Watercolor Christmas card: snowy pine branch

1. Welcome to the class!: He hates winter time again. We got our first know a couple of weeks ago and now I'm just admiring these beautiful white landscape. So what else is coming? Oh, Christmas. So how about we create some beautiful Christmas cards with watercolors. What I have in mind today is this beautiful pine tree branch. This will be a quite quick paint and it is suitable for all levels. We will first create the background with wet on wet technique. And for that, we need to wait a bit for the painting to dry. But after that it's just very quick painting. My name is Lisa have tune-in and I'm a software tester by profession. But on my free time, I love to paint with watercolors. I have learned everything that I know about watercolor painting online. So I fully believe that anyone can master or become better in painting by practicing and by following these online classes. You can go and check my art from Instagram. You can see my account there on the screen. And then on my profile page you can go and check what other classes I have. E.g. created another Christmas card deemed class test a few weeks ago, and you can see the picture here from the class. So are you ready to get started? I'll see you in the next video. 2. Materials: Let's then check the materials we will be using. I am using Arches paper, which is 100% cotton and 300 GSM. So this is really good, especially when you are using wet on wet techniques because good-quality watercolor paper can hold a lot, a lot of water. I'm Connie, the paper into a small, square sized paper, but you can choose otherwise. Then you will need to normal masking tape from any hardware store. And then two jars of clean water. The other one is used for cleaning your brush and the other one is used for wetting your brush. Then you will need a few brushes, e.g. a. Size four round brush and a size eight, e.g. or size six, depending on your brushes. And then you will need a pencil and an eraser for the sketch. And then also, I am using this small spray bottle, but this is optional. I use these to wet my paints. Then next you will also need some tissue paper for drying your brush or fixing any mistakes that you make in the painting. And then of course, some pains. In this class, we'll be using these colors. Burnt sienna, sap, green, phthalo, blue, indigo. About feel free also to use any other similar colors. Then also, we will need white gouache or white watercolor. And a mixing palette. I think that's all our materials. And here's still a list of all the materials. So go get your stuff and let's meet in the next video where we will make a simple sketch and start painting the background. See you there. 3. Class project: background: Start by taping the paper to a board or to a table. So just take your masking tape and attach each firm on all sides of the paper. Make sure that the tape is attached firmly on all four sides. This will prevent the paint from leaking under the tape. Okay, then let's make the sketch. It's a really simple one. We will just sketch the breadth. So let's start from here. There will be a one branch or maybe two. Let's see which one looks nicer. Then let's make a few smaller branches from the main branch like this. Let's add a smaller branch here. Under the main branch. The painting doesn't look that empty. Next, we will sketch an area that will be left without any paint. So that is basically snow. We will want to leave it white, solid sketch this blanket of snow here on top of the branch. Okay, the sketch is ready. I said it would be easy. Okay. I will just erase a bit off the branch here from the section that is supposed to be snow. And after that, we can start painting the background. Take a quite big round brush, e.g. size 12, for wetting the background. And then just take clean water and water, everything else except for the white part. So there's no part should stay dry, but everything else can be wet. Be careful also when you apply water on the bottom side of the snow so that the white area doesn't get wet. Then just continue applying water everywhere else. There we go. Now that the entire background is sweat, take a smaller round brush, e.g. I. Six, and take the low blue and put it to your mixing palette. Then let's add some water to it so that the color is very light. We will apply the first layer like this with this very light color. Then let's start adding color to the background. When you apply the color, make quite large circles on the background so that the center of the circle remains white. With this, we are creating these uneven background that looks like there are twinkling lights or maybe snowfall on the background. Okay, continue adding the circles in this manner. You can, there might be some cheese that you want to smooth out so you can clean your brush and dry it on a piece of paper and then just apply the brush over those areas like this. This way the color will blend the edges between the white and the blue will be even smaller. But this is optional because we have a wet background. Once it dries, it will anyway look at the transitions between callers will anyway look a bit smoother than they look at this point. So don't worry about that. Okay, then just continue adding the circles. And you can vary the color a bit. So in some place is you can use a darker tone and in other places or lighter tone. Okay, Now the first layer done. So next, take more phthalo blue, but this time, don't add any water to it. So we will use a more concentrated color, which also means that it will be a darker. So let's add this darker tone in some places, but still leave the white spaces on touched. I'm concentrating myself on the corners and on the bottom and top part of the painting. And I'm leaving the branch. The area around the branch, lighter lit, again, blend that color. So clean your brush and dry it a bit. And again, run it over some of the areas where it looks like there say too harsh line between the different tones of blue. Next let's add even more darker tones. And this time, let's use indigo, that is really dark blue. I'm adding it to the phthalo blue on my mixing palette. Then let's apply the color mostly in the corners. And some other selected areas where you feel like there could be darker tones. Let's add some darker tones here at the bottom as well. And again, let's leave the whitespaces. I'm torched. Then what else? Maybe we could blend a beat, beat, hard, harsh edges here and there. But that's also keeping mind that wants to destroy the edges. We'll get blurred anyway. Okay, I think I will add even more darker tones in some places. Remember to keep in mind that if your background has started to dry, then you shouldn't add anymore colors because it won't blend anymore. So only if your background is wet, you can keep on adding these darker tones. But otherwise, you're not just stop it. It's fine or so that way. I'm blending the color in some places because the transitions don't look that nice. So just a bit of blending here and there. I want the colors to look the lighter and the darker colors to look smooth. I don't want there to be any harsh edges between those different shade of, shades of the blue. Bit of blending here at the bottom as well. Here too. I think my background has started to dry a bit. So I will soon have to stop. But while I still can, I will keep on blending. And I will also want to add a darker tone steel. Next, add a bit of pale blue. Again. I will take a really concentrated blue, so there will be hardly any water in it. And I will add that in some places because I feel like I added a bit more indigo, so I will now add more favorable blue so that there is more interesting colors in the background. I will keep adding more indigo in the darkest places. I'm mostly again, concentrating on the corners. And in some selected spots between the between the white whitespaces. I'll add just a few more spots of indigo and then I think we are done with the background. Once you're happy with your painting, leave it to dry. And once the area around the tree branch is dry, you can continue to the next video. 4. Painting the pine branch: Once your background is dry, let's proceed to the next step. Take some burnt sienna and a maybe size six round brush, and let's start painting the tree branch. Leave the snow area once again untouched. Just paint the branches underneath the snowy area. Let's add this small branch here and then another one here at the tip of the branch. One more here. Just follow the sketch that you made in the beginning. It probably is still visible under the background. Wash. Then take a smaller brush. I'm using this size four. And it would be nice if your brush has a fine tip. Because now we start making the pine needles. So cake, sap green. And you can take it straight from the pan and start adding these small needles in each of the branches. I start to add the needles here from the base of the branch. But you can start anywhere. Depending on your what feels good for you. Just apply short lines, short fine lines that look like pine needles. And feel free to turn around the paper in whichever direction. It feels good that it makes easier for you to paint the needles will take more sap green. I'm using the colors straight from the pan. So it's quite concentrated. And makes fine needles, pine pine needles. Then continue adding the pine needles towards the tip off the branch like this. We want to cover all the small branches that we have added with pine needles. So in the end, there isn't much, much brown actually visible from the branches. Just a bit of brown here and there. But mostly it will be covered by these green pine needles. They are still a few more pine needles to be added on the bottom side of the branch. And after that, let's add a few pine needles or so on the top side because we have those tiny branches out there as well. Okay, the beak branches now done, and then let's add pine needles or so to this smaller branch here on the left side. So just keep doing what you have been doing for the past few minutes and add small sharp pine needles all around that branch. Now that I look at the painting, I feel like there could be even more branches on the left. So I will add just a few pine needles between these two branches so that I will partly fill it up with pine needles. Yeah, I think that looks nice or at least to my eyes. You can add as many or as few pine needles as you want. Your tree can be began fluffy or it can have only a few pine needles. It's up to you. I will add one more small branch here on the middle. And I think after that, we have, we are finished with the first layer of our branch. Let's then add another layer of pine needles. And this time with indigo, you don't need to wait for your painting to dry. Okay, so let's do what we did just a moment ago with the green color. But this time we will add the pine needles with indigo and be careful that you won't add too much indigo pine needles. So we want the green needles to also be visible underneath these legal pine needles. Try to add as fine lines as you can with your brush. That way, the branch will look more detailed. This time I'm starting from the tip of the branch. I am adding the pine needles here in the smaller branch and on the top and on bottom of the branch as well. Basically everywhere where we just added the green pine needles. Okay. A couple of the small branches have been done and then I continue my way to watch the base of the of the branch. Just a few more pine needles here. And then we are done with these step. Okay, that's done. Then I will just add a bit more indigo to kind of clean the line here between the snowy area and branch. I will just add a bit of color here on this, on this line. And we bet we are done with the pine needles. Let's next start adding bulky effect on the background. 5. Bokeh effect: Let's then at some bokeh effect on the background might be familiar for you from photographic and abroad. K-means, the blur that is produced in the out-of-focus areas of an image and it caused by a camera lens. But of course we don't have a camera here, so we have creating the effect ourselves. And usually the effect looks like often the effect looks like a small circles of different colors or different values. So we will try to recreate this by painting small circles with different colors. And the colors we are using are white. And then we will use the Taylor blue. And then will we meet, we will mix those two to create a light blue color. And we will add at a small circles with these three colors and try to create the bulky effect. I have now started adding. The circle is sweet, light blue color. I'm adding them in a random way. I'm trying to keep my eye on the image and try to kind of see where I need to add those two. So it's based on my interpretation, on my feeling of the image. So you can follow what I do, or you can follow your own aesthetic I, and decide yourself where you want to add those circles. Now I'm adding more circles here at the bottom part of the painting. And I try to add the circles on a dot on the darker background so that they are better VC bowl. And I leave the white or the lighter areas almost on touched on it, a few more light blue circles. And then I will switch to the phthalo blue. Okay, then I'm starting to add the circles with a low blow. And we'll add them. In some of the same places where I added the light blue circles. The circles can also overlap like this. And you can also add different sizes. Mine are pretty much the same size, but I'm adding also some smaller ones in some places like here. Let's see where else should I add circles? Maybe one more here. That's enough of blue circles for now. And next I will take white, and I will start adding circles with that. Let's add one here at the top. It's overlapping a bit with the light blue circle. Then a few circles here at the bottom. One more here overlapping with the light blue circle. Continue adding the white circles. You can add as many or as little as you want. Country. Try to pay attention to the position of the circles so that they look like they have been added in random places so that they are endemic to kinda seemed like 2 cm from each other in random places. I like to add these white circles the most because they are, they are best visible on the blue background. So they look the best, in my opinion. Let's add a few more here at the top. Maybe one here to overlap with the blue one. Country. Now there's a nice amount of white circle spot. I think we could still add a few more light blue circles. Let's fill some of the empty spaces so that the background looks more balanced. Steve, add a few more light blue circles here on the top part of the picture. Maybe one here next to the branch. And do another one here. I think that's enough circles for now. Let's next add a few snowy pine needles. 6. Snow and splashes: We have one more step to do and that is adding some snow in the painting. Take Taino blue and add a good amount of water to it so that you have a very light tone. And then add a bit of that. Here on the snow, we are creating a kind of a shadow on the snow because we cannot leave it entirely white. So let's add just a bit of blue as a shadow and then blend or fade the color so that it doesn't stand out too much. Let's add a bit more blue, slightly darker tone of blue. At the top. Top part. We want it to be quite light, but it should be still visible and mine wasn't visible enough. So I'm adding a bit more tomorrow color here. Let's then add a bit of snow on the pine needles. And that's done by adding white pine needles. So you should be familiar with this by now. So add one more layer of pine needles, but you don't need to add many of these. So just a bit here and there. We want the green and the indigo layer still to be visible from under the white layer. So at a few fine, fine white pine needles in some places. And in some places you can add more, more snow and in other places less snow. So it's up to you. I decided to add a bit more snow on this branch. So it looks like they're so big clump of snow there. But in other places, I'm only adding those fine lines. So it looks more like they're bit of frost stuck on the pine needles. We already have a lot of snow, but I think I'm adding a slightly bigger part of snow or so here in this section because it kind of balances the snow that we have on the left side. So it looks nicer this way. Then I will keep adding those fine lines here as well. Oh, okay. That's enough snow on the tree branch and mixed. Let's add some splashes of white color on the background. So take white gouache or white watercolor and add a bit of water to it. If you use too thick consistency, you won't be able to create splashes with it. But then again, you shouldn't add too much water because then you will get two big splashes and it won't look that nice. So add a bit of water at a time and test it, e.g. on a scrap piece of paper and try to find the right consistency? I think mine is not right because the splashes are dropping nicely. I slipped from the brush. So just tap with another brush or with your finger on the brush that holds a color. Like this. I'm adding splashes all over the painting. Let's then do the same with indigo. So let's add a few, few splashes with indigo, but not too many. Not as much as we did with the white color. So again, add a bit of water to your indigo and try to find the correct consistency. And try to add mostly added the splashes in the darker areas. So in the corners and at the top and bottom part of the painting. Try to avoid the branch and the snowy part. A, you could even put a piece of paper on top of the branch show that you'll want to get too many indigo splashes on top of it. Let's then do the same with light blue. So add a bit of white to your phthalo blue. A few splashes with that color as well. I think that's enough of splashes. Hey, we are done. 7. Thanks for joining!: There is only one more thing to do and that is removing the tape remote. Remember to remove it in an angle so that it won't rip the paper like this. Or I can already tell you that this looks beautiful. Thank you so much for joining this class. I hope you had fun and I hope you'll learn something. Maybe. Have a nice Christmas. I hope to see you soon. Bye-bye.