm painting. And that is making it so I'm getting paint on the paper, but I'm also getting water on the paper. When you're sitting out in the wild, your paper is going to dry faster than when you're in your studio. And when you're sitting out in the wild, you are not going to to sit on a rock for much more than an hour, probably even less than that, right? And so we're not looking for shortcuts necessarily. What we're looking for are quick ways to give you the experience that you want. And painting the subjects that have the most detail first, in this case, that's the bison, right? We're starting with the subjects that have the most detail so that we can use the dry space in order to craft that detail from light to dark and then painting the background around those subjects. Um so we're just going up to the house with the green. And then I'm also painting one layer of mountain behind the house. Now, in the reference photo, all of the, like, hill sides are kind I just kind of looks like one big hillside. I'm going to take some creative liberties here and paint kind of, like, multiple hillsides. And I'm just kind of messing around with different color mixes. I added a little bit of yellow to make it, like, more of a warmer green for a hill that's going behind. And because we're sketching, right? Because I'm sketching this, I am painting the front layer first and then filling in the back layers as I go. This kind of goes back to what we talked about with painting layers, right? It's not necessarily about painting back to front or having a very specific order, like we do if we're painting with watercolor and lots of layers in the studio. It's more about how do I paint something and then give it enough time to dry so that the layers don't all run together. How do I patchwork this scene together? So I did those first two, like, background hills and then I came back to focus on the grass in front of the bison. It's a little more yellow than green, and so I thought, I'm going to add some yellow to it. And then I thought, Oh, that looks terrible. And that's going to happen when you're sketching. That's going to happen a lot when you're sketching, especially if you are out, you know, in plain air in the middle of it all. You're going to paint something and you're going to make split second decisions, and it's going to feel like oh, I don't love that. And that's okay. That's fine. You can, you know, make do with what you have. You can make different decisions that maybe cover up the mistake, right? I think that all of that yellow is not really what I wanted, but that's okay. I added a little bit of yellow in, like, loose zig zag strokes to the rest of the field. And ultimately, you know, like, one mishap is not going to ruin this scene. So now I'm adding in some more hillsides, and I'm just kind of, you know, going front to back, which, again, I'm doing this in my sketchbook. I would not normally do this in my studio, but I'm going front to back, specifically so that I can still have all the details that I want and without getting all of the dry space too wet, right? Because I want the front to overlap all of the back ones. I'm also, as I'm layering these hills, kind of following that zig zag movement pattern, right? So I want them to kind of be like angled down and layering on top of each other. Now, at some point, I decided, Okay, that's enough hills. Now let's paint the trees. And especially with the trees, I am being so loose. And again, this is one of my when I'm out in the wild trying to sketch something fast, painting a tree in a very specific tree shape is going to take way too long, and I might get impatient. So instead, I'm just doing kind of flat vertical strokes, and then I'm going back in after where I maybe have a little more opportunity to be precise and making some of those trees a little pointy on the top. So I'm like, I'm blocking in essentially all of this space with the green vertical marks that I know trees make. And then I'm going to go back in after and add in some more, like, sharp, maybe a slightly more accurate detail to make them look like evergreen, to make them look like pine trees. But remember, these trees are in the background, so they don't need to have nearly as much detail as you want them to have. Now, this photo is in broad daylight, and so you can see, like, specific details. But just because you can see something in a reference photo doesn't necessarily mean it's going to translate well into your painting. And so as you're painting, especially as you're painting plain air, especially as you're trying to really simplify and zoom in for a sketch, one of the most important methods for simplifying is letting go of detail of letting is saying to yourself, even though the thing that I'm looking at has a lot of detail, that doesn't mean I have to capture all of that detail. And in fact, capturing all of that detail might make my painting worse, and it definitely will make my painting experience worse. So, we painted the trees, notice how, like, especially for that background blocking, that layer was lighter. And then as I added on the sharper details in front, those details were a little bit darker value. So what I mean by darker value is there's more paint and less water in the mixture. So now I'm going to continue on adding my layers by adding this mountain layer in the back. And this mountain is kind of like a blue violet, but it is in the background, which means I know for sure that I want it to be pretty light value. I want it to be blue, and I want it to be pretty light value. Now, the trees might have had a chance to dry, in which case, I might be able to, like, bring down this layer slightly on top of the trees, but I'm trying to paint around it around the tops of the trees as much as possible. Then I added a little bit of pink to this blue layer to make it a little bit more purple. Mixing colors directly on the page is one of my favorite things to do, especially when I'm sketching out in the wild because it's so much easier and it's more interesting to have lots of different colors kind of reflected in one layer. Now, I do think that I had a little bit too much purple in there, a little bit too much pink. It's more than I wanted. So easy fix. I took my towel, I mopped up that paint, and especially because it was still pretty wet. It was able to pick up pretty easily. That's definitely a trick that I would use, you know, especially if you're painting big flat washes like this, you can just, you know, you don't have to keep something if you feel like it was a mistake. So now I've done the mountain, and I'm adding the sky. The tricky thing with the sky, I'm using, like, a lighter blue. The tricky thing with the sky is that that mountain used a lot of water. And so I want to be really careful as I'm adding my sky. I'm using lots of white space. I'm very intentionally not bringing that wet layer directly to the top of the wet mountain ridge. And, you know, when I'm outside, it's going to dry faster than it would in my studio. But still, I don't want the mountain that I painted to get mixed up with the sky. I want that mountain ridge to still be clear. And so I'm using I used short, kind of choppy strokes to bring down the sky, knowing that it is not going to be perfect. Okay, I have most of this scene painted. So now I'm going to add in a few details. I took some indigo to add in just a few shadows along where the house is. And again, this isn't going to be perfect. All I knew is along the bottom and along some of the sides, I wanted to be darker, and that was good enough for me. And my brain will fill in the rest. As long as there's that contrast there, my brain will fill in the rest. So, Nan, then I'm going to go back in and I'm going to add just some really quick strokes for grass. Bigger in the front, smaller as we get in the back, but using various shades of green. And I don't have to fill in this whole field, but adding a few vertical flicks like this, again, very small in the back and larger in the front is going to add to the texture, and it's going to add to the movement. Then I'm just adding a few zig zag strokes here and there, especially because we were able to paint the trees and the mountain, like that top layer. This bottom layer of grass was able to dry so that now I can go back and add in these details that are going to make this part of the scene you know, look even more interesting. And especially because it's closer to the foreground, we do want this to be slightly more detailed, right? I do want where the bison are and that field to have maybe a little more detail, a little more movement than all of the subjects in the back. And that's just because I can see them better, right? I want that detail because the contrast of more detailed to less detailed as we go from front to back, and foreground to background is going to help everything snap together. And there we go. Uh, I, you know, as always, I like to say, This is where I was. Make a little note about the things that I was painting, especially when you're travel painting, making little notes about the process and about where you were, it's just going to make it even more interesting and memorable. And I had so much fun painting this little simple scene with Bison and which are especially meaningful for Grand Teton National Park. So I hope you had a lot of fun, too. Thank you so much for painting with me, and I will see you again in the next video. Y. 11. Thank You!: Well, my friend, thank you so much for watching. Thank you so much for painting with me. I hope that you enjoyed this little watercolor tour of Grand Teton National Park, and hopefully it inspired you to get your own watercolor travel supplies out and take an adventure. It doesn't even have to be at some place super magical, like a national park. Even if you use these ideas in your own neighborhood, which neighborhoods are pretty magical, I know that it can bring you so much joy that these techniques can help you feel like a real artist, because the truth is you are one. You are a real artist, and you, too, are just as qualified to be a planer painter out in the wild using your creativity as anybody else. If you really liked this class, I would love to hear from you, especially on skill share. One of the best ways for me to get feedback is for you to leave a review. It's also one of the best ways for other people to figure out if this course is for them or not. And as a bonus, it helps with the old algorithm stuff, right? Anytime you leave a review on one of my classes, it helps other people find my class on skill share. And I would just really appreciate that. So, um, yeah. If there's one thing you could help me with, it would be to leave a review. Or you can feel free to shoot me an email Colby at this writing desk.com, if you have any thoughts or anything that you want to share with me. I am always so happy to hear any stories or anything that's going on. And I just really appreciate you being here. So thanks so much for joining me. Thanks so much for painting with me. If you really enjoyed this class, I have so many others. Feel free to check them out in my classroom. And I hope to see you again very soon.