Vibrant Watercolor Fruit: Mastering Tone, Texture, and Color Harmony

1. Welcome To The Class!: Hello, everyone. My name is Will Elliston, and I'm thrilled to welcome you to this watercolor painting class. Today, we'll be working on creating a vibrant and refreshing still life, featuring colorful summer fruits. The transparency of the glass, the varied textures of the fruits, and the interplay of colors give it an illusion of complexity when actually the process is quite simple. We'll learn how to create depth and realism with different tonal values, and you'll discover how to choose and mix colors for a balanced, vibrant composition. I've been a professional artist for many years, exploring lots of different subjects, from wild life and portraits to cityscapes and countryside scames. I've always been entranced by the possibilities of watercolor. But when I started, I had no idea where to begin or how to improve. I didn't know what supplies I needed, how to create the effects I wanted, or which colors to mix. Now I've taken part in many worldwide exhibitions, been featured in magazines, and been lucky enough to win awards from well respected organizations, such as the International Watercolor Society, the Masters of Watercolor Alliance, Windsor and Newton, and the SAA. Watercolor can be overwhelming for those starting out, which is why my goal is to help you feel relaxed and enjoy this medium in a step by step manner. Today, I'll be guiding you through a complete painting, demonstrating a variety of techniques and explaining how I use all my supplies and materials. Whether you're just starting out or already have some experience, you'll be able to follow along at your own pace and improve your watercolor skills. If this class is too challenging or too easy for you, I have a variety of classes available at different skill levels. I like to start off with a free expressive approach, with no fear of making mistakes as we create exciting textures for the underlayer. As the painting progresses, we'll add more details to bring it to life and make it stand out. I strive to simplify complex subjects into easier shapes that encourage playfulness. Throughout this class, I'll be sharing plenty of tips and tricks. I'll show you how to turn mistakes into opportunities, taking the stress out of painting in order to have fun. I'll also provide you with my watercolor mixing charts, which are an invaluable tool when it comes to choosing and mixing colors. If you have any questions, you can post them in the discussion thread down below. I'll be sure to read and respond to every think he post. Don't forget to follow me on skill share by clicking the Follow button at the top. This means you'll be the first to know when I launch a new class or post giveaways. You can also follow me on Instagram at Will Elliston to see my latest works. By the end of the class, you'll have a beautiful painting showcasing your improved skills in tone, texture, and color harmony. Let's get started. 2. Your Project: First of all, thank you so much for choosing this class. I deeply appreciate you joining me here today. So we're going to paint a vibrant still life featuring a glass filled with colorful fruits. This subject is perfect because it offers a wonderful balance of simplicity and depth. It makes an ideal subject for exploring watercolors full potential and for practicing essential techniques. You can really follow your own creative path and have fun with the process. I've planned out a simple step by step approach you can follow along with. But if you're feeling adventurous, you can add your own individuality to it. In the resource section, I've added a high resolution image of my finished painting to help guide you. You're welcome to follow my painting exactly or experiment with your own composition. As we're going to be focusing on the painting aspect of watercolor, I've provided templates you can use to help transfer or trace the sketch before you paint. It's fine to trace when using it as a guide for learning how to paint. It's important to have the underdrawing correct so that you can relax and have fun learning the watercolor medium itself. Whichever direction you take this class, it would be great to see your results and the paintings you create through it. I love giving my students feedback. So please take a photo afterwards and share it in the student project gallery under the project and Resource tab. I'm always intrigued to see how many students have different approaches and how they progress with each class. I'd love to hear about your process and what you learned along the way, or if you had any difficulties. I strongly recommend that you take a look at each other's work in the student project gallery. It's so inspiring to see each other's work and extremely comforting to get the support of your fellow students. So don't forget to like and comment on each other's work. 3. Materials & Supplies: Before we start the painting, let's go over all the materials and supplies I use. Having the right materials can greatly impact the outcome of your artwork. So I'll go over all the supplies I use for this class and beyond. They're very useful to have at your disposal and will make it easier for you to follow along. L et's start with the paints themselves. And like most of the materials we'll be using today, it's a lot to do with preference. I have 12 stable colors in my palette that I fill up from tubes. They are cadmium yellow, yellow cha, burnt sienna, Cadmium red, sarin crimson, ultramarine blue, cobalt blue, cerliu blue, lavender, purple, Vidu black. And at the end of the painting, I often use white guash for tiny highlights. I don't use any particular brand. These colors you can get from any brand. Although I personally use Daniel Smith, Windsor and Newton, for Holbein paints. So let's move on to brushes. The brush I use the most is a synthetic round brush like this escoda pla brush or this Van Gogh brush. They're very versatile, because not only can you use them for detailed work with their fine tip. But as they can hold a lot of water, they are good for washes as well. They're also quite affordable, so I have quite a few in different sizes. Next are the mop brushes. Mop brushes are good for broad brush strokes, filling in large areas and creating smooth transitions or washes. They also have a nice tip that can be used for smaller details. But for really small details, highlights or anything that needs more precision, I use a synthetic size zero brush. All brands have them and they're super cheap. Another useful brush to have is a Chinese calligraphy brush. They tend to have long bristles and a very pointy tip. They're perfect for adding texture or creating dynamic lines in your paintings. You can even fan them out like this to achieve fur or feather textures as well. And that's it for brushes onto paper. The better quality of your paper, the easier it will be to paint. Cheap paper crinkles easily and is very unforgiving, not allowing you to rework mistakes. It's harder to create appealing effects and apply useful techniques like rubbing away pigment. Good quality paper, however, such as cotton based paper, Not only allows you to rework mistakes multiple times, but because the pigment reacts much better on it, the chances of mistakes are a lot lower, and you'll be more likely to create better paintings. I use arches paper because that's what's available in my local art shop. A water spray is absolutely essential. By using this, it gives you more time to paint the areas you want before it dries. It also allows you to reactivate the paint if you want to add a smooth line or remove some paint. I also have an old rag or t shirt which I used to clean my brush. Cleaning off the paint before diving it in the water will make the water last a lot longer. It's always useful to have a tissue at hand whilst painting to lift off excess paint. Also, you never know when an unwanted splash or drip might occur that needs wiping away quickly. I also have a water dropper to keep the paints wet. When you paint, it's important to have them a similar consistency to what they're like in the tubes. This way, it's easier to pick up sufficient pigment. A hair dryer is useful to have for speeding up the drying time and controlling the dampness of the paper. And lastly, masking tape. And this, of course, is just to hold the paper down still onto the surface to stop it sliding around whilst painting. Also, if you plan on painting to the edge, we'll allow you to create a very crisp clean border. And that's everything you need to paint along. I encourage you to experiment and find out what works best for you. Now, let's get ready to start the painting. 4. Sketching It Out: This does come across as a complicated painting and something difficult to draw. But as always, if we break it down into smaller steps, we can make it a lot more simple. I'm starting off with a horizontal line about one fifth of the way up the paper, and I'm just doing light strokes to imply some berries or fruits and a rough outline of the glass. It might be difficult to see the lines because I do at this very first stage, use light lines myself. And I can barely see them because I want to rub these particular lines out later. This is just to map everything down very lightly. Of course, I'll include the tracing template, which will help you speed things up and get things more accurate because at the end of the day, this class is about painting rather than drawing. Drawing is a whole other thing to practice on if you want to become a good artist. But if you just want to practice the painting aspect and end up with a nice painting, you can just use the tracing template. Now that I've laid everything down with a very light line, I can start going back over some of these areas. I'm marking now some of the highlights, the reflections on the glass. With this light lead that I'm using. Or at least it's a dark lead that I can press lightly to achieve a dark line. It means that it doesn't affect the paper. I can rub it out. If you use a light lead, you have to press harder and it actually affects the paper and it's difficult to rub out. Now I've switched pencils and now I'm using a harder lead where I can go in with a finer point and really clean up the lines and add details to the more general simple shapes we just drew in before. And I just go back and forth, try to make corrections. I think I'm mainly going to paint strawberries and blueberries in this painting. Now, depending on how much precision you want with your drawing and painting, you can spend as much time as you want really finessing over the details going back and forth. It doesn't always need that. Sometimes having some details left out adds to the mysterious nature of watercolor. But if you have the patients, you can was put as much effort into adding details as you want. But there's no pressure to do that if you want to have fun exploring. So I'm painting the curve at the top of the glass here. And just where the straw is, I'm trying to get the angle right to match it. Then just at the top here, there'll be a little bit of refraction from the way the light distorts through the glass. I'm being quite abstract with the fruits and shapes inside the glass. Now, I'll of course, finish the drawing up and scan it in, making it available for tracing. But I think for the footage, let's move onto the painting now and I'll come back to you with a fully rendered drawing. 5. Starting The Painting: With most of this painting, I'm going to be using my number 12 synthetic brush, which you can find out more about if you watch the materials and supplies video. But before we pick up any pigment, I'm just going to take water, as I've done on this left side, and just underneath this line that we've painted, and pre wetting the paper, and I'll do it on the other side as well. Just because I want to have a slight gray background for where this hypothetical table might be. I'm going to have most of it in white. In fact, all of it is going to be white. I just have to ground it with some kind of light gray. Subtly, I'm going to mix a bit of this black, dilute it, so that it's a very light gray, and maybe add a bit of coolness to it, a bit of blue, just so that it's not a bland neutral gray, and apply it to this wet area we just made and Over this blueberry, I'm quite happy to overlap it, but I'm going to go as far as that strawberry. I don't want to take the vibrancy out of that strawberry, and we'll do the same thing on the other side too, just taking it as far as the fruit, not overlapping there and just bringing it down. Making sure it's a nice clean, even wash, not much text on here. We want it to be barely visible by the end. Of course, this will dry lighter. Darks often look darker when they're wet than when they're. Once you're happy with that stage, you can get a hair dryer and dry it completely or we can move on to the next stage and be careful not to touch this wet area. We're going to be starting with cadmium yellow. Taking a little bit of that there. You can see on the edge of my palette. And I start with yellow because it's the most vibrant of the colors, and I'll be going back and forth between yellow and red, and both of those combined will make a nice orange. As you can see on the drawing, they are quite abstract shapes. There's a few lines there, curving lines, swirling lines, and I'm basically going to just improvise a bit with tones and color. Using the lines as a guide. You can have the final reference image at your side to make sense of what I'm doing because some of these reflections of the glass, I'm trying to preserve the paper. Now if you want to do a easier way of painting this, you can just paint straight over these lines and then come back at the end with gash. But I'm deciding to do most of it with the brush without gash. So I'm trying to preserve some of these lines. It's easier to have reference when you have my final painting to the side. So if your screen is big enough or if you have two devices like a mobile phone, you can have the video playing on one of them and maybe even print out the final image of the other one of the reference image. Now I'm applying a bit of cadmium red into this wet yellow, so it has nice soft, smooth transitions and mixtures. Whilst it's very wet like this, it'll have a nice gradient. There'll be no hard edges. Keeping it very diluted at the bottom here. I can do most of this painting with this same number 12 brush because it can hold a lot of pigment, but it still has a very fine tip, so I can use it for details. The only thing we might want to use a different brush for later on are the small little reflections at the top of the glass or the little tiny highlights that we'll use with guash at the very end. But it's good practice to try using a bigger brush and trying to make use of its full versatility. Using it at an angle when you want to have thicker, wider strokes and using it with the tip being perpendicular to get very fine lines. 6. Using A Tissue: With various parts of this painting, I'm going to speed up the footage because it actually makes more sense seeing it speeded up. If I played at normal speed, it would be a bit too slow and it would be difficult to see the context of where I'm going because it doesn't look connected. You can actually see the watercolor flow a bit faster. You can see what my mindset is planning. Bit more clearly. When every thing slow down. If I'm thinking of things in terms of 5 minutes or 10 minutes, it'll be difficult to see that far in the future when you're watching it, but if you see my speeded up footage, you'll see the watercolor blend a bit better with how I want it to. Even when I watch the footage myself, I find it very insightful to see how the watercolor reacts with time because time is an important aspect of watercolor. Seeing it from a different perspective is very useful. Also, this painting requires quite a few details, which doesn't necessarily mean complicated details, just maybe a bit more time consuming. So speeding up the footage so that it reaches an hour and a half is much more palatable to watch, I think. You can see I'm continuing looking for different areas, using the pencil lines for borders and just going back and forth with different colors of red and yellow, different tones. I might apply a thick stroke of yellow and then wash it out with a bit of water to bring the tone a bit lighter, and then I might do the same with a red, add a bit stronger red and bring it out a bit lighter. Or maybe I might add yellow and then transition it to a red. I'm doing a mixture of all kinds of combinations between thicker pigments and more diluted pigments and a mixture of different hues and colors. You can see in these smaller areas, I'm using the tip of my brush, so I'm angling it a bit more perpendicular to the paper. And so far, all I've used is biu red and pium yellow, and of course, they come together to make orange, so we've actually got three colors we're working with. Even though we're only using the two. If you see my palette on the side, I've got a couple of reds. I've got abu red, and I've got alizarin crimson. C abu red is the vibrant one. It's a more opaic, and alizarin crimson is more translucent. Translucent colors often look darker on the palette or applied thickly because the particles are so small that when light shines through them, they disperse and absorb all the light, whereas opaic colors have thicker particles and they actually reflect the light a bit more. You can see in my palette, the opaic colors are the brighter ones and the darker ones are the translucent ones. So I'm starting to apply some very bold red up at the top here. I'm not sure what fruits these are at the moment. I'm just having fun experimenting with different tones, different colors, different textures. My original idea was to have strawberries and blueberries. But within the glass, it's a bit more abstract. I don't know what's going on there. But it shouldn't really matter at the end of the day as long as we're creating something that's visually exciting. We don't have to get specific with what we're painting. Really, what I think is going to be exciting about this painting is the reflection of the glass. 7. Painting The Leaves: Oh. I have a tissue at hand to dab out some of the pigment and watercolor if it's a bit too strong in some areas. In this section, I'm just trying to preserve that white line, the reflection of the glass. The other ones, I decided to go over because I don't want to be pure white, but this is just the first layer. We'll come back and we'll create bolder tones later on. I'm just checking to see that gray bit we painted before is perfectly dry so that we can start painting the fruit on the table next to the glass. I'm mixing a green and I'm mixing it not by using my viridian green, which would seemingly be the most obvious, but actually using cadmium yellow and cerlian blue. I just think it's a bit more natural. It's a bit more organic green. I'm using this green to paint the leaves of the strawberries, naturally be the only part that we have green. I might paint the straw green or possibly a blue. I'll decide that a bit later on when we've got all the other colors added in. Maybe I'll have a bit of green fruit in the glass as well, but at the moment, I'm just using the screen to paint in the strawberry leaves. This takes a bit of precision using the tip of the brush. Although you can still see I'm just using the same brush, same large brush. I add a bit of yellow into some of these parts, yellow ocher, for example, to keep a nice bit of variety going on. It's not just the same green blocked out, but we have a few bits of transitions going on. Adding a bit of veridan green in there, and you can see it's already a bit more artificial. But I think I do want a bit more variety. So you can see going from left to right, these leaves all have a slightly different green to them. These are quite abstract shapes as well. I'm trying to keep them natural and organic looking by making them asymmetrical. I'm trying to make it a bit odd, some of them are quite thin, some of them are long, some of them a bit thicker. Trying to keep it a bit random. But of, I had it sketched out to begin with to guide me. If you've used the tracing template that can help you help guide you. I'm painting these leaves before the red of the strawberries because it's a lighter pigment. I always try to paint light before dark. If we painted the red of the strawberries, then it would be a bit more difficult to paint these on top. As a general rule with watercolor, we paint light before dark. But there are times when we can break that rule. Sometimes you'll see in my other classes, I use dark pigment straight away, and I use that dark pigament to spread out the pigament into other areas. 8. Painting The Surface Reflections: I'm adding a bit of yellow inside of the leaves. So there's a bit more of a transition going on in the middle. Now I'm taking my caving in red again, and even though we haven't painted the strawberries, I'm now painting the reflections of the strawberries onto the table onto the surface. Because again, if we're painting light to dark, the reflections will be lighter, so that's why we're painting them first. This is just cadmium red. Maybe with a little bit of alizarin crimson in there, but that's a personal choice. If you want to keep it simple, there's no need to add a lizarin crimson if you don't want to. Now I'm taking a bit of cerlian blue. This is to paint some of the highlights or the reflections on the glass. It takes a bit of time because we're gradually building up these details rather than doing it in a of all and one go. It's really good practice for our observation skills. We're studying how this glass works with highlights, reflections and distortions caused by the glass. We're paying attention to where the light source might be and how it interacts with the glass. With this area in particular, we're using small, controlled brush strokes to indicate tiny little reflections and refractions. We're using a mix of different colors we might see. So even though we haven't used blue yet, I'm adding that in there because it might be reflecting the blue sky above. It might be reflecting the blueberries. It's not just white, but of course, having the background as white does make it a lot more simple because if we had, let's say, a bit more of a obscure background, then we'd have to think about how that reflects as well. Because of course, glass is transparent and we would have to paint the background through the glass, and the color should be visible, but just slightly muted by the glass. One of the most important aspects to be aware of when painting these things, these details are the sharp edges and the blurred areas. Because glass often has both sharp edges and blurred areas. And of course, for the sharp edges, we have to use the point of our brush to create that sharp edge. But then if we want a blurred area, we have to use a more softer approach, just a damper brush to soften those edges. For a lot of this shadow work, I'm applying a bit of blue in here because even though there might not be a blue in the strawberry, The blue adds a bit more interest than just a gray and blue mixed with the red, makes a purple. It just makes it a bit more dynamic. Creating a few random reflections here, but of red, a very pale wash of red, again, by having the final painting as reference on hand, you can see what I'm trying to because it can be a bit confusing whilst watching this, knowing what I'm or aiming for. On this right hand side, I'm having shadows overlapping. So I started off with red, then a gray. Of course, this purple looks a bit gray as it is. It's just a more colorful gray. 9. Starting The Blueberries: Now, I just used a hair dryer to completely dry this shadow area. Now I'm going in to paint the blueberries. I'm pre wetting the area, the circle, so that there'll be a soft edge everywhere. Apart from the border, everywhere inside, it will be a nice even flow, so I'm just pre wetting this area right now. Then I'm going to take some cobalt blue, and dab it in there just to get started. We can mix these colors on the paper. We don't need to use our palette. And using the brush just to take it to the edge. Like I said, there's no hard edges on here. Take some alizarin crimson, mix it with cobalt blue to make a nice purple. Dab it in there. Because we know that it's all wet already, we don't have to be worried about a hard line because it's just going to melt away and blend out. It's dabbing the pigment out of my brush onto the paper. I'm not completely filling the area, though. I'm allowing some areas a bit lighter because there'll be some reflective light hitting the base of the blueberry. This is seran blue now. Because when you look at a blueberry, it's not just a solid blue or black or purple. There's a whole different thing going on there. There's some textures going on there. I'm trying to indicate that change of tone and color. It's all roughly the same tone actually at the moment, just a mixture of different colors of the blue and then the purple. Now we're going to go in a bit heavier. I've mixed pure purple from my palette with a bit of black, added a bit more blue to get it to the cooler side and now I'm just it in there bit by bit. Try and create the, the circular form, the sphere of the blueberry. I'm sorry that my hand is obscuring the view. It's difficult to I need the tip of the brush to gently allow the pigment to flow out, and that means holding it perpendicular to the paper. But you can see there, I basically dabbed a bit in the middle, da a bit around the outside, and there's this ring going along the middle that is a bit lighter in tone. Now, there's a little blackberry blueberry rather just hiding behind this strawberry. We're now working with quite dark tones, the darkest tones we've used so far. I always like it applying the darkest tones in the painting because it then gives me context and reference to the rest of the tones, how far I should go with the rest of the tones. 10. Painting The Strawberries: And you can see how that dark next to the leaf of the strawberry actually makes the leaf look quite light now, whereas before, it looked like a dark pigment. Now that we've applied a dark pigment next to it, we've actually made it pop. Now I'm going to paint, instead of painting the blackberries, I'm going into the red of the strawberries now. Now that everything is dried around it, especially the leaves, we can start painting the strawberries. Again, just using the same Caban red. We're going to have to have a bit of finesse around here when painting the leaves because we're going to have to get the tip of the brush and go in between each of the leaves and very carefully paint around them. Of course, you could use masking fluid if you wanted to. I tend to leave masking fluid out of my demos, my demonstrations, and lessons because not everyone has it, but it is a useful thing to have. But at the same time, it's good practice with precision painting things like this. Although it doesn't take a lot of mental energy, it's not mentally difficult to do. It really helps the mind relax almost because you still have to concentrate and it's very meditative. It's quite therapeutic because you can just go and enjoy and just fill in the little gaps. In a very relaxing way and it helps your mind shut off to everything else that's going on in the world, and it's very you can take your time with it, and it's a very peaceful thing to do. It really brings you to the present moment and makes you concentrate because, like I said, it's not mentally difficult to do, it's more physically demanding. It requires your mind to control the movement of your hand and gets you in touch with your own actions and physicality. I'm just using a tissue just to pick up a bit of the red from the top because it's a bit too much. Rolling up the tissue into a fine point and just scraping it along and dabbing it in certain places. You'll see when I move my hand away what it looks like. Subtle, but it creates a nice soft edge. It reflects the light that could be bouncing off the top of the strawberry. I've got a bit of orange here, so again, mi that cadmium yellow into that red makes a slight orange. Painting the strawberry next to it with that orange. Taking a rid of a lizarin crimson and blending it with that orange. I'm trying to make the most of the reds. We've got a warm red on the orange side and then a cool red with the sarin crimson side. Using the tip of the brush to make sure we don't go over the edge of the blueberry. Now, the strawberry looks like I've put details in there, but that's just the reflection of the light bouncing off the camera, which does actually look quite effective for the highlights that you would see on a strawberry, and we'll do that a bit later at the end once it's all dried off. Again, using a precision to paint the leaves of the strawberry. I have to be careful at the top of the strawberry because I don't think it's fully dried up at the top. I have to get a hair dryer or wait for it to dry completely. 11. Playing With Different Consistencies: Thicker pigments, of course, dry faster than very wet ones. So I just clean my brush, make sure there's no liquid on it, and I used it to suck out some of that extra pigment at the top there. Again, to create a highlight, adding a bit more yellow in there to make it a bit more warmth to add a bit more warmth. Adding another shadow to the right. Now while I'm waiting for all that to dry and go back into a few more details on the glass reflections. You can use the reference, the tracing reference to make sure your drawing is correct because these are quite specific highlights and reflections and refractions. You can also look at the final image of the painting as reference. There's not too many little details here. They're not that specific actually. But when they come together at the end, they'll be quite powerful. It's just making sure that you paint to the right edges. These vertical lines that you see in the middle of the glass, they all have to be connected one way or another. Or not necessarily connected, but they have to be in line with each other. But you can go back and forth, especially at the end with guash or Guash. You can really emphasize the lines. On this edge, on the left, I'm really adding the vibrant pigment now, going back with a second layer, using that cadmium red as a base, and then again, influencing it with the yellow. Of course, you could experiment with different colors. If you prefer a different color scheme, I'll be excited to see how you can adapt it to your preferences. Maybe you want to have it more emphasized with yellow than red. Maybe you'd want green and yellow. Maybe you'd want blue and red. Again, I'm speeding this area up because there's lots of times when I'm pausing to think and it takes time using the tip of my brush to fill out some of these areas. You can still see everything that I'm doing. I'm not doing anything particularly technical. I'm just filling in gaps, painting in numbers in a detailed way. And It just takes time, so I figured speeding up would be a bit more beneficial. I occasionally clean my brush and suck out some of the pigment in other areas to correct my tones. You can see now I'm being a bit more careful about leaving those reflections, those vertical lines in the middle of the glass. I'm being a bit more careful not to overlap them now. It takes a bit of time and concentration to figure out which areas to paint and which areas to leave. But if you have my reference image again, it should help guide you. As you can see, I'm going all over the place. I don't necessarily paint in a particular order. I jump around from the middle of the glass to the blueberries, to the strawberries, to the reflections. So I'm painting out the blueberries again, and this one on the left dried a bit lighter than expected. It very often does with dark pigaments, they often dry lighter than they look. So I'm adding a bit more just to correct the tone of it. 12. Starting The Shadows: Now I'm going to start painting the shadows underneath the fruit. And I find shadows, in particular, you can be adventurous with color. With watercolor painting, and using colors can be very subjective rather than objective. You can be very free with what you use. It's a bit more personal and expressive. It doesn't have to be a precise match. We can choose whatever we want, whatever is personal to us. The magic of watercolor lies in its transparency and its laying capabilities, and by varying the amount of dilution of paint and the amount of water used, we can achieve a whole array of tones and effects that are impossible to replicate in any other medium. This fluidity allows for more spontaneous expression and encourages experimentation. This interaction between pigment in watercolor is very unpredictable, and because of that, it can yield surprising results. Unique results that other mediums just can't. Colors blend and bleed into each other in a very organic way. We couldn't even plan or replicate that in another medium. The textures mimic the complexities of nature itself. This unpredictability is something that people who love watercolor really embrace, and it's not seen as a limitation, but as an opportunity to embrace the spontaneity and really enhance and harness the medium's beauty. Watercolor really does go beyond technical proficiency, because successful watercolor paintings, they rely on the artist's ability to harness intuition and emotion. Colors are chosen not just for their accuracy, but their ability to convey mood and evoke feelings. Warm tones might evoke feelings of nostalgia and comfort, while cool shades might suggest serenity or peacefulness. The interplay of light and shadow, especially when painting reflections like this, can be achieved through careful laying and blending. They add depth and dimension to artwork. I think watercolor is much more personal than oil or acrylic. Those have their strength in other things, but there's something about watercolor that really transcends the boundaries of realism, and it really explores emotions, moods, and more personal interpretations of the world. Like the fluidity and unpredictability of the colors allow artists to really create compositions that resonate on a visceral level. They can be so captivating to viewers, and it really invites people in to connect with their artwork in a unique way. So instead of mixing pure black, I'm adding a lizard crimson there and ultramarine blue. And I'm just painting underneath there. It doesn't matter, it's not completely dry because it's okay to have that soft edge at the bottom. But it's where the shadow connects with the reflection. I use my finger just to smudge it a bit. I'm not afraid to use my fingers every now and again, just to create the blending. There's just a little line at the base of this glass that I just want to emphasize. So I'm mixing a very dark red and with a lot of precision, just painting that thin red line, and also in the middle of the leaves or the strawberries. 13. More Blueberries: So now, I'm going to start painting the right hand side strawberries with a very strong, vibrant cadmium red. Being very careful to get a nice little edge here on the side of the glass. Implying a little strawberry in the background behind the glass. But actually, I think I'm going to paint the blue braises instead. I come back to the strawberries later, so I'm just going to mix a purple using seran blue and a isarin crimson. If you've already got a purple paint tube, you can go straight there. I made sure the paint on the glass was first so that it wouldn't spill out. There's two blueberries here, so I'm just painting them both the same time. I'm not going over the edge of the other strawberries. You see how sometimes you don't have to follow the rules because I'm actually painting dark before light here. The blueberries are going to be darker than the strawberries. Before earlier on the class, I said that I paint light to dark, but in this particular case, I think I can get away with it. There's no reason. Having to be careful not to go over the lines here for the leaves of the strawberries. We do a solid wash of a pure color, and then we can start messing around with the tone. I'm sucking out a bit of the pigment there to make it a bit lighter on the top to help give a feeling of form. Do that to the other one too. It just makes it feel more, more volume. It's not flat anymore. That's all it takes to create a bit of volume. Wet or wet, taking away some of that pigment, and it gradually gets a bit thicker. Putting a bit more blue in there. Now you can start influencing some other colors to it. I quite like the idea of this cerlian blue coming through. Serlian blue is my favorite blend of blue, actually. And then there's another blueberry right here. I'm going to go straight in with the cerlian blue. And then in that darker, more purple blend into it on top. With these blueberries, I've actually had the speed of the footage put back to normal. That you can see what it's like painting at normal speed because a lot of this painting has been sped up and just for you to get an idea of how the water actually reacts, I thought I'd put a bit of normal speed footage in there. So you can see how there's nice. Apart from the edges, there's a nice soft blending going on. With the strawberries, actually, there's not much blending at all. It's all a solid red color. There's a bit of orange going on there. A little influence of different tones, too. 14. More Strawberries: I'm starting this strawberry with pure yellow because I want a bit more of an orange strawberry going on. And the real special thing about these strawberries will be at the end when we add the highlights because they're very tiny, they're very shiny fruit, and that means there's a lot of strong reflections of the light on there. So when we come back with the white gouache at the end, it'll really add a depth of realism to them. Now, before the blueberries are completely dry, I'm dabbing in this serian blue again because as it was drying, I felt like it was getting a bit too light. I wanted a bit more blue, and we're going to add a bit more tones later, but for the time being, that's fine. Now I'm going to be very careful because I've used the hair dryer to dry the blueberries, and it's okay if I touch the edge now. It's not going to spill out. You've got to make sure if you ever want to have a hard line like I have here with the strawberries against the blueberries, you have to make sure it's completely dry, so it doesn't spill over. I use the hair dryer just to make sure it's a very hard line. And again, with the strawberry, it's just a block of red at the moment. We don't have to worry too much about the tones of the strawberries. We'll add a little bit of a highlight. For the most part, is just a solid red with a little bit of lightness at the top. And we'll, of course, a bit of a shadow at the bottom later. Going back to the strawberries at the top, we can start filling out all the way down to the blueberries. No, I apply fi pigment in the middle and then use use a bit of water to spread it out. A. And also this orange. I want there to be a hard line there, so to be very careful it doesn't spill out. I made sure it was dry. Now I'm going to pre wet this because these strawberries, these last two ones on the left, are sliced open, and they have a nice wet and wet soft texture to them. I'm just going to pre wet it and a little bit of orange soothe in there, a little bit of red. Put a bit of cadmium yellow in there to turn it into an orange. And then for the time being, that I'll leave it like that. Now, I'm going to start doing some highlights on the left because while I'm waiting for those bits to dry, I may as well carry on with the rest of the painting. So I'm moving to a smaller brush now, number eight, I think it is, and I already have white in my palette, so I'm getting a bit of that. I'm just dabbing a few dots, just a couple of dots where the reflection of the light would bounce off and create these highlights. You can see, I'm just dabbing a few dots. On the strawberries, maybe I'm adding a few more circular highlights, loop highlights. Just a few dabs. And it just gives the illusion of a very tiny surface. Trying to evenly space them as well. And then while sticking with the same brush, I'm going to clean off the white end with a bit of a darker pigment, I'm going to go on the bottom and add a few shadows. Very subtle. 15. Layering More Details: Sticking with the same small brush, I'm going back over to the other side before it's completely dry. And with that bit of red, we picked up. We're adding a few more details onto the glass, emphasizing that highlighted line. Using a tissue to correct some of the tones, softening some of the harder lines. Thinking a bit more about edges, where I want there to be a soft edge and transition and where some areas I want there to be a harder line. These straight lines on the sides of the glass. They're usually quite solid colors, so they're ever going to be all white, all mid tones, or all dark. That's what makes them stick out. Just taking my time, making sure I'm not overdoing it, and I'm trying to be economical with where I place these details. They're only little things, but they take a bit of time to plan out. Now moving back to this strawberry, while it's wet or wet, you can see me dab the brush in there, because I've sped up the footage, you can see how it spreads out softly like that. I just have to keep on going back and forth because I have to wait for it to dry again. So I'm going back to the left, adding again, another layer, a darker tone on there. As I said, the shapes inside this glass are very abstract, actually. Apart from a few areas, you can't really explain what they are. I can see that there's a citruus fruit in there, but really the distortion of the glass helps us and allows us to be abstract without being direct with what we're painting. Adding a bit of a lizard crimson there. I don't know whereabouts you are in the world whilst you watch this or whilst you paint this. But certainly, for me, whilst painting this, it makes me want to have a drink, a nice refreshing drink. It's particularly hot where I am at the moment, so that's why I chose this subject. Now at the top here, I'm going to add a bit of green. The green that I already had in my palette from mixing seran blue and um yellow. I'm going to start off with it being a bit a bit more yellow, and then we'll add a bit of green on. So once we fill out the area with a wash, we can start manipulating it by adding more pigments. By dabbing this green up at the top, it can start blending its way down as it gets lighter and lighter towards the bottom. Needs a bit more vibrancy, so I'm going to add a bit more yellow to it just to make it pop a bit more. You can see there are quite a few things that don't make sense, for example, next to the straw. There's a big red fruit that turns into a lemon. I'm just going to add a bit more red to turn it to orange to try and make sense of that a bit more. It still doesn't completely make sense, but it's fine with me. It still has a appealing aspect to it. 16. Sliced Strawberries: We can get away with things like that. Due to the water color, nature. Now, with this strawberry, I'm using the same red, and just going along painting little segments or sections. So this one isn't a block of red and a bit of yellow there, and then going back into it with pure water just to soften it out. It's a bit too strong, though. I'm sucking out some of the pigment using a tissue and we can improve it even more later on with the white paint, the white. Remember this footage is sped up, so I was having to wait a bit more to wait for it to dry a bit so that I could add a bit more definition because of course, if it is too wet, this paint, especially the white paint will just bleed out too. You have to wait for it to absorb into the paper and the water to evaporate a bit. So that here have a bit of a harder line. And now that it's dried up at the top there where the green is, I can do a second layer there with a bit of a darker green to emphasize the peel. I'm really not sure what I'm painting here. Maybe it's a lime or a slice of apple. It doesn't matter actually. I just It feels right to have a bit of green there because we've got a bit of green with the leaves of the strawberries, but there's nothing else on the other side of the painting up at the top, so it helps balance it out compositionally by adding a bit of green Going back to the strawberry there, just to emphasize a bit of it while it's wet on wet, so I'll soften itself out. Mixing a very dark piment here because now is the time to go back to these blue berries, now that it's drier and starting to paint the darker tones into them. So like usual, we're using a heavier pigment, and then we'll go back into them with a bit more water to soften the edges and spread it out a bit. Whilst we're at it, we can paint the shadows underneath, too. We've moved to the smaller brush for this last part of the painting because we've finished with all the major washes now we're only really doing details and more fines. We don't need to rely on the big brush anymore. We can start using the small brush. So I'm going back and softening some of these edges. Now, figuring out what to do with these strawberries. The strawberry above here is another slice. But to make it a bit of a darker slice to make that front slice pop a bit more. I have to make it a bit darker at the top here. Going back with a white to add that te the texture of the sliced strawberry. 17. A Raspberry: Now, I think I'm going to add a raspberry here just because it's a darker. We need a dark color up here and a cool red is a nice balance a nice balance of tones. It's really good practice doing these abstract things because we're not limited with what we're actually painting because we're using abstraction, but it gives us a good opportunity to practice edges and tones and experimenting with variety without actually being that realistic. It is, of course, it's got a sense of realism in this painting because of the reflection of the glass. But if you look at what's inside the glass, it is actually quite abstract. J. Be careful on the edge. Then there's a little rim where the water meets the glass. It gets a bit darker and creates a nice dark line on the surface of the water there. Its tiny little details that if you observe closely, you can see them and small little lines make a big difference. Adding a bit more red to that strawberry at the back. All the main elements are down now. We're just trying to bring the painting together, tie it all together now by increasing the tones, adding the darkest darks into the equation now. Of course, inside this glass, there could be blocks of ice that even more. I'm using the white guash again to add the highlights to these strawberries, and you see just a few white lines, a few dots, a few curvatures, add a pop of realism to it. Now to paint the side of the glass very carefully going up a very thin line of blue, a grayish blue. Very thin. Using the same pigment, but a bit lighter, just run the brush over on the bottom of the rim again with a very thin line where the pencil markings are. Because of course, we're going to rub these pencil lines out at the end of the painting. And just finish before we reach the straw. I think it's a bit too dark on the left there, so I'm just getting a tissue and dabbing away. Now we can go to the right hand side and same idea. Maybe adding a bit more warmth to the gray on this side, painting to the very edge. It's an important part of the painting to get right, even though they're very small lines. Take your time to get it right, and just this little bit here connecting it to the straw. And then I'm going to clean my brush and get a bit of red, make it a lot more red rather than gray, not pure red though, and on the top line, the top edge of the rim, going to paint this line here because this is going to reflect the red fruit from the glass. And just paint up until that straw right there. We're not painting the straw. We're leaving a little gap there. Then we can connect it with the gray and let it blend out into that red. Maybe have a bit darker on that pack line. 18. Finishing The Painting: So you can see those thin lines have a big effect. And now I'm mixing, I'm going to paint the straw now and I think I'm going to have it serian blue in the end because that's my favorite color. And I think it just adds something nice because it's my favorite color, but you can paint the straw your favorite color. And to add to the illusion of realism to paint the straw, we're leaving a little bit of gap where the glass is at the top, the rim of the glass. Now I'm going to go to this obscure bit of fruit at the top, which looks like a slice of water melon that turns into an orange underneath the water and add a bit of yellow to it. Just because I like the mix of red and yellow and orange that it makes. I've got a bit of white mixed in with that yellow, and I'm just going over some areas to create a bit of high lights. Go back to this deep red. Emphasize this yellow slice in the middle, this orange slice. Again, going back to these fine little details that are very small, but just have to get a bit right. Making some of these highlights pop because I've lost a lot of these lines of the reflection, so I'm just going back to bring them out again. Pure white. And now I'm going to go back to the straw. And I'm using that same cerlian, but darkening it with ultra marine. And that blue in the middle of the straw at the moment will be a high light. So I'm going towards the edge to make it pop in the middle. And just where it reaches the top, I'm painting a little strip of blue that goes out a bit. Again, because it's distorted by the reflection of the glass. You can paint this straw, whichever color you want, purple, red, yellow, green. I like blue, so I'm painting it blue. Then leaving that white gap and continuing it on to the top of the straw. It's going all around the outside. Bringing it down to the bottom. You can see how the reflection of the glass changes the angle a bit of the straw. Softening a bit with a bit of water. Then using a tiny bit of tissue just to draw out some other that excess pigment, soften the line. Then now that there's not so much water on there, we can go back of some white and really make that highlight. Now I'm going to go underneath that rim of glass there, with a bit of black. And he's in the white. Ms with a little bit of ami yellow, and adding a few dots to this raspberry. Go back to these lines to really make the reflections pop. It's always better to come back at the end with this white wash than to be too precious with your washes at the beginning. Just go back and forth from your reference image of the final painting to how your painting is now and just to see what differences there are, whether they're subtle or not. It doesn't have to be perfectly matched at all. I just that's how we learn by observing and seeing what difference there is and how we could have done things differently. Now, with this painting in particular, we have to rub out the lines, but first, dry off the painting completely with your hair dryer, and then take the putty rubber and rub out all the lines to really help make the details clear. And that's the painting done. 19. Final Thoughts: Welcome back, and congratulations on completing this still live class. I hope you enjoyed the process and are eager to put your new found skills into practice. The beauty of this subject lies in its simplicity yet captivating nature, allowing each of you to infuse your personal creativity into every brushstroke. Throughout our time together, we've delved into the fundamental elements that define a successful watercolor painting, tones, textures, and colors. By mastering these, you will possess the tools to create paintings that are not only visually striking, but also deeply expressive. I encourage you to continue exploring and experimenting with watercolors. Whether you choose to follow the steps outlined or venture into your own artistic journey, remember that the joy of painting lies in the freedom to express yourself. Remember, watercolor painting is not just about technical skills, but also about expressing your creativity and personal style. I encourage you to continue exploring, experimenting, and pushing your boundaries to create your own unique watercolor masterpieces. As we come to the end of this class, I hope you feel more confident and comfortable with your watercolor painting abilities. Practice is key when it comes to improving your skills, so keep on painting and experimenting. I want to express my gratitude for each and every one of you. Your passion for watercolor painting is so inspiring, and I'm honored to be your teacher. If you would like feedback on your painting, I'd love to give it. So please share your painting in the student project gallery down below, and I'll be sure to respond. If you prefer, you can share it on Instagram, tagging me at Williston, as I would love to see it. Skillshare also love seeing my students work, so tag them as well at Skillshare. After putting so much effort into it, why not share your creation? If you have any questions or comments about today's class or want any specific advice related to watercolor, please reach out to me in the discussion section. You can also let me know about any subject wildlife or scene you'd like me to do a class on. If you found this class useful, I'd really appreciate getting your feedback on it. Reading your reviews fills my heart with joy and helps me create the best experience for my students. Lastly, please click the follow button up top so you can follow me on Skillshare. This means that you'll be the first to know when I launch a new class or post giveaways. Thank you again for joining me in this class. I look forward to future classes together, keep practicing, and until next time, happy painting.