Village Huts in Watercolour: Laos

1. Introduction: Welcome. In this class, we'll be painting a village hut seen in watercolor. Natural landscapes as simple and beautiful and providing the perfect subject for a beginner watercolor artist. Adding a man-made objects such as a house or hut can create an interesting contrast and help to tell the story. Learning how to capture a landscape in a quick, fun and loose manner is an essential skill that every artist should learn to master. Watercolour is the perfect medium that allows you to produce spontaneous and expressive paintings. On the go, planning is crucial. I'll show you how to simplify shapes and sketching the large ones such as foliage, trees, grass, and land. Getting those large components and accurately beforehand is essential for your painting to make sense. So join me in this class. You'll see just how easy it is to create this amazing scene in no time at all. 2. Materials Required: Okay, so we're going to talk a bit about materials, what you're going to need for this particular class. And I thought it will be great to just talk about the colors first. So I've got my palette out here. And you can notice in this painting that really isn't that many colors. We've really got a lot of these warmer colors here, like the yellows and we've got some of the greens out the bag, got a bit of purple, some cooler sort of grace here, but that's just about it. There's even a little bit of brown here. So what I'm using for the roof is essentially a little bit of yellow ocher. I'm also adding in near the bottom where we've got these more lighter and saturated areas, a little bit of this hansa yellow. So any type of saturated, vibrant yellow is great. And what you're going to find is that it's going to draw more attention to that area due to that saturation. So sometimes I saved that more saturated air to create a little focal point. So those are essentially the yellow is that I'm using in here. With the less saturated yellow is I tend to use yellow ocher for the rooftops and things like that just to indicate perhaps there's some tree branches and foliage and stuff that's been used to create the roof in the background, I've got some darker green. I'm using a green code, undersea green, you can also use olive green. You can use hookers green as well, just as long as you've got a dark green, it can also mix a dark blue with the yellow to make a green as well. So good. A good one that I use is ultramarine blue with a little bit of yellow ocher. Or I can use a little bit of Hansa yellow medium and that will create a nice green as well. And I've used different quantities of it as well. You see some parts a little bit more lighter, so I'll use more water and some parts here there'll be darker. I use more paint in those areas. So some of the really dark areas in here, I've used some of this color here, which is neutral tint. I also add in a little bit of brown. This is burnt umber, and I use that for these tree branches as well. Find a combination of burnt umber and ultramarine blue or even a bit of purple, makes the shadows pop out really well and creates a little bit more interests rather than just using black for your shadows or do use black sometimes for the really sharp edged areas of the shadows, but it's not too necessary. You can, of course, just mix up your three primaries together, yellow, blue, and red to create a nice gray and dark gray as well. So there's many, many options for you in terms of creating those dark areas. But I would suggest try mixing up your darks rather than just using a black. I've also got a tube of white gouache. And white gouache is basically an opaque watercolor. You can look it up and I've got a little bit here that's basically dried off and it comes in a nice little tube like this that you can get. And I use this because it's great for getting in highlights. So sometimes right at the end, say you want to create this kind of leafy branching pattern coming off the side of the heart. Or maybe just bring back some highlights on the rocks and bits and pieces in here, even on the shoulders, on the clothes of the figures. It really makes a difference. So that's about 0 in terms of color. Now, with brushes, I've got a whole bunch of brushes, but really, I'm only using a few of them in this particular landscape. Let me just show you what I've been using. So I've got these larger ones here. And these are basically watercolor mop brushes. As you can see, they hold a lot of water. You've got a large belly so they can pick up a lot of water getting bigger areas like the shadow on the ground, even the yellow is at the back where you do it all in once. Even in the background, some of the trees as well, these really help. And the fact that they also have a sharp tip allows them to cut around shapes. You can get in a lot of detail as well. So I have these and I use them depending on how large of an area and painting. So if I need to paint a really large area might use that one or that one, but normally I only need to use these ones. In this terms of the small details. Sometimes you can see a little bit of detailing here underneath the building or in-between the ladder area, or underneath the heart. I use these two brushes here. So this is a little flat brush. It's an angled flat brush. Okay. So it's not really completely, completely flat and not flat, but it's just a bit of a, got a bit of an angle on it. And I've got these synthetic round brush and this helps get in a little bit more detail. And you basically don't pick up too much paint. These don't hold much at all. Often use just a tiny bit of paint on there and very dry as well. And it's more in the second stage when we're getting in smaller details of these ladder rungs, bit of the figures, some of these rocks and things like that. Smaller brushes really work quite well. A bonus brush, sometimes I use this brush, It's a fan brush. And basically you can see the little bristles that creates this sort of effect as well. So you can use that to create the trees and the shape of the brush just makes them look a bit more irregular. Now the paper that I'm using here is 100% cotton watercolor paper in cold press or medium. It has a texture to it. And it's really important to have that texture on there because you're only going to be able to get a lot of these beautiful wet-in-wet to fix and the blending with these with this type of paper and also the dry brush as well. We have the paint that's sort of skips over parts of the paper. You're going to need that texture on there. So other cold press, medium or rough paper will do completely fine if you've only got smooth pressed or smooth prayers, but hot press, that's going to be fine as well, but I don't recommend it because it tends to be more difficult to control. So yeah, make sure your paper has some kind of texture. If you're able to get some the cotton content, if you've just got normal watercolor paper, even just cellulose paper, that's fine as well. Just remember that it will dry a lot faster than cotton watercolor paper. And you may not be able to get in a lot of these wet and wet effects, so well, few other miscellaneous things have got a container here, it's about a liter container. I feel that completely up with water and use that during the entire painting. I don't change it in-between and also have a towel, a just an old rag or something like that. And I use that to just sort of dry off the brush, control how much water is on the brush in-between the painting. Really important to have something like that. 3. Drawing: Alright, so we're gonna go ahead and get straight into this one. And I really liked the scene. I don't know what it is about this hot, the light just crossing over the side, but it's just amazing. And I thought, why not give this a go? So let's start off. I'm going to put in roughly a little indication here, scribbling aligned roughly about a third of the way through the page. Roughly where the bottom of this house, this larger hut in the middle, finishes off. What I'm gonna do. I'm going to just pencil in little quick indication roughly of the side of it, of the actual heart itself. And remember it's just a box. If you simplify this down to the bare minimum to box on its side. So if you can draw a box as I'm doing now, then you can draw this hut like that. That's the main area. I think the hardest bit or not the hardest bit, but one of the most tricky bits is getting in this ladder. And we know that it's the bottom of the huts roughly here. And you can always just alter this as you go. It's a little doorway here. Okay? And, um, you know, forget the little thatched roof here that you can see. It sort of has a beat that comes down over the top of the door here. Just being very loose with my drawing. So I can alter and change it up if I'm a bit off the top of it coming down, There's a darker bit there. This roof again coming off the edge. Then this is important as well because it has this kind of has this sort of the effect of the light bouncing off it behind here, it's very dark. Just in this section, the light source is coming from the left-hand side. Okay. Little, little lines to show the stretching across it. Oops, this should be more on this angle like that. This is the doorway here. Look at that Just coming downwards. That might change that around a bit. So not accurate enough. Coming down more on a slight angle like that. There we are. We've got this ladder, like this ladder. And the challenge is to preserve, really preserve the lights on that ladder. It's gonna be tricky. But it can be done. Because that's just this letter comes down, hits the ground roughly about here. And I'm going to just get in the little steps of the ladder. Like that. It's how many steps is five steps, but it doesn't matter. We just can make it up close enough. Okay. Underneath the building there is darkness, but there's a tilt here that there's a large stilts. Of course, this is just sand and bits and pieces there. There's little bits of wood underneath. You can see it's kind of just kept. There is maybe some storage so that it doesn't get wet. Behind that word, it's all really dark. Now you've got these planks of wood underneath the heart as well here. It's sitting on some type of foundation or something here. Just getting these errors, the stilts is little sacs here underneath as well. And these are kind of like again, probably looking like the food storage or something like that. Like that. Let me just get in this side of the heart like that. They're just get rid of that fetching, simple. Simplify that down. There's someone in there, but I'm not going to make big, big deal of that. You can see this bits of wood sticking out inside in there somewhere. I don't want to overly complicate things. There's another looks like another still coming down on this area is sort of on a hilly side. So it's going up hill here. So I'm going to just get those stilts going up a little bit, increasing in size. And then of course you can put some little things like rocks or what have you. There is something here like a hot or whatever. I've left a lot of space here. Actually put this hut probably a little, little slightly to the left, but that doesn't matter. I'm going to just indicate this one. Here. Looks to be another type of shelter. And some would just running downwards like this. Okay. Another log here on the ground, little bits of rock and debris. And I think these really add some interest around here. You can even see like some chickens just try to draw one in. Chicken here. Picking up the ground. Just a little indication of one. You got might have another one here, just around there as well. The thing that makes them look like chickens is just that tail at the end of the beak. At the bottom. The legs come out sort of towards the center to the back. Okay. Might just do another one here. Indication of another one. Okay. Chickens is another one here, just walking and they get smaller as you go out the back. So there's no need to emphasize them too much. But you gotta leg coming out the front and then B leg at the back like that. Then we have another chicken. A triangular, almost like a triangular like shape as you can see. Okay, good. I'm good. There's a few little bits and pieces there as well. On this house we can see it overlaps a bit, so it just cuts off around about here. Rooftop overlaps here. Okay. That I will just draw this other rooftop in like that. Bring that downwards like this. And you have yet another kind of hearts over on that side. This side of it there has a lot of probably a lot of shade on that area, but you've also got this area at the bottom where you've got these stilts come into the ground like that, same like this one here. A lot of stuff going on here in the front. And of course, I never fostered making all this stuff too detailed. Just a little indication could be some colors and what have you there? There's actually another one off in the distance out the back. There seems to be something like that. Okay. And I don't want to put all that detail in. So I'll just do something like this. Just a bit of this tree coming in from the side. And that can obscure some of that detail. But we'll just get in the bottom of that building as well while I'm here. But you can certainly tell that it's like a rooftop of some sort. Maybe there'll be some darkness under there to the main player in this though is this Center Building. Want to put in a little bit more effort into detailing what's happening here. K could put in a figure, just be walking. Figure walking in the distance, just off in the background there. Be another one here. Gives the scene a bit of life. Maybe put another, another figure just standing around here. Okay. So we've got a few figures in there. Here. There's some kind of wall. As you can see, sort of just come stretches across. You've got these kind of areas of wall or thing here. It looks like it's broken. A little bit. Simple structure here in the back. We've got some of these buildings and I think these are important to portray just to get a sense of this, everything moving back into the distance. So we've got some smaller bits and pieces. Just a box. That's the box. Always remember that. It's not. You get that top of that roof is a little bit tricky variety that they just make this around, make that up like that. And maybe another one here. You can see just in the background how they overlap. A bit. Same shape. Couple another one up here. There. They just have that come down and touch ups that same like that. There we have it. We've got a few little another one. I wanted to just put one more here actually, I think there's another one there. Behind that one. A bit more shaped with this one. Now, a lot of these trees behind the, I don't think we need to bugger around with those too much. But just a few indications of branches to remind me to make sure I go into that again. Okay. I think we're ready to get started. 4. Paint the light: I'm going to pick up yellow, yellow ocher. And not only that little bit of Hansa yellow to get the really light colors in and make sure that I have enough detail. Not detail, but basically all the lightest parts of my painting. So this part here where we've got the light is bouncing off the side of the building. I really want to create more contrast there. Okay. But I'm also mixing in some yellow ocher into this area. So like e.g. the underneath here the the ladder up putting a little bit more yellow ocher, which is more of a subdued yellow. Okay. Drops some of this in here as well. Okay, so we've got a difference, not just the same yellow running through the whole thing in some of these bits of wood as well. Kind of come off with this yellow curry sort of color. There. Go cross the right, the stilts of the house as well like that. It's getting this right hand side. I'll put in some of that yellow in there as well. Okay. We'll go over the top of all this later. So it's so we'll have the proper colors in there. But they're only that, but in the ground as well, you'll find that there's actually a lot of this. It's almost like a golden orangey, slightly red color there. But it's a loop. I'm simplifying it down. Just as long as you've got a nice yellow, maybe not as vibrant as that. You can mix in a bit of brown, tiny bit of this stuff here, which is burnt sienna. Little bit of red might do the trick. A tiny bit in there. Don't want to overdo it, but just to create a bit more reddish color. And we've got a lot of that permeating through the scene, even up into the back. Okay. The trick here is just to look at the general colors and not worry about the details. Okay, So coming through here, look at that just a bit. Rooftop as well. Through this house. This is also kind of like an orangey, yellowy color down there. On top of the house. We've got more of like a brownish color. I've used some burnt sienna, some leftover burnt sienna, which is like a reddish brown. And I'm just going to get that in like that. Get some of it to mix-in hopefully with the yellow. All I'm doing at the moment is I'm just getting in basic colors. Not too much details. More of that brown, a bit of that burnt sienna again. Keep it very light. Mix is just it's less than ten per cent painting here. Ten to 15% paint maximum. In there. A little bit of, I've got a bit of this whitish paints that I can just drop in at the bottom here. We've been just some water to just to blend that together a touch, but don't be afraid to leave a bit of white in there as well. Sometimes it can look good. Just dropping a bit of color back in, in that section, a little bit of something. And trying to, try my best to blend all this together nicely. Okay, this whole mix is here. You can see is that building on the left coming down the house, hut. Bit of warmth from the back of the house like that. Of course here as well. I could put in a bit there like that. But on the rooftop again back with that little burnt sienna, kinda like brownie color. Just like that. And join it together. Join it on nicely like that. We'll go back and reassess it just a moment. I'm going to work my way down the page using a little bit of yellow ocher mixed in with orange and red. Just a warmer color down here. The base, the k. Want it too brightly, kind of yellowy. So that's why I've put in some orange and a little bit of red in there as well. To calm it down, add a bit of difference. In there. We go. Almost there. Good. For the background. I'm gonna go put in touch of green. Okay. Just some soft, lighter greens coming through the edges connecting onto the houses as well. Like that. Okay. That's fine. Just letting it join on a bit like that. We've got some over here in the background as well. Sometimes this helps to mix a bit of brown or something in there so that it's not all the same color. I'm kind of joins a bit onto the rooftops. But it's really just soft and light colors at this stage. I don't wanna I don't wanna get too involved with the making it detailed just yet. Just a little indication of the green there in the background. Soft, sort of green if it's too dark, just do what I'm doing at some more water and continue on. Okay. Hopefully we can do this in two layers. Well, we've got all these lighter washes of colors in first. Then we'll progress with more of the darker ones laid off. Just putting in a little bit of darkness here. Little bit of darkness there. But it's more of like this reddish brown color so that it just looks more earthy in some spots. I'm good. Now, beautiful cerulean, the sky, I'm just picking up Buddhist cerulean now. Drop that straight in. Let's lot of it. Let me just add more water. Okay. Stuff. Connect everything to it. The trees, I mean, back there. More. I've got this kind of slightly lavender type color. I'll put some of that in there as well. Just some more coolness. Okay, good. Now that things are a wet, what I wanna do is work a little bit on some of the win-win affects little details. So if I got myself maybe a fan brush, look here, I've also got a little flat edge brush. Putting a bit of color. Let's go for some look. Purple, maybe, purple or something. A little bit of this stuff that just flip that in there to create some extra contrast and little bits of detail. I don't know, I just find this to keep things interesting. Just a little splatters of water in areas. Not to kind of picture perfect. I don't want that. I'm using these purples here because I find that the purple was actually help a lot. We've got all these sum. We've got all these warm colors in here, but we don't have any coolness. Brown, purple mix that together and flick a bit of this on the page. A bit more brown here, maybe. Good, good, good, good. Okay. Really quick dry. 5. Paint the shadows: Okay, Now that everything's dried off, the next step is to get in all the shadows or the little details and go from there. So I like to do all this in usually one go. And so I usually do my paintings in two main layers. So I've got myself a couple of small, smaller brushes. I've got this flat brush and a round brush. And I'm going to firstly go and see if I can get myself in a, these trees in a tree details out in the back. So I've got some darker green and I'm just picking up a bit of green paint, drying my brush on the towel I have and look what I'm doing. I'm just adding in little scratchy, little shapes out here in the back. Okay. Using an old round brush and just using the side of it as well to get in just indications of foliage off in the distance. Not too much detail there, but you're seeing, it's more just almost dry brush down here in the back. Like that. Here. Some of it's quiet light actually you've got more of a yellowy green here. So I can just go ahead and just redo that bit there. It more green just stuck in there like that. Here. Of course we've got a lot of this stuff which is closer to us and we'll be slightly darker. So I'm not going to again put in all the little details, just little indications like this, using the side of the brush to scratch in a few smaller details of these branches and things coming in. Okay, and this is still probably wouldn't even say it's 50 per cent paint, it's about 30% paint. The rest of it's just water. In here. Even around this section, it's kind of you can see some trees and things off here. That once you've got that nice little wash like that, this is when you can start picking up the other brush like this. Play around and add some more details. E.g. here is e.g. a little tree trunk. Like they're going up another branch off like that. And hopefully because it's not completely dry yet, you can go in and add in details without it, without, with basically that some of this stuff spreading into the, into that green. That there is some softness happening in areas. More, some a bit more in some places than others. They're there. But surprisingly it has dried pretty quickly. The weather here in Melbourne is quite warm today. Depending on where you are. You might get more wet and wet and blending effects. And in some places it will look more sharp like I've got here. And I'm going to join this on and just create and neck just another sharp edge here. The edge of this hot, the roof of it here. Just by putting in a touch of this paint In the edges like that. Okay, Look at that. I'm just cutting around it to create these kind of green sharper bits like that. More here. Look at that just cut around parts like this. You can just see here as well, there's another another one, like they're working from the top and moving your way down the page. That's too much paint picked up. They're just going to mix some of this. Okay, even here, you might get a, a branch or something running through that. That mix is a, looks to be a tree running up here as well. So play around and experiment. You can see what I'm doing a lot of the times just getting this green to cut around the shapes so that we've got the houses, huts in front top of one here. And of course here, just the edge of this hut that I'm trying to do this all in one big shape. As you can see, it's just one big gigantic tree line in the distance behind. Join it all up with each other. Okay? And then just carry the same mix downwards. You can see it's coming down now. And while we're coming down with thinking to ourselves, How about the shadows? Well, let's put in some of the shadows now I've got some lovely purple here, watering down that purple with touch. And I'm going to get that side of the building or some of the sides of the buildings in with a bit of purple like this, like that. Here. Underneath this building like that. And the right-hand side of it like this. Okay. Bit more, little bit more darkness and their mood this down like this. And that's the side of that building. Purple. We've got that purple underneath the rooftop there. Here as well. There's a bit of darkness in that section. So we can put some of this in here as well. Look at that just a little darkness there. Here. You're just bringing out the bits of darkness in here and combining it with the background a little bit so you can see tiny bit of that background is even little shadows on the on the buildings like this, it's hard to pick it out, but little shadows and stuff you can potentially get in. Okay. Let's put in a bit here. I like that. The rooftops. Okay, so we've done those, Let's have a look here. We've got a much darker rooftop in this section. This section in here anyway is closer to us and it's very, very dark. It's almost like the biggest contrast we have in it just comes straight down like this. And not only that, there's actually some kind of it looks like there's a bit of a tree branch or something on top of that roof, so I don't want to get it all in completely. Leave a bit of transparency in there as well. I just weary that making it too dark in that section. Okay, good. Let's have a look around here. Now. I'm going to go pick up perhaps a little bit of this brownish color. And let's further some of this in to this section of the roof because there's actually some kind of fetching brown sort of fetching on the rooftop like that. Okay. Little bits of something, but I'll indicate a little smidge of that. And even here on that side, because it's not actually completely orangey or it's actually quiet. It's very light brown tinge in there. But I want to indicate another layer of something. Some parts of it just some inconsistencies like that. Soften that edge there. Bring that around like that. As we move underneath the hut, you can now see there is actually some more details. Darkness underneath actually. I'm just picking up some more of these purply color. This purply color. Let's see if I can just get in darkness under there. That just cuts around the these little bits and pieces of the hut that you've got more darkness and the shadows of the of the areas just on top of the roof, top of the heart, these little, tiny little shadows. They ran the same. They're not as dark as that air the roof, but they kinda close to it. So you use little less paint. Here. This is large shadow just running underneath like that. Cross the side of that building. I wanted to just dry brush some of this as well so that it's more interesting looking. And he has same sort of deal with sort of catching the light of touch. But for the most part you've got like this dark area here on the right. Okay. Downwards, It's all just like a purplish color. I'm feeling unless you put in some brown and they actually dial it down a touch. Come down and remember, I'm leaving out areas as well. So it's not all just coloring everything in dark, but also making sure we've got some previous wash there as well. I've just swapped over to my round brush, change things up a bit. Let's go ahead and put in a few of these bits at the bottom. Okay. Good. A bit of a shadow or something here on that right side of this stilts like that. Now you can see just in the insides of the tiny little sections of the hot little hatching pattern. You can see some of them just sort of run down the page as well. Like, oops, that one is not good. Try to keep it straight like this. Like that. Just some little patterns indicating the details of this hot that they're fantastic. Notice how we're just, we're moving down the page, essentially painting what we can find. Here at the bottom of this hot on top, there's actually a darker region there. So I'm just painting that in, letting that sink into the sinking nicely. And I'm also trying to get in a sense of the ground or something at the top. They're creating a year just as some kind of elevation, I suppose, sense of elevation. Around here. You've got these like this wall. And there's all kinds of stuff in here. It's difficult really to see what is going on 100%. But what we do certainly have is a shadow, a large shadow running towards the right-hand side. And I'm using that some of that purple paint as well. Here it's casting a shadow on the wall. We've got another figure here to walking around. This couple there. We've got a lot of darkness underneath here. I'm going to just add an extra bit of extra darkness in there. And also remembering to leave out some of that previous wash. Getting those little highlights of things in that section. This whole area is very dark. I'll probably have to redo this again afterwards to get an extra contrast. But I want to do my best to get in this large shadow shape all at the same time. While we're painting. That sort of cuts over the figures in a way. All the way over here. There's a bit of darkness in here. I'm not even looking exactly at what I'm painting. I'm just looking at whether it's light, whether it's dark and going from there. And then look at that. That's another sort of something. They're a little bit of darkness under there. We've got a whole lot of shadow and stuff running towards this right-hand side. So just trading a little bit of softness there does help. Okay. Good. Underneath this building, I thought that touch of color would be nice bit of brown with something in here. Maybe cut around some of these bits in pieces with the switchover to that little flat brush again. Here we go. Just helps to create these little fix of the wood overlapping and things like that. Of course, we've got this this ladder shadow underneath the building. But we're leaving out the yellows and the warm colors. And that's what creates the form of what's going on in here. Without that, you can't really imply what this is. We might have some little bits in here that I can just emphasize out like this. This one might be completely, almost completely cuddled, colored in like that. There. Now this one's like go to beat up the top and then something like that here. Just creating a bit of negative painting. And that's essentially just leaving out those previous wash areas. To imply detail. The less sometimes what you leave out. I'm not sometimes a lot of time what you, what you leave out is the important stuff, actually in watercolors. So moving down, we're getting there and look, there's just some more darkness around the edge of that letter. In some more brown, maybe a bit more neutral tint in this mix. And there's more of these like planks of wood and stuff underneath. As you can see, I'm just exaggerating it a bit more than usual. Around this spot as well, is where this house, So these are the hot and the background takes over. So I'm going to just add some more of this bit of neutral tint in this section and join it up with this house here in the distance ride in the back. Okay. Cut around that figure. I think there's I did have a figure in here or something. What was this? I had something in there. That could be another let me just get rid of that. Actually, I think that might be better without there. Then of course, underneath the hut here you've got a little bit of darkness again. So just trying to make that all connect up. All the shadows like this, running down the side of the house like that. They're kinda like fetching ethanol indicate as well. There is a house all the way out the back. They I don't know what exactly it is, but I will just imply some shadows around the inside of it like that. Put a bit of green up there. They're jointed on. Okay. Just so that it looks like this, something in there. Some type of house shape off in the distance. Make it more house looking at that better. Okay. Good, good. And we will just work downwards a little bit on picking up more of this brown and purply mix of color. Just seeing if I can get in a few darker spots in areas indicating contrasts and areas of the huts. It's almost like slight detailing, really. Because everything's still, still completely wet. Areas. You can actually get it to merge in quite nicely. Now here I'm just getting in the door. The entrance like that. Simple kind of entrance there. Good. I'm using this brush to indicate some little details and ideas. It's award or something like that. May maybe there may not be there. Here's that. Again, this is the ladder. Again, I might think to myself, why not put a bit of a shadow or something? Here near the ladder on the right-hand side. There is a there is actually a shadow there anyway. But getting an indication of that, that could be a shadow of something here as well. There there could be a couple of things just lying there in these overlapping shapes that then start to create a sense of depth in your painting. These little bits of wood or something, they're there there at the top like that. Of course, we've got some of these tree branches or something at the top. I don't want to mess around too much with that. Of course, we've got these like a little branch or, or tree trunk or something like that as well. Something like that. You can of course, getting the figures, the legs of the figures to look at that. It's just a simple, simple little figure there. Then I've indicated it. You may not even think it's a figure if you're not paying attention. These could be a couple of figures. Example that one's more bent over looking down or something like that. This, I think I had a person here as well, a figure off in the distance here. So I can just again indicate something like that. The shadow coming towards that right hand side. All these bits, these little things here on the ground like this rectangular palette of something you can use that again is like a little indication of the light hitting that side and casting a shadow to the right. Let's have a look here. You can do the same thing. That could be like a little poll or who knows, could be a shadow, something coming across. I think the big thing is just this large shadow here on the ground which I'm going to get in. We use we use the flat brush. I'm also use this brush here, the mop brush. So I'm going to pick up a large mixture of kind of purplish paint, a bit of grayish paint as well, which is basically neutral tint in here. Mix that all up. Okay, that was a bit of brown and they can help. And I'm gonna go straight for it. And it's just the contrast is really not this dark, but I'm thinking I just want to make it a bit darker than it actually looks. Okay, this could be something another building off in the back. That's just casting this little shadow, whatever. And then the interesting thing is that you've got these hens as well, which you can simplify down, indicate a bit of detail. They also cast a shadow like that. And these little hints like this one, oops, cut around that. So cut around that hand a little bit. This one here too, so that they pop out a little more. Maybe a little hint. One here is sharper looking shadow coming through the scene. Pick up some more darker color with my mop brush. Because I'd started off with the sharper edged flat brush. I pick up my other mop brush as well. So I've just got two slightly smaller than the other to help me cut around things. And what's most important as well here is to not think of coloring everything in just in one big go. Look at the shadow. There's actually little bits of light through the shadow. Believe it or not. This little bit, it's a little bit of light has to be preserved in spaces. And it's not all the same, like tone as well. The shadow, you've got some soft debates and some other sharp a B. It's two bit more here. Here. Cut around that. Hen. You might even be, might have trouble even differentiating what that is. Afterwards. We can always bring it out with a bit of gouache. If needs be. Just want to make this make sure the shadow is just one big shape. I'm being careful around this region and that the reason why is just these hens to try to imply them better. More of this color. Be probably put a bit more purple in here. Actually. I'm going to look at that. I'm just trying to get in like a sense of that shadow running through here. I can get more at the base and here actually it would be nice. And keep, leave a little bit of the previous color in there. Some spots. You mix up a lot of paint like this. It makes it a lot easier in After keep running back and mixing it. I'm not the best at this. At times. Planning forwards as important, sometimes difficult to estimate how much you need. But if you're painting a large area like this, certainly neither a fair bit big shadow shape and it just kinda comes in like that over the top of everything else here. But you've got a quite nice, That's what a large sort of shadow suppose. Running in. Just dab off touch of this color here. I don't think that was I think that goes in a little bit too far. But you can have something just crossing over at the touch like that to just getting a big shape, big shape over the top of it. I think it's more important than it looks. I'm done with the few brush strokes and with confidence rather than incredibly accurately, we can get some more details in just a moment. So let's give this a quick dry. Okay, everything is all dried off. Now in the final stages of this painting, really just to bring out the little details. And before I forget, I just want to put in a bit of red or something for the faces of these, this figure here, It's a little touch of red like that. It's hard to get that one in there. Just a touch of that in there. But we're bringing out all the dark has details and areas of contrast. So firstly, I've got a bit of neutral tint and I'm getting that brush really quite dry at the same time. And this is so that I can just get in extra details there that underneath underneath the fetching of this rooftop. It's not the end of it either. I think a bit of gouache at the end. We would be perfect to bring some of this out. But just some good way areas like that. I'm just adding in using this edge of that brush touch of darkness in there. The darker section is just underneath where there's a light can't quite get to it. I think this is pretty dark already. There's not much really do here. Maybe darken some of this stuff at touch, more. That section. They're going to sections like that on top. Actually, I've forgotten to put in just like that. They're even on these back buildings. You'll notice there's a little extra shadow underneath these darker spots. Then they connect up a little bit with everything as well. Whoops, to avoid that here as well, you know, tiny little helped to create structure in the building when g. So you can even put in bits and pieces like Windows or something like that. Probably not necessary, but little details on there. Like even on top of the roof where you can get in like a little indications of the fetching and stuff like that as well. Just little bits like that. Overdo it. Here. Of course you've got all this stuff going on. It's tricky to see and I'm tempted to just use that really regularly brush that I have to do this one, just pick up a bit of this brown paint, dry it off and just see if this will do something. Flicking it around to create this little texture on the roof. And this is trying me, trying to get in some of the the fetching I suppose, and it does. It's not 100% running in one direction either. So you having a bit of this inconsistency in here, actually it looks good. And you can see how some of it falls down this side as well. Coming down here like more vertical and then some of it starts coming out towards the other side like that. So as you move towards the front of the scene, you will find that little details like this. Do make a difference. You don't need to do it really for these ones out the back. I mean, you can indicate like that. But I'm not too necessary. Long as it looks looks kinda like that. Ching, you'll be fine. And a wet some definitely had some quash to this afterwards. To bring out extra highlights. I think that will be quite nice. Small weirs that angled brush pick up a bit more of this purply color. 6. Finishing touches: We'll just join this up. Its shadow of the tilt to the right-hand sides shadow. That as well. Because we've got that chicken there as well. Under this could be another figure or something like that. Walking, standing around. Who knows? We'll see how we go. Extra darkness in some spots. Pick up some extra paint and threw that in there. You'll be surprised how some of these contrast actually brings out the details so easily. Leaving some of that previous wash as well. Layering effect and leaving the different layers in is the key to much of that. There we go, Just a little something here on the ground. It could be bits and pieces of whatever. It could be like a rock or something here in the back. You don't need to put everything in there by the way, you just want to put in what you think tells the story. So if it starts looking too messy, we don't like something in that reference picture, then don't play around with it, just leave it. Here. I'm just trying to pick out some examples of perhaps rocks. Some details that I can just slowly guess and exaggerate. I suppose. Like they are rocks or something here on the ground. Like that. Using this darker paint. That's one of the advantages of just leaving in these little highlights here from the previous wash. Suddenly you can create three-dimensional shapes that look like perhaps there's a rock or something in there. And all aids to show and demonstrate that light source coming from the right. It's chicken here. I'm going to leave that chicken and this one here as well. Just getting that shadow a touch more. She can use well, they're more these rocks again like we just just guessing and I'm making up stuff. And eventually you'll find it turns into something like log here. Trying to get in mixture contrast, maybe for this ladder here. Well, that Yeah. Extra detailing and sharpness as well like this. And this is to further emphasize, details. Have some darker bits in here as well. Underneath here, underneath the roof top there. There perhaps window something. Door here. Be a door here. Window. More tree branches and stuff. You can play around with as well. Just increasing detail when the background. This small flat brush. Be surprised. If you little bits and pieces like that can do. It's quite, it's quite a dark mix I'm using as well. They may not actually be there in the reference, but just want to re-emphasize them. Make it a bit more interesting. Background creates that, that layering effect as well. Okay. Alright, well, the final step is I'm just going to use a bit of gouache and finish this off with the final highlights. Bit of fresh white gouache that I've got. And see what I can do so bit here on top of that roof. Like that. There. Not only that will grow up, I want to get in a few bits of highlights. But firstly, let's do the chickens. Little bit of color like that. Maybe a yellowy color in the gouache. This could be another chicken or something like that. Yellow for some of these fetching. See if I can get a bit of yellow gouache in there. I'm basically a warmer gouache, yellow mixed in with it. And I can do this sort of thing now. Sometimes with the brush that I had before that might work better. Okay. This looks a lot better. Actually. Looks more random, more messy, which actually works well for this effect. It's kind of like the sunlit parts of the Ching. Don't want to overdo it though. They're like that. Okay. Few bits and pieces of other rocks highlight extra bit of extra detail on the rocks and them bring out some of the contrast better than any that you might have. Bits in the background that look better if you just add in little highlight here and there. Stilts, e.g. just bring out extra detail in them, but not too much. Figures here. Just put some, maybe a little bit of color and the heads and the shoulders two indicates some light like that. Little bit of this stuff on the roof top as you can see, like kind of what it is, but why not just add-on indication of that. And also here, there's like a like a tree branch or something laying across the top there. Something like that here as well. So these little bits of gouache and highlights in here serve to just break up the darkness. And for me, I like it. It just makes it look more interesting. Rather being completely in shadow, everything completely in shadow on that end really strengthens that light source coming from the left as well. She used enough water and they have gone to light actually. But it doesn't matter. Do manage to get in. Good, good enough indication to tidy up this ladder. Touch if I can. More of that light coming back, maybe like another little plank or something moving up here. Some more of this chin kind of effect. Few stray brushstrokes with the gouache. I put it in a bit of blue for that figure or purply color. Something cool. You guys just totally different. That you're just making it look like this person's wearing a cap or something. Okay. And I'll call this one finished. 7. Class Project: Your class project is to draw and paint your own Village hot landscape in watercolor. This can be seen featured in the class, are based on one of your own photographs or scenes you've observed outside. You can also refer to these scan drawing and painting templates attached, which will allow you to trace the drawing if you choose to do so. I recommend drawing each scene free hand. Drawing is an important step in improving your painting skills. It provides you with an opportunity to compose and plan your painting. Once you've finished the drawing, use the watercolor steps and processes included in the class demonstrations to complete your painting.