Walk into the Clouds - 14 days of Watercolor Exercise

1. Introduction Clouds and Skies: [MUSIC] When we look up, we see a cranky atmosphere or weather, which continuously changes its color, shape and size. Have you ever wondered how to capture it with watercolors? If yes, then this class is for you. Hey, guys, I am Dhritikana Nath, an artist, instructor, mother, a teacher, educator and business owner of VibrantParcels where we manufacturer handmade artists sketchbooks and brush rolls. [MUSIC]. If you are joining me for the first time, I go by the name watercolor.illustration.letter on Instagram. Most of my artworks are displayed over there. Today we're going to explore seven different types of clouds and skies starting with our romantic skies, sunset sky, bellowing clouds, night skies, cotton candy clouds, colorful skies and lastly, my favorite, passing the light. Every three days, I'm going to introduce you to a new set called skies and clouds. The first would be our small exercise above our romantic sunsets on a travel sketch book. Moving on to our final two projects, Project 1, that is about the open sky and Project 2 which is heartwarming young sky. Both of these are unlimited palette exercise, once we are done with these two final projects, we will move on to the next set of skies and clouds, everything about sunsets. There we would be following again in the same pattern with the exercise and final two projects. All the projects are done from a reference image, which I have selected from copyright free website. It is going to give you an insight into not copying each and everything that you'll see in a photograph, whereas we can get to an extent by taking only the inspiration and making it your own. Lastly, if you are new to watercolors, are taking my class for the first time, I would recommend you to go through my two other classes, Easy and simple way to paint clouds of seven different types and exploring skies and clouds with watercolors. This would help you to ease through this class very easily. So without any further ado, let's grab your art supplies and start with our first lesson. 2. All you need: Hey guys, let's discuss everything that you need for completing the painting. Now there are various sizes of brushes [LAUGHTER] that I've kept over here. You can of course, have imperial sheet and you can cut out pieces from it and paint along with me. This is the smallest one which I have kept. This is for various exercises we will be using this size. It is called press, 100 percent cotton paper and it is 300 GSM, 140 LPs, so that we can do all heavy arches. One thing that I need to tell you over here, in this particular classes, we will be using a lot of heavy brushes, as well as some wet on wet method, which is one of the reasons I would always tell you to go ahead with the cotton paper only in case you are using any handmade paper, please go ahead with full 40 GSM, a 100% cotton paper that can also work well. The next is our masking fluid. Now this is the masking fluid that I'm using. It is from Sennelier. You can go ahead with any masking fluid that is available with you. I have been using this masking fluid for quite some time now. By the way, these were the papers that I wanted to tell you. It is nine into 12 inch if you see this as seven into 10 inch and this is the smallest one which is 3.9 into 9.8 inch up. These are the papers as well as I have a sketchbook from vibrant parcels, I use it very often for many of my other paintings, for skies then water, then your drawing, landscapes, seascapes, fluoresce, etc. You can even use these kinds of sketchbooks for these practice exercises. I would leave that up to you what you want to go ahead and use. There is a paper, which is basically your tissue, your towel, and this is going to be your best friend throughout your entire section of painting the clouds. It is really important for us to have some tissues handy with us. I would be using a ceramic palette. I'm using a simple ceramic palette that is available. You can go ahead with any ceramic palette that you have for or else any other mixing palette which you use, it's good to go. I did not explain you these two kinds of erasers now, one is for removing any type of pencil marks. The other one is basically to remove the masking fluid. Now you can also take off the masking fluid with your hands or with this kind of an eraser. But this is one of the most preferred ones, it is majorly for moving your masking fluids only. There are two kinds of tape that I've kept. One is around 6'7 and the other one is about half an inch shorter bit more than that. These other two types that I'm using for most of my paintings, then a different color for tips that I've used here to just lift up our moods during the whole of the painting process. Let's just discuss all the brushes that you need. I have kept one scale handy, you can always keep this, is a good source of, I would say help any time you need it. I have kept one flat brush. This is one-inch Princeton Neptune flat brush. You can have it now, another one that I would be using is the Vinci size zero brush and the last one is my Davinci three by zero brush. So these are majorly the three brushes that I would be using. Now, there are two other optional brushes that I've kept. One is for the smaller, I would say paintings that we will be doing and this is basically a liner brush that I go ahead and use in few of our paintings. It has got a nice tip. If you see it's from Escoda. This one is from Princeton again, half an inch brush that I've kept. These are major the four of the things. While you paint there is one important aspect that I wanted to introduce as our acrylic sheets. Now, this is the acrylic sheets where I would be actually pasting my paper and then going ahead and adding the colors. So that's another thing that I wanted to tell you. A pencil keep it always handy for drawing. Two jars of water. Two jars of water is very important. One is for our fresh supply and one is for washing our brushes. So I would leave this two jar of water, it's one of the most important aspects while we go through all of these paintings. Majorly, I have discussed everything that we would be required or that we will need throughout our entire process. Those that are left is majorly your colors now, each and every day, or I must say the seven different kinds of skies that we will be painting over the 14 days will have a different palette of colors which we will be discussing individually as we progress. So let's move on to our next lesson. 3. Palette & Practice Exercise Romantic skies: [MUSIC] For working with this exercise, I am going to use my sketchbook from VibrantParcels and we are starting with the first painting. Over here, of course this is a small thumbnail sketch or you can say a bit bigger of course but it is just going to give you one idea about what we are going to paint in our first painting. I do not want you guys to combat with everything at the first paint and this would really help you to get an idea as well as ease out in the process. Going ahead with some Opera, I know many of you do ask me how to prepare Opera. See Opera is a kind of magenta. With magenta, usually company does this, it adds a fluorescent dye. Now that fluorescent dye we usually do not have [inaudible] it with ourselves, that's one of the reasons you cannot prepare Opera at home. I would request you guys to go ahead by purchasing an Opera or else using alternate colors like crimson or else any other kind of pink. But of course the brightness of the color will not be what you also write up on the paper. I think that's the only thing which I wanted to tell you as there are repeat questions on Opera a lot. I do use this color very often and this is one of my favorite colors to walk around with. I'm going ahead with my Indanthrone Blue. Indanthrone Blue is one of the blues which I really love nowadays and it is becoming my go-to color. Adding some darker value is pretty easy with this color. We would also use some amount of purple after this, but it's an option that I always give you. I think two colors, it's very important for completing your painting, two to three colors, and this is one of the blues that I see giving very beautiful and pretty colors. Even when you add it to anything or any other shade of pink which you want to add, then adding some amount of our purple onto the sky area. Now this is something that I always love to tell you is leaving some white spaces. Why we did this exercise is to actually get a hang off leaving some white spaces. This is not an exact match of how we would be painting, it's just very close or something which is similar to what we are going to paint. It would help you to understand that leaving these white spaces within the painting is really important for our first two skies as well as our watercolor palette that we are going to use for these paintings. They are majorly limited, the color palette, for both of these paintings I tell you we would be using very few colors. For this one it would be Opera then your Indanthrone Blue, your Bright Violet as well as your Payne's Gray. Those are the four colors. As I have told you it's a limited palette exercise that we are doing. Limited palette actually gives us a lot of opportunity to not actually make any kind of muddy colors. In the meanwhile, this painting is drying off, I would like to tell you about the palette. As I've already told you Opera is difficult to make, so you might have to buy this color or else you can go ahead with other options like crimson or any other pink of your choice. Once you have added the Opera, take Indanthrone Blue, that's the second blue which we are using. Then is our Bright Violet I'm using from Mijello Mission Gold. You can go ahead with any other violet of your choice. The last one is your Payne's Gray. There might be some color a bit here and there, that's always up to you. Many of you might not have Indanthrone Blue, you might use Prussian Blue though your pigments are different, so I think it's up to you. See the colors how they react, work on the smaller piece first and then only go ahead with other pieces. This is the color that I was telling you, it's from Sennelier that I'm using. Two of them are from Mijello Mission Gold that is the Opera and Bright Violet and this one is from Sennelier. I think the Payne's Gray is also from Mijello Mission Gold. Why I like Mijello Mission Gold for my clouds is they do not spread a lot and it helps me to control the colors a lot more than any other brand pigment. I have used PWC too and it really spreads a lot, it's difficult to control when you are working on your skies. I'm not sure exactly what component of the pigment actually makes it flow a lot more, but I think Mijello Mission Gold is one of the perfect colors that I would love to go ahead with for painting my skies. We are done with the palette of the day 1. There is something more that we need to add and it is the dry brush technique. I just take some of my Payne's Gray on the brush, take off all the extra paints on the tissue and then add this dry brush technique. Now this is something that I love to use for my future paintings too. You have to go ahead and work with this technique more and more as you progress in this journey, so it's good to learn. Do try it on this painting, it would help you to get a hang of it. Yes, it takes a while, but once you take out the moisture from your brush you would get these strokes. It is perfect to paint your trees, your bushes, that's what we are doing over here and that's what we would be doing even in our first romantic skies painting. Romantic skies, I think was the name because I just felt the colors were so beautiful. Anyone would love to have dinner or watch this sky when you are sitting out. I think it was just one of the most pretty skies that I have seen and that's the reason the name came from. I'm just going ahead and making some lines now for the painting. Once I'm done with these lines, this part of the painting is done. It's a quick exercise as I've told you, it's not the exact one that we would be painting. Believe me, it's just to get a hang of it, understand what we are going to do, understand this dry brush technique, understand your palette, those are the important small aspects that we always forget. Every two days a palette is going to change as I have told you earlier, because I love to use new palettes and I am going to add more and more colors as we progress. The first one of course as I've told you, we want to use lesser colors, make it less muddy. Going with the few colors is the best title. There are lots of techniques that I'm going to cover in this particular second painting. Though we would be working with only basic two colors, that's vermilion and Payne's Grey. But there's a lot to learn. Apply your first wash. Once you have applied your first wash, let it dry a bit. Do not just go ahead and add your colors. Keep it for one or two minutes, as we are working on a very small size paper right now. We don't want our colors to flow a lot. As I've told you earlier, also, how to work through your brushes and how to apply your colors. We are not going to add our brushstrokes when it's a lot muddy or when there is a lot of water on the paper, we're not going to do it. Those are the aspects we are going to follow. I have used my thicker brush to just blend the colors well. Once I have added the colors with my thicker brush, I would go ahead and start adding the clouds towards the bottom area. Now, the clouds that I'm adding towards the bottom area is absolutely random. I'm not painting much. Here I'm going to tell you one important technique that is how to pick up your colors. Though in this case, we are using our half an inch flat brush. Always pick your colors, take off the extra paint on the tissue, and then wash your brush as you observe me doing it. I do it for one or two times, and then I just washed my brush. That's very important. Whenever you are picking up your colors, you can keep on repeating the process for more than one or two times. Use both sides of the brush. That is, yeah one side, just picking up the colors. Then again, you've seen it, it takes some time to get a hang of it. But once you know how to use it, it can be used in so many ways. It would help you to paint skies like pro, whenever your light is so throwing from in-between the clouds. You can work through it. You will find this very useful when you are doing any underwater sea painting. These techniques have their use in multiple places. It's just up to you how you want to use it. Now, I am just adding some more lines. Again, this is not what we have really done in our final painting, but it's good to even know how to add these lines and show there's in a better way. Adding something gray. Now, I'm using again the tip of my brush, as you observe. I am not going to use the whole of the brush to work around with this, adding some more lines. Then once we are done with this part, I would go to the top area of the sky where we are going to add our paints gray. Then once we have added our paints gray, we would mark our palette though, you already know what is our palette for D1 and D2. But it's good to just do it on the left side of the paper. I have used a very good travel journal for myself. I always say this, that your paper is really important when you are painting. Many of you do ask me that there are less options or there's no 100 percent cotton paper available, less 100 percent cotton paper were available. What is the cheaper way to go about it? Guys, there is one thing that is handmade paper, which you get for 40 GSM in the market. Go ahead and use that in case you want to invest less right now. But believe me this case, one thing that you should invest always, because you are going to read the returns like anything. If you are using a bad paper, you will always feel that you are not good enough. Whereas, once you start using a good paper, you exactly know that you are getting the best of the results. Now, I am using the major two sheets, which is your vermilion Payne's gray, and as I've told you, this is the brown ocher which I have left. It's not mandatory at all to have this color, it's something like you're bit of burnt sienna added into your yellow ocher or your raw sienna. They are way more similar to the color that you observe right now on the palette. I think these are the colors, majorly it's optional as I've told you. Two colors, which is very important for this painting. One is the lighter shade and one is the darker shade. Warm and cool are always a good idea to go ahead with. They produce best of the colors, and they look amazing altogether. In case we last a few minutes of the painting, and once we are done with this part, we would let the area dry off completely and then have a final look at both of the paintings. There are two years of mountain that I would love to add is basically the hills or the mountains, whatever you want to call it. It is going to be a part of it even in our final vermilion, romantic sky painting. Going ahead and making you a bit more well-versed with it right now. Adding the color, once you have added the shade, go ahead and add one more darker shade. This is the lighter shape that you have added. The darker shade though would be more with the Payne's Grey and less of vermilion. This is more of vermilion, less of Payne's Grey. These mixes you should try always some on a separate piece of paper which is measured in a draw for any paper which you are not planning to use any more or 25 percent cotton paper. This is 100 percent cotton paper, or else sending handmade paper. I think those are the options. You should always go head with and checkout for your paintings. Checking out your colors is very important, as I always say. Let your paper dry off. Now, once your paper has dried off, so one thing is that every layer needs to be dried off before you add the second layer to it. That's important. I think we are happy and good with our small thumbnail sketches or smaller squares sketches. We're going to finalize this and it's going to be amazing. I am not telling you something that you will not follow. These are two of the major sky that I have fallen in love with, and I think you will also love it completely. Let's just move on to our paintings now. Full pleasure paintings that is waiting for all of us and paint together. 4. Romantic Opera Sky Project 1: [MUSIC] We're on to our first painting, and here we're going to paint with the opera. That's one of my very favorite colors which I have been using for a really long period of time. I'm applying some of my opera directly on the paper and then I have applied some clean water. I'm using my flat brush to apply the colors as I'm trying to actually occupy a lot of area on my paper. This is one of the good ways to use your area or use your flat brush to apply your colors on a larger piece of paper. If you were working with the small size paper, then you might go ahead with some of your smaller size brushes. I would leave that decision absolutely up to you guys. The size of the brush will not define your painting. What I would ask you to do is go ahead with whatever size of paper is available with you, whatever sizes of brushes is available with you. Just do not take a really small brush for a large size paper or else do not select a very large size brush for a really small paper. That would be my only request. Once you are done with this part, go ahead and apply some indanthrone blue. Now, indanthrone blue is one of the very favorite colors which I'm going to use in this painting. I'm using the Sennelier indanthrone blue. You can go ahead with whatever is available with you, or else go with Prussian blue. Though the Prussian blue might be a bit different compared to the effects that you would get with indanthrone blue. Wherever I feel I want to push my paints down or else I just want to take off all the colors from a particular area, I'm going ahead with some clean water and applying it with the help of my brush. Now this is my da Vinci size 0 brush, which I'm using as a nail. You can go ahead with any brush that is available as I have already told you. A few of the places I have genuinely kept as white. I always feel that every painting where you are actually going ahead and painting the clouds, the white of the paper, if it reflects that looks really, really nice though in the photograph, you might not find it. But as you progress in your watercolor journey, you will understand the values and you will understand how beautifully it reflects. The more you add, the white to your clouds, the better it looks. I have just placed my paper below this paper and that's one of the ways my paints will move towards the bottom area. I hope you can still watch it. I have actually fixed my frame [inaudible] because that really helps you to concentrate and understand one after another how I am progressing with the painting. Going ahead and adding some more clouds. Now, this is a really small brush. I think it is 2 by 0 or 3 by 0, something like that which I'm using again. It's a brush from da Vinci and it is my latest favorite. But you can always go ahead with any other brush. If you observe my brush doesn't have a lot of water. I'm working with really less amount of water as well as on my background paper, I do not have a flowing water. If I have a flowing water, I will not get exactly the clouds which I want. I'm going with the simple way of applying my colors. One thing that you have to always work around though, when you are working with clouds is to apply your brush movements. Sometimes I am applying it towards the opera color that we have already applied on the paper or else sometimes what I usually do is I'm going a bit below, so the direction I keep changing. Now, direction is really important when you are working with clouds. If you are having the same direction clouds for both the layers or say, for two layers, two layers in a way I am trying to tell you is the first layer that you have applied is your opera, and on top of your opera, you want to paint with another layer, though, it comes within the first layer itself, but still if you want to paint on top of it. I don't want you to paint in the same direction. Some of the clouds will move towards the bottom. If you see that top left cloud, it starts to from the top and slantingly it comes down. When I go towards the bottom area of the clouds, I'm going with the darkest value, which is practically my paints gray and applying some amount of my indanthrone blue. This area is now quite dry, I must say, and that's one of the reasons I'm getting really dark clouds and they are not moving a lot or the colors are not moving a lot, it's absolutely okay. Few of the areas you have to see how you want to add your colors and then go ahead with your painting. I am even adding some shadows towards the top area of the clouds. These are small things which we keep doing while we progress with our painting. You can even stop in case your paper is completely dry. Just let your area dry off completely and then go ahead with your darker values. Once you have absolute dry paper, apply one layer of water, but really like that, and then go ahead with the darker value as you observe. I do add some darker values now, though I feel that I could have avoided it, but it's absolutely fine. They'll look confident with your stroke still you feel that this can work for you. Always go ahead and paint. That's one thing which I have absorbed in my journey that if you think that this is going to work for you, it's absolutely going to work for you. I am going with a bit of blending brush if you observe, I'm then just blending it towards the bottom. This can only happen when your clouds are absolutely dry in the area where you are blending. Now, that's really important while you paint it. There might be a few areas here and there that you might not be very happy with the outcome. All those things can actually come in this journey, and you might feel that, okay, I'm not really happy with how it turned out, but do complete your painting. I always say whenever you are painting from a photograph, it might be a bit different from when you are actually applying your colors and painting on a paper. Practically, a watercolor painting is really different. Going ahead and applying some of my water towards the bottom area, and once I have applied the water towards the bottom area, I'm going with some of my indanthrone blue. This is just to create the darker values while you work towards the bottom area of the clouds. This area is going to be really dark, so do not worry much. You will only observe one thing while you paint the clouds. Seven to eight minutes is the max that you need for painting the clouds time. Your paper will only remain wet till that time. In case you are planning to keep your paper wet for a longer period of time. I can suggest you one thing. Take an acrylic sheet, and just apply water on both sides of your paper. Then when you feel that the water is dried up, or you feel that you want to go ahead with another layer of water, just to apply it on the area where you are painting. Let it just become a bit dried where you can start applying your colors. Then you will feel that this paper is wet for a longer period of time compared to if you were taking some watercolor pads like this to add the colors or to paint your clouds. That's actually a pretty easy way to paint your clouds and to keep your painting wet for a longer period of time. As we progress, we will see how that also works. But for this painting, I do not think that we need a really long period for keeping your paint all wet. While I apply any blue that is set on tone blue or any other colors, you have to always see that your paper is wet or else you will get those hard edges that we really want to avoid. Some of the places where I think I have got that hard edges. I'm just blending it with my blending brush. Now, each and every area seriously we can't blend. That's one thing which I have seen. Wherever we can't blend it well, I am going ahead with one more layer of water, as I have told you all earlier. Then I am just adding the colors so that I get that bloody effect. Yes, you will also have this happening in many of your paintings where you will not get exactly the effect that you wanted, and you might have to work two times on it. I think it's just an extended work that we will do and sometimes we do not get the desired results. Still we are satisfied or happy, we keep working on it. But to make sure that you have this opera pretty much visible on your paper in case you are covering it with the complete blue and dark blue clouds, whole of the painting will come crashing. Yeah, I have to tell you this very well, that do not try to actually cover all the areas of the opera, opera needs to be there and opera is practically the beauty of the whole painting. I do want you guys to remember that there will be only about 30-40 percent of the space where we're going to add these darker clouds rest area will be more of opera. Once this part is done, go ahead and start painting your bottom area. You can only paint your bottom area once the paper is completely dried. Do not try to add any lines or any trees. If you see the brush movements which I'm doing, just going with some straight lines. That's absolutely okay and then making some dry brush strokes. Not all of this you have learned earlier, and I would just like you to go ahead and apply it now. Dry brush is a really great way to actually create your trees. They will give the look of trees as well as they will not make it look like it is overdone, or you have practically not need something. I have used this technique in many of my other paintings and I just wanted to share it with you guys, that use these dry brush technique wherever you want to add any trees, or wherever you want to add those dry lines, and give the impression of trees or bushes. It would practically make a lot of sense to do it. Some of the places you can alter the values of it, which means that you can have darker values and some of the places you can have lighter values. That decision, of course I would leave it up to you. Then you can have these dry strokes, and understand that some of the areas we are leaving, even as the skies appearing, we are not covering the whole of the area. The best part about a cloud painting, as we are not going to overdo much of the space, few of those spaces we are willing to work on, which is majorly about 1/3 of the bottom area of the painting. The rest of the painting, we are going to leave as that gives you a lot of time for doing other stuff here. I know most of you are really busy, and you are trying to just get yourself de-stressed or you are just not so much into the painting as you have a lot of things pending. You can practically leave it over here too and in case you want to incline to move along with me, and to paint along with me, paint that tower and have the whole beauty come together, just carry on. I am pretty much sure you will be in a position to nail it. It's just the last part where we have lot of details. Details means yes, we have to concentrate more and just keep on painting, or just have the patience to go with the flow. That's the only thing which I always say having the patience as the most important aspect in watercolors. Patience actually gives back a lot to you in watercolors. We can't think that we will create masterpiece every day. Practically when I was painting this one, I failed four times till I did succeed. It takes a while to understand how you want to paint your clouds, how you want to add the direction to your clouds. Direction to your clouds is really important when you are working with watercolor clouds. I would give you further details into how I added action, etc. As we progress, there will be some different kind of clouds that we are going to paint, and you will understand each and everything about adding the directions, etc, with it. Here I've kept it more simple, just adding some background, the color, and then applying the darker values. Keeping it simple always gives back a lot of time. Not only a lot of time, it even helps your spectator to understand exactly how you are working around the with your colors, exactly how you are trying to add simplicity to your painting and still have a very beautiful painting altogether. Using the tip of my [inaudible] brush just to add these lines. Now, this brush holds a lot of water. That's one of the reasons I have to take off all the water on the left side of the tissue. You will see the color of the tissue changing. That's absolutely okay. Take off all your colors on your tissue before you apply it on the paper whenever you are doing dry strokes, or whenever you are adding these trees, it just takes a while. Everything that we're painting over here is real-time. Real-time actually helps you to understand how much time I needed to complete the painting. Accordingly you can also go ahead and channel your energy in a way that you can plan and understand how you want to apply your colors. Now this is more of our dry parts that we are adding, and dry parts is not going to challenge you that you have to finish the painting now itself. You can always do it in parts. But it's always a great feeling to finish it and have a look at your painting. Once the left part is done, let your paper dry off, and then I'm going ahead with the tower. I'm starting with mostly the left side of the painting. I do not try to place the towers in the middle absolutely, that's one of the things which I never do. Placing these towers or these buildings is good towards the left, towards the right, or towards the bottom part of the painting, wherever you want to add it's always good. Going with a very rough and simple sketch, I think you should be in a position to see it. One thing that I always tell everyone who is watching the classes, do try to watch the class on a bigger screen. Bigger screen actually helps you to understand how you have to apply your colors, how the strokes are when I'm adding these lines. In case you are watching it on a smaller screen it becomes a bit of a challenge to understand each one of them. Going with some more strokes as you absolve and I would be finalizing more on this as we progress with the final painting, or with the final outlining with the colors. But just a rough outline that I'm making right now. With my paints grade, there will be some of the places where I will apply some lighter values and there will be some of the places where I would be altering the values of the color of paint is going to accept now, that's something which I have been doing for many of my paintings and I'm so happy to show you how this all comes together. Adding a bit of tone blue. Now, why I do even change the values while I'm even adding any of objects, it just gives the real picture I feel adding completely flat colors for your buildings. Some, doesn't add that much amount of flavor, as well as that much amount of expression to your painting. That's something which I always love to add. It should be expressive, it should appeal to anyone who is watching it. Overall, yeah, that's something that I look forward to. That's one of the reasons you might feel that sometimes I am actually taking off the color from my brush, and then applying it on the paper. All of this, as you progress, you will understand more and more. Wash your brush wherever necessary lift off your colors as I'm doing right now, after washing my brush, and then now slowly moving to the top part where I have applied in and around the colors for the window. Once we are done with these smaller parts, you have to think that this is actually one of the paintings, which is not very easy. But it gets very less time for the clouds. Do not keep painting your clouds when your paper is dry. That's one thing which is rule of thumb for getting these soft and nice clouds. If you are working through your painting even when it is dry, you will get those hard edges. Blending brush might come to your advantage in that case. So keep your blending brush handy. I will do a quick recap of whatever we have learned in this particular. I would say one. This is just one of the two paintings that we are doing from the romantic sunset. The second one also we will be painting one small heart or you can say a small bond or someone who is living in a house, whatever you want to call, that's absolutely fine. We are doing those kind of both paintings too. This is all a limited palette exercise which I wanted to show you here we are using four colors There we are majorly using two colors. Whenever you have two or three colors to manage, it becomes really easy. You do not get any kind of muddy mixes. I have carefully chosen all these colors. If you see opera and your portfolio looks beautiful together opera, purple, blue, and pink is great. All of these work together very well. They never give you any kind of muddy mixes. Always test your colors on a scrap piece of paper before you go ahead and paint directly on your painting. That's one thing which I have always made a point. I will show you how I checked my colors and I do not just go ahead and start painting. As I do tell you that all these paintings which you observe have been done at least two to three times before you finally see it coming up on any kind of channel like Skillshare or you see me teaching it anywhere else. I do paint flawlessly only because there's lots of practice that has got into it. Sometimes when you guys tell me, this is really nice and this is really pretty, the outcome did not come according to how you have called. Guys do not get this harder. You are going to get there. Practically there is no mathematics. I would say, there is nothing different in getting there. It's just a bit more practice than what you have been doing and that's one of the reasons of getting this daily exercises. One of the days you are practically practicing how to get these smaller clouds and how to get these paintings in a small piece of paper and the second we're finalizing it. Always it's a good idea to do your thumbnail sketches. Thumbnail sketches gives you a really good idea to understand exactly how you want to apply your colors. In case you are not confident enough anywhere or in case you just feel that you are not getting what you exactly wanted, just go ahead with another thumbnail sketch. It just takes a lot less effort compared to if you scrap on painting and then again start with another painting. That's another aspect which I can tell you can help you really in your watercolor journey. That's something which I have used every time in my watercolor journey and I have actually succeeded like anything. It gives back lost time as I run a business, as I am working, I take many other classes in person, so everything put together, I do not have a lot of time. I have a very small baby of 16 months old in and around the house and many of you have just one question, how are you managing such a huge show yourself. It's just a bit of planning. I must say that few things I do very deliberately like planning. Planning is really important in this case. I do plan out the smallest sketches if I feel it's good to fill on smaller piece of paper and then just work it out on a bigger piece of paper. I think that's one of the best place you can walk through your paintings. You can get a beautiful future painting done. I think these are just a few lines that I'm using, just a tip of my brush to add these lines. Everything put together. These are simple, easy, and I feel that there is so much less work that I have to do. It's just finalizing the painting and I'm practically seeing the whole of the painting has come together. Some few details and details usually take a lot longer time. If you see our clouds were done during the first 13 to 14 minutes or 15 minutes max. Then we're just going ahead and detailing and detailing and detailing. Something that you will also understand takes a lot of time, takes a lot of effort. For completion of a painting, it's important to add the details. Details can really help you to take your painting to the next level. I think I have added all the lines wherever I feel it was necessary. I'm using the tip of my brush, if you see I have been using only two brushes. One is my Da Vinci size 0 brush, and this is size 2 by 0 or 3 by 0, something which is really small in terms of the tip. You can also go ahead and use a brush like this or if you have smaller brushes, go ahead and start. It's absolutely fine. I always tell you what are the materials that I'm using, but you do not need to purchase all the materials that you see. You go with whatever is available, then create your own painting and treat your own magic. You guys, seriously, I can't wait to see what you create in the project gallery. Always do upload your projects in the project gallery. This is a really important exercise. I love to give you my feedbacks in case you are going wrong anywhere. I would love to add how you can correct it. I think that's important. I'm just adding a few more lines. These will go on till you feel that your painting is finished. Wherever you think that you want to stop, just drop it there. For me adding these lines will create that sense. There are some electric lines which are also going. There's a tower that you can see. All of it put together will make lot more sense. It will feel like that we are actually living somewhere. Yes. It would give the feel of life and you are absorbing it from a distance. You have taken a photograph for your reference and we can't completely ignore it in view of the places we are adding some highlights now. Now highlights are something that I always love to add down. Why? It really gives the painting another level and sometimes I get over it with so much that I keep adding more and more highlights. But do remember highlights is just for your details and it would just add some more, I would say expression to your painting, some more depth to your painting. The whole depth that you have added to the painting is based on your clouds as well as what you are painting for your foregrounds. Foreground is something that you should always watch out for because that really helps you to give depth to your painting as well as details, which is important. Yes, always break up your painting into your background and into your foregrounds. Even for paintings like cloud starts very important. Once this is done let your paper dry off and then just remove the tape at an angle. I did use white gouache for the highlights. 5. Romantic Vermilion Sky Project 2: [MUSIC] We are onto our second painting of the romantic skies. This is one of my favorites and the best part about this painting is we're using a limited palette. As you already known that there are mostly two colors that we are going to work with and I have applied one layer of water. I would be then picking up some of my vermilion and applying it with my flat brush. This is one inch flat brush from Princeton. I'm going ahead with just a very light wash of vermilion over my paper. Some of the area I want to keep it as white as I want the sun rays to move out of a particular place. I will show you exactly how I pick up my colors when my paper is wet. There are two ways of lifting off your colors; one is when your paper is wet and another is when your paper is dry. Over here, we are trying to work around in the painting when my paper is wet. Now, something that you need to do or understand when you pick up this color, just not all the colors you can pick it up. Why? Some of the colors are staining in nature and because of that reason, once you apply it on the paper, you cannot remove it. Now, if you were not using 100 percent cotton paper, it becomes again, really difficult to pick up your colors. This is something which I have learnt over time that you cannot always pick up your followers from every paper that you use. If you are using cellulose based paper, then again, it becomes really tough to pick up your colors. These are the aspects which you should keep in mind while you pick up your colors. You will observe that I'm using my size one inch brush from Princeton to pick up my colors, every time I'm picking up the colors and then taking it off on my tissue. This is a very easy exercise to do, but along with it, you have to keep in mind that you need to clear out your brushes each and every time you are going ahead and picking up your colors. This is a very important part of your watercolor journey to keep your paper clean. The only way you can keep your people clean or white wherever you want it is by taking off all the extra paints from your brushes into your tissue. Tissue should be very handy to you. I'm mixing up some of my vermilion with my Payne's gray, or this is basically your sennelier orange that I'm using. It's a very beautiful shape. Practically I came across the shade a few days back. I just thought to include it in this painting though I'm exactly not sure of your pigment, etc. You can get more information about it, when we started out, what are the colors that you need for this painting, there I have added everything. Going ahead, I'm using my Size 4 silver black velvet brush to add the smaller clouds. You have to go with a very easy way of adding these clouds. There is no different thing that I'm doing over here. It's just that keep adding the clouds. Still your paper is wet. If your paper is drying off, let it dry off completely. You will observe me also do it. How I keep working through it is very important. You will practically not get more than 3-4 minutes to paint your clouds. In the northern part of India, it's already very hot because of which it becomes even more difficult and challenging to paint my clouds. Here's one of the challenges that I took to myself that let's try to paint the clouds in a better way during this hot summer season so that weather should not be a question that comes to my mind when I have to paint these beautiful and natural looking skies. Going ahead and adding my vermilion color. You have seen that this makes us more vermilion, or you can say sennelier orange compared to the other part of the sky. We are going ahead and this is basically your layering technique that I'm doing. I would be adding three layers of mountains. Though it is a very easy exercise, but the layering technique over here will set a lot of perspective to your painting. There is sky that you have added and there is some amount of land that you are adding. We will even draw one small house. Then there will be some palm trees as well as some of the smaller bushes. Along with it, there is a small bell that you will observe. Now, either you can draw in the beginning, according to me, I have just left it empty for now and went ahead with the drawing only after this layer and this part was complete. I'm going from top to bottom while you observe me painting. That's one of the ways of moving ahead in your painting. Though many people, and even for me, I have worked around with different techniques, but this is one of the best ways where I have also painting the sky and painting the whole landscape comes together pretty easily that way. Once I am done with this part, I would allow the spot to dry off completely. Again, to be precise, I'm going ahead, with my Sennelier orange towards the sky. How I go ahead with? I would be applying one clear water on the sky area and then I would apply this orange. You will see that I am going ahead with very light hands while I apply this layer. You need to work very quickly in this case as well as we will not have a lot of time to work around for our clouds again. Going ahead with the Vinci brush, again, this is one of my favorite brushes as I have told you. Adding that amount of Sennelier orange that is required for this painting. Once I have applied the Sennelier orange, I would go ahead and add small dots here and there. It is just below the darker clouds which I have added as well. I go towards the bottom area on the left part. I would even add this Sennelier orange mix a bit. That would make my painting look more vibrant and more dramatic. Our photograph is not exactly similar to the one that you are observing me painting over here. One of the reasons of the same is that we take the inspiration from the photograph. What we create with it is always on us. We're not here to copy the entire photograph, but again, not going just against it completely and working it up. That's one thing which you should always keep in mind is that go with the flow and understand how you want to recreate the photograph. You should add a lot of your own to this photo and practically that will help you to create your own creative field work because there are a lot of times where the photos are watermark though this this particular photo and all the other photographs that I have chosen is from copyright free website, which is my Unsplash. But still, I think always changing the photos and recreating something of your own will seriously help you a lot in your journey and how and what you recreate is the whole guidance I would love to give you through this painting. Adding some of my darker values now for my mountain area. I think the mountains are quite below the line. Now done what I really wanted. I'm going a bit slow while I create this lead because it is free hand. I'm going a bit slow, will really help you to walk around on all these parts more easily. Why I say always cool a bit slow? Going slow is good when watercolors rather than coming back and again, redoing it. Watercolors leaves us with lesser opportunities to actually correct our mistakes compared to many other mediums like wash or acrylics. You have to be really mindful of how you apply your colors on the paper. One of my important, I would say suggestion to each one of you is not to think or not to leave any painting in the middle. Always, do complete each and every painting. I seriously had at least 3-4 bad attempts and I could not make any of my paintings when it started off with this whole class, it's absolutely fine. You will have your mistakes and those all mistakes are good till you can create something that is in your happy space and it makes you happy. It is a stress buster. Everything put together, now really add up a lot. That's what I always think. Already the sky looks amazing to me. Now I am creating this mountain. As I have told you, I just felt that the mountain has come quite below where I exactly wanted. Going ahead with my thought here. Now letting one of the techniques that I always love to cover. It is wet on dry method and we are here to work wet on wet as well as wet on dry. I am a firm believer that to run all the styles and to learn how to walk around with your paints, it's important to work both ways and that really can help you to master the skill set of watercolors in a better way. Go ahead and complete this part of the mountain. Once you are done, you let it dry and we can start with the bottom are. Again, it would be a mix of your Sennelier orange and your paints green. Both of them can create real wonders. I must say. I'm adding a bit of my orange into the mix and then going with my mop brush to add the colors on the paper. I'm going with a bit of a darker value over here as we have already applied two layers on the paper and that might show up. So it's good to add the darker values. Even in the photograph it is darker values. When I saw this photo on a larger, I would say screen, like my iPad, I understood that there is something that is even on the photograph and that's how I created this bottom part. There are not only trees, there is a small house on the right, which can be seen with the normalized on your particular mobile sets if you are using now, that's why I always say that try to observe the class or try to observe everything on a bigger screen. Bigger screen always helps us to get these smaller parts of the painting pretty easily compared to if you're observing it on a smaller screen it becomes very difficult for us. Though the painting might look bit more dramatic compared to what you observe on the photograph and that's absolutely perfect as I've told you earlier. Going ahead with darker values of our paints gray towards the bottom area. It's the white that is showing off and we do not want all the white to show off a lot. Adding just as a Sennelier orange is quite enough right now. I guess I would allow the spot to dry off though nothing shows off for now and then we will start adding our graphite marks for the small hut, as well as where we have to place our trees. Now you might not be in a very good position to understand what I am placing there exactly. If you can't, then no problem at all just wait for a while where I would go ahead and start adding the colors. You can understand it better and then just start painting it. Once you observe me to do it, also it will be easier for you that way rather than going ahead and right now trying to paint along with me. I'm placing a small bell towards the left part then I would place some bushes in the middle. On top of it, I would add some of my palm trees for the background. This is a very easy painting. I must say it's just that there are a lot of steps, which is broken on the painting into a bit longer process compared to what it would have usually taken. I think that's the only aspect which you have to keep in mind. The overall, you have to feel confident because the sky, you can nail within a few minutes. Practically our sky then all this layering, etc, did not take us more than 13 to 14 minutes. This part of the painting is of course, is more detailing and I would like to add those details towards the bottom area. I'm one of the firm believers that even if you were painting the sky and the whole focus is on the sky, some parts of the painting really make up your painting or take your painting to the next level. That's what I think over here we are trying to add. About four to five palm trees you can go ahead and add exactly the way I am doing right now, and then start adding your bushes. Of course, for the bushes I am doing a dry brush technique. You would see the colors that I picked on my brush are really dry. If there is a lot of water, I would just take it off on the tissue and then start adding my colors on the paper. Once your watercolor is dry you need to understand the layer would be one shade lighter compared to what you would have applied on the paper. I will add these bushes from my background area, and this dry brush technique you have already done it in the previous painting. It would be pretty easy for you to work through this. It takes a while to understand how to use this dry brush. It's only very less amount of water on your brush, and then just blending it. Towards the top area make it more dry and you have some tooth which is already prevalent on your paper because of which it is more and more dry. Now the more toothy paper you take the rough you will get a better outcome for this. I've observed it that it becomes better with it. I am practically mixing two colors. One is a lighter value of my Sennelier orange plus my paints gray. Another is my paints gray, darker value. Now this really helps to create that beauty for the painting where you can see that the bushes are not only of one single color as we always observe even naturally, that some of the leaves are darker in shade and some of the leaves are lighter in values. It can be because of the sunlight that actually falls on the particular plant or tree that you're observing always even when there are new leaves coming out, you can see all of it. Putting together everything you can understand that these small things that you observe actually brings you closer to nature as well as it really creates, I would say, recognition in front of any of your fellow, people, or spectators who are really seeing your painting, or who really are potential people who want to actually have this small creative piece with themselves that would bring them closer to nature as well as that would really bring them to a point where they can understand your thought process and how you are painting so naturally. Going ahead and mixing some colors. Now, this mix is very important though you might think that why she's mixing so much of orange and your paints gray, but never in a painting you can paint everything black. Why? If you paint everything black, what usually happens is the whole painting doesn't have all the wear and tear that usually is there in a house. When you observe any house, you can see that there would be a lot of wear and tear on the walls as you do not keep painting the walls every day there would be lot of rainy seasons and a lot of other seasons which come and go. Because of those seasons, you see all of it. Along with it, while you go ahead and paint, you have to even understand that there are sun rays which are falling on the hut or on the house that you are drawing right now. Because of those summaries, the colors will change to an extent here and there, and that's what I like to add even in my painting. Going ahead and adding the color for my rooftop. The rooftop has this small lines that I'm adding to make it look more organic and aesthetically pleasing I would say rather than keeping it more flat. Now, if you add flat colors, what really happens is it doesn't give that effect of it being so naturally there in your background. Though I always say that watercolors is not to actually show everything that you observe from going ahead and just doing it like that and creating the realism. I do not believe on realism for watercolors. Watercolors is a quick medium where you can be done with the painting within 30 to 40 minutes max, as well as it can be lower. It starts from 10 minutes and goes to 40 minutes. That's usually the duration which I have observed. It's for everyone who are beginners and who want to be done, who want to adapt this medium as their hobby. I must say that those are the aspects that you can always keep in mind while you are working with watercolors. Watercolors is very rewarding when you start understanding this. Of course, it becomes really rewarding in that way. Going ahead and adding more colors for the top part or you can say the rooftop of my house. It's a very simple way of adding colors. I'm just leaving two windows on the rooftop and then adding some colors of darker value as well as lighter value. Adding two small windows. While we go towards the left side of our house, then some small black dots. That's it. I guess this is good to go. Once we are good with this part of the painting, let's go ahead and add some of our trees. You can observe that we really added some darker values while we were walking through the bushes. But now they are all gone and they have become more lighter. Go ahead and start adding these lines for the trees. You are not going to go very precise. In this case, we are only trying to get something which is similar to the photograph. As I say, we are not here to create realism. Going ahead and making these trees is very easy. Just go towards the top, add some loose lines. You see how I added small lines on the top and then extending it on the left as well as on the right. That's it. Keep adding more and more lines to extend it. Do make sure that the top area is smaller while you go towards the right and the left. That area for the leaves is larger or longer in size compared to the other parts. Leave one or two dots here and there. That would make it more aesthetically pleasing as I say. Let's keep painting our trees. Now this is really therapeutic. As I've told you, you have to just add a few lines and you see the trees are done. I think that's the real satisfaction which I get in watercolors. Adding a few strokes and you can get so much done in this medium. One of my favorite mediums to work with and as you progress in your journey, you can understand that it can be one of your own favorite mediums too. Seriously as you progress, you can understand more about this medium. The more you understand, the more fascinated you would be to understand it more. I think that's what magic of watercolors is all about. I always say that watercolors are magical. They are truly a blessing to anyone who is in love with this medium. I can dream. It live watercolors. It's something like that. The reason of this is practically, I have worked so much intensively with this medium. Every time I think about working through this medium, I even have more to discover about the medium. Some of the mediums are granulating, some of the mediums are non-granulating, some of the colors are something on the ballot and something on paper. Then some of the colors have underlying the other colors to it as they are made out of two or three pigments together. Overall, whenever you are working with medium like watercolors, you would be more and more fascinated to know about the pigments, to know about the colors, to know about what is the light fastness of it? Is there any stainingness of it? There are so many properties that you have to look into. One only request that I have is always, please do use artistry pigments. Artistry pigments will leave you with so much more opportunities to work in a better way. I feel artistry medium practically gives us so much more flexibility. Whatever we want to create, we can get it as we do observe a particular shade. I know that I would be getting one shade lighter than that or a shade that is similar to that. Whereas if we are working through those student rate pigments, we practically don't know how exactly light this pigment will go as there are a lot of binders than many other additives that usually makes it way more cheaper compared to the artistry pigments. You'll need not go for all the artistry pigments at one goal. You can slowly keep investing in it and then understand. If you need it more, you can add more money into it and buy it. All the shades that you want rest. I think it's a decision on which you can take personally. If you want to follow this as your passion or even as your hobby, slowly steadily start investing on the right parts. I would say basically the right tools, the right colors, the right paper, everything you need to have intact. Always my paintings are heavy washers and you'll need 100 percent cotton paper. That's the most important aspect which I follow in watercolors. Paper is the most important thing colors. Anything that is available can still do, but paper can't do. Most of you or many of you have told me, I think that I do not like watercolors or they don't exactly turn out the way we wanted. The only answer that I have is because of the paper that you have practically shows how well you can do. Just believe me, go with a good paper and rest everything can work for you. Whatever we will be doing from hereon is basically to just add those details into our paintings. Most of our painting is done. We are just adding some dots, some small lines, a bit of wash for highlights and few of the places I would take some white wash and then add a bit of orange into it. Add some small lines, as I've told you. Those are the changes or the details that I would be doing. It's always good to add these highlights. They really help us to understand. Pull off the painting or it gives another level to this painting. The small things like the windows, etc, do get highlighted in the process, as well as it does attract the concentration even to the bottom part of the painting. As I know, the sky looks way more interesting than what we have painted towards the bottom though it took longer period compared to what we did towards the top part of the sky. I'm going ahead and adding those white dots as I have told you. I think I would love to add some more for the walls as well as for my bushes. I would go ahead and add some. Even for my bell. I think the rooftop needs some more highlighting. It's just really boring I must say. I want to add some more intensity into it. Or you can say some amount of addition of attraction as well as aesthetically pleasing thing I really want to make. Adding one more line for the bell and then allowing my paper to dry off completely. This is a very important process. If you do not allow your paper to dry off completely, it might clip off. It's really important to not allowing your paper to dry and make the whole painting go for a toss as you have done all the hard work and the paper will peel off. You will not get exactly the outcome that you want. Meet you all tomorrow in the next lesson. 6. Palette & Practice Exercise 1 Sunset Skies: Guys, this one is a very simple and easy exercise. It is exercise 1. It is just for your benefit that I have added it. The first color which I'm using is Naples yellow. I would request you to just consult this all together and then only start with your painting. There will be multiple colors that we're going to use for all these three paintings. All these colors I will be using for my sunsets skies as well as for my next set of clouds, which is majorly your cotton candy clouds. It is important to first understand the whole concept and then you should go ahead and paint along with me. I'm using two colors. One is the blue, it is my phthalo blue that I'm adding towards the top area. If you do not have phthalo blue go with cobalt blue or else you can also use any other blue that is available, like cerulean dark that you have. Else, ultramarine is also good. I'm adding a bit of ultramarine now just to blend the colors as you observe me, or else you can take a darker value of the same blue that you have added and then just add it on the paper. You would work majorly with water compared to the pigments, because I am a firm believer whenever you are working with watercolors, it's majorly the water that adds most of the flavor to your painting compared to any other pigments that can add on. I would love to keep the transparency of the white that you hardly see. That white can practically reflect and give you on great outcome. Blending my white with the middle part of the paper. Once this blending is done, I would go ahead and just add a bit of orange into it. Either you can take permanent yellow paint that has some amount of orange color into it, or else go ahead and add a bit of orange, red, whatever is available, but in lighter value, that's the most important aspect. You might not be in a position to watch my entire palette, but that's absolutely fine. As I have told, first observe and then only start painting. Most of the paints that I have taken is really dilute, so check your colors on a septic paper and then start adding it on your final sheet. Once this part is done, I would like to place a small tape towards the top area of the people so that the paint do follow towards the bottom, or they flow towards the water area easily. That's how the direction of your paint should be. Once this blending is done, we would go ahead and start adding our workloads. But the first layer that we add is for these very important. We are going with the darkest value right now. It's majorly the purple, or else you can also go ahead and use red violet. Red violet is a very beautiful color. This red violet is from the general mission gold. You can go ahead with any other red violet that is available with you. Once I have added the red violet, I'm going with my vermillion. Now since my brush quality had a bit of red violet, therefore the red which I'm adding right now on the paper is more towards the purple shape. These things do keep happening. It's perfectly fine because we have to create clouds in that way. I'm changing the direction of the clouds. This is one of the important aspects of painting clouds. If you have added a very flat layer for the first wash, always change the direction of the clouds in the second layer. Now, we're doing layer and layer two together. You can also let your paper dry off completely, add a really light wash of water, and then go ahead with the final painting. All of these are possible. It's just that my paper is wet for a longer period of time and I would love to use that to my advantage. I'm mixing some amount of my ultramarine and purple. It's a bit of purple that I always add to my blue and it gives a beautiful shade. You'll see that there is a light hint of purple into it. These are small experiments that I do. Then you can see finally how the painting is turning up. We have added the lighter value first and then we are going with the darker value. Though this is not the particular way to go ahead in this painting for the second layer, we can either go ahead with darker value and then again come back to lighter value. Those are the aspects which you will observe me using for this painting. Going with some of my lavender too, you will observe how beautifully I add lavender to these clouds. The clouds is like a cup shape, so it's coming down from the left side as well as it is coming down from the right side. But the whole concentration of the clouds is towards the top right corner. One of the important points which we should always notice, do not occupy the whole space of your clouds or the atmosphere that you want to paint. If you occupy the whole of the space of the paper, then it would become really tough for you to practically focus the whole of your cloud area into one particular part. If your spectator is coming and the whole side is going to get the direction where to look at, it becomes really tough for them. That's one of the reasons I am concentrating it towards the right. Now I'm adding some lavender. You might feel that the way in which I'm painting is a bit quick, but that's absolutely fine. Do not worry, as you are absorbing this and you'll be painting along after it, the color palette, etc, everything we would be discussing once we are done with the painting. You don't need to have this color all together. You might have a bright violet and have a titanium white. Just makes it a bit and then you can get a color like this. You can see that I'm using only two brushes. One is my da Vinci, [inaudible] and it is 3 by 0 size. As well as I have used another brush, which majorly my flat brush, half an inch. You can go ahead with any brush that is available with you. I'm adding some smaller clouds towards the bottom and then we will just discuss the palette that we have used till now. I have started with the lightest value, that is your Naples yellow. Once you are done with Naples yellow, it's vermilion, then your phthalo blue, a non tone blue, or ultramarine, whatever is available with you. You can also use Prussian too as another option, but you might have to take a lighter value of that. I have even taken some amount of lavender. If you are not having this lavender, go ahead, mix it, that is your violet with some of your titanium white. Then you can get this lavender color. You can see my colors on the top. I'm just adding in tone now. Keep a yellow by yourself for your own benefit. I love to use the yellow, that's one of the reason I keep it really handy with myself. Let's move on to the next exercise now, where we are going to paint another cloud. 7. Practice Exercise 2 Sunset Skies: Guys, this one is going to be more of color mixing and I would be showing that on this palette. I have started with my Naples yellow. With Naples yellow, I'm mixing some of my vermilion and then creating a peach kind of a color. I would be applying that color on the paper. I am keeping it very transparent as this is watercolors, and watercolors are meant to be transparent. That's the beauty of watercolors. As I always say, the more transparent you can keep, the better would be the outcome. Once you have added this, go ahead and keep blending it with the background. I would use some water for blending this. Once I have added water, I would blend it in a better way. The tip is peeling off in few of the areas, that's why I've used my fingers to just fix it a bit. Once I have fixed it, I would take some more of my vermillion and add it towards the bottom area as I want it to be darker in value. The top and the bottom would be more darker. There would be a transition of colors from blue to this beautiful vermilion peach kind of a shade, which we are creating. Now, something that I need to tell you is, every time you will not have all the colors available for yourself, it's good to mix your colors and then start adding. I did not want to get into this overwhelming feeling in the first exercise. That's one of the reasons I have told you to keep all these colors. Again, I'm going with my [inaudible] blue. Now, this is a beautiful shade that I had. You can also go ahead with Prussian blue or your ultramarine. In case you do not have this blue with yourself, that's absolutely fine. I have extensively used this blue for all of my clouds exercise. Yes, it's something that you might like to purchase later on, that's also okay. Or else, whatever color that is closest to yours on this particular painting, you can use that. Not a problem. Even cobalt blue is good. Do not worry. I'm mixing some amount of white after this with my purple color that I already had. I did create that purple color mixing some blue and purple in the last exercise, as you have seen. I would be adding some white into it. That is the whitewash basically, which I had, and then create this kind of a cloud. It's beautiful, how you can create so many colors only using a few of them, how the whole of the painting changes and how the whole thing comes together. I am adding some more smallest lines and these lines will create the clouds, which you'll need for this painting. Again, the hole concentration of the clouds is towards the right. I would change this concept of painting the clouds in the next one. Believe me, then next painting that we have is one of the most amazing paintings that I have done till now. There's so much to learn in that. How to actually create your skies with only a few directional strokes. That's it, you are done with your sky. It's one of the easiest. There, I would be adding some birds so that it looks even better. Going ahead with some more vermillion and white in it for creating these denser clouds. Once we are done with this, I would be adding some more darker values. Few of the areas, I like to add this vermilion. I have used it even in the last set of clouds, that is romantic skies, the same vermillion we're using over here for this painting too. It's a beautiful color from Sennelier. In case you do not have the vermillion, you can get orange for yourself. That should also work. On top of the peach that we have added, it was really light. That's one of the reasons, even the vermillion, which we are adding, is shining. Or you can say, it's showing up very well. These are small things, which you can keep in mind. I think, it would even help you in any of your other paintings of clouds or skies that you want to go ahead and attempt. Adding the top part of my brush for creating some more strokes. Yes, I think these are the denser ones that I wanted to create always. Once this part is done, we will be actually done with the complete painting. I'm not going to do anything more for this part. It's a really small painting and I'm going to keep it easy and simple the way it is. This one thing that I've understood about watercolors is, the more simple you can keep, the better would be your outcome. The more you touch a painting or the more you try to complicate it, the difficult it would be for you to actually paint. I'm taking more denser color, which means some more blue and some more purple. More of blue into it, and lesser purple into it, and then adding in few of the areas. Again, some strokes, just a touch, and tip of my brush we will be using for doing this magic. It's completely magical when I think how the color changes for the sky. Every time and every point of the day is so much different than the other times of the day, as well as in every season we find so many different type of clouds, sky colors. How the whole magic happens in nature is something that practically no artists can capture, to be frank. This is just an attempt by which we can try to capture a few of them on our sketch book or on our paper with colors and brushes. It just feels so good, when I add this darkest value of red. Now, this has a bit of red in it as I am moving towards the vermillion, so I need to have some amount of red. Now, we will move on to the next exercise where, actually, a lot of magic lies. 8. Practice exercise 3 Sunset Skies: This is practically our third exercise. In this third exercise, we would be learning more about how to actually have directional clouds. The directional clouds we have already done, but how to basically have a sky which is one directional. By direction I mean that you will be blending your colors moving from left to the right top area and from the right to the left. I would be starting with my very light wash, that is of Naples yellow. Then, I would be adding some amount of my yellow on top of it. Now, yellow is the next one that I want to go ahead and add. It's not the first choice that I always do or go ahead with because I just find yellow to just mix with the blue that we have and create the color of green. That's one of the reasons I like to avoid it in the first go. Naples yellow is one of the yellows where we do not get that color. That's a great way to practically avoid all of these mixes. Blending it a bit with some water, as you all saw. Now my water is becoming a bit dark. The top one too. It's always that way. You have to keep one fresh supply. That's very, very important. Going with my phthalo blue in the first go and then adding more of these darker and border strokes. I have already applied one layer of water and now I'm going over it. I did tape down the bottom area of the paper because I just want to show the colors that I would be using for the painting too. These are all usually the same colors. Only one color that I would like you guys to add on is crimson or else quinacridone or pink. That's one of the colors which we will go ahead and use in our final paintings too. Now, this set of colors which we usually get in well, [inaudible] set color, whatever you have. In case you don't have the color, go ahead with whatever is closest to it. I'm using a bit more thicker brush this time and it is my da Vinci brush which is size 0. I am making these strokes. You might find me painting really quick. That's because I like to work quickly when it is a clouds painting, or else the paper will dry off very fast. That's one of the reasons for this quick stroke and quick painting. Going with my purple now. When I have added the purple, we can go ahead and start adding some more strokes. Now, I like to use the lighter value initially and then go ahead with the darker value. That's one of the aspects which I always follow. It's easier to go with the darker value earlier, but yes, you can go back there. It's always great if you can just go with the lightest and then move to the darkest spot. That's fine. This already looks so nice. I think that I would add some red and that would make this painting even more better. I did try this out in my last part that you have seen earlier on the other paper, but it did not exactly turn out the way I wanted. It was a fair attempt as I did not mention how many failed attempts I had. It's okay to fail. I always fail. That's one of the reasons I have taken this paper and I'm going ahead with another trial of this, as I'm not sure that what could be the final outcome, even of this. Still, it's a good idea to go ahead with what I think is important. Once I'm done with this one, you can see how much it is different from the original one that I did paint earlier. There are reasons when I don't like something, I just go ahead and discard it or I don't use it or follow it for any of my teachings. We all fail, and we all learn. Learning is most important. I'm going ahead and adding some more blues. You can see that continuously as I am painting with water and brush, I'm keeping the strokes. That's one of the reasons my paper is not drying up or else my paper would have dried up till now. It's a way that you can follow. Do not try to mix the blue and the yellow much. If you try to mix this Naples yellow and blue, you will be finding it difficult to go ahead with. Now I'm adding more of the yellows as you observe me. These are border strokes. They are not as light as you have seen earlier. They are directional. They are moving from left towards the right, as well as from left towards the top left corner. There is a direction to it now. This is the sky which has become more directional compared to the clouds that used to be more directional earlier. Now, this is another way of painting your skies. There can be various ways in which you can see your skies. This one is basically for your first sunset, now where we will have some direction and we will be adding our clouds accordingly. First and the second, both are almost similar. We will have these directional skies, and that's okay. It's just setting up the pace for that particular painting. It's an exercise. [NOISE] Even these exercises will really help you in the third skies, which I have told you is majorly our cotton candy clouds. The colors that we are using, the mixes that we are doing over there would be really helpful. All things is going to really help there. Overall I think you can go ahead and keep adding all of these strokes. Once you are done with the stroke, we would start painting our boards. Once you have added this quinacridone, I told you we would be using our quinacridone or carmine or some amount of pink. I wanted to introduce it in this particular painting as we have done both so far. Peach or red, vermilion, all these colors in the last sky, whereas we haven't used any pink. It's always great to use this pink. The colors that you also have right now on the paper is going to dry off completely and it is going to be one shade lighter than what you observe now. Be sure of the colors that you want to get on the paper. If you're using a student grade paint, it might be 2-3 shades lighter. If you were doing wet on wet technique, it might be two shades lighter. If you are using wet on dry, it would be only one shade lighter. Now, these are the aspects that you have to keep in mind while you paint. I am now adding just the colors that we need. First is my Naples yellow. I have created that. Once I have added the Naples yellow, I will even keep my yellow with myself. Then, the vermilion that you have, you can have the pink, you will have the phthalo blue. You'll have your purple. All of this, yes, you can just make these small dots. It's just a way to keep in mind what you had used for this painting. Seriously, you don't need to keep a track of all of this. But even keeping a track is good for any of your future paintings where you want to replicate something like this. Replicating or I think in exact copies, of course, not possible altogether, but something which is closer to this one is surely possible. Now I'm adding either blue or you can go ahead with the purple that we had, adding some of our paints gray. That's it. These are the shades that I've added. For the boats, they will be lying in all the directions. I already have a class on painting your birds and [inaudible]. If you are not very sure of how to paint the birds, you can go ahead and take that class. That would really help you to ease through any paintings where there are birds involved. Let's have a closer look. I will only remove the tape. I did not mention it, but we do only remove the tape once your painting is completely dried off or else you keep it. Otherwise, your painting rips of. That's something which we do not want to see for our paper. Or we do not want it to happen for our paper. Adding the wings. First, I have add one wing, then I added a bit of a body. I did extend it again towards the right. I have added another wing for the bird. I am making the body a bit and then, again, extending it towards the right. That is the other wing that we wanted to add. This is the third bird that we have. We are adding the wing, a body and then again. The process is very repetitive. It's a pattern that you follow. If you can follow this pattern, you can practically nail any of your birds that you want for your sky. I am using all kinds of direction to paint the bird as it is nature and they will not fly in only one single direction, they will fly in all the directions possible. That's the aspect you have to follow to make it completely natural and absolutely grounded, just the way you see or absorb any painting. This is the last bird and then we are done. We are done with all the three exercises, and we will move on to our first set of painting for the sunset skies. I need to tell you it's going to be a bit longer than what we have already done in our last skies because the skies are easier, but we have more elements to it, whether you say it's the ocean or you say it's the board that we are painting, as well as we will use our masking fluid in one of the exercises, the sky. Then meet you in the next lesson. 9. Sunset Skies By the Ocean Project 3 Part 1: Well, we are already onto our third project and I must say, there is only one thing that would take some good amount of time from you is drawing the human figure. There's no difficulty at all. Where you paint or when you make your sky. Anything and everything would be perfect that way. First, I like to draw a line and just see where exactly I would be drawing the head. Then look at my photo reference. Once I have decided my head, I would extend it a bit into the body. I am just going with the flow there, there's no actual measurements which I'm taking and going ahead with. This is something that I always love to do going random as I already have a reference image, which is like a guide to me. You can either trace it if you are not very okay doing it. You just take the photograph and trace it on your paper. If you want to give this a try, the drawing will take a bit more time compared to when we start with our painting. Adding a bit of hands over there. Now, they look really odd to me, so it is singlet and then, again not trying to change it a bit will be good. Once I have added the body, I would go ahead add the legs so the reflection of the legs will fall onto the wet sand. Now wet sand also has a reflection because there is water on it. It's not like it has less moisture. We've had just come and gone. That's one of the reasons, so the wet sand will have for the reflections. Once you have added the pants that we want, of course, we cannot go without them and then extend the legs. The legs would be from your knees to the toes. That's how we see it and this is practically seeing it from the backside. The person is facing the sky and he's having a look at the beautiful sunset. Of course, this one is something that I have tried to include maybe many of you might not be very much willing to do it but believe me, go with the flow include an object and include humans, includes birds. They are really a game changer for any painting. We will be doing even easier painting, so do not worry at all. It's just that, I want you guys to try this out. Give it a try whatsoever it turns out. If you are not confident, go ahead by tracing your human body. That's all I can say. The photograph is already with you, so tracing should be easier that way. You can also draw along with me. Try drawing. If you were not happy with the outcome, then you can of course go ahead and just trace it as well as then paint it. That's all. I feel that it should be an easier task and it's more easy being said but when I was myself drawing, I literally felt that this [LAUGHTER] is a very tough one for me, as I'm not a person who actually paint a lot of human figures or a lot of birds or something like that. I like to go more loose when it works as a landscape or like to add a lot of buildings, so flowers whatsoever you talk about. Nature is my forte. When this came in, it was a challenge for me, so I just thought to put up the challenge even for you guys. You are following me on Skill Share or if you have seen my classes, you have never seen me including all human figure practically. It is weight off for me also to paint it. Go with the flow just know that this is the place where you should restrict your figure till that much only and then now you can of course. If you are very well aware of how to sketch, how to make human figures, etc. That's an additional benefit. Go ahead and use your knowledge. I think you will have way better outcome that way if you are already very good with these small aspects of drawing, sketching. Drawing and sketching is basically a base for any kind of watercolor or any kind of journey. Now initially when we start off with our journey, we are never so much inclined towards drawing. It's more about letting the creativity and letting our creative juices flowing but with time, of course this becomes important and I slowly feel that, how things are quickly and steadily changing for me moving from an absolute landscape focus to more of florals then, including humans and boats, etc. The style of the painting and the work changes so much. There is so much more life that we add to our painting. If we do all these small additions to our painting, I have myself thinking of having these humans to more of urban sketching, to more of any other things that I do because that really eases or that really uplifts the mood of a painting, the life that it adds, the creativity that happens once we start adding that is something that is unparalleled. You cannot practically compare it with anything else. I would specifically ask you to yes come and do this along with me. It's an important aspect of watercolors and you will enjoy it. Believe me, you will enjoy it to the core. The sky is one of my own favorites. It's all about skies and I do understand that you also like to paint the skies. But with that, many of us should not forget the fact that skies are not so easy, you need to know exactly when your paper is drying up and even walking in the worst of the condition, which means that you have high summers like an India. I was telling you that I switch off my fan AC and everything when I paint. That's a very, very difficult situation to work with but till my sky is done I keep that and then only work with my watercolors. Usually when I'm working with watercolors, it's a 30-45 minutes exercise and during that time, I just switched on my AC or fan whenever my paper is drying off. That's the only place where I change or where I actually add any fan or any kind of AC because AC what it does is, it takes up all the moisture from the room. I literally need that moisture on the paper, so that it stays wet for a longer period of time though you might see me using only edges but still it's difficult at some point in time to deal with the whole situation. I have added some amount of some water on top of my paper but do remember that we do not want puddles of water. It's just normal flowing water which we need. Once we have that normal flowing water which is going to only moisturize your sheet, is exactly the requirement. Time-to-time you would even also of that, I will also add some amount of water on the paper and accordingly, that might help you to keep your paper moisturized. Now, this is something which I have observed that you can't actually judge how much moisture is there on your paper. There is times where there's white space that is there you will observe. Where I would go ahead and just apply one clear water in there and then go about painting it. That's how I like to actually work through the paintings, etc. I hope it's easy to follow for you because there's nothing much over here. We are working with some amount of pink and then adding some of our Naples yellow. Wherever I feel that I need some darker values, I am making it more dark right now. I pick up lighter values first to just take a look that it is absolutely fine. Once I'm happy with that, then only I will go ahead with the darker values. This darker value, as I always say, we don't have much space to get back on. It's just that only a few times where there is a probability to get back. Most of the time in watercolors, you do not get any ways of going back. I think now the pink looks really bright and beautiful. Whatever color you observe right now on the paper will absolutely change once you have added the blue, as you observe me adding it right now. This is wet-on-wet technique that you were doing, so your colors will be one or two shades lighter compared to if you were doing wet-on-dry. Wet-on-dry is one shade lighter, whereas wet-on-wet is at least two shade lighter. That's how you can see it. I'm going ahead with my cobalt blue right now. I have taken even endon tone blue. Usually, I mix some of my cobalt and some of my endon tone. But while I'm adding my first here, I would like to keep it to just cobalt blue as of now. You can always go ahead, mix some of your colors and then come back to it again. Going with the left hand on the right. As I say, I really like to change the direction of my clouds. If you see while we go towards the bottom media, they are more straight. Whereas while we go to what's the top-right and towards the top left , they're moving inside. Whereas even from the right they're moving into the sky. Whatever you do over here, most of the clouds are moving inside. That's what makes the whole of the painting very different compared to if you have only one-directional clouds. Now it's time to add some darker values. How you go about adding the darker values is the major question we would go about by mixing some of our endon tone blue with our cobalt that we have already taken and then mix our colors and come towards the bottom medium. Wherever it is already wet, we will only go over those layers. We are not going to touch any place where it is already dry. That's something which I always, always follow. That go over the places where it is wet. Now you might find a challenge during the hot summer season, as I have told you earlier, it really becomes difficult to keep your paper wet for a longer period of time. What you can do is you can actually stretch your paper. Now, stretching is an exercise which many of you can do for keeping your paper wet for a longer period of time. You can give it a bath altogether. Those all things can also be done and I will give you way more detail as we progress. Let's first discuss this. I think this is really important when it comes to stretching. There are inexpensive paper that are available in the market, which is 190 GSM compared to what we usually use that is 300 GSM. 300 GSM is always good to go. Anything less than a quarter sheet without stretching can go and there will be no buckling. You can just tape it down on a board and go ahead as we are doing right now. But there are many paintings where you will observe that if you have taken lesser LV paper compared to 90 LV paper, 190 GSM, that is all drawback of this buckling, as well as it will dry up faster. In those cases, we do the stretching. Stretching larger pieces of paper is very important. Where you are working on a really huge size paper or else you're working with something which is of lesser GSM. Go ahead and immerse the paper in water, keep it or soak it for 30 minutes. You can also soak up to two hours, it's up to you. It depends on how much water your paper can take. Then remove it from the water, shake off all the water that's there on top of your paper and then place it on a rigid waterproof board. Now if you do not have a waterproof board, go ahead and use an acrylic board. I mean, that's really easy to get and you can really have a better outcome that way. Go ahead, use an acrylic board, place it on top of it, and then just stick your tape on the sides. But before you stick any tape on the sides, just use a sponge to remove any excess water that's there on top of your paper. Now this paper will take at least two hours to dry off completely or you can even leave it overnight. You can dry off that way and then in the morning it's absolutely ready for your work. I think this should be a good one in case you are working with a lesser GSM paper. This method should also work and you will not find any buckling and your paper will stay wet for a longer period of time that way as water is quite absorbed in the paper already. That's one of the ways you can go ahead with or else you can also go with two layers of water. One you have applied first, and then you can again go ahead with second layer. Let your paper dry off a bit after applying the first layer, then again apply the second layer and only start your work. That means also your paper remains wet for a longer period of time. I think now we are towards the bottom media of our clouds and you can see how small, small our clouds are right now. While you go towards the bottom, I always say your clouds will become smaller. That's the only change which we have, rest everything remains same. I will meet you in the next part where we will be working through rest of the painting. I think you have been able to follow me for the clouds area, and we will move on to the water next. 10. Sunset Skies By the Ocean Project 3 Part 2: Guys this is the second part of the painting and in the second part we are going to do just a small thing. Go ahead and first apply some water in the middle part of the painting and then start painting your sky. This you can only do when your paper is completely dry. Do make sure once your paper is dry, then only you go ahead and start adding these colors. Before your paper is dry, if you start adding your colors what would happen is that you will get cauliflower effect. That cauliflower effect is not a very good thing to have at this point in time as we have already completed the major part of the sky. Only a few parts of it where we want to add something in the dark or lighter value is left. We should not, anyways so just follow the part of adding colors or going ahead and taking risks at this point in time. We would like to get those soft nice edges and wherever necessary as you observe. Me I just pick up the color with the help of my damp brush. I have been doing it very often and I will be doing it even in future, yeah. This is an exercise that I have always done it even for my other paintings wherever I feel that it is necessary I go ahead and pick up my colors that way. If you see most of the parts towards the bottom of the sky is just touching our brushes and then lifting it off to get those small lines. While you always go towards the bottom as I've told you, it's just a few dots here and there. We are not going to go ahead and add a lot over here and nor I am going to actually show you that we will pick up a lot of colors too. Only wherever it is necessary we will pick up and only wherever necessary we will add. That's it. I think it's time to now go ahead and make the sky a bit more darker in few of the places wherever I feel it is necessary. In case you are happy with how it has turned out, then leave it over here. You don't need to do anything further. We will move ahead and start with our painting of the sea. I can tell you that because I do not want to touch each and every part of painting, that's something which I always avoid. I like to preserve the white of the paper, and the white of the paper really makes the whole of the painting come to life always. That's how I see my painting, I love to work with the white that is already there on the paper. If you see most of these places we haven't used any masking fluid. Now masking fluid is mostly used in only one or two paintings where we want to just resolve a small part of the painting. You can also use your masking tape, cut it out in that shape, and then use it. All is whatever is available with you, try to use that for your own advantage as I always say. This is something that you decide, this is something that you like to do. Do not just go ahead and start adding or start making anything that you don't like or that you do not want to add like you do not want to work with. I'm adding some vermilion. First have added some maples yellow, then I'm adding some vermilion on both the sides. Once I've added the vermillion, you can go ahead and just start adding some pink and then blue. That is how we go about our painting. We always start with the lighter value and then move to darker values. I think by now you-all know it how to walk around with it, but still it's always a good idea to keep repeating the same process so that it just registers and it is like muscle memory for us or in our hands that than it being in our mind. That's how I always see my paintings or that's how I always like to use and work around it. I'm going in and around right now with the darker values that is majorly blue, and I have added some amount of my Payne's gray into my blue and then mixing some amount of my orange with it. Now orange, what it does it gives a darkest value with your Payne's gray. We have already walked around with this color in the second project, and I'm pretty sure about it you might have already nailed those projects. Here we are just going to add a bit of colors here and there, and then I think we are good to go with it. Just adding some more lines in the necessary spaces, I do keep using my tip of the brush. Now this is something that I have learned over time. Always takeoff any extra colors which you feel is necessary as I did. It's such a quick process for me. I will take it out on my left and then just keep adding my colors. I will show you and then do it. It's nothing like that because it is just in my memory and I just know that this is how I want to go about it. That's one of the reasons you might find the whole of the process being quick and fast but believe me it's not a faster process as I could say. It's mostly and mainly because of the reason that I have been painting so often it's there. I know that I have to do it this way. Do keep following me as I proceed. This is completely real-time, believe me, I worked through the paintings just this way. There is no speedup video, in case you want to pause anywhere just stop and have a look at your painting and have a look at mine. I think you would be in a position to understand anything that you still have to add and then you can now move to it. You can also reduce the speed of the video in case you want from the bottom part of your device in case you are watching on any larger screen. If you are watching on a smaller screen like your mobile, etc, you can do it from the top most right corner, yeah. You will slowly observe that your paper is drying up as you have already worked on your paper for about 4-5 minutes. That's one of the reasons right now whatever you would be adding will stay and it is going to be way more smaller and it will not flow a lot more like it was earlier. Why? As you progress, as your paper becomes less wet, of course, you will also find that your painting is becoming less of blooms and more of drier parts, just the way as you observe me. I am now splattering some of my water. It is clean water. Many of you always go ahead and ask me what I use for these white spots and I always have to say water. Water has all the magic in it guys in watercolors. You practically don't need anything else for the magic. As I did earlier tells you that we would be ducting a few of the parts of the sky, whereas I just wanted to attempt my bottom area of our painting first and then go ahead with the sky. This is just a bit of a touch up I must say. I feel that the sky is a lot lighter than I would really like it to. I loved it more vibrant and beautiful, that's one of the reasons I have added some water and then I'm going ahead and adding the colors. It's just on the sides that I'm adding it and even on the right side and the top part I will be touching it. It's not that I would be touching all the parts of the sky I always say it. I like to touch only a few parts of it. You can of course go ahead and use a non-tone blue color. If you have used ultramarine, go ahead and mix your ultramarine with a bit of in-dawn tone and then start adding it. You can also go ahead and just apply some amount of your Payne's gray. Now, these are the colors that I really, really like and I really, really want to use for my painting. I think it's always a combination of colors that you use and no one can actually tell you how to apply your colors, what colors you should choose. I always have this one thing in mind when I'm painting. Whatever is available with me, I would walk around with those colors, I really don't go ahead and buy any new color when I have to start with a project or follow artist or follow an instructor, that I always keep in mind that I'm not going to do that. It's just a process and I really love to actually follow the process, which is one of the reasons that I like to keep following many artists and understand their painting process, how I can improve upon my own processes. I challenge myself with new paintings, with new photographs, with whatever I see in and out. Those are small things that I do for myself and you can practically also do it this way and nail anything that you paint. I think now the whole painting will need to dry out first, and then start adding one more layer of your mountains or hills that you observe in the background. It will define your horizon in a better way. I would just make some amount of my red with blue and yellow to get this a dirty brown, and you practically always do not need all the colors that you see on the paper, whatever color you have on the palette try mixing it a bit with other shades of it and you can create something like this. Another way of getting any dirty mix like this, use your Payne's gray, use your vermilion and you will get a color that is closer to this one. Rather than the browns, you can also use that color as you have already made that kind of a color earlier and it would become more easier for you to deal with it. Going ahead and just adding a few lines here and there. Once we have added these lines, we would start adding the lines towards the bottom area. This is majorly to show the waves, to show the ripples. Now again, I'm touching the tip of my brush. As I said, that's your best friend right now. Believe me, the better you can walk around with the tip of your brush, the better results you will have. I would just use the tip, touch it, and then pick it up, touch it and pick it up in a few areas. Make small lines in some of the areas and just leave a few areas like that. That's the process which I love to follow while I paint. I think it's a good way to keep a control over your paints, your brushes, how you go about your painting. You are working small areas, that gives you a lot more control on your brush, on your lines, on how to want to paint around small aspects. But those are the things you should keep in mind. As I keep adding these lines, I would make the painting more in-depth. I am going to add more and more depth into the painting and you are actually working in layers now. The first layer was already done. Now this is the second layer which we are adding for our bottom area. This is something that you would do when you are very versed or when you are more experienced and I'd like to actually teach you guys this, as I know many of you want to learn more of the intermediate as well as advanced techniques. Though this is not completely advanced, but this is something that many advanced artists do use. I think it's important for all of us to learn and progress through that. Once I have added this brown that I've already told you, it is also called as the red brown. You can even use burnt sienna. You do not need to go with the same mixes that I do or I'm doing on my palette. It's absolutely fine to use the color that is already available for you. Maybe the burnt sienna is available for you. Why do not use it? Go ahead and use that. Adding some amount of my Payne's gray now towards the bottom. Once I have added the Payne's gray towards the bottom, I would go ahead and add some more darker values in some of the areas for this boy who is fishing? I love the idea altogether. You can fish for so many reasons. It's such a pretty nice, lovely day. It's a nice hobby, you like to spend the time outside. Overall, everything put together, it just makes this whole thing come to life. Anyway, I'm just so much in for a such kind of day. I can completely feel it. I can just be by the ocean for as long as you want me to be there. We make sure that we go and just stay in any of our ocean villas, anything like that for quite some time every year. That's what we do as a family because I'm more of a water person and I like to be there for quite some time, spend some time with myself. Those are the things that I do. That's one of the reasons I can associate with it so much more. Adding some of my Naples yellow. These are all darker mixes. You can practically go ahead with any dark value that you have. Just don't make it completely black. It is one of the things which I like to avoid always, not making my painting completely black. You aren't getting a closer look at how I'm painting this boy. It is important to have a closer look right now at the subject because this is one of the subject in-focus. It is closer to us, though it is in darker value as I did not want you guys to get into the complications of painting a human being, which is not the major subject of reflection of the human being in the water and how to paint the sky and the water. Those are, I think, the important subjects for us. Even the sky has turned out so pretty and so beautiful. I'm so happy, I must say, with the whole of the painting, how it has turned out. There are a few of the paintings where you have to make less effort to make it come to life. I think this is one of those paintings where we had done so much less effort to make it come to life. Whereas when you would be doing the next painting, you might feel a bit more effort is required to work it up. It's just the length of the video which I feel is longer. But the rest, I think everything is fine. I'm adding some of my water with the help of my brush towards the bottom area. Then I'm adding this reflection. It looks nice. If you add the reflection, it just adds depth, as I always say, to your painting. It just shows how dimensional your painting is, how beautifully you have just taken a note of everything that is required to be done. I'm adding some amount of my royal blue now. These are just the highlights, as I always say, for any painting which I like to add. It's majorly the details and these details just add a bit more flavor. I'm happy already, as I have told you. Sometimes I just use my fingers to paint. It's a very good habit. I can tell you that and you would be very happy to do it even as you progress in your journey. It's the best way, I must say. There are so many times where you can just paint with your fingers only. Adding some more highlights to the two people who are there at the distance and touching a bit on the head, and on their body part for this highlight. Then going ahead and adding some amount of black or Payne's gray. I do not like to use black, so I like to use my Payne's gray. There is one more thing, if you sometimes use your Mars Black, it gives some more of granulation. That's one of the reasons I do not use black. It gives me granulation and I don't like it. That's one of the things which I like to avoid. Adding some more black for the ears and for the head a bit. Touching again the tip of my brush and then just adding it. I think the black looks, on the hands, it doesn't look good. We have to just blend it. There are times where I'm always not correct. There will be times where I will be wrong and that's where I say that sometimes even instructors do not get it at the first go and we just don't pick up the colors or just blend it. Those are small aspects that anyone can do and everyone is learning. Every painting is a new learning for us even. It takes a while for each one of us. Let your paper dry off completely and once it has dried up completely, go ahead and remove the tip at an angle. Be super proud of this painting. I know you guys have nailed it. It's something that all of you will look forward to. Practically, the sky has turned out so beautiful. It is the life of the painting, I must say. If you are also scared to paint skies, I think this is one of the skies where get all the confidence, where you just know that you are nailing it. See you in the next lesson. 11. Sunset Skies Evening Sunset Project 4 Part 1 : Guys we have moved on to our sunset cloud now. Sunset cloud is something which I have painted for past so many years, and every time, whenever I have to paint sunset, I am more excited. First, let's just draw a line for our horizon. It is basically about if you divide your paper into 2/5 and then mark a line. 1/2 would be your top part and then about one part would be your bottom part. That's how I am planning to mark my paper. It is major part would remain as the sky and then the bottom part would be your water as well as the beach area. Why I have practically given more space towards the top area as our major work, is in the clouds and that's one of the reasons we are focusing majorly on the cloud area, so that's how we're going to do it. I am going ahead and marking small buildings lines. It is not something that you will think that can't be achieved or can't be done. It is pretty easy in terms of achievement and any one of you can do this. Only one aspect that you should always keep in mind while painting these sunsets. Sky will not offer you a lot of time to paint and that's one of the reasons whenever you think your sky is drying up, let it dry. I might have told this trick in each and every I think project that we are attempting, but I want this to register absolutely well with you guys. Never feel that your painting is drying up and you cannot work upon it once more. We can always go ahead add some amount of water, clear water of course. You will always observe I have two jars of water on my right. I never work with one jar. That's how I keep working with my painting and I still can keep working on it till the end if I have one fresh supply of water. We will repaint our surface. I'm going to again start painting. Do not fear or do not work on semi-dry paper. Let it dry completely and then start working. I'm making a few lines here and there. This is not to depict anything, it's just to show that there are some buildings, etc. In the middle part where I have just made a small dip towards the bottom, that's where I would be painting my sun. I have taken Naples yellow and a bit of yellow for painting the sun. You will understand that as we move forward, only one thing you have to wet your paper well. While you wet your paper, you have to understand that it should not have a lot of water as well as it should not have way less water. If it has very less water, of course, you will get patches and you will get some hard edges after a few minutes from the time you start painting. Right now, of course, the water is quite a lot, but still I wanted to go ahead with this much amount of water or also I will not get the time to keep working on it. We'll start with the lightest value and I have taken some amount of my Naples yellow on the Da Vinci paintbrush and I've started adding the colors on the paper. If you observe, I'm going ahead with very very light wash on them. This of course will become more lighter after it is completely dried off. Now that's one thing you should always keep in mind whatever colors you apply wet on wet, it could go one or two shade lighter. Whereas if you were doing wet on dry, that might go only one shade lighter. That's absolutely okay, I think the expectation which we have applying some amount of yellow. This is an Indian yellow which I always use and this is a fantastic color to be frank. While I go towards the sides, I like to add my Naples yellow, whereas just in and around the sun, [inaudible] yellow which you have. Naples yellow, the best part is, if you add any blue also to it, it will not turn into or muddy or dirty mix. Now, I'm going ahead and adding some vermilion. The vermilion is of course, from Sennelier again, and this vermilion I have been using for many of my other paintings too. In fact, I think initially also we have worked out with vermilion on paint [inaudible] our were painting. Yes it makes one of the major part in my painting story. Each and every painting becomes more amazing and important as we progress and as we understand. Well, this is a softer, I would say sun, which I am making. That's one of the reasons I have to clear out sides of this area again and again. Similarly, I would now go ahead and add some amount of my Rosie or you can also go ahead with carmine. You can go ahead with any other color of your choice. You seriously do not need the colors that I'm working with. It's just another pink. It can be any kind of carmine or it can be any Rosie. It can be anything that is available on your palette or whatever you have, any dark pink color that you have. Going ahead and adding some more clouds. Now if you see the direction of the clouds changes in this case and that's one of the important aspects in watercolor. You have to understand how the direction of the clouds. If you see the top area from all the sides, it's moving towards the center. Whereas while I was in the bottom area, it was simply moving from the right and on the left-hand it was mutually applying the colors. It was on a single direction or it was basically a single direction in which we were applying the colors. It was simple, easy, but as we progress, I would like to tell you a bit more about the direction of your clouds or watercolors are. Basically the direction of your clouds as you learn to paint, of course, similarly, your watercolors will also need to be applied, so that's one thing which I have observed. You usually change your way of applying the paint with the help of your brush. But yes, you need to understand how the direction of the clouds are and that's something which we would continuously work on, and that's one of the important aspects of watercolor, clouds for this particular class. I in the meanwhile, I am taking some amount of my cobalt blue over here and along with the cobalt blue, you can, if you do not have the cobalt blue go ahead and use any surrealism blue which is deep in shade. Or else you can also go ahead and use ultramarine. It will not serve as an exact I would say color replacement, but it would be something similar and that's absolutely fine. Always you do not need a similar color change. It just needs something that is similar to what you observe on the paper. Every time I'm pulling the paints towards the center, I'm even now removing the paints from my brush, and then again pulling it. That's how we go about painting on this particular area. Adding some pink, yeah, I think it just makes the painting looks so much more organic and beautiful. Adding those clouds, of course, you can practically feel the clouds right now. But as we progress, you will understand how it is to paint the clouds and how beautifully your clouds are turning up. Mixing some amount of my blue on my vermilion and getting a bit of darker value like this dirty color like this, and then adding it. While I go towards the top, I will make more bolder strokes. While I go towards the bottom, I will make more thinner strokes. As we move from top to bottom, you will understand that the clouds are broader towards the top, and while we go towards the bottom, the clouds become thinner and smaller in size. That's how I go about painting this one. Just mixing some more amount of my [inaudible] blue with pink that we have, sometimes I mix it with bit of orange and sometimes I mix it with some amount of my quinacridone rose or else I will not get a color that's something like this. Mixing again, there's some amount of my vermilion as well as my naples yellow and then applying some drops here and there, this will give a beautiful looking cloud. Believe me, once it dries off, you will understand. While you have this mix of your vermilion and naples yellow, add it even towards the bottom area, we even need some clouds over there though I know that this place seems to be drying off already, so it might be difficult to add these lines, but it's okay. Go ahead and drop it in few of the areas so we don't need to add it everywhere and I do understand that few places will become wet, and few places will dry off. They don't evenly dry off, that's another thing which I have observed always, that there is not much way where you can see or where you can understand why these places are actually drying off faster, whereas this place is not drying up so fast. One, another reason is the pigments that you apply, which I have also felt a few places that sometimes because of the pigments are drying is also quick compared to the other places where the drying takes some more time. Guys over here, I think it should have been a bit easy way of applying your paints because we're just dropping a few dots here and there, and whenever I'm going towards the bottom, I will just take off all the extra paints on the left side of the tissue and then only go ahead and start painting the area towards the bottom. Do understand that every place where you're adding the darker [inaudible] is usually on the top area, whereas or while you go towards the bottom you're not adding such dark clouds or else the whole paintings will not look aesthetic. As for my understanding, see again, this is a painting where we are walking through the photograph and it's not that everything that we paint will be similar to the photograph that we observe. There will be a few areas which is as per the photograph which you see, whereas there will be a few areas which is not as per the photograph or maybe actually apply our own changes that's the unique style. That's the change that I think each and every artist looks forward to. [LAUGHTER] Because you have to add something of your own or you cannot just go ahead and paint the same photo. That's why I have always looked forward to create in your own style, it is your style that matters the most time. Though your style, of course, will keep changing. I have observed the same in my own journey. My style has changed so much, if you observe my previous two classes on clouds, they are way different than what you observe right now. The way in which I apply my colors, the brushes, the way I hold, the less number of brushes which I use nowadays, so I don't want so much of chaos, I feel I just keep it very simple and easy. Whereas all the other at first, I was all in, I was trying to yield, I was trying to move there and then of course the brushes [LAUGHTER] also changed accordingly. There was so many brushes which I was using, whereas now I just use the tip of my one single brush and that really works. In case I need any dry brush technique, I will take off all the colors from the brush and then start using it. If I have to apply any colors or if I have to pick up any colors just the way I'm doing right now, I will pick it up, wash my brush, and just take off all the extra color on the tissue and then again start picking it up. I think all of it put together you will understand truly that there is no one single way of painting on. There is no one style which you can follow as and when you continue painting your style changes a lot, and as such you will keep seeing that you are just going ahead and building up yourself as a better artist and as a better person who understands his subject or who understands how to paint a particular scene, everything you can't include and that's one thing which I have understood. We should go minimalistic while we approach our painting. If we detail everything possible, then the whole painting will get lost, and that's one aspect of watercolor which I have understood. Do not try to imitate or do not try to get the absolute realism. The more you let it loose, the better you get, the better the final outcome or the better, final overall look and feel of the painting is. I did make a small straight line, that was to mark where exactly I want to paint my bird and how exactly I have placed the head over there. Then understand it's a really small bird, you do not need to worry much while you continue your sketch. I wanted to keep the bird to this length. That's one of the reasons I like to mark it beforehand. If we do not mark these areas, it just becomes too difficult when we are finalizing it, of course you can trace it, so many of you might be thinking that, "Can we trace it from [LAUGHTER] the photo?" Yes, go ahead if you're not so well versed with how you just paint, that's absolutely cool with me. But the better you do of free hand drawing or if you can try it out with your hands how to draw it, I would be more than happy to guide you through the process. As I feel drawing is a very, very important aspect of watercolor. The more or the better we know how to draw it, the better usually the outcome is. I am pretty good with how the bird looks now, do a few changes, I think. I would just see even with the exact reflection of the sun would be. Now, this board is not exactly in the area of the sun, so go ahead and paint it as you want or the real colors of the photo that you see. Just add in the similar way. 12. Sunset Skies Evening Sunset Project 4 Part 2: I must say that we're pretty happy with how the complete painting has turned out in the initial part. Over here, I'm just lifting off some things. I'm using my flat brush to do it. You can also do it this way. You can take a smaller flat brush if you are not very comfortable with the larger flat brush and see how I can pick up the colors from in and around the sun. We can see that the sun rays are dropping in and in few other places where I think that I'd need some patch-up there. I would go ahead and just add a bit of colors over there. While I go towards the left, I could just add some texture in the background, which is basically to show that there are some buildings or something like that far away. We are not going to detail much over here. It's just drop and lines here and there which basically makes up the painting right now, and that's it. Then let's move on to the part where we are going to show the reflection onto the water, paint a bird as well as paint the water radial. First, we're going to paint the water radial, and as we move forward, we're going to paint the bird. It's easier, as I always say to mask your bird and then go ahead and paint over it. That requires much less effort and you do not need to think, how do I cover the bird also on water? How do I just save it and then cover it? I'm applying some water, leaving just the space below my sun and then extending it on the right as well as on the left. I like to keep the space as white, though you can also go ahead and paint just the way you did the sun. I would leave that option up to you. But for me, I have saved this space and then I'm going ahead and adding my Indian Yellow first. Over that, I think I would just like to get some amount of my Naples yellow. That's one of my favorite colors that I have been using throughout this painting as well as you have also seen me using that pretty often in other paintings too. Either you can use Naples yellow or there's a peach which you get from White Nights. But I think this Naples yellow is better compared to the peach because sometimes I do get those hard dark and muddy colors once I mix blue or some other colors with that. But over here, it doesn't happen that way. That's one of the best reasons I always ask you to check your colors on a set off sketchbooks or paper, whatever you think of you have at hand, and then only go ahead and paint over it. Applying some more amount of Quinacridone Rose, as I've told you Quinacridone Rose Carmine color which is pink and you can go ahead with anything of your choice. There is nothing like a particular one which you have to go ahead with. Yes, I guess that's good to go. Once this part is done, I would go ahead and start applying some darker values. Now, darker values means more of blue so pick some mix of your indoor tone blue and some amount of your pinks today to add that. I would go ahead with lighter values to see how my colors are appearing on the paper so that I do not end up making any many mixes or any darker wrong mixes, which is not up to my expectation. I would go ahead and start adding now the darker values. I will mix some amount of my Payne's Grey with my cobalt blue and then apply it. It would give a darker value, slowly and steadily as I increase the amount of Payne's Grey, I must say. Then you can see how it appears. Of course, I'm going wet on wet. That's one of the reasons you have to be slow at adding these colors. We can't be really faster at adding this layer. Why? As we do not want the whole of the painting to be covered, whereas we even don't want lesser area to be covered. It's majorly the shore line which we want to cover with the darker values and better version. I'm left out with lesser paints going ahead and fetching some amount of my darker values. I'm adding some more orange into it or vermilion into it. This is a very beautiful color. You have already seen it during the initial project where we did the paint only the basically two colors, vermilion and our Payne's Grey. I'm using those same technique which we did over there, as well as the same mixing technique which we used over there for the darker values. Once we are done with this part, I would start adding the other waves. These waves look really organic when you start doing only bits and parts of it with a wet on wet technique and some parts of it we have to do it in wet on dry. Clearing out a bit and then just making some more darker values. On the right, it is to show that there are waves, there are ripples, then there's shore line. Everything put together has to come up the way we exactly want. It is not a tough thing. But you need to know that your brush should have less amount of water in it. Usually, pick any water that is there on your brush and then start adding. That's one thing which I must say you can always understand, and then you will find that the overall painting has some actually turned out exactly the way you wanted it to. Something that I have noticed is picking up less colors on your brush as these brushes are like water reservoirs, I must say. Water reservoirs, you have to take off the extra water from it and maybe you will lose out some pigments also. Of course, that's perfectly fine, and then start adding it. Using my blending brush to blend the areas. Some of the areas we had the white space, which we have preserved looks already dried up. I'm not extending a lot over there. Picking up some water on my brush and then splattering it towards the bottom area. How many of you do have this doubt, how do I get these whites and how is it done? Is it with salt or is it with gouache? I just use simple clean water. You can say that's it, and then you'll get these beautiful textures. Water can do wonders every time you do not need salt, you can say medium or any other particular thing to actually give you the textures, etc. Water colors is all about so much more, I should say, flow, as well as how to just work around only more with water rather than with pigments. If you can work more with water and less with pigments, I think that's the one important aspect which we are always looking forward to. Painting the bird now, I'm using my darker values towards the top right-hand corner of the bird and the lighter values while I paint the body of the bird. That's what I follow and I'm using the tip of my brush to paint this bird. Of course, this is [LAUGHTER] becoming one of my favorite brushes. The tip is so beautiful. I cannot literally tell you how good I feel after investing on this kind of a brush. There are times where we do feel that why are we even investing so much on a hobby or something like that. But believe me, this is a different brush altogether. If anytime you plan to actually go ahead and invest on good brushes, I must tell you this can be one of them on which you can actually invest. Going ahead and adding some brown values. Now this brown is of course mid and it is a bit of blue, then some amount of Quinacridone Rose as well as some yellow to get this brown that I have that you also, and making these small lines which would be like ripples. I have to go ahead and add some more closer lines in and around this inflection with yellow, which I will be doing either now or maybe later. First, let's just add these smaller ripples and that would practically show the wave which we want to actually depict through this painting. I think I'm pretty happy with how it has turned out. The bird looks amazing. It's just a reflection that we have to paint, which we will be doing as we progress. Keep adding smaller details and smaller lines. Once you have added these details, use some colors to your advantage. That's something no one can seriously tell you when you are coming closer to the sun, you have to use more of yellow, more of your Naples yellow or any other orange that you have on your palette. Rest of the time, of course, you can leave it and move with the colors even from the darker values. If you observe, I am using really light values to go ahead and paint in the white area of the reflection. While I go towards the right, I would increase the intensity as well as the changeover. This whole thing is giving a depth to your painting. If you slowly observe, these waves are coming together. It shows the perspective so well while it is towards the shoreline which is closer to you, they are far away from each other. Whereas as you progress, you will see these waves are getting closer to each other. That is something which is so perspective. If you can put the perspective together, well, I can tell you that you are going to nail in painting. Adding some more lines. As you see, this is the place where you're going to only actually add lines and that's it. Small lines. You set off your brush to do that and whole of the painting will come together. There is nothing much that is left over here. We're not going to overdo any part of it. If you see last 6-7 minutes, this what we are going to work on. It's majorly the detailing part. Taking the darker values, making these small lines, then just flattening some of our paints as well as adding some of our watercolor marks for the stones etc. on the shoreline. These are those small aspects which we are to watercolor to show it more organic as well as to give it a feel that yes, it is a shoreline. You can also etc. I hope that you can now compare the photograph as well as the painting which we have done. I usually like to just go a bit different on the photograph that you observe as that's what makes whole of the painting your own. You will see more of it coming after this project. Many more projects are there to come and you can see each one is done very differently. I will practically teach you how you can make any photograph your own. It is just the inspiration that you need to pick. Every time you are not going to pick up everything that is given in the photograph. If you can pick and choose two things from a particular photo, then practically you know that you are avoiding a lot of noise from the photograph. You are just concentrating on a few things and those few things practically make up your painting. Like over here, we had to focus a lot on the clouds. From clouds, we moved on to the medial part, which is our bird. I did not do a lot of additions, I must say, to the water etc., we did simple wet-on-wet and some textures that we added. But the rest, everything else was kept really simple. We have gone ahead and added a bit of reflection, that's very important. It should be done in lighter value than the color in which you have already painted the leg. That's one thing which I must tell you. It would show that the reflections are coming through. We are happy, [inaudible] What more can I say? I think this is one of the painting where I am super happy and excited to show you the whole of the process. There is some splattering that we are doing right now. Once the splattering is done, I would add a few stones as I did tell you already. Then there would be some reflection that I'm going to add for the stones. That's it. Just see if the area which is majorly your sea or which is majorly where you have the ripples and the waves adding some more lines. These are small dots practically which would make or which would actually show the stone. It is basically an illusion that you create with your painting. This illusion will show that the stones are lying on the beach and there is a reflection which you see the water has just gone. On the sand it's not there, but still it's there. The reflection is coming. Everything put together will actually make so much sense for any one of you who actually loves sea. They can practically, I think, imagine the whole of this scenario. I am a complete sea lover, we are so much into sea, that every year I have to visit any of the beaches. That's there always in my holiday bucket list. If it doesn't happen, then it becomes very tough for me to carry on. I think I'm so much of a sea lover, [inaudible] so much when we are there, the reality and how it looks. It practically makes so much sense when I start painting. I just feel this looks exactly like my painting. This looks exactly how I work on my painting. I can practically relate to it. I always love to relate to each and every painting that I do. This is what I feel is the soul of your painting. The more you can imagine how you are painting, or the more you can imagine how it should be, the more soul or the more, I would say, life that you add to a painting. Of course, it's not life, I know, but still it's something like a passion, it's something like exact illusion, exact photo, or exact painting that we want to create. I'm just lost of words to tell you how I feel right now. But we are done over here. Do not try to touch a lot on all the areas, let your paper dry off. Once it dries off, then just peel off the tape and have a final look at your painting. It's not a very easy one, let me tell you. You guys have nailed it completely. You need some amount of patience to get this through. I do understand at each and every level that you will be challenged with this Skype class. It's a walk into the clouds. Anything that you can think of, from clouds, skies, it's coming through. It will take some time, but you will get a hang of it. Stick around. Let's move on to the next painting. 13. Cotton Candy Clouds Project 5: Let's just go ahead and start with our painting. We are first applying one layer of clear wash on the paper. It's going to be simple. This one, as it is, nothing but a painting where we are keeping our foreground simple, only for our clouds. Yes, there is some kind of a bit of complexity. I think the last few exercises were way more [inaudible] because we had backgrounds, we had foregrounds, we had a lot of stuff that we did paint, so I wanted to keep it simple this one. You guys should feel more relaxed as well as you should feel way more better in this one. You can apply some of the yellow color. How you apply it, just mix it with your Naples yellow and then apply it. Once you have done that, go ahead and clear this peach kind of a color which you all saw on the palette. There will be times where I might miss out on actually explaining exactly what I'm doing on the palette. Let's just go ahead and see how I'm applying my colors, how I'm mixing my colors. That would give you a rough idea about not purchasing all the colors as I always say. Work around with whatever you have, though Naples yellow is not a color that you get in any palette. This is one of them where you might have to make a purchase, but anything that is closer to it is good to go. I'm keeping the white of the paper pretty intact as I always tell you, I leave a lot of white-spaces compared to not applying the reds or the orange or whatever you say. I keep it empty as the white can reflect and that reflection of the white of the paper will give a lot of edge to this painting. I'm going ahead and blending my colors of my blue with some of my quinacridone rose or the pink that we already have this custodial. A very, very light wash on the left side of the blue. Once I have applied this blue, we will go ahead and go towards the bottom area where we will apply some more colors. Though the blue is pretty bold and I must say that I could go ahead and apply it with my flat brush of it. What happens with the flat brushes? It works or it actually helps to apply color in majority of the area it covers a lot of space that becomes easy to go ahead and even cover the areas whatever you want or whatever you feel is necessary. Mixing my quinacridone rose to get this beautiful purple kind of a shade that you observe now, for the sky. We haven't used practically any kind of purple, but still we get that purple kind of a shade. It is all color mixing that you can do for your having these kind of outcomes. Quickly going with some more amount of each color. The paper is still wet, that's one of the reasons I can keep working on it. But your paper remains wet for four to five minutes, which I have usually observed. What happens, is that it normally starts drying up in few of the places and few of the places will still remain wet. If you stop applying colors on the dry places, it would give you a cauliflower effect, which we really do not want for our painting, we want those soft, nice, beautiful edges for our painting. I hope you can get it and you can understand now what's the reason for only going ahead with these shades initially and just working on the top area of the clouds, because bottom area would be our cotton candy. That's one of the reasons I'm not applying any colors over there. It's just mostly the white that I've covered with my flat brush, the rest of the area, I would leave it empty. I guess this is around five minutes that we have worked on. Once you are satisfied with the top area of the sky, you can let it dry. You do not need to keep working on it or just keep applying or retouching each and every place. The one good part is that the paper which we are using is arches and the arches is wet for a long period of time. As I did tell you earlier, that this is the time where you have to let your paper dry off. Mixing some amount of your yellow and some amount of your lovely neon as well as a bit of Naples yellow to get this one beautiful sky. The sky has one of the beautiful colors that we already know, which is some amount of yellow and a mix of your quinacridone rose. It is in very, very less pigmented quantity that we are applying. I am not sure how I want to go ahead and how I want to apply the colors. That's one of the reasons I am going with the flow, what I think is necessary and then slowly, I would keep adding more colors as we progress. Blending it wherever I feel that it's necessary, that's absolutely fine, we do commit mistakes and in case you have also committed a mistake like this, please go ahead and make those so thoughts as you observe. Few other places. Yes, we will have those hard edges and few of the places you can always keep it soft. That's how we usually observe in any kind of a painting. You already have a photograph which I have referred to for this painting and that you can use for actually having a look at how to not exactly use the same photo or not to actually copy the photo majorly. You can always take the inspiration as I see. Do take the inspiration, but do not try to copy and you can practically see a different version of the painting and how beautifully you can challenge yourself and make the painting come to life without even going ahead and just doing a point-to-point copy. As I always say, copy is not the best way. Even if you are taking from copyright through website, I always feel I never want to copy any kind of painting. I just love to change it a bit of my own. I take the inspiration, the clouds, etc. Many things that I keep changing for all my paintings if you observe. I am touching the tip of my brush for the darker values and few of the places wherever it is needed. One of the most critical parts which we are going to paint from your own is to actually make the colors look one shade lighter or way lighter in few of the areas and darker in few of the areas. This will come with practice, so I would suggest you guys to try this out on your own on rough paper and see how it works for you. If you see I'm blending some of my colors in a really light shade and then applying it on my paper. Going ahead with my Quinacridone Rose. Once I have applied my Quinacridone Rose, I would go ahead with my blue and then blend it with the background. I have already applied the colors, that's one of the reasons whenever my darker shade is coming in contact with the lighter shade. That is the blue is coming in contact with the sample of the peach that we have already applied. It's making its own blend. We are not actually trying to blend it artificially or with our own hands the water will do its job, it will make things work for you. Now applying some of this peach color also towards the bottom area of the top of the clouds. See slowly instantly as we move down, it would be way more darker. But till here I must say there will be some more lighter shades that I keep applying. Yes, there will be areas which we will completely occupy, it's just one of the photos that we are painting now and based on this only I have even painted my next painting. We are blending in few of the areas as you observe, and then I would go ahead and blend it even with the top area. Blending is something that I have always done and I love to do it till now. Blending really helps any painting to get where it has to be. I think these are few of the techniques that you will learn or we all learn in the process and wet on wet is, so you see amazing part that we are now applying the colors, applying some of our lighter values, and then blending it with the darker values. It needs a bit of control and it needs some amount of practice. You will absolutely get a hang of it, it might take some time as I always say. I will take off all my colors and then just try to blend it. Few of the areas I can even lift off my colors as you observe me doing it now. It's okay to lift off your colors or add one or two small dots here and there, wherever you feel it is still wet. These are the aspects where you experiment and understand what is actually needed. If you exactly know what is needed, then it becomes very easy for you as well as for any other participant, any of you who wants to have their own outcome or who wants to try out the old paintings in the way that will also be really helpful. If you do this exercise I think that you can ease any kind of cloud. This is of course not an excessive project altogether. But overall, I must say that this is one of the exercises which can help you to paint any kind of colorful clouds or any kind of cotton candy clouds. It's just the technique that you need to know which we are discussing now, and this technique can help you work through any of your paintings. Touching here and there and I did blend with my flat brush as we go towards the bottom area. Once we have added the clouds, I don't think that I'm going to touch it everywhere anymore. Few of the areas where I I'm adding some water and then some of the colors, it is with a very light hand I added so that I can add one or two drops of colors here and there. This is something that you should be very careful of while you add the colors and while you get this thing working. From here on, I really want to discuss each and everything way more in detail because we are going to lift off our colors as well as add colors in many of the areas. I would be using my flat brush it is close to, I guess six semen and I'm using my pencil of black brush for this one. It's a very normal flat brush that is available. But if you see, whenever I'm trying to pick up the colors with the round brush, I'm not going exactly or I'm not getting exactly the way I want to pick up. You see the difference how the flat brush works and how the round brush works? That's the reason of switching from my round brush to the flat brush or else I love to use only one or two kind of brushes for all my paintings. As I did tell you earlier it's just that every painting has a different requirement and lifting off really requires that high flat brush thing for getting a good final outcome. Picking it up. Then again, just picking it from the darker areas. You should know that you can only pick up the colors from most of the darker areas if you try to touch your lighter areas, it would become a bit more white, that's it. But touch your brush and then pick up the color, wash it. Again, go ahead and try to just pick up the colors from other places. You have to go with a damp brush for picking up your colors wherever you'll feel it isn't necessary and you want to add some colors, feel free to go ahead, just make that a bit more wet. Then just apply the colors of the darker value. If you want to keep it more lighter, you can just even pick up the colors from that area. That's how I look into it. You see those whites small patches makes that thing look so better and so much more than nice. If you even want to blend hard edges, this is a good way to blend the hard edges. This is absolutely a new technique which you might be coming across and I'm helping you to understand this as we have hardly discussed it to be frank with you all, the whole of this technique and how it falls together, how you can paint clouds, etc. But once you get a hang of it, I can tell you this would be an amazing experience for you. I now want to discuss the second way of picking up the colors. It is using your brush. How do you do that? Just apply the colors. Take off any extra colors with your brush or use the tissue. That's the easiest way. If you use the tissue, you can pick up the colors very easily. But what happens in a tissue is that you can't control from exactly where you want to remove whereas if you are using a flat brush, you can practically control from the areas you want to pick up your colors. That's the reason I have actually told you to use your flat brush. This is one of the thinnest flat brush, as I've told you earlier. It is 67mm or you can go ahead with 1/4 the inch that you get in the market. Applying some clean water towards the bottom area of the top cloud is so thin and then going ahead with a few small drops of this cloud area. Just to show that it's not completely white as we have already some amount of colors that we have added. Picking it up a bit more as I feel it did not make much of sense. [LAUGHTER] [inaudible] says, I always tell you some of the places we do make our own mistakes and then we have to do a very simple and easy way to just pick up the colors. But on the right, when I've applied the water, I'm going ahead and adding these small dots. We have the areas we will add, we have the areas we take it off. It's always good to use your tissue, keep it handy as I always say to pick up your colors. It would help you to add your watercolor paintings, watercolors needs some tissue or some kind of eraser. Now, watercolor cannot use an eraser, that's the basic thing. Tissue really helps to pick up the colors from wherever we want. I'm wetting a few of the areas and then picking up the colors with my tissue, that's another way to go about it. Once this part is done, I'm applying again some more water. I've taken the water of course from my clean jar. I keep two jars handy for myself as you always see. Now, keeping one jar of freshwater really helps you to just keep that fresh supply of water wherever you need that clean wash. You don't need to again, get up, get the water, and then start painting. It makes me feel a bit more lazy to do that. I do it initially and keep it handy with myself. I think I would let the clouds dry off now completely and then go ahead with my paints gray. Now paints gray is the color that I've been using for long for painting my foregrounds. As I want to keep my foregrounds really simple, I'm not going to add a lot of changes to it or I'm not going to add a lot of highlights to it. It's going to be absolutely in the darker color. You can also use black if you are not having this paints gray with you. That's also okay. Go with the smaller strokes to get those bushes and lines for the foreground. It is a simple bush that we are painting. We will just keep adding up the colors. I would even give you a closer look of exactly how I proceed with my painting. These are just touches of brushes here and there. Once we do touch our brush, we will pick it up. Then again, we will touch our brush, we will pick it up. That's how we go about touching our brush and picking it up, touching our brush and picking it up. You see there is an underlying blue to my color that you always see. This underlying blue really helps to give that good, beautiful outcome which usually you don't see with any other black paints that you use. Applying some more of my paints gray. Once I have applied the paints gray, I would blend it with the background. Once I have done this blending, I will again go ahead and make the top area of this foreground more detailed. That's what I think, the rest of the area can be in black. You keep extending it. There is less as of now to speak so I would leave it. At this point in time, I would let you paint along with me. It's simply going ahead with the darkest value. We will again meet when we have to do some more difficult things. I think we are practically done with the difficult part. It's mostly the easier part that is left now. It would help you to relax really. It help me to relax when I say that I could just do the foregrounds, which is very easy. [MUSIC] Blending some with my other colors and applying it wherever it is necessarily. As I've told you, you can even use a black. That's fine. We're just at the end and now we have to add these small dots here and there. Once we have added these dots, it is done and we will have a very close look at what more details we can add for our foreground and then let our paper dry off before we peel the tape. That is one important aspect of painting. You have to let your paper dry off. If you try to peel when your paper is wet, what usually happens is that your paper will rip off. We really do not want any reaping of paper at this stage. We have practically done all that we have worked so hard and hence, there is no way we can allow anything to go wrong at this stage. I guess you can all make these small dots. Once this is done, as I have told you, have a look at your final painting after pealing off your tape. Cool guys. I will meet you in the next lesson where we are going to go a bit more colorful than what we did in this case and we're going to paint a bit bigger than this one. Now, you can choose your own size and shape, as I always say for the paper going ahead with whatever is available with you is good, but just 100 percent cotton paper. That's it. Meet you in the next lesson. 14. Cotton Candy clouds Project 6 Part 1: Well, we are onto our sixth project, and this is going to be cotton candy clouds. Guys, we're not going to use anything different compared to what we have used in terms of the color and you have already done a lot of exercises in your second set of clouds. I have not included any exercise for this session. It's going to be a really simple one as I have told you earlier. The first one is also a cotton candy cloud, and this one is also a multi-colored cotton candy cloud that you see. We are going ahead with either you can take your [inaudible] or else you can go ahead with your end on green, blue, whatever is available with you, go ahead with very thick brush and start adding the colors on your paper. Once you have added the colors, go ahead and make these larger brushstrokes one after another. Once you have made these brushstrokes value are going towards the bottom. Make it more and more light compared to what you have applied on the top. Now before you decide how to make it lighter while you go towards the bottom, it's always a good idea to make it look more bright. While you are going towards the bottom since your top area would be with the darker values, which you will see how I go ahead and apply but while you go, do what's the bottom, as I've told you, we will be using warmer shades. Warmer shades means very light value of yellow or very light value of your orange vermilion, whatever is available with you. We would be using that once you are done with the light value, they see it as lightest value that we are adding right now on the paper. While you have added this part to the painting then it's important to go ahead with the darker value on the cloud area. The base area should be light as we will go ahead with one of our work dark sheets while we make our foregrounds, whereas when we make the clouds, we will of course make a few colors. We will work with a few colors. Few of them would be in the warmer shade and some of them would be in the lighter shade. That is more change that I have done to the clouds painting. You can find the reference image of course in the resource section, so go ahead and download. There's only one reference image, which I have considered for both the paintings. It would not be the best to actually attach it over here. Hence, I think it's better for you to download it and then start with both of these exercises. Going ahead with my vermilion or you can go ahead with a bit of your quinacridone rose. Both of the colors look very nice. This is more of the wet on wet technique that you'll see because the paper is still wet and we're going ahead with our brush on top of it to make these clouds. When I make these clouds, you will also start dump. Some of the places will get a very nice outcome and few other places we'll even give harder edges. Those are all things that are absolutely okay. You will get a bit of cauliflower effect maybe because you guys are starting out. These are the difficulties that you might face as we progress in our journey. Something that I want you to know before we make our move, that's very important, before you make your move, you should always know what are the difficulties that any painting comes with. There are a lot of difficulties that you might have faced previously in your clouds painting. But believe me, this is going to be something really wonderful. You will be very happy with the final outcome. As you progress, you can understand how beautifully you can add more and more from cognitive to the painting and how all of these colors to blend with each other. How wet on wet can create so much magic on the paper. It's unbelievable. Going ahead with ultramarine blue. As I am going ahead with ultramarine blue I would tell you that this painting is more to relax so you can just listen to some good music or else you can listen to me and just keep painting. I have taken some of the indigo or else you can also go ahead with paints gray. Both the colors are absolutely okay for this painting. I think one important aspect of painting is to relax and to paint and for the clouds I think that is one of the most primary requirements. Whenever I'm painting clouds, I have to relax a lot more. Few of the areas I have to touch and go, and few of the areas I have to have some darker value. This is all as we progress, you'll get to understand and you get to learn. This whole series is more about multicolored clouds. That's one of the reasons, even though cotton candy clouds are multicolored, we will have more of billow clouds as well as the water laden, no clouds coming up later. Once we are done with our rough night skies, then now those are also coming up. A lot is there and I hope if you have done the previous exercise, you will be really good with, this particular except it is a bit advanced, I will not deny. As we are working with our blending brush, we are working with wet on wet, we are working with wet on dry. Some of the areas I'm picking up the color, some of the areas I am adding more colors. It takes a while to understand and to get a hang of it. Once you get a hang of it, I think that nothing can stop you. It's like you get hooked to painting these clouds. It's something like that every day I want to paint only clouds. Every time it happens to me when I am into this mode of painting clouds, I start painting clouds and I keep painting only clouds. Those things do happen and it's okay. All of us do have this tendency of painting, something that we like. This is one of the subjects start all of us like, there is nothing that can stop us from painting these. I think that's the reason every one of you might like to do this. I keep up tissue very handy with me. What happens is sometimes I want to pick up the colors or sometimes I want to just make my brush more damp. I will just remove the extra paint from the brush and then add it on the paper. I really go very slow in the whole process. If you observe me, I'm not trying to fast forward the process. It is absolutely real time so that you can paint along with me. The first part of this video is majorly focused on painting this clouds and once you are done with this cloud area, we will move on to the next spot where we are going to work on a foregrounds. Foregrounds is going to be really simple. We will be working with only dark values for our foregrounds. Let's go ahead and keep painting, keep adding more and more flavors to our beautiful sky. Once we have added this sky in here, I'm going to add some more pink to the orange or to the one that we have already added. It's just that I wanted a multi-color clouds, that one of the reasons I am touching it again and again. But if you are happy with the outcome that you had already, I think keep it as is, you do not need to touch it like I am doing, again and again and again. That's something which I always say, whatever you like, try to keep it, try to keep the originality or try to keep it the way you are liking it as of now. Watercolors is all about how you perceive it and how you think that it can work for you. Something that I have always learned in the past and I'd like too even though in my future, keep adding the colors when you think that it is the right time and you can actually paint in the best possible way. If you think that this is how it should look for me, then keep it as is. If you think that, yes, I need to touch it and I want to work something more on it, we have to add it. Again, the one most important aspect of watercolor is to know exactly where to stop. If you don't know where exactly you should stop, then there will be a bit more difficulty when you finish it or when you actually finish any of your artworks. It would be either overworked or else there are chances that you have worked less on it. It's really important to know how you actually finish or how you actually make copies come to life along with the fact that you know exactly where to finish it or where to not add anything more to the painting. That is what I love to always teach in my classes and my workshops and any place which I work on or on anything that I work on. This is something that I love to actually add and point out. While you paint, we are working mostly with Ultra Mini, if you see, there might be some amount of granulation that you might observe in Ultra Mini when you use it. We would be actually picking up some of the colors with the help of our flat brush. This is the six mm flat brush which I am using from my Winsor and Newton, it is a very basic brush which is available in anywhere. You can either have any kind of a flat brush that is available with you or in case you want to actually go ahead and buy this kind of brush, feel free to go ahead and even buy this kind of a brush that can also help you in your future studies, etc. Either a bit of clouds or either of any other subjects that you want. I'm adding some more quinacridone Rose over here and I'm blending it with my brush a bit. Of course, I can blend the entire area, that I know I can do. It's okay to not blend right now, we will be blending it later on. Everything that I paint right now, you must have observed that it is wet off. But as I have told you earlier, we would be blending it later on. I'm bending it now as you observe me doing. All that is wet on wet gives you a very nice outcome. But it is a possibility that you might find some hard edges. Go really fearless with your painting. I don't say that always, but with your clouds, I always do say this, go fearless. That is very important for anyone who is painting clouds. All the outcome will not be appropriate or will not be as per your expectation. But as you progress on this journey, you will have more favorable outcomes. Those favorable outcomes will actually help you to get beautiful final paintings as something which has a background as well as a foreground, it has a beautiful sky. Everything put together, it might feel something really amazing. You see some kind of a brown is now seen on the paper. These things do keep happening, these are magic. As I always say, watercolors are magical and as you paint more and more, you will find more and more mixes, you will find more and more beautiful outcomes, you will find more and more happy accidents. Yeah, that's what I love to say. Yeah, this is a happy accident. Every time you will not see this happening. All the colors will not give you the same kind of an outcome as there are different kind of pigments which each and every company uses for preparing these colors. That's one of the reasons you don't get these kind of colors every time you try to mix a particular shade with another shade. But yes, I think whenever you find this kind of mixing and you find these kind of shades, to keep a note, keep one of the paper or one of the sketch books handy for yourself where you make lot of swatches. Now, that's something which I always say and suggest to each and every person. You should keep a small sketch book to make your swatches, to understand how your color reacts, how your pigment reacts with another pigment. This is something that you get to understand over time. This is something that you will work, work, and work more and more to get a hang of it. I think this is it for my lower clouds. I'm not going to work very hard. Why I say this, as it would be covered with my foregrounds. I know that my foregrounds is something that I want to go ahead and work on. That gives me a beautiful outcome. In few of the places, you can pick up the colors as you observe me doing it. It would be more of picking up the colors and just doing some additions here and there. That's it. I think the best brush for that is your flat brush, which you observed me using it. Once you have used this flat brush, you can see there are a lot of places from where your colors might get lifted. Once you lift the color from these areas, you can again add it back, if you think that you have lifted up a lot of color compared to what you really wanted to. This is a good exercise and I hope once you are done with this part, we will have a closer look at it and how you can remove small areas. You can use a tissue to just wet that area first and then remove it with the help of your tissue. Place a wetter area with your brush, remove it with a tissue. In case you want to add more colors, go ahead and add it, then blend it with the background. That's also is a possibility. Each of these things might look really small, but these small, small steps add up to a lot. You will find that there is something which you would end up making absolutely beautiful. Yeah, it's miraculous, the way when I see everything getting together and how this whole cloud has turned out. Already it has taken a shape. Even if we don't touch it much now, you can see that most of the areas look perfect and look perfectly blend. Each and every part of this painting looks great. I guess this is very cool. Let's move on and just add some beautiful thoughts or some beautiful small, small golden touches. Not past your golden touches, I must say. That's it. I will just add a bit of music over here and I will meet you soon in the next lesson. [MUSIC] 15. Cotton Candy Clouds Project 6 part 2 : This part is way more easier compared to the last one, it's less complicated. We are working on a fulcrums, and for the fulcrums, there will be one electric pole, there will be a light attached to that electric pole, there will be few electric lines, and then in the foreground there will be some bushes, some dark values which we would be using for creating those foliage. It's going to be simple, and hence, you will have more of music in this one. We will just sit back, relax, some paint. It is more to relax. You have already dried version of what you have created for the clouds. This is only to make the clouds look more original or I must say that the foreground actually add that an edge to your painting. You can always leave it with just painting the clouds, but I personally love to have these kind of foregrounds, and hence, we would be adding the darkest value for these foreground. Just adding some of my darkest value, as I told you. It is either paints gray, black, sepia, any dark color that is available on your palette. These are the colors that you can surely use. You can even use indigo if it is pretty dark for your palette. I guess that's all from my end in terms of what you need. We are using the same color palette that we have used earlier. There is no change in the color palette. All the colors that you have used earlier will be used in this particular series too. It's only that you might have to add ultramarine if you have not used it earlier. In case you do not have ultramarine, you can go ahead with cobalt blue also, which I might have mentioned earlier, so that's another option that you have. I think, yes, that's it. One thing that I must tell you about the electric lines is they will all converge to one single point. That is one-point perspective. If you are not aware of this perspective as a rule, I would ask you to go back and check out my earlier class on clouds. There I had mentioned about the perspective, how all the lines converge to one single point. There are three aspects of perspective; One is the vanishing point, one is the horizon line, and one is one point of the spectrum. I would request you all to go through that, it will help you not only this particular painting, it will also help you in any of your future projects. This is something which can act as a base even for your urban sketching or any kind of travel sketching that you are planning to do. Once you are aware of these small facts that I like to always do, then you start out with the darkest value. I am using my paint's gray, as I have mentioned earlier, and I started adding it on my paper, with the help of my da Vinci, the [inaudible] brush that is three by zero, which I am using for this painting. You can go ahead with any thin dash that is available with you. If you're not very comfortable with these kind of brushes, go ahead and use any thinner brush like size 2, size 5, size 0, whatever is available. If you're working on a smaller paper, the size of the brushes might differ, so always keep that in mind. If you're working on smaller paper, if you are working on bigger paper, accordingly, the size of the brushes always differ. Right now, you have to just go with the outline and paint inside that outline. It's simple, we would be adding more of music. I, at least, would be adding more music in this particular session, as you have to just observe and paint. There is nothing much that I have to tell you. Over here, it's only smaller dots, and there, the rest, everything is so simple, easy. Just hang in there and let's paint this, so pretty outcome. [MUSIC] Hi, I hope you have enjoyed this painting a lot. I'm just adding few more details here and there. You can use any of your liner brush for doing this. Now, every painting comes with a few different kinds of brushes that I might be using. The basic brushes remains the same, that I have discussed maybe here and there, some liner brush or maybe a thin brush or small flat brush. Those are the aspects, so those are the things that might change a bit with each and every painting, but the rest of the things remain the same. Now, so adding few more lines for my electric pole around there just to make it look more original and to give more natural vibes. It is nature, as I say, even electric lines and never straight, overtime there are some wear and tear, adding more lines to it, because of something or the other that we usually see. Maybe they're branching out or anything else that is there in some electric box that they have fitted, etc. Once you have added these lines, go ahead and make one or two lines for branching out these small branches that is there for the stem, which is going towards the top, or moving towards the top. And remove the tape at an angle, that's it. Once you remove the tape, have a fun look at this painting and I hope that you are super proud of yourself. We will move on to the next set of clouds where it is more about painting night skies. 16. Palette Night Skies: Let's discuss all the colors which you need for completing the painting. It is your non green-blue, then your indigo. You're familiar and cerium blue that we would be majorly using for completing the painting. Along with it, I need to keep some amount of white quash and masking fluid. That's all for this painting [NOISE]. Now let's discuss all the colors which we need for this one. I'm going ahead with my main green over here, either cobalt three and you can have porous compost blue, some amount of your portion blue had your indigo along with it. This is what we need for completing all the paintings. You just need to have some amount of highlights over here which means you need white quash and red color. We will give some of these platters for the stars over here with white quash itself. Let's move on to our first painting now. 17. Night Skies The moon light Project 7: Hi guys. We're onto our seventh painting. This painting is all about creating night skies. We are going to create two night skies. One would be project 7 and another would be project 8. I've already told you about the color palette that you would need for completing the painting, as well as this is going to be simple, easy painting. It's relaxing and it's really nice to go ahead and really paint night skies. Most of you have already figured it out. Most of you know how to paint night skies, but here I'm going to include clouds in the night sky which might be a bit challenging for a few of you. Though blending the colors, I know you guys can do superbly by now but including the clouds may be a bit difficult as I already said. Let's keep working towards it. I'm using a coin and I'm just masking out my moon. You can also do the same or else you can even use a masking tape to mask out your moon. I would leave that decision up to you. I'm using a cerulean blue. You can also go ahead with royal blue if that's what you have with yourself. Cerulean blue is a very beautiful color and I have it from Sennelier. Cerulean blue really acts or gives that light value of the blue that I need for this painting of mine. Guys, many of you always ask me what's the size of paper, etc. I have already listed it down in the materials required. If you still have any doubts, paper is always up to you, whatever you want to use. I love to use a bit bigger size paper. That's one of the reasons I have taken the size, but you can go ahead with whatever size that is available with you. I have added vermilion now and I am using my absolute flat 1 inch brush for doing the whole of this painting. Why I always go ahead and use bigger brush is because it really helps me to add all the colors very quickly and I can move around with my painting very quick, as well as adding the cloud also becomes easy just like that. So one of the reasons I always like to use my bigger brushes. I'm only adding water while I go towards the top area as well as I will like to squeeze out some amount of my Cerulean blue or else you can also use royal blue. Royal blue is also a great combination if you want to try that out. Royal blue blends in very well with the vermillion that we have used hence I think whatever shade is available with you out of these can be used. Once you have added this color while we go towards the top, we would be adding the darker values. I would add some darker value initially and then slowly blend it and take it towards the bottom. Now, how always adding the darker value at the end is advantageous is? That you cannot come back in your watercolor painting very easily. If you take that now, I want to pick up my colors and I want to come back into my watercolor paper, it really becomes tough that way. Hence, adding the darker values at the end makes more sense. That's one of the reasons I'm also adding it towards the end of the painting. I would say once I have added the lighter values, then I'm going ahead with the darker values. Adding some yellow towards the bottom left. This is Naples yellow that I'm using. Many of you by now, already know that there's a love for Naples yellow in me. I can tell you this Naples yellow looks so beautiful whenever you apply it on the paper, you would get to see how much magic it can create always. Once you have added this Naples yellow, go ahead and take some indanthrene blue or else you can also use a Prussian blue or a light value of indigo, whatever you see beautiful as I always say. You do not need to go ahead and purchase new shades. Start applying a very light value initially. Once you are happy with that, go ahead and apply some darker values. I have also taken a mix of my indigo as well as some of my indanthrene blue. That's how I go about it. I'm making a slanting of movement of my brush from the right towards the left. This would give you a very beautiful outcome once you've finish off your painting. Keep adding the colors, and once you are done with this spot we will go ahead and apply some more colors towards the middle as well as towards the bottom area. It's going to be a simple painting, as I've told you already. But adding the clouds is always challenging and keeping your paper wet for a longer period of time is even more challenging. Whenever you feel that your paper is already dried off, let your paper dry off completely and add the second layer. That's what we're going to actually understand as we progress through this painting. Wherever you see that the paper is drying up, I have taken on damp brush. I'm going ahead and just cleaning up or just making the hard edges more softer. That's how I go about it, and adding some more cerillium. I think cerillium is one of the beautiful colors that anyone can have on their palate. It's a very light value. That's one of the reasons this can be used anytime for the clouds, as well as this color is very pretty if you are going ahead with any of your other skies or clouds where your major intend is not the skies or clouds, it is majorly focused on either urban sketching or travel sketching or something else as an object. You can keep and work through it. I guess this is it where we keep working through the painting. Now, I guess we should let our paper dry off. If your paper is still wet, you can work through it. In case your paper is not wet anymore, you have to let it dry off and check it as I am checking it now. Once you feel that your paper is completely dry off, then you have to apply a very light wash off water as I am doing. After you have applied this light wash off water, go ahead and just take it towards the bottom area. Once you actually take it towards the bottom area, then you have to make sure that none of the colors are blending with each other. That is something which you have to take care. If your colors are moving into each other or you are overriding one color with another color it might create a chaos within this painting or it might look more chaotic. That's what we should always go ahead and avoid. Going ahead with some more vermillion. Vermillion is one of my favorite colors throughout the series of the painting. I have specifically gone ahead and purchase this tube off Sennelier for making all of these paintings. It might look sometimes so difficult that if someone purchasing a tube, but this is a very rare pretty color. Really, I could not stop myself when I had to even think that I want to purchase this. I just went ahead and purchase it already. Now I'm just adding one of my tips to allow the colors to move towards the bottom area. That's something that you can always do. Tilt your paper. If you tilt your paper, what happens is that automatically because of the gravitational pull, your colors that you apply on the paper will move to which the bottom. I have taken some cerillium, and I'm making the same movements that I did earlier while I added my clouds. Take some more Indanthrone blue and just start at these long, long lines. The clouds are of two types that I'm introducing over here. One is that it is concentrated towards the top area as you are watching me add right now. Another one are the smaller and the longer ones which we usually observe as we come towards the bottom area. I will be having clouds even towards the bottom area of my painting. But I just wanted to tell you what are the kinds of clouds that I'm introducing in this one. Smaller and thinner lines as we go ahead and make these brushstrokes. I'm just touching the tip of my brush and picking it up. Again, I would touch the tip of my brush and pick it up. That's how I will go ahead and make these soft clouds. Wherever I think the paper is wet, I would go ahead and just add some water before we add the clouds. As we know that they are all soft clouds which we are adding rather than the hard edges, that's one of the reasons it's important to go ahead and add it slowly and steadily. We are not going to fast-forward this process at all. All my videos, of course, are real-time, but over here you need to go slow and just have a look at your photograph once and then come back and again start painting. Some of the area, I would create depth. Depth is by adding your darker values and when you add your lighter values, it would be creating some lighter shadows or the light shades of clouds that you add. Now, darker values whenever you add they will show depth or the shadows of the clouds. They would practically make it more better looking compared to if you were not adding it. It's always good to add dimension to your clouds. This is practically adding the dimension which is required for this particular painting. Let's go a bit more board as we now go ahead and add our vermilion to the clouds, which is basically the area where we have already added the cerulean. Now, cerulean is a light color, that's one of the reasons I did keep it a bit lighter as I wanted to add this vermilion over here. Then I'm blending it a bit with the background. That's how I always go ahead and add it. Do make sure that you are not creating any muddy mixes. Now, this, of course, will not give you any muddy mixes, but still, if you are getting the muddy mixes, do try out these colors on the paper so that you are not getting those mixes. We really don't require that and we should not get it either. That's the thing. Now, once you have added it, just fine-tune some of the details here and there. There's some more work which is still left. Of course, it might seem very, very easy to many of us, but believe me, it's not the easiest thing that I have come across. There is so much that is there and there is so much to learn. I still, whenever I paint, I keep learning it and whenever I look above me into the atmosphere, I see there is so much wide range of colors that are available. Starting from your dawn, to dusk, to the night skies, everything looks so amazing. Everything looks just very, very, I would say it's close to unrealistic because it doesn't seem like real. How can nature have so many various different colors for one single element? That's what always fascinates me whenever I have to paint this cloud. There are just few more final touches which you can keep doing and we will move on to the next step, which is eventually painting your moon as well as giving the final touches anywhere which is required. Remove the masking fluid that's already there and apply some yellow. Once you have applied the yellow, there is some amount of vermilion that you need to add. Once you have added the vermilion, we will add some small drops of our darker value vermilion and then some white gouache. That's how we're going to progress with this. I thought now just go ahead and paint it. We will paint a bit more in silence, I would say. That really helps every one of us to concentrate and move on, I guess. Let's go ahead and continue with this painting. Let's remove the tape at an angle and have a final look at our painting. I think there will be some more changes which I want to do to my moon. It just doesn't look like moon a lot. I would like to add some more white gouache. Let's have a closer look at it and fine-tune the details a bit more. Once we are done with this, we would take a palette knife and then remove this paper. That's one other thing which I wanted to tell you. If you have a glued part, you can always use a palette knife. Any of the particular place which is open toward your paper, and then move it all around and take off your paper. That's how I always use my own paper. It really helps, the glued part, so you don't need to apply any tape if you do not want those crisp edges, just go ahead and paint on top of it. That's a great way to work and that's a great way to continue painting. 18. Night Sky Aurora Project 8: This is one of the most, I would say enchanting and lovely paintings that anyone can do. Practically it requires really less number of colors, as well as the outcome that you can get from this is close to something that is really amazing. I feel that using minimal colors and getting the best outcome is something that you always look forward to. We will first wet our paper, and once we are done with wetting our paper, we will go ahead and start applying our colors. You have already seen that I have taken some colors on the left of my palette. I'm going ahead with the main green from Schmincke. I think this is gradient yellow-green and some of the other companies' colors or yellow-green. There are many kinds of green that is available in the market. You might have to try and experiment a bit or else you can make some amount of yellow and green and get this color for yourself. Once you get this color, go ahead and start applying some of your darker shades. Now, darker shades is basically my cobalt green that I have. Now, in case you do not have this cobalt green, you can also go ahead with the compose blue. Compose blue is another beautiful color that I have from my Mijello Mission Gold. I have been using this color for many of my other classes as well as night skies. Go ahead and start applying this color on top of this area that you can cover in more of the cobalt green or compose blue. You can also use with the lighter shades. I had some green on my brush already so that is giving a bit of a light green shade in it, which makes it look even more brilliant and beautiful. I would leave out some whitespaces which is there in the middle. As you observe, I always love to keep the white of the paper intact. That helps to actually make the painting glow. Something that I have learned over time, if you keep some of the spaces empty, you can get a better outcome compared to if you are using all the spaces, then it might not give you the best of the outcome though there are many paintings in which we cover most of the places that you observe. But here, my colors are actually moving around and I'm so happy to see that happening. I am going ahead with my Prussian blue. Again, this Prussian blue is from, I guess PWC. That's one of the reasons you can see the flow is very high compared to Mijello Mission Gold. Mijello Mission Gold is one of the colors where I have seen that the flow is not so high or they move around pretty less compared to the other colors. I am using some of my permanent violet or any other violet that is available with you. You can go ahead with that. Either it can be even bright palette from your Mijello Mission Gold sheet. There are many kinds of violet which is available in the market and you can have whatever is available to use on this painting. I'm tilting the paper. Many of you have asked me what is the kind of sheet that I use. I use, first of all, 100 percent cotton Arches paper. Most of the time I'm using an acrylic sheet to tape it down. You can also go ahead with these acrylic sheets or also if you have any cardboard or else some kind of a wooden board, go ahead and use it for your advantage. I'm mixing up some amount of my blue with my purlple that I already had. I'm applying some smaller clouds towards the bottom area. I would not add a lot of colors right now. But as we progress, you will see me adding more of my deeper values of blue. Some of my Payne's gray, I have added. If you do not have Payne's gray, please go ahead with some of your indigo. Indigo and Payne's gray is one of the most favorite colors of mine which I have used throughout this cloud series. I think you can also really make a lot of difference with these colors when you start applying it. Going ahead with some smaller clouds now towards the top area, I would also apply some loose brush marks. I'm not going to define this a lot as you all saw on the photograph. You can see I will not make an exact copy of it but I I keep the originality of the photo which you see as well as I would just mark a few of the areas where I think it is necessary to give a look or the painting what we are doing is something that is closer to what we observe. I always say you have to make your own tweaks to make it your own. We're not going to copy anything, whatever we see. We are going to make something closer to what we observe. There is something that I have learned over these years is how to understand what you want to paint and how you actually put it on the paper. Something that you really understand about watercolors is there is nothing that you want to achieve should be close to realistic or realism. We are not trying to actually attain realism through any of our painting sketches. That's what I understand. I would love to keep it loose, simple, easy. The better you actually add the contrast colors. Like if you see over here, there are lighter and darker shades. If you add the contrast to your painting, you can get a really great outcome. I even had this contrast to my travel sketching or to my urban sketching. The better you get the light and shade or shadows, etc, on your painting, the better would be your outcome. I guess that's something that all of us need to learn over time and it takes a while. Also, it's okay. I mean, we all are learning and I think if you have that urge to learn, there is nothing that can stop you and there is nothing that you can't be also great at watercolors. Watercolors is all about practice. I must say it's a guidance which if you can practice, you can get better and better at it. This is something that you learn. There is so much that I do challenge myself always. I have been working on 300 GSM paper for so much longer period of time. Over the years I've realized that I want to work on even 185 GSM or 200 GSM paper, and I started challenging myself with that. Though this is an amazing paper, 300 GSM to work with, 100 percent cotton, you get the best outcome. But how about working on all fit more than one paper, where you can go ahead and work on layers rather than only working with one or two layer you work on a lot layers. Yes. These are small challenges that I also went myself and understand what would be my best outcome in case I am trying to achieve something like that. I guess this is it and let's just start adding our bridge. I have added a line and post that. If you have a closer look at it, this would be a great idea to actually see it on a bigger screen or else watching the lines might become bit tough. That's one of the reasons I always say please do watch the classes on a bigger screen. It can give you a better outcome. It can give you a better understanding. There are small details that each and every artist does add to the painting. Every time when we are placing our cameras, there might not be a very close look that you get. Yeah. I think adding that things to your painting will make your outcome or just watching it on a bigger screen, doing these small improvements can add a lot of value. That is something which you will actually have a lot of takeaway through each of your classes. If you see I'm making smaller lines now closer to each other. This bridge there are two lines that I'm making and once I am done with the sketching part, we will go ahead and start painting with the darkest value, either at the Payne's gray or either at any black or even it can be indigo. Whatever is available with you. Secondly, I will just tell you one thing. You cannot do this exercise till your paper is completely dry. I always allow my paper to naturally dry off before I start with any of this sketching on top of my paper. Again, I'll meet you when we have to start adding the colors. I'm starting with the darkest value. Once I start with the darkest value, I would take a script liner brush to add these longer lines. I have a better control with this script liner brush. But if you have any other brush, like size 0, size 1, size 2 round brush, that can also work. You really do not need this kind of a brush for this painting. Let's go ahead and keep adding the colors. As you progress, I would give you more insight into it, though our bridge is just a very simple structure. I have kept it real-time so that you guys can work along with me and paint along with me. Seriously also, most of the painting that we did for the sky happened during the initial part, which is majorly about the initial 10-15 minutes we did. The rest is more to be done as a bridge or filling up with the colors, so I'm going with the sketching. It's simple, easy. It's just that when we have a photo, we just can't understand how we have to interpret it and how we need to paint it. Once you start understanding the fact that we need to keep the sky really simple, easy and go ahead with our very easy structure for our painting, that is our bridges, etc., you will get a serious hang of it and you can do wonders with watercolors. I have to add some more broader lines now, and that's one of the reasons I have switched on to my broader brush that is majorly your item. This is again from da Vinci, that I'm using the brush. It has got a very nice tip which can be also used if it is required. I have two of these pillars and I need to make these pillars in a very simple way. Keep adding the colors as we progress. Simply just make the top a bit broader and then extend it towards the bottom. Now I've started with the lines on the left and on the right, as well as I'm extending it towards the middle. Both the sides we have to extend it and then join it in the middle. That's how we go about it. Again, I'm using this brush of mine. You can also go ahead with any other brush, size 4 brush or any other size 2. Whatever is available with you you can use that to make it, which makes you more comfortable while you paint this one. Making some small dots wherever it is needed. Once I have made those small dots, I would go ahead and again now join the lines from the top towards the bottom area. These are basically the really things which do exist, and you can also see it on the photograph. You can go ahead and download the photograph from the resource section. I would again leave that decision up to you in case you want to download. If you are more comfortable watching it on the screen itself, you can of course watch it and then paint along with me. That's a great idea. That's one of the reasons it was a great big background. One of my students asked me to include these cell reference images whenever I am painting and I think that really works well for anyone who wants to paint from the real photos. Using my script liner brush to make these longer lines. Once I'm done with these longer lines, I have to make sure that there are two parallel lines. One for basically the top hanging bridge line which is connecting the back towards the bottom, and one that is there in the front. Both of them you need to always add. Adding some more final details with the help of my liner brush. I'm using the tip of my brush absolutely to make these details. Here is for the bridge top area that I am adding it. Now if you want to add it go ahead and add it, if you want to employ the step, that's also okay. It's just that these small details really adds a lot of value to your painting, as I always say. Splattering the stars is an important aspect for a night sky and I think we should do it for this painting too. Though I do not want those white dots to come over my bridge. That's one of the reasons I would go ahead and just cover my bridge before I have to add these smaller dots with whitewash on the left side of the painting. Once we have added these smaller dots on the left side of the painting, then I would go ahead and let it dry off. You can also move your tissue as you want. Tissue is your best friend, I think, throughout the entire watercolor paintings that we did till now. Let's go ahead and add some highlights with the red gouache and the white that we have. Once we have read these highlights, I would let the paper dry off completely and then remove the tape at an angle. Always remove the tape at an angle whenever your paper has dried off completely. Do not try to just take off your tape before your paper is completely dried. You may have the chance of ripping it off, which we do not want at this stage. Adding some more lines for the highlights of the bridge. Once you are done with this, there is no particular way in which you should add these highlights. In fact, there is no rule in which you can add these highlights. It's just simply what you think. Where you think you can add, just go ahead and add in a very simple and easy manner. 19. Exercise 1 Billowy Clouds: Guys, this is the first practice exercise along with it, I will keep discussing all the colors that we have used till now will be only used in this practice exercise except the compost blue that you might not have used earlier. You can also use any kind of turquoise if you do not have that compost blue. Yes, most of the colors we have already used throughout this session. Now, let's go ahead and first wet our paper. I have not taped down my paper, that's one of the best things which has happened in this particular painting. I am not going to tape my paper anymore. It's just that I wanted to keep it loose, easy, simple. We are going to do a very simple exercise on the left as well as on the right. The first one, is to actually tell you. If you're not working under fan or air conditioner, this is the outcome that you might get. If you are working through your fans and air conditioner, on the right side, you will see that there might be a few patches that do come in. And I will even teach you how to make it better, or else how to improve upon it. It's not that you will get the best outcome, but some way or the other, it could be good and it would be fine if you even are making it, you will get a good outcome and so you don't need to worry on those facts too. This time, I just thought to cover how we can actually just go over and get over the difficulties that we usually face during the hot summer season, in India, it's very hot, so that's one thing which I wanted to cover. Going ahead and taking some of my burnt sienna along with it, I have taken the blue that was available on my palette. This is any blue that you can go ahead with, whether it be cobalt blue or neon blue, or any other blue that you'll find on your palette. You don't need to have the blue that I have mentioned or you don't need to work through the same blues that we have done till now. Once you have added this, once you have already applied the smaller patches, as we go towards the bottom, our patches will become smaller and smaller as you have already known. You have even done that in your all your exercise. And I'm just cleaning up a few spaces wherever I feel that it's necessary. I pick up the colors with the help of my blending brush. That's absolutely fine, we do these kinds of things so pretty often in our cities or in any of our paintings that we plan to do. Because I feel very strongly that every time you do not get the same outcome which you think in your mind or you think that you will be in a position to get, it's good to go ahead and just to see what's the best outcome that you can have and how you can handle it. Even if it means picking up some of the colors, that's absolutely fine. I have told you this is any blue that is available on your palette, there is no low turquoise or two would be a good one if you have that. In case you don't have that, go ahead with this blue whether it be cobalt, whether it be ultramarine, anything will do, and anything will look fine. But one of my favorites is the little blue or yellow turquoise as another color which you can try out. Yellow turquoise is a bit greenish, which I do avoid. Blue is something that I have been using and I really, really love it. Once I have added this blue, I would go towards the bottom and add some lighter values of it. Few of the areas I would make more darker patches and few of the areas I will make lighter patches. You have already seen that I have applied the darker value earlier compared to the lighter value which I am applying now. Few of the areas where I have added the blue, I will just blend it a bit more. As I do feel that there were some patches and I really do not want any kind of patches in this kind of painting. It has to be loose, simple, easy, and it has to give an impact of like we are going with the flow. With this, with the flow of watercolors we're painting and that's something which I have learned in my journey that if you have to go with the flow, you have to paint it more loose. Painting more loose only comes with a bit more experience and with some amount of practice. Yeah, guys practice is the key as I always say, a guide for person, or someone whom you'd like to follow. Do try to practice along with them because practice makes all the difference in watercolor. Once we are done with this blue, we will go ahead and take some light yellow green. Now this light yellow green is from Mijello Mission Gold. You can go ahead with any other light green that is available on your palate. It has got a very nice yellow patch underneath and it has green on top of it, which makes this color really one of my favorites. I always go ahead with this color in many of my paintings. Once I have applied this, I will have two more shades of green which I would be using. One is using my sap green or olive green. Both of them are pretty close in shades. Whatever is available on your palette, go ahead with that. In case you do not have that, try to mix some burnt sienna with your viridian, you will get a darker value of green. That is more on the dull side. You can even use [inaudible] that is a good way of using viridian. Viridian actually shines on the paper a lot. That's one of the reasons I do not use it very often. But yes, this way I think you can utilize your viridian and it would look really nice. Once this part is done, go ahead and start adding some other colors. What are the other colors that you would like to add in this painting? It is a spring season and in the spring season we cannot avoid the flowers that come over. Let's just add some of our orange than red or purple that we have towards the right side of this field. It's a very imaginary painting that I'm doing right now. It's just out of my own imagination and what I think that I would like to paint. I usually don't do this kinds of paintings much, but there is no reference that I have for this painting. It's just what I feel, how I go. This painting or how I approach this painting, I just think about it and I keep approaching it. There might be few difficulties which many of you might face when you are doing a painting out of your own imagination or out of your own thought process. Adding some more green and this is the forest green which I have or else you can also go ahead with vandyke green. So vandyke green, I usually find it very useful from Mijello Mission Gold brand, and for forest green, I have been always using Sennelier. Sennelier has got a beautiful forest green, you can go ahead and use it. You can see that I'm mixing some amount of my red with the orange that I've already applied and then I'm going ahead with my red violet. Now, if you do not have this red violet color, you can also add a bit of your pink and mix it with your bright violet to get this color. Once you have a bit of darker value, go ahead and add a few dots here and there. Now, our paper has a lot of water right now, which is one of the reasons you can find that it is spreading lot more than what we might like it too, but that's absolutely fine. Every time you will not get the outcome which you want or which you need. Those all things are part and parcel of watercolors or are part and parcel of anything that you do. I can now feel that most of the part what I wanted to paint is done, but my sky looks really empty. It has called got a lot of quite space, which is one of the reasons I would love to add one small branch of the tree, which is on the right. One thing which, actually, I mean, after I have completed the painting, I realized is that on the right, making it more darker is not a great idea. You can even go ahead with lighter values, but this is not too bad, not nor it is a great idea too. Towards the top, try to keep it more loose and try to keep it more lighter if you're going ahead with this painting so that your leaves of the trees are better seen. That's the only thing you need to keep in mind, rest you can follow this pattern or follow the way I am painting. It will give you something which you will really love to do, or you will have an outcome which you would really fall in love with. I'm picking up some of my light green and just starting to the tree branches. It is very random way in which I'm applying it. I have not thought anything or there's no thought process that I've applied and I am adding it. It's simple leaves that you have on the trees and you keep adding them. Once you have added these trees, just make sure that the leaves are also there towards the bottom. Now our tree branch will have lot of, I would say, leaves on it and that's really important to make these leaves loose and simple. If you observe, I am actually taking two to three different values of one single color and it is my yellow-green. In some of the places, it is of darker value and some of the places it is of soft light value. Once you have added this light green, go ahead with some of your sap green and start adding small dots. You'll see these dots are very loose. I'm not trying to define any leaf to be frank. I'm going literally loose towards the bottom of my painting of this tree branch. I would go with the darker values and towards the top, I would leave it as lighter value because the shadows always appear towards the bottom. The top part of any tree you will observe is mostly of lighter values, so do not try to add a lot of darker values over there. While if you want, towards the bottom area, you can add more darker values but it's important to make a contrast. Contrast will give you the required tip to the trees and leaves which you need for this painting and that's one of the reasons I'm going very loose in this way. I want that kind of look for this painting where it makes the thing more organic as well as make it more natural. Watercolors is all about making it loose, simple, easy, and to complicate it is not the idea. This time as I've told you, I do not even like to tape down my paper. I want to go so much loose in my approach. Though I think that you can always go ahead and make it as you want to, you can also tape down your paper but this would be a cool approach. Try it out. I think that's really nice and make some more dots towards the bottom area as you have observed me with your bright wallet or else mix a bit of your purple in your pink and get a color which is like your light violet or something closer to that, that's absolutely fine. Then start adding the darker brown. Now, darker brown is something that's really important for you to add. That again gives a depth to your painting. As I always say, the depth is very important. If you cannot add the depth then I do not think the whole painting will come to life. Yeah, I have not stressed so much [inaudible] about the depth and contrast, but as we progress in our journey, we have to look at more and more not nature and nature oriented aspects of painting. Going with my liner brush, you can use this kind of a brush for making those small lines and I have this brush from Escoda. I have been using it for quite sometime. I really like it. Even if you have a thin script liner brush of zero size, you can go ahead and use that. There is no rule as such what you have to use or what you do not have to use. Make sure that whatever is available with you, use that. Even if you have a round zero size brush, that's good to go. Go ahead and use it for completing the painting. Once you are done with the spot, let your paper dry off completely. That's another important part. If you do not allow your paper to dry off, then in few of the places where we want to add some highlights of white gouache, will not be possible. Make sure that your paper is completely dry before you approach this second part of the painting, which is more about the layering. Whatever we are doing right now is all about layering. We are going ahead on top of one layer, which we have already applied in terms of the clouds and then we have painted this branch of my tree. Once we are done with this, we are now going ahead with some smaller dots to make the flowers. I guess this is it, and once you make this, just have a final look at it and I'm pretty sure you would be happy with it. I will meet you in the next lesson where we will be painting another floral, beautiful field as you observe now. It is all about painting flowers and it is during the spring season you get this kind of a blowy water lading cloud, as well as if there are any mistakes, how you can fix it, all of that we're going to learn next. Meet you in the next lesson now. 20. Exercise 2 Billowy Clouds: We're on to our second exercise now. I did not tape down my paper on all the sides. It's just that I covered one side of it, as I do not want the clouds to move towards the bottom area. I could be painting some floral fields over there. Again, this is an exercise where I want to show you the problems which happens in case you are under an air conditioner, or you have a fan, or you are in a very hot climate, which many of my students have faced, and I really want to tell them that there are a few small things which you can do. But the time of outcome that you can get on the left side is very different than the time of outcome you would be getting on the right side. But on an overall basis, this will not turn out bad. This would turn out somewhere really close to what you can expect from a cloud's painting. But along with it, you have to factor a few things like there might be a few hard edges here and there, whereas there is no hard edge when we are going ahead with the left side of the clouds. Now, I'm adding some of my colors. This is basically the same color that I have used earlier, which is mixing some blue and some of my brown to get this dark dirty shade. You can also experiment and get this shade, that's not a problem. I have already applied some water, now going ahead and applying some of this color in few of the areas. I'm going with a very easy and small movement. Again, this is a very imaginative painting that I'm doing. It's not that I have thought or I have any photograph in front of me when I'm painting this. It's just out of my mind and I wanted to make something close to springs. This is it. When I want to paint something spring, I think floral fields are really a nice thing to go ahead and do. While you are adding these clouds and going towards the bottom, as I always say, please make it smaller compared to what you add towards the top area. The blue that I'm adding looks really huge, as well as it is quite dark than what I do expect and what I really want to add. Few of the areas are already dried up as you can see. I'm going ahead and applying some of the freshwater and now you can see I'm extending the colors a bit from the top towards the lower side. Plus I will pick up some of the colors and few of the areas as it is touching the darker values which we have applied, whereas I like to keep it really simple and easy. I like to keep it separate altogether compared to if you see it very close to each other. I don't like it that way. I like the whites that we really get in a billowing cloud situation. If you have any photos of water laden clouds, they look something similar to what you observed me doing it over here. I have already added in one of my classes about clouds, where we have painted the bellowing clouds, but it was with a hard edge thing that we did, rather than making it really soft, exactly the way we are doing this time in both of these paintings. I would leave that again up to you, how you want to go ahead and do it. There's no best way. You have to paint it. You can have hard edges, you can have soft edges, whatever looks good to you, go ahead and paint that. There are a lot of darker values that I do not want to add while I go towards the bottom so I'm blending it a bit with my blending brush. The paper has already dried off as there is a fan, an AC which is running in my room. You'll see how much different it is in this situation compared to what we did in the last situation break. That's one of the things I really want to tell you that if you are also facing this kind of a situation, use a blending brush to blend in few of the areas rather than going ahead, the way you observe me going now. It gives you really hard edges which we do not want for our painting. That's for sure. I do not want it for my painting. Once we are doing this, I'm going with a huge brush and I'm blending it to the lighter values, as you observe, they go towards the bottom and we get the lighter colors. Adding some of the water near the tip or the horizon line which you can observe I did add. I'm taking off some of the colors and then blending it with my largest size brush. This can give a bit of patch here and there or some hard edges. I have already told you we are working under extreme conditions and this is not the best outcome that you can always get. Be ready for it, but you will really get something which you like. Once you're done with the blending, just remove the tape at an angle, and then we will start with our greens and yellows and orange, red, everything. But first is a yellow-green that I would love to apply. My cloud just above the green is still wet. That's one of the reasons the colors are blending so well with the greens. Once I've applied the Indian yellow, this is [inaudible] which I'm using. I would go ahead and apply some orange. Now, the orange is the Winsor orange, and it is more of the yellow color that I see. I'm adding more of reds now, and from reds, I would move to a bit of pink, and then pink-violet. This is color shades which I'm using more in the warm family. I'd love to add warm colors on my painting, and going in a very random way with my brushstrokes. There is no best way to add your florals or anything when you are working on a paper where you don't have any edges or anything like that, you just go simply with the flow. You just let your creative juices flowing. There is no best way, as I always say, whatever you think looks good to you, continue doing that. Most of my red has gone into the yellow. Now, once it is done, there is no point now thinking what we can do to edit it. That's okay. If it is actually something like this, then also it's fine. Do not worry. It's all part and parcel of the game. You will get to understand it better as we progress. I would add some of my greens over here. You can see this is the green, but it is turning brown as we move towards the bottom, it's the olive green that I'm using, and the olive green, I don't know why it is turning brown. Whatever it is, I'm going to add it as I go towards the bottom and then extend it with the liner brush to show that there are some floral fields. To show the floral fields, one thing that I want to tell you is we have to work wet-on-wet. In wet-on-wet, we will make those small dots that really gives the outcome which we want. Sometimes what I do is, there is an underlying yellow which is already present on the paper, and I just use my brush that is thick brush to remove the red or the orange that you see, the underlying yellow comes up automatically. Now, going with some small dots, as I have told you earlier, they may become more bigger and broader if you have a lot of water on your paper. If you have less water or if you have waited for about three to four minutes, you will get the exact dots like the way I'm adding right now, and it would make your painting look even more amazing, so I would request you were to add these dots. When you move more and more in detail, it creates that depth. I actually add two or three colors to create the depth which we want. The faraway flowers are not having any lines or anything, where we want to define it. Whereas, the flowers which are closer to us, they have some other definition. But as I've told you, we want to make it more loose, so I'm not defining anything properly, it's just simple dots that I'm adding, and then I will just add some lines with my liner brush. Before we do that, going ahead with some faraway trees, simple lines with your brush and then blend it a bit with the background which you have in yellow or the orange which might have touched it. That's all okay. But your brush should not be really wet. What will happen is, all the greens that you are adding on the top will come towards the bottom, which we really don't want. The green that I have picked up on my brush is the forest-green or the [inaudible] green, which you can use. If you do not have both the shades, just mix your dark green with some amount of Prussian blue, or else if you want a more dull shade, then you can go ahead with your viridian, as I've told you in the last painting on the last exercise too, along with your browns or some other shades so that you can get the darkest color that you want. I think all those experiments are up to you, what you want to experiment, what you want to add. I'm just going ahead with some lines now and just pulling the paint from below towards the top. This is one of the techniques that I really love and I keep using it for my florals. I might not have introduced in the last two florals, but as we progress in this journey and as we make more florals in the coming days, you will understand how we progress with these flowers, etc. I'm going to paint a floral sometime in future and you will figure out a class very soon on that, but before we go ahead with it, you can really see how beautiful this altogether looks. We even don't need a practicality highlights, but just to make it more prominent and make it more beautiful, I would allow the paper to dry off. Once it dries off completely, I will take some white gouache on my brush and just start adding this small dots. These dots really help to give you that look and feel which you want for your flowers in terms of the highlights, and then again, a few lines in wet-on-dry method. Wet-on-dry, you are applying wet paints on dry paper. This is again the second layer that we are adding. We will work in layers, as I always tell you, I like to add layers in my painting, a few of it. I think I'm pretty happy with how it is turning out, maybe a few more lines here and there, or some more details which we want. Once those details are done, like adding these small foliage here and there, we will have a look at the painting. But before we have a look, we always need to make sure that our painting is completely dried off, rather than it being wet. Make sure your painting is completely dry, and then only you close your sketchbook. I really love to use this 100 percent cotton sketchbooks. They are such amazing stuff. They give such amazing outcome. Though you have many sketchbooks available in the market, but cotton sketchbook really gives you the time to paint on, and this is from Vibrant Parcels. If you really like to use these sketchbooks, you can go ahead and try it out. I would leave this over here. 21. Project 9 Billowy Clouds: Guys, this is going to be amazing at a most beautiful painting. We are going to do billowy clouds, first. I would mark my horizon line. My horizon is basically about one-third of the paper, or maybe on one-third rest of the part of the paper I have kept it as my sky. Sky is something that I've always loved to paint, just that every time whenever I see the sky, I'm more excited, and I just think how we can paint it differently. We have been experimenting majorly with a lot of styles, but over here, I must say it's going to be about painting billowy, and those rainy water-laden clouds. We have done it initially also in the seven different days of painting the clouds, which was one of my first classes, and if you haven't still watched it, I would ask you to go ahead, and check it out. That was majorly on wet-on-dry technique, which we did, and this time we are going completely wet-on-wet. You might have already done the first part of this, which was a bit easier compared to what we would be attempting now. I did fail in this completely, and I must agree to it that the other side of my paper is already wet or you can say it's a failed attempt. You can see that buckling, etc, but I left it when I saw that, okay, the cloud is not coming together exactly the way I wanted it to. Though I could have experimented it more, but this one is something where I did not want to take a chance. I have kept my paper wet for some time if you observe and then only I would go ahead, and add any color on top of it. I need the paper wet optimum, I would say a moisture, it should not be very running, whereas it should not be too dry, that is something that I always take care of. In India right now we have absolute summers, and because of the summer season now, I cannot use the fan as well as the AC when I am working. This particular sheet needs to be wet for a longer period of time as we are painting the clouds. I am just going with the flow I have not thought about how I really want to add my colors. What I usually keep in mind is towards the left, I would be adding the clouds, and the right would be more of the darker values as you all saw from the photographs. I think whatever is good with you go ahead with that. Now, I'm mixing up some of our three beautiful colors, which is our tailor blue, then some amount of our ultramarine as well as some amount of indo-tone blue. If you do not have indo-tone blue go head, and use Prussian blue, though this might not be the best option, but at least Prussian blue is available on everybody's palate, usually, that's what I have observed. So you can go ahead with that. There is no requirement of having the same colors that you observe me using over here. It's good to have if you have it, but if you do not have it, do not worry, go with whatever is available. In case you even do not have ultramarine, go ahead with cobalt blue or cerulean blue. These are the colors which I really like, and I have been using for quite some time. So those things should work even for you. I have already added the darker clouds, and now whenever I'm trying to go towards the top area, I think this paper has already dried up in that area, I am not going to touch the darker values of the brown. To get this darker value of the brown, it's very simple, go ahead, and add some amount of your blue into the brown that you have. It would give you all those image which you need for painting the clouds, that's a really simple way of working through it. Going ahead, and adding some amount of our mix, and towards the right as well as towards the left. Now, this mix is again experimental, this blue I really liked, that's one of the reasons I use a lot of color formatting. But if you are good with cerulean or any other blue like cobalt hughes, go ahead with that. They would also look equally beautiful. Going ahead, and adding some more drops of blue here, and there. Once we have added these drops of blue here, and there, we would start adding some of our darker brown clouds towards the bottom. But before we add that darker brown clouds towards the bottom, do make sure that your paper is wet. As I do observe that my paper is becoming dry, and dry as I progress. I do not have much time to work on it. Wherever I feel that I need to work more I would let the paper dry off completely then apply another layer of water on top of it with really light hand so that the layer which we have already applied doesn't show up. That's most important. Once done then of course, I think it becomes really easy, and simple for you guys to apply the colors. We do not want any hard edges for this painting. That's one of the reasons I have only worked with wet-on-wet, but that's something that you can always have thought through. This whole process is focused on those soft, beautiful, nice clouds. We will have another round of clouds where we would be working through the cotton candy clouds and those cotton candy clouds would be more of a wet-on-dry method. There's a lot that's coming up, believe me. You will enjoy it completely. Adding those smaller clouds, as I did tell you earlier, we would always add those smaller clouds to our advantage. Bigger clouds always appear towards the top area of your cloudscape, smaller clouds up here towards the bottom area. I always keep a blending brush handy, and practically my blending brush is my size 0. I'm guessing it gets a new brush by Da Vinci, you can keep any other blending brush to your choice. You can even have silver, black, velvet brush like I have kept. But practically all these paintings can be done with three major brushes. One is the flat brush that you are observing me, which I am using, and another is my size 0 casaneo brush, and the last one would be, of course, I think this is 3 by 0 or 2 by 0 by Da Vinci only, and it is petite brush that's what I know. So it's a bit smaller. I am good to go. The less crowded or the less brushes you use, the sorted you are, right? I'm just blending this darker value in a few areas wherever I think it is necessary. I am going with applying some of my darker values, and then blending it with the blending brush. This is one of the ways by which you can paint your clouds, rather than going ahead, and applying the colors on the total area or on the totality of the painting, you can go ahead, and only apply it on just a few places, and then keep adding your cloud, that's also a way to do it. Though, in the first painting, we did not use this method in particular, but try whatever looks good to you, and then you can always get the final outcome as per your choice. I always try to give you more options, and opportunities to understand whatever way you like, you should be in a position to paint your clouds that particular way only. I'm wetting up the paper a bit in a few places wherever I want to add these darker shadows. I was not very happy with how the painting was turning out with the blending brush, though it is not that you cannot get, but I just wanted more of softer clouds, and softer edges. That's the reason of going ahead, and doing this part. Adding some more darker clouds towards the bottom area, the bottom area also seems to be drying up, I don't know what do I do right now with my paper. It's drying up. But it's okay. I think that's part and parcel of our watercolor journey we should experiment, and exactly as we keep on experimenting, we will understand how much water, how much colors should be added. It's absolutely okay to go wrong at some places or picking up the colors exactly the way right now I was doing, and then adding some smaller dots here and there. It's not always that you have to be correct with the first move or with the first colors that you add. You can slowly build up on the style, and you can slowly get exactly what you really want to achieve from a particular painting. Secondly, never leave a painting in between. I have always followed this rule. A thing that I must tell you was the cloud is a major attraction for this painting as we are focusing on the clouds. I have told you that I did fail because my clouds did not work out exactly I wanted to but over here I'm helping you out to understand the structure, how you should add the colors etc. That's why I've said do not leave your painting in between. I really want you guys to go ahead and complete it and then only understand how your painting has turned out. I'm adding some water in few of the places wherever I think it is necessary and then blending it with my blending brush. This is a great way of working through smaller spaces where you do not want to touch on all the areas that you have already painted. I have this work always and I wanted you guys to also note that this is a way that you can attempt your painting. Always take off your colors or as I know that this brush is something which can hold a lot of water I do take off all the water. I think even if it is pigment laden still I like to take it off on my tissue and then only apply it. I always keep the tissue really handy and now when I see my cloud I can feel that of course, something has come together. There are the whites which I can absorb there are the taco values that I can see. Once the painting is dried off you can always see that it has become one shade lighter. Going with the horizon blue, this is again becoming my go-to color. It's one of the beautiful shades that you get from Mijello Mission Gold. Of course, you might have pearl or any other color available with you which you can use for this painting. It's just the color that I wanted to tell you I'm in love with. Once this is done use your thick size one-inch brush and then start adding some amount of your Taylor blue. Once you have added the Taylor blue go ahead and then add some more darker values in few of the areas as you observe me adding it. Mixing some amount of the horizon blue with the Taylor blue that you already have on the palette and then we add it in a few darker areas. Now Taylor blue is really important I already had some horizon blue on my brush here and I just mixed it with the Taylor Blue that's absolutely okay. You always do not need to wash the brush and get the exact colors that you want. The color of the sea will not stay the same at every place it would change over a few areas and that's one of the reasons I do like to change my colors and then add the darker values of a non-tone blue or else you can see even though Taylor blue. In a few areas, some of the areas would be wet on wet and some of the areas could be wet on dry. I'm using the tip of my brush to add these longer lines as you observe me doing it now. Once I have added these longer lines, the ripples or the water would be easier to follow. Using the light yellow-green to apply for the green patch of this painting but believe me, the right side of the paper would be some area where I want to add this green. I do not want that all the area on the right becomes green completely I want the white of the sky to be also visible well and only apply the colors once this part is completely dried off. Go ahead and first check with your hands that this area is dried off or not. I did add a small line with my pencil to understand exactly how I want to place my small green area or just small hilly mountain that I want to add to this painting. This is basically piece of land and it helps to complete your landscape painting. Landscape is made up of three important components, your sky, water, and land. If you can add all of these three within one single painting I can't tell you how beautiful the whole composition will look. I sometimes use more of water rather than now pigments as you observe me adding it right now. Now, this yellow-green you can use or you can also go ahead with olive green from Mijello Mission Gold it would give you a similar color like this one. Or else you can also just go ahead and add some of your darker green into the olive green or yellow-green and then get a color similar to what you observe. It all depends on the experimentation that you do not have the colors always available. You can go with yellow and then add some drops of green that should also work. We're not here to match up the color as I always say just adding a few darker patches here and there. Adding the darker patches is very important. Darker patches will give the depth that you need for a painting. Always you see me altering my values, you always observe me adding some places darker, some places lighter. That's always to show that we have some trees appearing with the darker value and some of the trees appearing with the lighter value or land area with the lighter value. It would give the impression of trees or it would give the impression of land and that's how we put all of this together. You can even add blue if you want more darker patches or more darker small dots. I'm using the tip of my brush of course to add these dots and as I've told you use your blue to the advantage that's really important. So many of you always think why I always ask you to use or mix colors and then you set on your paper. This is something that we always do not need to purchase every color. We can mix a few colors and get exactly what we want. That's a way to not only save your resources but it's also a way to understand your colors, to understand your painting, or to understand the pigments that you have. It takes a while for each one of us to get hands-on with watercolors. Watercolors is something that I have always thought of using that I've always fallen in love with. It is not a thought, it's a process that comes to me pretty easily. But initially, when I was starting out, it was not so easy. I used to be pretty demotivated. I was not happy with the outcome etc, that was coming in. But over time, I have realized that everything that you do will not be a success it takes a while to get the best out of it. Till then keep experimenting and keep understanding about your watercolors in a better way. I would go ahead and add some ripples now. Now, these ripples are on the dry surface. We did work wet on wet. Now there are only the ripples part which would be wet on dry. This wet-on-dry technique is very important over here. If you are working wet on dry, you will understand that whenever you are closer to a water body, some of the reflection of the mountain will fall on the water and that area will become darker as this place is quite far away from us so we will not observe the exact reflection, as well as the water, has quite good amount of movement. Now when you have a lot of movement in your water, you will not get the best of the reflection. You will only get a fairy pale picture or just a shadow that you would get on the water area. That's one of the reasons I'm not using green to depict my land area in a better way. While I have added these smaller lines, I do have to make sure that some of my lines are longer and larger compared to some of the lines which are smaller. You can use pressure of your brush which is majorly to make the broader lines and release the pressure of your brush when you want to make the smaller lines. Again the concept of depth is very important when you are painting the water. Whatever water is closer to us, you will observe the ripples in that part of the water in a better way compared to when it is far away from us. Those are like simple small lines or you can just leave it as this. We do not need to paint everywhere possible that's a thing which I have always considered that we do not need to paint every time or we do not need to go here that paint everywhere. Few of the places should be left empty, that would give us a lot of space to play. That would actually help our painting to come together on its own. Though the billowing clouds ring rain-laden and you might think that it can rain anytime, do we need to paint the picture gloomy or something like that? I am not a believer of that. You can make that beautiful blue sky for yourself and still have the option of painting your billowing rain-laden clouds. That's how I see it. That's what I have tried to add even to my painting. From the photograph, you can also see the same. I haven't picked up the entire photograph. The entire photograph was quite longer. I did picked up a few portions of it and added what I really wanted to. I have left out the beach area. You can go ahead and add it if you are working with even larger size paper. That's absolutely up to you. We are not going to pick up everything that we see in a photograph or everything that we actually observe. There will be few things that we would be leaving out, and there would be only a few things which we would be choosing. That's an add or that's a progress that we all make slowly and steadily. It will not come on the first day. It comes over time and experience. But never try to include everything that you observe in a photo. If you try to include everything that you observe in a photo, then it would become really difficult for yourself only to finish off, or the detailing that you have to do for it will become really tough in that way. Adding some smaller lines here and there. Once this part is done, then I guess we will add some more darker blue value towards the top left corner. As I feel that that looks really white, and I'm not very happy with how it has dried up. The royal blue that I have is, of course, one of the lightest value that you can work with. Even after adding ultramarine into it, I did not exactly get the color which I wanted. Going ahead, wetting my paper, and then adding some more blue. This blue looks so amazing. It looks so pretty on the paper. Once you complete this painting, I'm pretty sure about it, you would be very proud of yourself. You have to tap your back that you did it. It's you who did really [inaudible] the painting. This is one of my favorite paintings from the whole series, though the whole series is absolutely beautiful and noteworthy. But I would say there are a few favorites that every artist has, and something that they are really proud of. This one falls under that category where I'm really proud of myself to paint these beautiful billowing clouds, rain-laden, when it's all about not having that outcome that I tried earlier. So many times, I failed. I failed at least 4-5 times before I painted this one. Once this was done, I am so happy. I am really, really happy. It's like achieving something or getting that thing which you always wanted, getting a chocolate as a child. If you are [inaudible] student and you really wanted to achieve a particular percentage, you get it. The feeling that you have, I'm having the same feeling, the same, I think, the rush or gush of emotions in me right now. Using the tip of my flat brush just to clear off a few areas, because I think the paper was wet. That's one of the reasons the color was coming a bit down. I did not want to actually play more with water media. You saw how I added the colors towards the top right corner and towards the bottom left corner. That was more lighter values as you have seen. That's the only change which I did. I like to add a few details. Now, this is the time where we are adding details. We have already practically completed the painting, and we do not need to add a lot over here. But a few details are always good to go. You can't leave the painting over here itself. That also will make a lot of sense. But some of the areas for my land, I think I want to change a bit or add more depth, and add more textures to it. This part would be more focused on adding some texture. Adding the depth, of course, we have done. It's not that we haven't done that. Adding the texture is something that I always look forward to. It is the land which is brown in color. This brown, we really want to show some. Some small lines and dots, that set what you need, use the tip of your brush to do that. I'm also using the tip of my brush to add that lines that is required to show the darker value. Again, how do we create this darker value? It's only mixing some amount of blue with your brown. You can either mix cobalt blue with your brown or else, you can go ahead and mix any other color like a non-tone blue or any other blue that is available with you. Use your finger sometimes to just blend it. That's absolutely fine rather than using your brush always. Yeah, it might look pretty amazing that how simply even doing a dry brush technique can add it. I have taken off all the color that I had on my brush. Now I would go ahead and add this dry brush technique. I hardly have any color on the palette. It's only the dry brush which is left now for your addition of the brown spaces into the land area. I think I'm very happy with how the whole painting has turned out. I do not want to touch a tone more from here. Going forward, we should exactly know where to stop painting. That's a very, very important exercise which I have learned over these years. If we do not understand where to stop, we might end up spoiling a painting. Adding a few birds. I think the sky looks really empty. I want to add those birds for the beautiful sky that we have created. A few of them. We do not want to get overboard. We want to keep the beauty of the sky that can be seen. Then adding the birds, a small dot in the middle, and then extending it to the right as well as to the left. I'm using the tip of my brush to do the same. That's what even you all can do to add these lines, and the body of the birds. We have painted birds earlier. This is just a small exercise that we are doing. Some of the birds would be longer, some of them would be shorter. Some of them will be flapping their wings towards the top. Some would be just going on the left, right. You can place your birds as you want them to fly. Remove the tape pattern angle once you are done with the birds and your paper is completely dry. Then have a final look at your painting. Those crisp, clean edges, I think will even serve as a high point in your painting. Let's go ahead with the next painting where we are going to change the palette completely. Then paint two of different kind of clouds from what we have done now. 22. Project 10 Billowy Cloud: Guys, we're on to our tenth cloud. Practically, this is something which I am so proud of. You guys are all on the tenth painting. I can't tell you how proud I am as a teacher, whosoever has joined this journey, has practically learned a lot through this process. I know many of these might have been very difficult for you, but I have constantly tried to tell you that I have two preliminary classes before this. If you are a beginner, go ahead and join those two classes. One is seven different types of skies and clouds, and another one is watercolor skyscapes. In case you are interested in learning skies, I think both of them can help you to just develop the base, and on top of that you can actually go head and learn all of these clouds. All of these put together can practically help you nail any of your future paintings and any of your future class projects, or any projects that you want to try out on your own. There are specific requirements of every project, and in few of them, I have included practice exercise and in few of them I have left it. If there are more practice exercises in one kind of a cloud, maybe I have left it out for another kind of a cloud as I know that you have already learned it in the older projects. While we are discussing this, I know you might have already seen me taping down my paper and applying some water on my paper. I like to apply a lot of water on my paper, but I do keep in mind that there are no puddles. Puddle means in any place on the sheet there is a lot of water, and it just so much that you can practically feel that there is a small puddle or there is a small space where you can practically pick up the water. In that case, you might have to move around your sheet a bit and then start with your painting. One thing that I have understood right now on the paper is the colors which I've chosen practically move around a lot more than what it did earlier. Hence, I am going ahead and taking off all the colors on my tissue. I do keep my tissue really handy. If you observe, I am not defining any horizon line for now. I am just thinking about adding these smaller clouds towards the bottom and larger clouds towards the top. If you see from the photograph which we have, you can understand that how the clouds are practically moving. I always say, I do not try to imitate the entire photo. I just take bits and some parts of it and then add something of my own so that whenever you are attempting it, or whenever you want to attempt it, you exactly note that you should not copy your photo. It's just a reference, you have to take the inspiration and move on. We are painters, or I can say you are an artist right now. If you are an artist, you have to make sure that you can let your creative juices flowing. They will only work when you start a bit differently compared to what you really also you have to look in-between the lines. As I always say, just read through it and understand what it is required to make your painting a lot more interesting. That's it, I guess. I wanted to tell you and let's make some of our blue. You can use indanthrone blue or you can also go ahead and use your cobalt blue. Whatever is available with you, there is no rule as such, what blue you should go ahead and mix with your brown. As well as this brown is burnt sienna. I have used burnt sienna as this is one of my favorite colors that I have been using in many of my older paintings. You can even see that, particularly, the illustrations that we had in the practice exercises, you can see that I'm mixing up these colors. All the colors have been already used, practically, there are some orange and yellows which you can try it out. Rest everything we already have on our palette. I have discussed it with you. There is nothing new that I want to tell you about the colors. Whatever is available with you is good to go as I always say, and I'll let you know what are the alternate colors which can be used, so that at no point you just feel that you are out of place. Whatever is available you start, and in case you do not have, you just have a few basic shades, just read through the color theory like how you can actually make a color, read through the color wheel, read through the color theory, try to mix your colors and get something that is closer. I think all those things can help you through your journey, if you are just starting out, I think the color wheel is great to have it by your side always, that really acts as a guidance for you. Let's keep painting. You will observe me adding some clear water on top of my paper in places where I think it is already dry. It is very hot in the Indian weather, right now, it's Indian summers which is going on. I can only tell you we are about to touch about 50 degrees and another side of India, it's so hot that you can not practically keep your paper wet for a really long time. Even if you switch off your AC, your fan, everything still it becomes very tough to keep it wet. Anyway, I think these are small challenges which we all need to face, and it's absolutely okay to face them and understand what are the other challenges you can have in the future. Everything comes with a challenge. Whether it be your watercolors, whether it be anything else, we are here to face that and move on. It's time to add the colors. I have mixed two colors, which is my ultramarine and Taylor blue. Both the colors are from two different brands. One is from Sennelier and one is from Winsor & Newton. Though Winsor & Newton is the ultramarine one. Blue blue is from the scenario. You can use any color that is available on your palette. I have taken a very light wash in the first quarter and then I am going ahead with the next one. I would take some darker values. We will keep completing the bottom of the painting, and then we will move on to the left side of the clouds. Ever you think that your paper is drying off, go ahead and just add some water onto the dry paper. Now, my paper is drying off very quickly as this is not exactly the arches paper which I have used. It is linen paper and linen paper is so bit less. I would say it's not as thick as arches and it takes a while or it takes less time to dry off for complete. The arches remains wet for a longer period of time that's a very simple thing. In case you're working with arches, you will not face this difficulty, as I've already told you in the northern side of India, it's very, very hot. It is becoming really difficult to keep the paper wet for a longer period of time, whether it be linen or any other brand of 300 GSM. I think this current situation is really difficult, so let's move on and use our greens for our painting. I am using my yellow green. This is a beautiful yellow green which I have from Magellan Mission Gold orals. You can also go ahead with olive green. Both these greens are absolutely cool. This olive green also has a light shade of yellow green underneath. We will figure out how beautifully this blends with the background. You can even leave the painting at this state to be very frank. But I want to add more flavors into it, I want to add more shadows into it, more depth into it. That's one of the reasons I have taken our darker value of green. Again, it can be the same shade, darker green, and mixing some blue into it to get the darker values. Or else, if you have other greens like Vandyke green or dark green, or even viridian, go ahead and use that. That would also help you to paint this one. As your paper is wet enough, so go ahead and start adding some of your greens into it. I am making some shorter lines and longer lines to get this one. Once you have added this longer and shorter lines, you can really see how beautifully this whole thing has turned out. Just simply adding lines can add so much depth to your painting. The shadows and depth is very important in a painting. Shadows are the darker values which we add. Some of them would be simple grasses. We will even add highlights with the whites. You can do a lot of things in it. Though I have added way less highlight compared to the darker greens that I have added. Once this paper dries off, you will see that all these grasses have turned really lighter compared to what you are currently observing. Anytime you're working with your wet on wet technique, whatever color you absorb, it would be one or two shades lighter. I have already set it in many of my other classes as well as in the current class too. But I like to repeat it as many of you might be new and maybe following up this tutorial itself. It's great to always hydrate it once more before you actually approach your painting. Let's keep adding some dark dots. You can see now my paper is almost dry, so the colors are not actually moving a lot. You can see precise strokes rather than there being completely wet-on-wet as we were doing earlier. I'm using the tip of my brush, that is the petite that we see size of two by zero. That's the brush, I guess. You can use any thin brush that is available with you. It is not a requirement that you have to use this particular brush only. Go ahead and use whatever brush is available with you to make these loose grasses and loose background color. You can say, loose foregrounds to be frank. Yeah. It is not what we want to focus on. That's one of the reasons we have made the clouds to center for us. There are only these grasses that we want to add to make it more organic and to make it more lively. I will go ahead with one more layer of clouds. That's why I'm applying a clearer water on top of the sheets that we have already applied. This is absolute clear water. I have two jars of water, if you see on my right top hand side, one jar is for the dark greens that is already added and one jar is clear water that you've seen. One thing that I want to tell you is if you want to download the original picture, go ahead and check out my gallery. You already have it uploaded over there, that is the resources section. You have all the photos with day-wise as well as it's there on the top left hand corner. In case you don't find anything of course, you can let me know and we can do those edits and upload it. That's not a problem. But I guess keeping a photograph by your side is of real help and every time I do not like to edit a photo and keep it for my reference, but still, if you find it more useful, I think many of you have told me that you find this more useful compared to what we were following earlier. That's one of the reasons I like to add it towards the top left-hand corner. I guess I'm good with this right now and I'm adding some darker values. Again, I'm using the same sheets, which is mixing some blue with my brown and then adding it. It's a very easy process. As I tell you, this is loose brushstrokes, and this time I'm using my size four silver black velvet brush. If you do not have this brush, please go ahead with the petite two by zero brush, which we were using. Now since it holds a lot of water, that's one of the reasons I just shifted to this one. Again, silver black velvet holds a lot of water, but it is not a mop brush. Mop brush is like a reservoir. It has so much water that you can practically paint as much paper or you can cover as much paper as you want. Those are a few things which I have observed and I would like to tell you, if you are going ahead with these paintings. Now I would like to add some dry brush strokes with my petite brush and you can have a closer look at it whenever you are observing it. You can observe that, I'm using it in a very loose way. I'm not trying to define anything right now. Whatever definition of the grasses we did was on the left side and I'm not adding anything towards the right hand side. I guess this is it. I'm pretty happy with the outcome overall and I think that I would go ahead and add one or two more lines. The rest everything looks perfect to me. I would do just let it dry off. I'm not going to touch it a lot. Only thing is that I might add one or two highlights with the white as you observe, but it did not turn out very well so I left it. We can really concentrate on a bit more greens. Let your paper dry off, and then remove the tape at an angle. Have a final look at your painting. I'm pretty sure about it that you will fall in love with it. 23. Multiple Colored Skies Project 11: Guys, we are on to our Day 11 and I'm excited to teach you this topic, it is all about painting multicolored skies and clouds. One of my favorite topics I must say, I don't know till now how many multicolored skies and clouds I must have painted. This is just sharing one of the paintings that I did get inspired from a photograph. The photograph you can, of course, find in the resource section as well as on the top left-hand corner, you can also find it over here, which you can always go ahead and check it out before you start with your real painting. Again, it's like an inspiration that we're taking, we're not trying to exactly copy what we see. It's by this we can put this wooden deck bottom, I have taken off a few of the things, one or two things here and there. You can figure it out pretty easily once we are done with the painting. But I think overall, once we complete it, you will understand that it is pretty inclusive and there's nothing much that we can add or we should add in the process. All these lines that are there on the wooden deck will converge to one single point which is called as invisible point. This is as per the rule of perspective. As per the rule of perspective, you need to go ahead and always converge all the lines to one single point when we are working on perspective. I think that's one of the basics. I have it in one of my other clouds classes, so watercolor, clouds and skies. Go ahead and check it out. I have taught how you can actually converge all the lines to one single point, whether it be fields, whether it be wooden deck, whether it be anything that you are working on. Once you are done with this particular part, just go ahead and apply some clear water onto the sky. The sky is majorly about 60 percent of the paper. Sixty percent of the paper means most of the paper goes there, hence when you think of even doing this particular sketch, make sure that you have most of the area dedicated to the sky. It's very hot in India, in the Northern side, I must say. That's one of the reason my paper might get dried up pretty quickly. It's good to go ahead with the sky into all three layers, that's how I always like to paint my sky. Now, going ahead with some Naples yellow first, and adding a few lines. It is using one of my very easy and simple 11C brush. You can use Size 4 brush or any other brush of your choice and keep adding the lines as you observe me doing it. Once this part is done, we have to make sure that we can add opera. While we add the opera, there are chances that you might not have this color. Many of you have asked me how you can prepare opera. Now, opera has a fluorescent dye in it because of which you can practically prepare opera. You can use carmine instead of this or any other pink that you have, maybe Quinacridone Rose or anything pink of your choice. I am not going to actually define the exact thing that you can use because opera practically cannot be replaced, and whatever you have close to the color that I'm using right now on the paper you can go ahead and use it. I have picked up less amount of the color when you observe and now I'm mixing some of my blue. The blue that really I love to use is a mix of my ultramarine and some of my phthalo blue. Now, this has been the case in many of my other paintings, as well as I've told you one of my go-to colors nowadays is in [inaudible] blue. Though I have not used you're in the current painting, but if you have it do go ahead and use it. It is a bit darker compared to the phthalo blue and ultramarine, which is one of the reasons I've tried to avoid it as I wanted to make the sky really bright and beautiful, so keeping the glow of the morning. It's not exactly a sunset, it's basically the morning time and it must be bright, beautiful. You will observe that the paper is drying off very quickly. When your paper is drying off, let it dry. Then apply one more clear layer of water, go ahead with your second layer. We will be working in layers even on this painting so that there are no hard edges. You know that I love to use my colors to my advantage and get those beautiful soft-edged clouds. I guess that's how it's going to be. I'm mixing some amount of my royal blue. Royal blue is from Sennelier. I have been again, using this color very often and you might have seen when we made this below clouds, at that time we did use some amount of our royal blue. Royal blue is a beautiful and nice color. Why? Because it has very light shade of blue in it and if you want to actually change the shades, that's a great way to do it. I'm applying some more darker values on the left. Right side, I will make it more brighter. I like to use the contrast in the skies too so that we can create the depth and that way we can really manage the beauty of an individual colors that we have applied, as well as show the various tonal values within a smaller part of your sky area. [MUSIC] Let's keep adding some darker values even on the right side. But I'm not going to touch it a lot, as you understand that slowly I will keep adding some strokes, and rest I will keep as the royal blue. I really like this color I have told you already, so keeping it as is will create a good outcome. I think once this paper dries off, the colors will become way more lighter, so I might have to go ahead and apply one more layer. In the meanwhile, you can start adding colors onto the bottom area. I'm going ahead with a bit off my opera and a good amount of blue in it. Once I start adding the colors, I will make lighter values towards the horizon line, and as we come towards the bottom we will keep adding the darker values. I'm using lots of water in my brush, I want to use it or else it would be difficult for me to go ahead and keep painting on a dry surface. We have to make ripples even for the water. We will have two ripples for the water area; one would be in wet and one would be in dry. So both of them we are going to paint. [MUSIC] Adding some more phthalo blue for our quick studies. As you know, I like using this color and there's a beautiful blue that you have. In case you do not have phthalo blue, go ahead and use any cobalt blue. Don't try to use Prussian blue. Prussian blue is way more darker. I'm using a touch of gold, and that touch of gold is opera, in few of the places so that I get a hint of violet in few of the areas. Though you can observe that violet is really light in value and I'm not trying to add a lot of darker values towards the top side or just below the horizon line or the water area. Now, we will go ahead and get some more darker values. I have taken my Size 2 brush though you do not need the Size 2 brush, it's just that I wanted to explain to you how to have that control over your water or paints, etc, everything. Size 2 brush gives that quick control though I'm not very happy with how it is moving. It's good if you can switch on to a bird bigger brush, it will give you quick help. Initially while you are towards the bottom area, I think Size 2 brush is not required, you can even go ahead with Size 4 or Size 6 brush. But as we progress towards the top area, at that time we really need thinner brushes so that we can get those ripples wet. Most of the area over here adding the ripples would be straight. I am not going to change a lot in terms of the ripples that we had over here. But when we progress through the entire journey, you will understand that adding the ripples, etc mainly for the water is not the focus or the perspective, it's just to complete the painting, to complete the picture, whereas our main focus has been the sky. Once the sky is dry, you will find more work that we need to do over there. You can see a light and shadow, it's only because there is sunrise and once the sun is there, I am getting these smaller lines on my paper. But do not worry, you will see a clear picture very soon once the sun moves a bit. Keep adding smaller and smaller lines towards the top as I have told you. Let the area dry off and then only we will add the smaller or you can say the dry ripples that we need. By the way, I think my sky is also drying up in the meantime. So let your water dry, let your sky dry, and then we will start working on the sky. [MUSIC]. I guess I would go ahead and add some more blue as well as a bit of my purple and white, again, not operon and make a darker blue and purple shade, which is not exactly what we have applied earlier more of Taylor. This is a darker value that we are adding and it has some amount of purple in it. Because of the purple, you can see the darker shade coming up. I'm mixing the colors a bit more as I like to see the colors popping up. We have already applied our first layer, and I'm not going over the first layer completely whereas my second layer also needs to be seen, and we have to show the clouds. The clouds on the left are in a direction which moves towards the middle area, whereas you will observe that the clouds on the right will just cut across the paper. It's something that I was not sure of will look good or not, but once I've completed the painting, I think this is one of the very best outcomes that we have done now. Going ahead and adding some more small clouds towards the bottom area. The cloud is the major important aspect of this painting, that's one of the reasons you have seen me walking through the clouds more, though the whole painting is real time because of virtue, or finding it a bit longer, and the size of the paper is also not very small. It's a bit smaller than A4 size. Hence, everything takes a while, I guess so we would keep adding some more smaller clouds on the right as I've told you earlier. Smaller lines will make whole of the paper or whole of the cloud area look even more amazing. We have so much to explore. Every time I just see above me, and there is so many colors, there are so many range of outcomes that you can have, there are so many photographs, there are so many paintings that we can do. Everything put together, it's sometimes amazing how nature gives us so much to think about, so much to work on. I am so much inspired by nature each and every time I have a look at it, I'm like, there is something new that I can do, there is something new. To make it more organic, we keep trying out different aspects. I told you that this cloud will be cutting across. I will even make some smaller clouds towards the middle bottom area. I can see that my paper is becoming dry in few of the areas because of which I'm using my flat brush to blend it a bit more. These things you have to keep doing or else you can even keep a spray bottle. What's the problem with the spay bottle is you can't control the water flow over there. Whereas if you are using a flat brush like this one, you can seriously see exactly where you want to apply your colors. There is nothing like you cannot apply the colors here, or you cannot apply the colors or water over here. If you are trying to control the water in a particular place, you can even do that rather than only trying to concentrate, or else if it's a spray bottle where it puts pray, we don't know. Or exactly, you might be focusing on a particular area for the spray, but water will move in. We can't really control water. Whereas using a brush, as I've told you earlier, it's way more control method. Losing control is not a bad idea, but maybe for this cloud, we would not like to do that. [MUSIC] I guess I'm pretty happy with how the clouds have turned out and let me just add some amount of small bushes. It's basically foliage that you add in and around the horizon. It's a good way to show that there is some greenery that is there. It really helps you to define the horizon line in a better way, though you can blend it better and then have some reflections too, but it is really far off. When something is really far off, you cannot see the reflection. When something is close to you, then only you can see the reflection in the water. Keep this thing in mind, it can help you even in your future projects. This is something that I have observed, not only in photos but also in live, wherever I've gone then you are to beach area since every year we have a plan where we visit beaches and we have till today fallen in love with beaches, and I must say I do visit these areas very much, water bodies. Whatever I have absorbed near the water bodies is whenever it is close to you and there is still water, you can see reflection, whereas if it is not still and you are watching it at a real distance, you will not see a lot of reflections, etc. It's really far off. You cannot figure it out. Whatever is close to, you can figure that out. That's why I think given the ripples that are closer to us are bigger in size, whereas I always say when it is near to the horizon, they are smaller in size. That's how even perspective works. For any painting, any drawing, anything. I think perspective is one of the basics when you are working through any of your watercolor or any of your sketching, any of your drawings, anything. You want to try it out? Try perspective. I feel that perspective can really help you to ace along. Once this part is done, go ahead and move on to the right side. Once you're going to the right, just make sure that you're adding small bushes on the edge only. That's it. Let's then go ahead and start adding our colors toward the water area. It would be all wet on dry method. Wet on dry is that hard paper has already dried and we're adding the second layer. We will just use some wet paints to go over it. [MUSIC] I think this is the time to make the ripples. Again, the rule of perspective is, while you go towards the horizon line, you have to make the ripple smaller, while you come towards the bottom, you have to make bigger ripples, that's how we go about it. It's a simple process, so I have kept everything really simple. It's just that earlier it was more wet, so controlling the water is a bit tough hence guiding your more over there was very important, whereas now I think you can pretty much do a lot of things on your own. This would take some time and then we would start with our index. [MUSIC] [MUSIC] The process of painting our wooden deck is, again, really simple. We will start with some blue and then you can keep adding a touch of [inaudible] to it just to give that [inaudible] of a look. Its majorly reflecting the same colors that you have for the sky. I like to keep it that way. In the morning it's shining and I really like it the way you can observe even on the photo. Yes, going ahead with the same colors, going ahead with the same things, I feel makes it look better and nice. Once we are done with this part, go ahead and add some more darker blues while you are just in the bottom area. This is very close to you. That's one of the reasons we have to detail it more. Which means you have to individually show the planks as well as you have to make those lines. Then some white highlights in few of the areas. I guess that's it, what I wanted to tell you and rest we can continue adding the colors. Make sure that this paper dries off completely and then only you start with your other parts that is adding some of these lines for the wooden deck. As I have told you it is perspective and all of these lines have to converge to one single point. Keep that in mind and then start adding it on top of the drawing that we have already done. [MUSIC] While I paint the lines I have made sure that few of the lines are broken and they're all not absolutely straight. I've taken my size 2 brush. You can go ahead with any other thin brush for all of these and then continue adding the colors. Going ahead and adding some more of our row lines wherever necessary. Once this part is completely done, I would ask you to just see how your painting now looks compared to how it was. Adding few more highlights with white I would take some off my opaque white and I would use it for adding the highlights. I'm using it until nowadays and I feel that it is better than even whitewash. I was using some other white goulash and it was not as opaque as I wanted. Whereas this one I'm using in terms of the opacity for the highlights that I need. [MUSIC] After adding the highlights your painting looks more complete and beautiful, ones though highlight suntan. Let your paper dry off. Look at it. In case you have taped down your paper, do remove your tape at an angle. Do not try to take it off without going ahead at an angle or else it might be difficult for you to actually prevent ripping off your paper. Though I'm going with the scale, but I'm not very happy with how my brush is moving. It's good to use small liner thing rather than using this. Yes, going ahead with it. Once this is done just blending it more, blending it and adding the white highlights in a better manner. This a size 2 brush so that it looks more organic and nicer. Let's just remove the tape after this and have a final look at it. I'm excited now to have a look at it using the scale often whenever I feel that it can give me a very nice line. I use my skin, I don't mind using a scale. It's absolutely fine if you can get a good outcome why not. [MUSIC] 24. Multiple Colored Skies Project 12: [MUSIC] Hi guys. We are on to our Day 12 and this is the multiple colored skies that we would be doing. It is the sunset palette that we have used earlier, but there will be a few new colors, as well as we will learn how to paint a wet vermilion, red then your Naples yellow. That's one of my go-to colors always. These are the colors that we would be mostly using. It would not be a lot of direction that we are giving to the clouds. But there is one layer of color that we add on top of it, we would be adding [NOISE] somewhat darker values. That's how we go about it. [MUSIC] Take some orange from my palette, but I'm not really happy with the orange that I took hence I'm taking the vermilion. This is the vermilion from Sennelier. We have used this vermilion during our second project and you can say that that was one of the most amazing projects we did with only two colors that is Paynes gray and your vermilion. If you haven't really gone ahead and seen that, go ahead and try it out. You would be very happy to actually see how beautifully even one painting can be done by using only limited palettes. Those are the things that we started off with and now we're working with so many different colors. The last lab that we did was multi-directional. If you see we had outs in two different directions coming up whereas here that's not the case. We are going ahead with some flat washes or two during the initial part of the sky that is towards the top area. As we come towards the bottom, you will see more of multicolored as when you are going to watch the horizon line or towards the bottom, we see more of smaller clouds compared to what we see towards the top area. [MUSIC] I did use my largest brush for adding the purple. I wanted to add a very light wash and now going ahead with my pale blue to add the other blue color into it. You can even go ahead wet paint onto or just mixing a bit of purple into any of your blue that you have on the pallete. Don't go ahead with a lot of lighter values, but don't even go ahead with a lot of darker blues. That would really not be the best one to go ahead with. I'm using my Da Vinci round brush, it's size zero. I have used this brush throughout most of this painting etc. But here in today's session, we would be also switching on to our size two brush as we have really smaller clouds and it gives me more, I would say confidence as well as lot more control. If you have smaller brush, the larger brush you need to take off the colors, then apply it on the paper. Again, take up the colors that way. Many of you might feel a bit more challenged compared to I have, of course never noticed it much. I really do not find that I'm actually being challenged a lot when I'm using a bigger brush, I just need to take off all the extra colors on the tissue and then apply it. Though by using a smaller brush, it becomes way more easier for each one of you. [MUSIC] Let's just make some amount of our royal blue. I have been using this color very often for many of my paintings, and I have been very happy with how the whole painting guns up that way. Today I just thought to show you how I worked through my entire palette, one of the blues. Though we have already used this blues in many of our earlier paintings, but still each and every time I mix some color, each and every time you have a look at it, sometimes I directly use the colors from my particular rough bands and sometimes I do mix it and then only use it. There are so many ways of using the colors. I even try it on a separate paper. If I don't like something, I will pick it up from the paper. I slowly move my brush, though I know that the cloud is something that you have to work very quickly. Moving very slow might not be the best idea, but I just prefer thinking and then moving because if you were not thinking much and if you just go ahead and keep painting, what happens is in the process, you might spoil the painting or overdo it at some point or else even might not do it to the extent you would have loved to add the colors. That's something I do keep in my mind. Right now my paper is completely dry, and I would go ahead and start applying some water on the top area. Once I have applied the water on the top area then I would add the second layer. I know that we have been going on in layers for our painting. I would really like to even do the same for this particular painting. It's very important to go in layers for your painting. In case you are doing any clouds painting, that's something you should always keep in mind when you are working through your different exercises. Because in the first here we really do not know how much taco values you would really need. One of the colors that you have applied for my tab I've added thinking that it's wet on wet might become way more lighter than what you would have expected, that's the reason it's always great to go ahead with the layer 2. [MUSIC] Start applying some of our red. Yeah, this is a beautiful red, and I really like adding this color. I am using my size two, it's called a travel brush. You can go ahead with any other size two brush, that's absolutely fine. You can even use Perla from the series. I really like the Perla series from the Escoda brush, and I have a lot of them. But somehow I think this particular versatile one goes well, so in case you are there and you want to try out these brushes, I must say that it's a must to go ahead with Escoda. Escoda is something that you will really fall in love with once you start adding, or once you start using it, I must say. I mean, any fancy brushes that you want to invest on, I think that's something you can really look forward to. Adding some of my darker colors. The darker colors is majorly my orange, it's dopants orange that I have, and I'm adding it towards the bottom area, making it more brighter. If you see, I've just taken the inspiration from the particular photograph that I see. It's not that I'm going to copy each and everything from the photograph. There are so many paintings where I just take the inspiration and move on. It's never a great idea to copy each and everything that you see in a photo or you see outside. Just add some of your imagination and add something of your own. It would really make the whole painting come to life with your own lenses. I feel it so strongly that we all have the power to see it from our own eyes, and it's always great to show the world what you see, rather than what others would like to see. Yeah, I think this I have been following for quite some time. I have evolved a lot as an artist in the past years because of how I look at something and how I observe it, how I love to paint it. There are so many different ways in which every artist go ahead and paints something, but it's always up to them what they all saw, and how they all solve it, that's something no one can practically teach you. It's more about letting it loose, or letting it flow. How it flows, that is that it is majorly your creative self, the creativity flows within you. Those are the aspects I think I would like to always tell you that go ahead and just explore it a bit more. Never try to just use all the same colors. Never try to work on everything that you observe. That's something which I have been doing and I would really like you all to also go ahead and try it out if not follow, maybe but trying it out will also give you an understanding about it. [MUSIC] I'm pretty happy with how the whole painting has turned up. I do not want to touch it more over here. I will just move ahead with my flat brush. This is the one inch brush which I've been using throughout the series, and I'm going ahead with awkward color, adding some doing to it, and then just mixing all the colors that I see on the palate and adding some of the darker values for the painting. This is very important when you are doing any kind of buildings, etc, towards the bottom area of the sky. You can always go ahead and add these lines. These can be done with a flat brush very easily, so I'm going ahead with my flat brush for the same. Once I'm done with this small part of adding the colors or adding, I would say the bottom area for this painting, then I would move on to the darker values and we will have layers even for the building part, it would really give us a depth. Now, creating depth is very important for any kind of a painting. Creating depth really helps you to see through it and show that there are multiple buildings that are there, and maybe some in the background, and some in the foreground. I would say any kind of painting we continue building like that. Going ahead and just leaving it over here, I think I should not touch it more. While I go towards the bottom, though I think that at times we keep working through it or feel like to do it, but still here is something that we should always avoid. Some places where you want to just clear up a bit, go ahead and clean it up wherever it is necessary. I just added some water and I'm cleaning up a bit around the orange color because it had the dry strong brushstrokes, which I really did not want for this painting. Yes, that's the only reason, picking up some of the colors as it was moving towards the top area of the sky, which I really did not want. Keeping a tissue, very handy, it's very important, and I have been stressing upon it for quite some time. Tissue not only helps you to remove the extra paints or taking off the droppings from your brushes, but it really comes handy in case you just add a drop to your painting somewhere or your brushes fall onto your painting, whatsoever it is, you can just take it off with the help of your tissue. Those are the aspects that I always say is important for a watercolor painting as therapy, if you wish to get back to watercolor painting in case we do not like something about it. Going ahead with some darker values towards the top area, it's a mix of blue and purple. You can also do that and keep adding some of the plain or simple water or you can just, while you go towards the bottom area, you need to go ahead with the clear water and blend it. I'm using my same, I would say Da Vinci brush for this part because it has a nice tip, and that can really help to add the colors in a better way. Once I am done with this part, I would go ahead and clean some of the areas as you observe me doing it right now and blend with my clean water. I have two jars of water. One of the jars you can see it is very really, really dark, whereas I would shift out to the clean jar that is kept on the top for any of my freshwater supply. That's again very important. Now, once I'm done with this part, I would go ahead and directly start adding the bottom area for my houses, etc. Now, if you do not want this, you can of course, go ahead and draw a few lines here and there, that would help you to Ace through it in a better way if you are just starting out. I just thought to go ahead directly over it, but now I would use my pencil and then just add some of my houses towards the right. It's majorly just to define a better view of the areas. I am not a person who will concentrate a lot for the bottom part, but seriously, when you think about the time that goes into the bottom area is way longer than what we did for a sky. You have to work in layers and again, you have to add the colors in a particular way so that it creates the depth. All of it kept in our mind, yeah, I think it really takes some good amount of time for us. The next five or 10 minutes we would be spending actually doing all of it and going with the flow. Here, I am not thinking much about how to go about it as this is just a very simple bottom horizon line definition where more of buildings are coming in, etc. But there are times where we need to think a lot where we work even on the horizon like our last painting, where we had the water and then we had even the wooden deck. We had to practically work a lot more than what we are working over here, and it took some good amount of time to even create those highlights. Over here, we will also add some highlights, but those highlights are simply for showing that there are some lights within the building. Yeah. I guess that's it. For this particular painting, you can go ahead and check out the photograph from the resources section. That would be easier for you to just have a look at it and go ahead and paint along with me. I am adding some of my darker values while I go towards the bottom, but I would be even picking up some of the colors, so yeah, be ready. Picking up the colors is the best exercise I think I would have done for this painting and I have used it a lot. I mean, to a great extent I've used it for this particular row painting. It's not that every time you use it for each and every painting, but wherever we need, we would use the techniques that we have learned, and something that we have learned really comes handy for all of us. [MUSIC] [MUSIC] I have very less to explain now. We have some good music and let's go ahead and paint along. Have our peace of mind for this particular part. Something that I have learned for watercolors is going into my own meditative mode for painting. That really helps to ease through any of the paintings when the mind is not calm enough or when you have so many thoughts running just to calm yourself down. I think painting is one of the great ways to go ahead and just to see how you can actually make things work for yourself. I think this is it over here, we are done and once we are done with power plus here we have to go ahead with more layers to it. Let's continue working on it. I would need to work towards the end where we will be discussing a few more things about the highlights and some more aspects of watercolor painting. [MUSIC] Adding some smaller highlights with royal blue and some of my other crystal shades of yellow. Now, this really helps to show the light. If you are under the observation that the spill out a lot of light, that's not the idea, it's just that one or two cases we would be adding it and rest of the places we will just leave it. If you see it's just small dots that I continue adding for our buildings. We can see there are some foreground buildings, there are some background buildings. That thing is also established which I really like. If I don't like something I would go ahead and just blend it at the background as you observe me doing it right now and I feel the whole painting has come together. This is the time to have a look at it and feel really great about yourself because you have repeated or not a photograph into a painting of your choice. How you do it is really simple. Keep some white areas, that white areas of a particular paper really helps you to actually go through it and understand that your painting has some light in it and that light really gives so much life to the painting. Overall I think I'm very happy with how it has turned out. It's time to just let it dry off and then have a final look at it. Once I have a final look at it I really want to take off the tape at it and see how the final look of it is. It gives us crisp beautiful edges and that's something that I always wish to see. For each of my painting I wait for this moment, it's been so long. I have been painting and every time I paint I just wait for this last moment to see how the whole painting has turned up. It's like a child receiving a chocolate who has a love for chocolate. [LAUGHTER] I think that's the best part of a painter that when you paint something you will need to have a final look at it and once you have a final look at then only do you exactly know how beautifully it has turned out. I guess let's move on to the next project now. 25. Passing the light Project 13: We're on the 13th day now. We have just one more day to go. This is going to be very exciting as we are going to do my favorite exercise, which is about passing the light, I will just mark the area where I want to paint the sky. Of course, it's all about the clouds and the sky. I had taken majority of the ADR as fat. I would go ahead and first apply a generous amount of water. Once I have added this generous amount of water, then we'll start adding the colors. Do make sure that you are working with quite a thick brush. That is wash brush, like a one-inch brush or two-inch brush. Whatever is available with you will be helpful for this exercise. Just go ahead and change your brush once you have to start applying your colors. I'm just wetting my paints. Before I start with my painting. I'm taking some amount of my Naples yellow right now and using the same brush for adding the clouds, not this is the bigger size brush that I'm using now, you can even use a smaller size brush if you are working on a smaller paper. In case you're working on a bigger paper you have to work with. Because I splashed, that's how it works. Now, what is the main idea right now is to apply our first layer. The first layer needs to be really, really light in the color. That's one of the reasons this brush can be very helpful. Now to add these colors. Once it is done, we will shift our smaller brush for adding the darker values. Now when we add the darker values, it's going to be very different compared to when we are adding the lighter values. I would be working majorly what my Naples yellow and some amount of my Payne's gray for completing the painting. These two have been one of my go-to colors to be frank, which dominates this painting altogether. Mixing some amount of yellow, Naples, yellow, of course, both of them together to get this shape off the yellow. And then using my mop brushes in this gas annual which I have from the vinci to add straight long, long lines. Now, I'm moved from the right, from the top, from the Mac, everything is going towards the inwards. And inwards is more in my lighter values as of now compared to where I am towards the outer side to side is more ductile compared to what it is right now for the inside, there would be some part which is there in the inside, which would be more in the darker values compare to when you are In the outside, which would be a mix of your darker and the lighter values. Now, whether it be you are considering me pull CNO or you are concentrating using Payne's gray, both of them will be used in a similar fashion, I would say, because that's how we are going to apply the columns. Now, applying the colors becomes really, really important. In this case, the whole of the painting is really simple. It is that I'm doing it within 15 to 20 minutes. You wouldn't be in a position to complete the painting. This is absolutely the same time. I have not increased the speed anywhere to be frank. Now I'm applying my Payne's gray. Now, basically which I have is from Magellan mission. You can go ahead and use any other things clear which is available with you. This has what beautiful blue in it and it looks very pretty when I apply it. I'm using my brush to apply the colors. You can also go ahead with any smaller Street crash for doing this. It's not that you have to use the same kind of, a similar kind of progression. Very sure about it. Whenever I'm telling you about the brushes panel around getting your buck the colors that are very few colors, as well as all these brushes can be interchanged. Whatever is available with you, I think you're good to go with it. There is no need of actually buying anything new as of now, then you feel that this is the hobby that you want to add, that then you should always invest on good supply. Of course, having said that, I always feel that having some good as supply or owning some good supply can really help you to have enough. But the most, most important aspects of watercolor painting is your paper. I'm using arches, 300 GSM watercolor paper for lighting. These colors. And this is one of the best papers that is available on the mountain top. My current lovers for one of these sides here, seven, which is one of the best papers right now for me as I am now to watch the coastal side of India. And here it's more humid. Because of which I like to use one of differentiation which is more tenuous and it stays wet for the perfect amount of time compared to if I'm using 300 years. Some, it stays wet for such a long time and become fully disclosed for me to naturally dry it. I have to use hairdryer. And what usually happens in a hairdryer as if you start applying your hair dryer, the deep sometimes being. So that's one of the things which I don't want for my crisp, beautiful answers using my round brush. Now, I scenedesmus city. Of course, the clouds are becoming more and more and try it yourself. So you can always see where the cloud is wet and just apply the colors in those PBS benefit. It's already dry. It would be difficult for you to apply the color during this time. And let your people trial. Once it has vital, apply one more layer of water. Again, it has to be really, really light layer of portal that you apply. We do want our underlying phosphate to come up or the colors to mix, which is one of the important aspects that you should always understand. You should always follow while you are working with watercolors. You can include layers and layers and layers, but venue of wetting your people, which for me has a first-year, it's important to go head as weighted. Very, very likely to wait for your people to become dry absolutely. Before you even start this part. Okay, going ahead and applying some of my things in the middle. This is the most exciting part for me. Now, why I say this is the most exciting part. You don't know how the whole painting will turn out. It can turn out absolutely dark and it can absolutely great. This is the kind of momentum truth in this painting and when you are done with this, but I can't tell you how excited you would be to get that perfect Cloud. And I tried, decided or three times before I actually recorded this tutorial. But hi, I'm so happy and glad that I tried this out as many times as I could because all of the painting is so beautiful. It is so pretty that I would like to try it again and again and again. Every time whenever I paint, I would like to check the progress that I've made and this is something that you guys should also do, try maintaining a sketchbook. I always say this. Maintain a sketchbook because your sketch books app practically the kind of proof that you are improving or you are trying to paint them to do the last few days where it becomes really, really difficult to think. But still a few go head and try to paint a bit odd. Try to draw it. I draw, I paint, I do everything possible on my sketch book. So there will be one of the exercises where we will be working on a sketchbook. I actually there was one of the exercise where you worked on a schedule during the initial part. And I always like to include those exercises. They are so amazing and they're so good using your sketchbook to the fullest. There are days. I just don't get anything out of my sketchbook, so it's okay, there will be perfect. They would be bad this they will be good days. Now, applying some darker values of my Payne's gray and this is practically using my size stroke discard off traveling fresh. It is optimal and it is a great gosh that I have been using. No, it's practically most about so I have one of those, Tibet and remove those size k to one. And this is the smallest size which is will suffer. And you can go ahead and use any size two brush. You don't need to to paint this one. I have kept the middle path, I would say in the painting completely like this is. So Greg, Stock, key things. Subpart, preserving some of the parts of your painting and white is tactically shows that you have matured as an artist. You are using the whitespaces of the paper for your painting. For many of my other paintings also, I have been doing it convey often and fast for 34 years, whatever I have been been been. You can also see the progress and glasses. And how things are changing. Again, MVK. That's something which pile like to work on. And then like to create for myself. Going ahead and adding some smaller, smaller clouds. And these clouds are only just cuts off the wound, I would say. What is touch on the whole, it is practically dropping your documents value. But with your drone, lot of lots and lots of concentration over here. And I would say just touching on picking up your best, just touching and picking up your batch, not allowing your brush to practically go head and had lost darker values over here. You want them to have these beautiful colors that you see in some of the places as you observe that the water has already dried out. I have taken my gosh. It is from the Vinci. I'm using my mop best to just add a bit of water, but I have taken off. I mean, basically I made a damp all the water has taken off and then I'm bonded on the paper. So that's how you should use your brushes when you are adding some water, et cetera. And it's time for some more of our yellow color. Of course, it's something that I would leave it up to you. You want to add? You do not want to. Since so I do feel that this place look way more lighter in value. I would like to add it and then running maybe with my size. One inch wash brush. So yeah, it's practically how I progress through the painting. Trying to add these. Why? Beautiful lines. How do you do it? Just pick up your brush, make it completely down, and then start picking up the darker value of the plots. You see how beautifully this line stands out. You can do it as many as you want, but high practically like to do with two less extent compared to what I usually do. This is more of white like that we want to show. But in some places what happens is we might not get the complete bike as there is some amount of screen which happens with color. But try as much as you can. Whatever you can is great for this painting. I'm slowly doing this process. If you see we worked on the clouds only for about ten to 15 minutes. It's never more than that. You can use your paper. I can practically see this is only possible when you are working without a fan. Now, if you are working inside a fan or kind of a setup where you are having some trying kind of an agent, then it would become more and more tough for you to get this outcome. Finally, I think I'm happy with the darker values that I'm adding. Now, when you want to add these darker values, you are absorbing how I'm actually adding very light a bit mind very, very light hands. I'm going ahead and add some layer of water. Then using my brush to add the darker values. That's how it should be because we cannot take off the first layer on the secondary which we have already added. It's great to work in layers to make sure that this is a bit tricky. Working with me become bit. In case you are new to watercolors, I would request you to just go ahead and first act and all the other clouds that we have painted audio as well as I have. What does Alice clouds class? So try to even check that out. I think they will be way more helpful for you to work on this particular cloud as this is a quick one. It has a lot more elements that we have covered compared to what I have done. My other parts of the clusters. Okay, fine. I guess I am great. You guys. How I would leave it up to here. I do not want to touch a lot more, but there are times where my heart doesn't stop. It wants to pink paint and paint and others menu see these kind of smaller things happening. But it is only possible, killed your paper's wet, so you will have applied another layer of water, make sure that you have two people wet. And then only apply these clouds because we are making those soft and gorgeous and beautiful skies. I do not want that. You get those hard edges for the light. That you want to. Once this is done, I feel that we should move on to the water. The water is going to be really, really simple. Like me tell you, it's one of the easiest that you paint over here. In this case, whatever you paint, you will see that it is simple, easy, and very interesting. How we make the lighter values in the middle, how the darker values come on the sides, how you are replicating those tie into the water now since there is very less amount of water that we are showcasing. So there would be very less amount from that you would be absorbing, which has the reflection into the water, as well as one more thing. This is a moving water, which means there will be lot of foods that I would be adding. But in case you have calm water, you can see an exact reflection. Now, this is not a particular waters plus, and that's one of the reasons I have not covered it. But they're grove there is a plan of going ahead and having low class from water. It, whether it be your underwater or whether it be your reflections into the water, you will get better insight. Recall, we have to take the OP. I have applied my lighter value as you observe in the middle. And then asked newly added a very lighter value of my Payne's gray on this side. Now I'm adding a darker value of my Payne's Gray from the sides and then I am taking it towards the middle AD. It's easy, just that I like you to gain that confidence really steadily and then start applying the followers. That is the darker value while you had into your painting. Using the tip of my brush for making these smaller lines. As you observe me adding these mono lines, you can literally see how the whole thing, thing has taken chip. Actually the total painting is dependent on the cloud spot. It's just a bit of reflection that you seem to the water. So there is not much told that we have over here are some facts that you need to add and then we will see how it goes. I'm removing some amount of the colors from the existing layer of yellow that we have added, not get them mixed up. Naples yellow and yellow had on our palate. It's not that perfect. Naples, yellow that we have added. Making these white lines and how you create these white lines penetrating up your color is something that I have known a lot of factors and it comes with a bit of practice. The lifting is not so easy and every kind of paper doesn't even allow them. Secondly, all kinds of colors on, so don't be late because they have the staining quality. And because of that staining quality, it's difficult to pick up the colors and make it absolutely wife. Now, there are a lot of qualities of watercolor that you must grow before you go ahead and think of before you go ahead and try them out on your paper. Try to understand the properties on a separate sheet, which you will of course use for your final painting. Use both sides of the shape to study that, understand it and then go ahead and paint it. I think that's how I would like to keep it for you, as well as the spot dry. That's not try to add anything more than this. I am very happy with how it is still not. Hi, I'm making a dry and then printing off the tape to have a final look at it. Very happy, excited, as full as it makes the painting look so much organic, nice. I can see those beautiful lines into those Kai, overall, it makes my heart goes yea, yea, yeah. I am super happy when I see this painting. I hope you enjoyed and join me in the next 14 days. Fact, the last code in there I would say for making another passing the light, painting. 26. Project 14 Challenge Part 1: The major colors that we will be using is Naples yellow, then your orange or neon, or any kind of price that is available on your palette. Keep some yellow by your side and you need to, and some purple, as well as for the sky area for the waterway here, you can go ahead with any dark colors which is available on your palate, like your dark blue, which means so cobalt blue, brush, tool and non-tone blue or any other blue I have used particularly in non-tone blue and Payne's gray mixed for the water. We're onto our day. 1414 is good surprise because here we are going to do two quick exercises. And I just want you to get prepared for any kind of painting or any kind of clubs that you want to work on. So yes, I have applied some water on the paper and now I'm going ahead with my Naples yellow and adding some amount of lines. It's a very easy painting. I must say it's just that it would take some amount of time as I'm using one PDE5 cheers some arches, watercolor, cold press paper. That is so much if I take, which qualifies belief that 185 years and cannot work. So I just thought that let's challenge ourselves and work on something which is less than 300 shares. And yet, you can practically paint exactly how you work on a 300 GSM paper. I have been experimented on this kind of sketch book for quite some time and this was a heavy wash that I did. Of course, we might not be in a position to do like a tendril washes, but three or four washes, it doesn't matter. You can easily accommodate on a 185 to 200 years, 700% cotton paper. Now a 100% cotton paper of course, is the key. You have to understand that whenever you are using a 100% cotton paper, then only these kind of what is possible. Going ahead and mixing some amount of my pincer orange with yellow and I'm leaving some white spaces as you absorb me doing and then applying the orange again. Now, why I have chosen this, I must say, first of all, I wanted to challenge myself, as I've told you that there's a myth always that we have to use 300 GSM paper or 620 GSM paper. There's nothing like that. Whatever paper you have available, I always say that go for 300 GSM, but even 185 GSM is great to work with. So do not worry, go ahead and use money for GSM or 200 GSM, Fabriano, 100% cotton paper. It works exactly the way we want. Applying some more orange now, another aspect that I want to tell us, I am right now in the coastal side, which is more on the wet or the monsoon season, is there. Hence, the humidity in the air is pretty high because of which it becomes easier for me to work on a 185 GSM paper compared to 300 GSM paper. 300 GSM paper really takes a long, long time to dry off. So that's something which I can tell you that this doesn't work exactly the way we want. Okay? Applying some amount of darker value, that is the Payne's gray. Once I'm applying this darker value, let's make sure that you are applying it towards the right-hand side. The orange there I've taken is this Emilio orange or you can even go ahead with balmy me on whatever is available on your palette. And this is a flat brush. And the movement with the flat brushes pretty easy. So it's great to work with the flat brush. Can these kind of passing the light exercises. I have kept me at day 14 as two different paintings and it's in the exercise from us I wanted to end this complete series on are high. And that's, I think it's pretty challenging for all of us to work with the passing, the light kind of exercise. And the last one was not easy. I ignore. So let's make it simple this time. I don't have any reference photos for this because I just saw them from my balcony and it's just that I wanted to paint it. I am dying off because I've told you that I'm right now in the eastern side of India and we have clear beautiful skies. It is raining and I see these kinds of beautiful skies every time. So it just took my heart and I wanted to add some water for adding that kind of good factor. But that's it. This is all I always keep saying. I will of course share one or two photographs later on. Then I send you e-mails so that you can also have a look how beautiful this geyser over here. Taking some more darker values and towards the top I have applied some amount of my Naples yellow. Naples yellow is the color which is one of my go-to colors for ways to apply the yellow as they don t mix up with the blue to give bad green shade, which I always like to avoid for my watercolor paintings. I guess. This looks way more prettier now, and I'm even removing the excess water from this side. What happens is their backgrounds. If you do not remove the excess water from your tape. Now, what is background? Background is nothing but your water accumulates at a particular place and then when it is drying up, it comes towards the inside of the paper. It takes off the pigments from that particular place. And it is a cauliflower kind of an effect which you usually see. Overall, it's not a great idea. I would say if you keep your water towards the side or if you have puddles of water on your paper. I think that's not a great idea to walk around with. So keep making these smaller efforts to clean up the sides so that you have that perfect, beautiful painting which you have been looking out for. I think that I could have practically left my painting at this stage. But somehow I just wanted to have more colors into this. And when you want more colors into something, I think you just move on. But let me tell you, this was looking very pretty at this moment. And I literally was like, Do I need to actually go ahead and again paint over it, or can I leave it up here? I will show you something that I shouldn't have done at this stage had it can actually lead to lot of problems when you are working on semi dry paper. If you observe the paper right now, there are a few effects which you will see that it is kind of semi dry. The water keeps moving and I'm getting those back edges, which are basically when which usually happens when you have semi dry paper, you are not having good wet paper. Now, these are the issues which you may face with the 185 GSM paper. Yes, that does happen. But it's okay. We can always go ahead with a second layer and fix it. I will even show you how you can fix this altogether. There will be no marks, no traces of any kind of struggle that you might have done. Like I'm also doing pretty much now. This here is some amount of purple that I've added. I've mixed a purple, wet my paints gray, and then I've added cleaning up a few spaces wherever it is necessary. I'm using my flat brush. This is a one-inch flat brush as well as I have a half an inch flat brush, which I mean it's a bit smaller than half an inch flat brush, which you can use for using these for making these, cleaning up some of the areas where you want to lift out the colors from. I guess that's it. We will read the painting to dry. Once it is dry it off completely, we will add one more layer of water. As you observe me doing, I'm going with a really light hand when I apply these this particular layer. And then you will absolve me fixing up a few things. It's simple, easy. It's just that sometimes we are heartbroken only with the first layer you are firstly, I never defines how your painting turns up. Practically you might be more happier after your first year is good. But you, you cannot, you cannot really see what is coming up in the next layer still you start applying it. Never ever get disheartened with your first layer. Or if it did not work well, just try fixing it a bit. Do not try to fix it a lot because that also doesn't happen. So let the watercolor is towards choppy, are not here to practically fight with it. Just try to do as much as you want or try to only fix it to an extent. I am applying some more amount of purple. You can see that I am adding some generous amount of my Payne's gray into the mix and then applying the color. Of course, this is with my round brush. It is a squad of size eight brush, but whatever brushes you have been using, it's perfectly fine. You don't need to practically switch to these kinds of brushes. There are only few brushes which I have used till now. Size eight, size six, or size 21, thin brush. Those all things are fine for you to complete any kind of painting. Once you complete the painting, you will seriously, No. Before the journey ends, you should never define how the final destination is. Because the roads are also beautiful than might be a little bit bumpy. But yes, they are beautiful roads and you should go ahead and explore it to the final destination is even more beautiful. Once you finish off with the paintings that we are doing for day 14, you will understand it how seriously the whole of these two paintings have turned up on a single page. I am fine with how it is. You can have a closer look at it. None of the lines, et cetera, which were there in my force. I would say the first layer is visible anymore. So yes, that's great. We do not have any kind of visibility into that particular path. And now it's time to clean up a few areas. This is the kind of touch of code that I always say. Remove the tape where you have to paint your water. Once you have removed the tape, where you have to think what does start with in downstream blue. Mix it with some amount of your Payne's gray if you want. You can also go ahead with another color, like blue and mix it with some amount of your room. Again, Payne's gray, or some amount of water, whatever is available on your palate. You do not need to follow the same color pattern that I'm using. It's just that I always like to tell you what are the alternative colors you can go ahead with. Even ultramarine is good one, what happens is our company has a bit of granulation and add because of which I do not like to use it pretty often. And hence, I have switched on to these two colors for my size, for my water. They're very pretty and you can even use cobalt blue cushion. Anything available on the palette is good to go. Adding some more darker values towards the bottom area. You might not be in a position to write now see it. But yes, it is closer to you or anything is pretty close to my eyes. I usually add the darker values in those areas and whatever is far away from me, I liked simple. Towards the top, I would be even adding some darker lines because the ripples are very close to each other and we do not need to define anything over there. Yes. Again, I would be going ahead and adding some darker values towards the top as you also see over here. I think there's a lot more colors than I would like to add for the water part. So I will go ahead with my flat brush size one-inch to clear that up in a few places. So you will see how it goes. Particular painting is full of difficulty to reframe. First of all, the paper is a bit challenging, but I have started loving this paper so much that I want to experiment everything on it. Most of my urban sketching that I do is done on this paper. And so that's something which I have been loving seriously. The line and Wash Park is most amazing. You can use any kind of pen. You can work with any kind of medium on it. I have been using pencil drawing than I have been doing. Different mediums like soft place stills adding it. Watercolor, pencils is the next thing that I wanted to do. So much to experiment on a sketchbook, your node, that's one of the major goals for me to keep a sketchbook always by my side. And I think you'll all be all should practically keep a sketchbook to understand how we are progressing in our journey. There will be bad days. I will never denied practically if you see my entire sketch book, one or two paintings are not great at all because they are always, always practice. As I see. Everyday is not a good day. Everyday is not the perfect day that you would like to walk around. So yeah, there were data types which can not great at all. Still we make it happen. So I think there should be an urge to paint. If your paints call you, go ahead and paint your heart out, it might be imperfect. That's absolutely cool. Do not try to say or sell that or not come out. Well, I did not get the exact outcome that we wanted. Everything comes with practice and you'll have to practice in the right direction. Try working on with different timed or subjects. Try working out with nature initially if you want, not. Great with your drawings. As I did always during the initial part of my journey. And slowly, steadily I went into the urban sketching part. And now I want to explore more of the drawing, sketching how to build up depth within a pencil drawing. So all of this can come even later, but the intention to paint, the intention to draw, the intention to hold onto your hobby. The whole intention of giving yourself that time and effort. New beautiful aspect where you can practically de-stress yourself like everything is very, very important. So that's all I would like to say that do try to paint. You would fall in love with it. As you progress, you will find so much of happiness in it that there will be much, much more coming up for each one of you. Okay, I think we have to get back to our painting now. I have been adding lines now, when do you add lines? Whenever people instruct, first, you have to allow the paper to dry off completely, then you start making these smaller dry lights on your water. Now, when I go towards the top, I make thinner lines, man, I am towards the bottom. I may draw the lines. That's how it should be and that's how you should be always painting. Closer to your eyes. You see them, they go farther away from your eyes. You see them smaller. I guess. This was one of the most important aspect that I wanted to tell you. This. So once you add these smaller, smaller lines, go towards the top where you have almost close to no ripples, make it darker. And then while you come a bit towards the bottom or while you come down, make one or two lines over there. And hence, I guess that's it where we would like to stop ourselves and just see how the whole painting has turned up. I think this is fair enough. Try in case you have any kind of mistakes that you have fixed. I guess this is it. I do not want to touch it a lot more. Once it dries off, I peel off the tape. You will see how beautiful that is. Nothing that is less compared to 300 GSM vivo or this is not that the colors have not worked out, maybe exactly the way we wanted or anything. This sharks are perfectly fine. We have worked with two layers. I think everything worked perfect after we are done with this water. Of course, this adds a lot more depth to your painting. And it is important to add this kind of tip to any kind of painting that you are doing. Or the second mere always is for that particular reason. One or two smaller lines. And then these smaller lines will face a way for the larger ripples or four. Beautiful. Also. I think keeping a bit of space in-between always helps. It shows the majority of an artist to actually block everything that is available and walk around with a few ideas and keeping to alias empty. I will move on to the next exercise where we going to do passing the light part d 14. 27. Project 14 Challenge Part 2: Next, discuss all the colors that you need for completing the painting. It is yellow, that is suddenly then some amount of your Naples yellow, blue in non-3GPP to any other darker value of that is available on the palate. And the last would be your brown. Now, again, brown, whatever is available with you on unsatisfied sienna. I'm like a brown. This is it. From the color's perspective. Let's start with the lesson. We are starting with our part two of this series. Again, it's a challenge. This is going to be easier compared to the last one. Why I say because I got on major hang of how to work with the one in p5 js and people in the first go with the heavy washes because I usually go with light washes for my 185 GSM paper. But this time I was so impressed with the way this 185 GSM behaved. And I'm literally very happy as well as shocked, happily shocked that I would say that you can practically the entire thing. So we're starting out with the sunspot, some amount of yellow plus Naples yellow. This is basically the Sennelier yellow or brown mixed pinning kind of Naples yellow that is available with you and get something like this in and around it, start adding some amount of orange. I'm taking my Winsor orange, all the colors I have discussed in the beginning, and I will even tell you about alternate colors in case you do not have orange, you can make some amount of red into your yellow and then get a color that is similar to this. None of the colors that I have mentioning right now you need to own it. Whatever colors is available on your palette is good to exempt the Naples yellow, which usually doesn't happen to be available always you will get the yellow ocher part, part Naples. Yellow is not always available, so that's something you might have to own later on. But you can surely try it with the yellow initially as we are mixing the less amount of blue in this and the middle part, I'm keeping more of water, which means that hardly you will get any kind of greens. Just fixing my son Albert, with the help of my clean damp brush. This I usually do very often whenever I am making any painting like this, as well as this one passing the light is more about lifting technique. And I really want you guys to learn this lifting technique. This lifting technique needs to be done at the perfect timing when your paper is not dry as well as it is not really wet, that the water is flowing. So that optimum amount of water that should be available on your people who are lifting out your colors. Just very important to note before you do this lipstick, going ahead with my flat brush, I'm mixing some amount of might and non-tone blue as well as some amount of my tailor blue. Now these are the two colors which are used pretty often for my paintings as well as I use. My violet. Violet is something that I have been using for my clouds, for my water. And it gives me such a wonderful as well as a beautiful picture. I must say that you guys should also try this out mixing up some amount of inventory in blue in case you don't have this color, go ahead with any dark blue color that is available on your palette. But don't try to go ahead with only indigo mix integral with some cobalt blue or some amount of ultramarine to make it a bit more lighter. And then apply it for the Cloud area. Once you have applied this part to your Cloud area, start going towards the side that is on the left as well as on the right to make some of your darker values are adding your taco van. Now, this darker value which you add should be with the flat brush that is half an inch. We have been using one inch flat brush for most of the parts of the wash. But over here, I do like to go ahead with thinner one. Once that is done, again, I'm mixing some amount of my wet, my orange that I already had on the ballot. Then I am adding this to my paper. Now these are the loops kind of clouds which I like to go ahead and add for my watercolor skies. Again, you can only paint this when your paper is not very damp or there's not a lot of water on the paper, there should be optimum amount of dryness to the humidity of the paper macro. So most when you are working on this, your clouds will actually move around a lot, which means the pigments will move if you have lot of water. And if you have very less water, you might get some amount of images, which we do not want for this painting. Now how this is, uh, something that I would like you guys to avoid for the software based clouds. Though, it's a choice that I always say many people like to add the hard edges to the clouds painting. Again. I see that you can choose how you want to paint. For this particular painting, I would love to add the softer flux, adding some amount of King non-tone do now towards the top area and adding some red to the bottom, as well as some amount of orange. Now the orange again, I have told you is mixed with some yellow to get this orange, you can even take the median is a beautiful color from scenario, you should try it out and see for yourself how you get the colors. Those scenario has been one of my go-to brand as well as Winsor and Newton Magellan mission board. You have being watching me Picking up for colors from these particular brands fosters that they are absolutely professional grade watercolor paints that I choose. The second part is high and very comfortable using these colors for yours. Now, that's one of the reason I go ahead with these sheets more often compared to other shapes, do I like to always try new shades from various brands? Parties have been my go-to brands along with White Nights. Many of you even like to use white nights. But I have used two white plaques very less compared to these few other brands that I've been mentioning. So that's something I can tell you. But my experience but do try out whatever colors is there with you. Do not just go ahead and buy all the expensive part materials before you adopted as you're foggy. I think this looks very much clean and pretty. I do not want to touch it to a lot extent. I would like to right now work on the bottom area of our painting. The bottom area of our painting needs to be in brown. You can go ahead with your burnt sienna. Now been CNR needs to be mixed with some amount of blue for getting those taco values orals. If you have Van **** brown, please go ahead and new SAP and I came around for our heading on these various shades into your drum. Read fields or any kind of fields that you want to add. It can be any field of your choice. I have not thought about a particular kind of shape, size, fields, etc. It's just absolutely random. I told you that I'm super inspired from where I live right now. I can see the entire city. I can see Greenfield's, I can see water patches. I could see the clear skies overall. It's an inspiration that I haven't myself and I just want to try it out on the paper. These are both the painting. On any particular photograph. I initially told you that all the paintings will be done from a photograph last two days. I wanted to keep it as whatever you see. Just try it out on your paper. That's what is most important. Sometimes you are so inspired by nature, you want to try everything out. You want to see how well it works for you. There was some amount of yellow which I use for my grounds to so you can also do it that way. Keeping the middle part more lighter compared to the sides. Sides. I have kept it on the darker values, adding some amount of brown. Once you have added this brown, make sure that you are just blending it well with your flat brush. Again, I'm blending does happen on its own to be frank, whatever do its job. And you will see that the pigments will flow into each other. You do not need to make much of effort if your paper is wet on its own drive. Now, if your paper is not wet, then it becomes a bit of an issue. As you can see that there might be patches, there might be some cauliflower effect coming up. So try to avoid that. Wherever you think that your paper has become dried enough, just go ahead and stop there. Absolutely. And then start off with a very light wash once your paper is Christian, going with my darkest value of brown, again, I told you you can choose when like a brown, mix some amount of blue into your burnt sienna orals. You can even go ahead with black plus one C, and this is a choice you can make. There are various combinations that I have told you what you can use. Just dropping in some amount of these beautiful small, small drops off darker values, keeping the bottom area more darker compared to the top area. Now why in and around the sun, it would be lighter. And that's what we want to show. I am going ahead with my thinner brush, that is my size two. This is size two, but I'm more comfortable with my size four is called optimal brush. I have been using it so much and I am still so comfortable with that brush that I love to use it more often. Making some small, small dots now they look a bit more. Some areas are more darker compared to other areas which are lighter. Again, I have told you the combination of the colors. This is cochlea compared to what you have in your background. If your background is really dark, you will not be in a position to see these dots. So make sure that your background is not really okay. Once this part is done, then let your a or dry completely before it dries off. We will be doing one special technique that is about lifting up your colors. Lifting up your colors is the most favorite of this particular painting. And I can't tell you how happy I am to teach you the spot. There have been so many struggles. I have listened to so many of my students who have always told me how do we do this lifting technique? How it works out the best, what's the best way to do it? What's the best paper to do it? There have been so many questions to be flagged this as being a challenge initially, but now when I see it is not a dollar challenge, you just need to be confident. You just need to be sure that the paper is optimal amount of amount of water. It has the optimal amount of water. And then you have to wash your brush, take off all that extra water that you have on your brush. Then do this small technique that is, use your flat brush. Just let it out. Okay, I am doing it again. You can see the repeat process. Once this part is done, I will go ahead with one more time on this for the third ray of light that I want to show that. Yes. Super comfortable, super happy. You can see that the water from the sides or the paints from the sides have not got into the white of the paper. That's what I was saying. You'd need the optimum amount of water on the paper. This is an experience. This is a trial that you have to do. I can only guide you through the process. I always say anything thing that we do is guidance. The rest of the work is with the practice that you get. So do try to practice this out. If you want to actually get a hang of it, you'll want to do these kinds of techniques more often. Try, try, try. The more you try, the better you will be at that time, the better outcome. I think that's still only via this whole process. And I'm just using a bit of my tissue to pick up the extra water that I had. So that's how I do what I'm using both the brushes. If you see one was a one inch brush that I use, now I'm even using half an inch crash. So both of them are being used alternatively for getting the best outcome. Again, you see that the paper has dried off and there are small lines that I need to make. Going ahead with that dealer, only a few lines that I make right now. These few lines and enough to show the white wheat fields or any kind of fields that you want to paint. It can be any other kind of fields which you want to show up. That's also fine. Going ahead and adding a few more lines from the top towards the bottom. Here, stretching and from the top towards the bottom isn't very, very important. That's something which always want. I'm sure that this is what we should do. This is how we should do. I guess so here it's more about the confidence that you have with your brush on your paper as well as with your pain. I have more confidence with this brush and that's why I'm using this particular brush to make these lights. If you are more confident with a tenon brush that you have available with you, please go ahead with that to make these scan lines. I think that's it. I have to make one or two fields. So I mean weak field. Particular, one in to the field spot. To make it look more organic, they are more closer to me and I can see it clearly. That's it. You can just make something more abstract looking. We don't need to make it absolutely beautiful or something that has to be exactly the same. I hope you have enjoyed this whole class, has been a lot of learning in this class. Each and every painting is absolutely different data, six to seven different types of clouds that we have done. Most of them have photograph which you can refer to and then paint. I always say do not make all go with the photo as such. Just try to make it on your own. How you just change it as per your requirement is something that we all learn in the process. As an artist, you should always make a few changes so that it looks absolutely like yours. I think that's all. I wanted to highlight. This particular class. If you have like anything about the class duly me a positive feedback, it really helps us to reach out to many more students and do upload your projects in the project gallery. I always eagerly waiting to have a look at them, as well as I would like to add my feedback in case there are there's anything that I can add on and see you very soon in the next class, which is going to be really exciting. Yeah, I dropped a hint very soon on Skillshare about it. Meet you next time. Happy painting. Till then.