Watercolor Essentials: Theory, Mindset and Techniques

1. Introduction: Welcome to watercolor essentials, theory, mindset and techniques. In this class, we'll be going through the building blocks of watercolor painting. Understanding the steps and processes required to piece together a painting is crucial. Believe it or not, painting begins even before you put your brush to paper. In this class, we'll cover all the techniques, theory, and processes you need to know. In order to paint. A beautiful painting will go through various practice sketches where you gain confidence before completing an exciting final project. Together. We'll cover a variety of topics including water consistency, mixing, understanding values and color. Talk about brush control and how to use different techniques. Also talk about the spective composition and how to build confidence and mistakes and deal with self-limiting thoughts when painting. Also go through my seventh step, unique watercolor painting process, which will allow you to paint anything in watercolors. I'm excited to get started. Let's get painting. 2. Blending Colours: Get that first coloring. Maybe just up the top here like that. It's just a bit of turquoise color. And say I want to blend this color in to the like an orange or something. This edge is still wet. I pick up a bit of orange. I wait for a little bit. I don't know. I'm not going straight in bunch sweet like a few seconds. And then I'll just pick up this other color, this bit of orange. Just drop that in like this. Touch that edge, just nip that edge a bit like that. Then come down. Too much water here in that left-hand side. When you nip that edge while the paper, while that first color is still wet, creates a soft blend. Also, sometimes I see people do this. I do this at times as well. You can kind of just go into it and just kind of feather a bit like that a bit. And keep in mind that this will soften and blend, has the paper dries and the color will spread in there naturally. That's really the biggest thing. Try to nip it while I get that second color in and just touch that edge while that first color is still wet. 3. Watercolour Washes: Now, there is also a flat washes and graded washes that we will talk about too. So I'm going to just switch over to the other sheet. Let me stop this bit of paper already. Let's go through just a couple of quick washes. I'm going to do a graded wash. We're gonna do a flat wash. Pretty simple stuff when you're beginning with watercolors. But it looks simple at times when you are at new to it. But when you actually try it out, It's quite can be tricky. This will be a flat watch and this would be graded. My handwriting shocking. What we want to do with a flat brush. I can't watch very carefully what I'm doing here in terms of the paint as well. Let me just zoom in slightly. You can see better. Flat wash. What I'm gonna do is just pick up one color. I can just pick up the two blue side. Idea of flat wash is to get the same color going all the way through the exact same color. We're talking about. The same tonation. How light and dark the paint is. Essentially, we want to keep it that same darkness we want. We don't want it to be old, light up the top and then go dark or kind of get a bit choppy in-between. I'm just picking up into these paint. The thing with a flat washes is that you really got to prepare in advance. You really got to make sure that you've got enough paint to cover this whole area. Because if you start painting in this large area and then you realize I've run out of paint, you then have to mix this up again and it's unlikely that you're going to get the same mix as you started off first because watercolors just has such a wide range, infinite range of tones that you can mix up. The concentration of water and paint at times, it's very tricky to get this legs heck, mix the second time round. So here we go. I've mixed up a bit of paint here and just sort of estimated roughly. Okay, this should be enough for the bit of a people that I have here. So I'm just going to pick up, just picking up the same paint. This is a large round brush, but I also have mop brushes and mop brushes like this one here. Fantastic because they pick up a lot of water. As you can see, I've already kind of done a couple of more strokes than I have with this one. Okay, these synthetic brushes are great as well. Pick up a lot of water where they didn't get, getting a lot better than they used to be. It's pretty much the same all the way through. And again, I'm just trying to lift off a bit here. Sometimes you get a little bit of paddling pools and stuff like that. That's roughly the same color. Now, graded wash is basically we're going from one color to another. All we're going from light to dark and we're gonna, we're gonna just do light to dark. We'll start off going from dark to light. That might be just easier. I'm just picking up a bit of this paint here, just a neutral tint, just a gray color. And we might go just up the top here. Oops, pretty dark at the top. All right. Then what I do is that I add a bit of water, pickup bit of water and mix it in this this mix, just a bit of water. Then we continue this down. It's still wet in that area. Continue that down, kind of help blend it a bit. Then we're going to add some more water and shift it down again. A little bit more water. Down again. You can see that there's a bit of a transition from light, from dark to light. And at the bottom it's almost just all water. You can still go into it actually do stuff because obviously it's all wet stool. We can go in and even add in a little bit more to try to get it to blend better, especially in these middle sections. And I do this quite often actually in with all my wet and wet paintings. I'd like to just go in there afterwards, change things around, adding a little bit more pigment at times. So while it's still wet, you can still have that ability. You can see there's a kind of a mix between light to dark and you're doing it all in the same wash. You got to make sure you're doing it in the same motion, but it's so that it doesn't dry to an edge here because once it dries to an edge, um, it's very hard to get that transition is a graded wash. We're gonna do another graded wash, something that's a little bit different. Something that usually when you're painting, when you're painting sunsets and what have you. You might have thought off normally with the sunset. You've got a bit of yellow here at the bottom. And then the top will be kind of bluish. Will normally start off at the top and I'll pick up maybe a bit of Boolean blue, drop that in there pretty light. Like that. Just dropping that blue paint. While it's all still wet. I'll pick up a little bit of this orange. Just blend that into the blue. As you can see, we now get a soft edge where the blue and the orange kind of combines together. Alright. Nice little soft edge like that. With, with blues especially I'm also very careful because if you, for example, go in with a bit of a hands, yellow, a very vibrant yellow. You can sometimes get some greens and stuff that's mixed in here. So usually with sunset, I don't use Hansa, Yellow, Hansa yellow medium, which is more of a very vibrant yellow. I use something more like a yellow ocher, something more like this. Just more subdued, bit more subdued down. I might just go in like that. You can do the bottom first so you can go through the top. I tend to do the top. Tend to paint from top to bottom. It's just I find that way is a little easier. And the reason why is because you can then use gravity to your advantage. Okay? Paint just sort of moves downwards by itself. There we go. We've got a little bit of mixing in here. Again, another good opportunity to practice things like clouds. This is already dried, wet and dry. Again, another opportunity to practice some techniques. I think that's almost try, maybe not, It's still slightly damp actually. If I want to put in some let's put in some kind of greyish coloured clouds or something like that here. Back there. Getting the sharp a kind of cloud effects. This bit here is still wet to let me split and dry ones. And then these softer clouds on that edge here as well. This is just basically it's just brush mileage. It's just getting you comfortable making contact with the paper, trying all these different techniques because it helps to build your confidence when you actually go in and you do a painting off when using alcohol to get good at it. Some clouds in. I've done that before. I've done that before, and then you feel more confident to getting these strokes. So a lot of times, There's so many of these little sketches and things. For example, here, I might just start putting in some mountains, just have a bit of a play around, bit of a darker something here at the bottom like that. Then you get to get an understanding of when these edges overlap and what happens at different points. The little tips on our washes. Okay. Let me just go ahead and what we'll do is a little demonstration. We've talked about the witness of the brush, the witness of the paper. We've also gone through a lot of wet and wet and wet and dry practices techniques. What have you? There's a few little techniques that I'll go through just quickly and it's not super, super important that just kind of bonus techniques for you to know about. But again, it's not something that's going to change, that's not going to be game-changing for you. Some people like to work with blooms so that they might pick a bit of water out. I'll pick a bit of water up and just dropping a bit of water here, here. Here. So a bloom occurs when you introduce more water into an area that's already, I'm starting to dry. A lot of times people avoid this. I tend to avoid it because unless I want to, I want to create something like soft flowers or dandelions or something like that. Down the bottom. You get these kind of effects like that. People associate balloons with making a mistake. So that's why it's really important. Again, when you have an area that's already wet to go in there and do what you need to do. Adding what she had, some clouds, that kind of thing. But once it starts to dry, as soon as you stop putting in a bit of wet paint in there, that's when you're going to run into some issues with these kind of blooming sort of fixed in here. You've also got lifting, so you wet the brush a little bit and you just pick up a little bit of water and basically just rub ones here and I'll just grab a tissue as well. What I can do, for example, might go here and just wet this area of the page with the brush and some water. And I'm going to do this kind of scrubbing motion like this scrubbing motion. And then I'll get the tissue and then you can lift. As you can see if this a couple of other techniques I know that people tend to use. The other one that I also use is scratching. So you can use a few different things. You can use a fingernail, you can use an edge of some sort. You can also use a con. I find that it's really, really up to you, but you can sort of do this sort of thing when you scratching off a bit of color to get in, getting a kind of sharp edge, finding something to grab it. I got a card here. We can just do this sort of thing, scratch off a bit of paint like that. I tend to use this when I'm doing landscapes, just trying to get in a bit of texture for grass, that kind of thing. Especially in the foreground, largest sort of strokes like that. As you can see, it's created sort of areas of contrast between light and dark. Also, you'll find, you'll find that this is, you can only do this while the paper is slightly damp. So it's not completely dry, but it's slightly damp. So you got to wait to that sheen has almost disappeared off the paper and then you go in. But if you wait too long, if I tried to scratch up this section here at the bottom, not much is happening. They're not gonna shift around much. Kinda go to get the areas that are still kind of damp. But if you go in there when it's too wet as well as say for example here, lift off a bit of paint, but then the paint will go back in there as well. 4. Painting Figures: This is what I do. I just try to pick one color. Don't worry about colors. Just look at one color. Painting. Pickup, gonna be a nucleotide. So I always start with the head like that. And they hid his kind of try to make the head a bit longer as well. Because actually hit the shape of most people's heads are kind of like an oval shaped, kind of like an egg. Hid. The body. Certainly depends. If we're talking about like an average adult. Generally speaking, the head who fit into the entire body 7.5 to eight times. This is something that you can actually measure out if you want to. You can have a figure here, for example, and be like 12345678 would be the whole thing. 1345678. That's about eight times into the body by 7.5 to eight times in the body. But normally I would start with the head. And the head will form the basis of the rest of the body. Okay, So this is, it could be a person walking towards the walking towards the right-hand side. Lately slip coming out in front leg, coming up and back there. The knee bend the knee like that. Not the best but it said it looks a bit like they're walking, maybe an arm like this, like that. You might think that heads a bit too small, so just enlarge that hit a little bit like that. And this one here, start with the head, put the body on because the head will kind of guide you as to how large the body might be. Bringing that down. Kind of like a rectangular almost shape for the body kind of independence. Well, some people might have smallest shoulders or wearing the just putting a couple of legs, 12. That looks really long, but it's a bit of shadow, perhaps running towards the left side. Position of the heads are important as well. So if you have a head, so this guy could be walking towards the camera or could be walking away from the camera and tip because the body is exceeds kind of like straight on, straight on. Whereas this person you can see it cannot walking towards the side here as well. Towards that right-hand side position of the head, you might have a head that's we sway. Always start with the head. If you want the person to kind of look like they're walking or running to the left. Slump the head a bit to the left. Again. If you want them to walk towards the right and just slightly ahead of it to the right like this, get the body in like that. Could be walking at a slower pace. And then you'll just get into the lake. There was a front one and then the back leg like that. There we have it. We've got a bit of a figure walking towards sometimes they have an arm out there, kind of putting something like a briefcase or something on that side as well. Who knows? It could be holding something here, walking towards that right-hand side. Let's go for someone walking towards the left. Same deal HD slots and lit bit towards that left there in late coming out the front like that. And then this one coming out towards the back of their arm or something there and just slight walk to that left the more kind of slanted the body. For example, if I put the head like this and then I have the body coming off from these kind of angle like that. It's thought to kind of make it look like this person's running, running really quickly and that's when you can sort of put an arm out like that. Running. Maybe they're running to the train station or something like that. They're gonna be late. But mostly you find that you get people in scenes in these in your paintings. Like this. Walking or just maybe talking to each other. Like this person could be standing on the side when you're doing people that had just standing sideways, you just get the sidewalk profile like that. And then you drink, joined the legs together like this. I'll just do like one line there for the legs. And then I'll do a bit of a shadow running towards that left-hand side. Sometimes people might have their arms out talking stuff like that. That kind of thing. Indicate this is another one that I was doing. Just someone maybe just standing next to them like that. So practice, practice, practice, practice, and just keep I'd like to do these. I just go in there and I'll just put a blob in here, here, here, here. There's a few heads in different directions and then I will just pick up the paint and just have a play around and add in some legs. Just standing like that. This one could be. Yeah, they weren't just one leg folded. This one here could be a bit of emotion towards the left-hand side. This one here. Maybe the larger one leg forward, one leg towards the back, like that. Okay. He's another one. Maybe this person could just be standing on the side kind of thing. Groups overlap with that other figure. Here looks like maybe looking at another thing. These two I get two people talking. You slap the head slightly towards each other like that. In that kind of indicates that they may be in some kind of communication, some dialogue, whatever. So something like this. Just huddled together, having a secret meeting, links and joined together like that. Maybe here there might be just discussing something. Often people stand to be closer, to be closer and they bring them together like this. Hearing conversations. So that way you can imply a bit of a story to try to change it random. But if you'd have I reference picture that's up lots of people in it. The best thing about those reference pictures, because often people get intimidated when they see reference picture was so much in it. But you have to remember that just because it's in there, it doesn't mean you have to include it. Can choose whether you want to put in that figure or not, or you want to change it up and make it more simpler. Most often you need to make things a bit more simpler and watercolors because there's so much in there. If you want to paint things more efficiently, I find them certainly trying to reduce down that detail makes a big difference. Okay, so try that little, try this little. The little technique. You look at people in different poses but maybe someone picking something up. Let me look. Maybe sometimes you have people that might be just trying to think. Clea could just be like into a river or something, picking something up off the ground. It's not the best one. The best one, but there's a few different ones. I mean, sometimes you've got people sitting on the beach and they might just be like this. Let me have a look. Lying on the beach or something, resting at the back and then the legs coming out there in front. Let's try another one. Someone lying down. Practicing these little shapes, little figures. Finding a way to think. How can I get this figure in the most simple way? Sometimes the knee is bent up like that as well. When I don't have a reference for this, I actually use references a lot. I don't draw a whole lot from my head. Some people are better than others at this, but I often use reference pictures to try to get the poses and stuff like that of people. But as time goes by, you start to not to consolidate this knowledge and you can just put together figures, nowhere until a bit of a story. Another thing you can do like little groups of people as well. You can just put a bunch of heads together like this. And then you can just draw the bodies in, kind of like touching each other like that way. It can mean that the taller person here in the back like that. And you just put in the legs and the body, the bodies of the people just kind of joined together like that. You can see that they look more like a crowd of people. It could be looking at credit people walking through the city of something like that. You go to booting here. Booting here on the side, like that. Quick little scene already to stop putting some of that together like that. Crowd of people walking through, start with the hits, stopped with the heads. The brush I'm using as well, It's like a smaller round brush. I always use small round brushes when I'm doing figures that makes things a lot easier to get in detail rather than using. For example, I don't know what, what else would be like. This is too big. This is in which you call it a mop brush. I think it's still possible, but again, it's gonna be a thought as to get that controlling. It's tricky. Always use a brush that is suitable for the size of that paper that you're using and for the stiffness of the brush. Usually a stipple brush is going to allow you to get more details in another example. No way I'm going to use that on the US that maybe for larger washes. Unless I'm painting on an enormous bit of paper off, there's no use for that kind of brush. You use about maybe three or four brushes. And most of my paintings, I hope that helped. Helped you in terms of figures, basic figures. Okay, I'm try do the same exercise and find some reference pictures online. Just go to, just go online and Google and just search for people walking around and try to, try to get in the silhouette of those people. Quite simple but more complex for you because I'm actually coloring the clothes, putting bits of detail. You can go in and pick up a bit of gouache and put in something like this could be a business Showed or something like that. Stop put on a bit of hair. Even for some of these people. There's a lot of, there's a lot that you can add on here. Thought. Giving these Is given them a bit more of a story. This person could be a business person I didn't know with like a jacket on or something like that. There may be some of the business pants, whatever, just walking through a blazer or something like a jacket could be holding a suitcase here. I can just indicate that more and I don't know what's there. It's got two suitcases. 5. Watercolour Techniques: I'm going to talk a bit about techniques. Techniques are basically the building blocks of your painting, so it's really important to practice them. Every mark made by your brush adds to the overall picture so bit by bit. And it's not at not often apparent until the end. So does anyone know how to make was on your omega k equals something like that? Or even like, probably a better example, is there anyone out of flip a pancake? I'm no good at it myself. But through practice, if you keep doing that repetitive motion eventually you can do it without thinking. And that's exactly the same thing when we're talking about watercolor techniques. For those of you who might play tennis and a little bit at tennis as well. People just practice this swings constantly and constantly to get that sweet spot where they're not even thinking it becomes unconscious. And that's the idea with watercolor painting techniques, just making sure you're practicing enough with those brushstrokes. A lot of people don't do that enough. We often wade into that last moment when we actually have to paint something that we pick up that brush and then we're like, okay, I've got to use this brushstroke, but we don't have the confidence to actually add that brushstroke in because we haven't practiced enough of those techniques. We don't know what's gonna happen. How does the brush needs to be, how much paint that we have to use, that kind of thing. So what I'm gonna do today is I'm gonna talk to you guys and show you a few different techniques and practice these before we go through and do the project at the end so that we'd be more comfortable. We'll do a few sketches as well. Now. It's not magic, of course, it takes years to get a really good swinging in in tennis, or I don't know how long it takes to flip a pancake. Learned how to do that. But certainly if after a few weeks, if you practice some of these techniques enough, you're going to have predictable results. I only just use one, one water container. So some people like to use two. And the reason why is because they use one for cleaning the brush and the other one for actually mixing colors. Because if it takes a little bit more experience to sort of mix the colors, I think in the beginning and I think you've got to probably good, just use one to clean that brush because sometimes when you're learning, you might pick up a bit too much color, which is something I did often in the beginning on pickup, a big glob of color. And obviously we mix that into your, into your water. It's just going to turn it pull the same color and mixing with the other colors so the witness of your paper, it's really, really important to keep that in mind. We're talking about the brush, how wet your brushes, the mixture of paint has pretty big implications on your painting. Okay, so we'll go through some of those, those bits and pieces in a moment. Let's, let's do, let's do some little exercises. I'm just going to use a number ten round brush. I hope you guys can see it. Okay. You will also be able to see my palette here on the side of zoomed out a little bit so that you can see me kind of mixing, mixing around. But there's basically, there's two main watercolor techniques that I want you to get. Get a hang up. It's basically just Whitman, Whitman, Whitman dry. If you've got a pencil, pencil off a moment ago. Usually I just draw a little square kind of thing like that. Just a little square. We can go wet and dry. Wet and wet. Wet and dry. What I'm gonna do here is I'm going to wet this page, this little bit of this little square down. Let's put some water in here. Yeah. Pick up a brush. A, you know, a larger size brush doesn't have to be smaller, much detail at all. It's just, we're just practicing brushstrokes. I'm picking up some water here on the side and just see if I can shift the container a bit closer as well. It's not true. It's actually not too important for you to see what's going on in there. It's more just mainly the color mixing. Be important. So what that bit of paper, for example, say we want to get in some clouds. We want to get in some clouds are just picking up a bit of maybe a bit of blue. Let's put in a bit of neutral tint in there. Basically gray and we can just drop it in like that. Okay. You can see the paper, the paint moves around, it doesn't stay in one spot. That's one of the essential watercolor techniques. Just a bit of Witton wit, like that. I tend to let the drop in bits and pieces while it's wet, I'll pick up a bit of blue, add that in, in some areas. Another thing you can do is have like another. For example, even try another one. We wet the paper. You just let it, basically you just let it dry About halfway. Why might put less water, for example, maybe just like keep it almost just slightly damp. How much water you have on the brush as well. That makes a difference. If you really soak that brush, stick it onto the paper. Obviously you just gonna get more water on the paper. But if you pick up a bit of water onto the brush and then dab it on TO tau or you've got some tissue or something like that debit onto a bit of tissue. Then you go in. What's going to happen is that you're just going to have less water. So even here, this is already slightly, slightly drier than that section here in this corner. It can see it's still very wet in the corners. And the longer you wait between this stage where it's where the water is wet into it's completely dry. The more control you get over your wet and wet techniques. So let's just try again. I'm using just one column, just using some of these neutral tint. Use any dark color. Can even use a light color, but I think it's for you guys just to be easiest, see if I can demonstrate this way. I drop in a bit of darker color. What's something you notice here? Well, basically, it's still moving around, but it's not going all over the place like in that one there. In some places it's actually almost dry it off like in this corner here. It's almost dry it off. You get a bit of control here. This is kind of like the in-between stage is not completely wet, it's just slightly damp. You can try. And I really recommend you to just try different stages. I mean, I might go for example, I'll do four of these, okay, and I'll just wet the page, this area of the page at the same time. Okay, and I'll do this 1 first, wait a bit through this 1 first wait a bit to this 1 first, wait a bit, and then do this last 1 first. And soon enough, it sounds a bit funny, but soon enough you get an understanding of what the paper looks like because the paper has a kind of a sheen to it. If you look at it from an angle, you can actually tell roughly how wet it is. And if there's more of a sheen on the basically the more uncontrolled effects you're going to get when you're doing large soft clouds. If you're doing maybe large area of water with some some soft wave and it large soft waves. This is a little bit better. This one here, yes, so go, you can still do some clouds and things. But for this stage, I use this for mountains like distant mountains in the rot in the back of the scene where you want a bit of a furry edge, a bit of a soft edge. This one here in the top right-hand corner. Wet and dry. Again, wet and dry is just as it sounds, we're using a bit of watercolor and the paper is already dry. You can even wait for this to dry and then add in some mountains over the top and something like that. I'm not going to wait for that, But basically, I might pick up a bit of blue here. Look just a bit of blue. And we can put in perhaps just some announcing something here in the background like that. The difference is you get sharp edges. Here on these two, there's basically no sharp edges. The boundary where the paint meets the paper, it just stops right there. And so when you're painting things that have softer sort of edges, if we're thinking about, for example, clouds, we're thinking about water even. I can just do a little example of water here. Oops. Middle example of water. So we'll just whip this section like that. Then I might drop in a bit of blue here. Oops, bit of water like that. You know the best example, but we want to just indicate some soft and gentle waves and stuff in there. It may it does make it look a lot more convincing and softer and areas kind of blend together. Whereas here from doing these mountain ranges or what have you. And I want them to just look sharp against the sky. There we go. You can do a combination type thing as well. Say, I pick up a smaller brush, and I do this quite often. I often pushed the limits as to what I can get away with. When things are still wet. It can be a little bit dangerous at times because you're putting in paint and you never knowing exactly what's going to happen. Again, if you practice this a few times, you get to see, look at the paper from, from an angle and you see how shiny the papers. And if you wait enough, the Sean goes down and you can let me steal a little bit of deafness in there, like here. But I can just go in and I can do something like adding some of these acts of a tree or something like that. Some branches. I could put it in a little person here or something standing up, put it in another person here, that kind of thing. What else could we do? Even if they touch the wet bit here, it doesn't actually move around all that much. Okay? You can sort of get away with bits and pieces like that. So practice, combine wet and dry and wet and wet. Some of the more beautiful paintings. And the ones that have turned out well for me are ones that I think it blurs the boundaries between sharp and soft. Because when it dries off, actually looks more interesting. Watercolors has to begin to start off and struggle with getting the painting to have some depth in it and just some interesting textures. And I think this is a good way, kind of trying to blend them together in ways. But again, you don't want to start doing any sharp shapes when the paper is completely wit. It's kinda like, I don't know if I wet this area here, width this area here completely. Then I thought, hey, I'm gonna get some mountains in the background. And then I'll jump right in here. That's still going to work. Okay, but if the paper is really wet, I drop it in there. It can spread to quickly. Watercolors has its own timing, It's got its own clock. And you need to know when to go in there winds the right time. The only way to figure this out is through practicing the different techniques, basically these wet and wet techniques for different types of paper witness. So you can see we've done a few little exercises here. The witness of the brush is also very important, determines the sharpness of the mock. How much the paint spreads, journey the wet to the brush, the more free and unpredictable. If, for example, I use this brush here, let me, let me find one. The round brush. This is a number eight round brush. The brush is pretty wet. I just had to pick up some paint, just a bit of random Pangaea. And I'm going to drop that in here. As you can see, there's just a lot of water on there. What happens is that the paint tends to just move around. It's kind of tricky to control. That's when you have a lot of water, it's almost like a fully saturated brush. I'm only using this amount of water on a brush normally when I'm painting large areas, painting large areas. Now, if you put less water in the brush, say let's pick up, There's two ways you can do it. You can pick up this paint here. This is a big puddle, enormous puddle here. And you'd do drop that in. You're gonna get that same effect. But if you pick that puddle up with your brush and just dry your brush on a towel, on a paper towel or whatever. We have now a bit more control. The water is more evenly distributed. It's a little bit more sharper, marks, more controlled. You can see you don't get any of these really big bits of areas. Now what happens sometimes you might make mistake. You might go in there and you might think, okay, that's about the right witnesses, the brush and drop that in there. Drop that in there and then you're thinking on hold. But all this water in here, miss this water in it. Little thing that I do and I do this all the time. Don't panic. Just get your brush, dry the brush completely. Bit of tau. As you can see, the brush is pretty dry now and you can just touch it on the page and pick up, dry the brush again on the towel. Touch the brush until the page lift up. And there you go. So often these little emergencies can be quite easily big if you go in there at the right time. So it's just having the confidence to know when to go in there. If you wait too long, it may dry and it may be too late to pick it up. If you ever get to a point where you've got too much paint in there? And it just doesn't look right, I think to yourself, okay. I've still got a chance to change things up while it's wet. It can lift off a bit of paint like that. There's also so much control that you can have with these techniques as well. Because you might pick it off and it might leave a little bit of lighter area up at the top as well. With experienced with more practice, you get better at lifting while still maintaining consistency through it. But certainly in the beginning and even now when I paint, It's never a 100% perfect. I'll pick something up or try to change something in. It will just come out the way that I wanted to. And that's watercolors for you. Watercolors is suited to quite a suppose like an expressive, loose sort of manner of painting. Don't try to get it right, summed all the time, a 100% right and get it almost like it's good enough. And you want to try to correct things. If you're going to correct things, try to do that correction with as few brushstrokes as possible. I mean, what you don't want to do is start going on now I've got to do this and then lift that off and thinking of what to do this. And then I'm going to add some more paint in here. And then the more you go in there, the more it starts turning a bit muddy. Bit about errors and stuff like that. Let's talk. I'm going to go through a bit of a few more demonstrations again just to talk about landscapes and combine all these techniques together on another page. 6. Practice Landscape: Uf, let's start off by doing a beat of the sky first. But firstly, what I want to do is wet the entire sheet of paper. Larger brush, because it's a larger area. Just going through this entire area. All the way through like that. The edges here. Fantastic. So wet that entire sheet of paper. Now we're going to go through and we're going to just add in a little bit of sky wash, so cerulean blue and just drop that in at the top like that. This is just a wet and wet, again, just a bit of cerulean blue here. You can also use any other blue you might have like an ultramarine blue or something like that of cerulean blue. Keep it pretty light. A Witton width against. So we're kind of creating a bit of a flat wash up the top there maybe with some some bits of dark areas in some areas. So picking up a bit of this darker paint, dropping it in like that. We've got some clouds. Really matter. I'm using the flat brush the whole time, but you can use any brush. You can use a round brush with a flat brush, round brushes that just going to create a shape that's rounder. So this could be adopted Cloud for example, like that. Docker Cloud running across a bit of darkness in here. Please. Cloud shapes. Just a bit of this wet steel with a paper's still wet. We're just practicing these Witton wet techniques. Now this bottom bit here. I want to add in a little bit warm and paint. Let's pick up Let's go ahead and pick up a bit of yellow ocher and a little bit of burnt sienna, yellow ocher. Or if you didn't have burnt sienna, just pick up a bit of brown on your palette. What I'm doing, I'm just going to just drop in a bit of this paint here, a bit of warm up paint down the base like that. All right. Good. All this is really wet and wet. At the moment. We've got the sky, we've got a bit of the land here, some clouds and what have you. Another thing you can do with clouds, you can also grab a tissue and just lift off in areas to getting these little cloud shapes like that as well. Can it needs a little bit. So a lot of sections in the sky. I don't tend to use tissues too often. All right. All right. So what we can do is pick up a bit of darker paint. I'm just picking up a bit of neutral tint and a bit of blue. And I'd say the consistency, you just want to make that makes sure that the consistency, there's less water in this mix and there isn't a paper, you're using a thicker mix of paint. We can just drop that in here in the back. And this will create a bit of a kind of distant mountain. The link distant mountains. Sometimes you get a bit of runoff. Here again, I can just pick that up with the tissue. That up with the tissue here is soft enough at the base a bit. So we have really soft distant mountains. And at the moment this is all still wet, so we'll just wait and width. I tried to paint as much as I can. Wet into wet and it makes it a lot easier to paint. And you can get, you can cover large amount of area. But not only that, it creates this beautiful softness and atmospheric feel. Like a lot of the, the softness and the kind of subtlety of watercolors comes from wet and wet techniques. And it's something that I think a lot of beginners, especially at a A worried to play around with because of the lack of control. At times you feel that there is a lack of control, but in fact, you can get a good sense of control over what's going to happen by practicing all these techniques, by making sure that you have gone through and basically try it out. Adding these shapes and bits and pieces for different witness, different waiting for the paper to dry for a little bit and just seeing what happens, that kind of thing. Okay, so you get a bit more of an understanding and you might think, okay, maybe I want to make those mountains a little darker so you can still go in, still, it's still pretty width there in the background. You can go ahead and add maybe another layer of distant mountains here. I'm going to go grab a hairdryer. Now, this is all dried and as you can see, the mountains because we've done all of them went into when it's pushed them off into the distance. This could be, who knows what this could be. It could be some wheat or something like that. Here. Now, second step, which is going to put in some little details, I'm putting in a tree. Again, this area of the painting is completely dry. I can pick up some neutral tint bit of brown. And I might think, hey, let's put in a tree here or something. Look at that. It's shop, shop sort of like that. And we can just draw a bit of a tree. I'm just making this up with these branches. He kinda just make sure that you scale them to splinter off into different directions like that. I've drawn, I've painted trees for a long time, so I kind of get a bit more confident with it. Try to do in one go like this. That's a tree. That's okay, Margaret loop. I'll still go through in the other sessions. The second session, third, fourth. I'll go through in those sessions some other techniques as well. This stuff here is more, is more basic, but it's really just getting you guys back to basics. Because I think a lot of the time, if you get these basics down packed and you practice them enough, the rest of it becomes easy. Maybe it's because people often don't. They leave all the practicing all the techniques all to the last minute. And often you'll learn a lot by doing these little sketches. Laying around these little trees and stuff often, a lot of these trees and things that I've done, they just look better in the actual sketches that they do in a full-on painting. There is a tree on the slide looking at a docket is it's dot because it's quite close compared to these mountains. Say we want to put in some lots of trees all the way in the distance. I'm going to use a thinner wash of this paint, put some more water in like that. And I'll put in a bit here. This could be another tree of something there and the distance, because it's a lot to mix in the background, it's going to push that tree back. Also, trees in the distance are going to look a little lighter. Sorry, not a literal, lots about a little less detailed. This is how you imply a little bit of depth in your painting of a tree. They're skipping another one and then you go smaller ones here. Can't CO2 much there in the distance. And we're going to look, I'm not going to fiddle around too much with those. More just a quick demonstration. You might have a rock or something like that. He will have a logic kind of rock here on the ground or something like that. He annexed to the trees like that. That could be grass growing. Just a little little marks on the ground like that. Shadow is important. Yes, The choosing a light source, really crucial. So for example, we might imagine light source coming from that right-hand side. And this is all just again, mainly just practicing our wet and dry and wet and wet techniques together in this scene. This shadow I'm going to do wit in dry. There we go. Maybe just a bit of a shadow running towards that left-hand side like that. With the shadows and things you've got to you've got to be pretty deliberate with them. Do it once and then just leave it. Sometimes you get shadows that coming from around the corner and stuff for objects that are in the background. Just out of the frame. I mean, like that. You can sort of play around a bit with the branches. The trees. Might even put in a figure like a person here as well. Often a distance links. Pretty simple. Just practicing, practicing some of these wet in wet and dry techniques. Using often, especially with the bits and pieces in the front. We're using really dark colors. Bring, bring it forward. If you do the figures maybe a bit too small. We can always while it's still wet, while the paint is still wet, you can still change things around. Someone just walking through. What could this be? Maybe like a house or something in the distance here. House there, maybe there's another house here. Something. A lot of options really. Practice those brushstrokes. Practice them in as you become more confident with what's going to happen when you put that brush to the paper. You're going to be more able to predict the results that come out. That's a really just a quick example, guys. I want to talk a bit about my process now. We'll go through a couple more little demonstrations. So we're doing lots of, lots and lots of little paintings today. But we're gonna learn a lot along the way. So that when we start doing a project at the end, you're going to be prepared and you're gonna know my thought process, why I'm using wet-in-wet here or basically some of the wet and dry techniques getting in some figures, some darker figures, that kind of thing. So you can really practice some of these bits and pieces until we attempt them. Big one at the end. 7. Techniques Summary: This is basically a quick crash course that we've gone through talking about techniques. Took my brush control benefit theory that's relevant to what we're gonna be painting and doing. A bit of perspective, bit of composition, talked a bit about mindset as well. Think about, think about basically trying to get through to the end of each painting. Understanding that you still learning and when you're learning you're gonna make mistakes. But the people that improve a ones who will just keep going, we'll just try and enjoy the process along the way. Finally, positives along the way. A lot of the time you look at your painting after you've done and you'll think quite like that. But if you put it away and look at it the next day, you might like it. I've found that happens a few times. In the next part two, part two, we're gonna be going through my process. I'm gonna show you just the process that I follow with all my paintings. And we're gonna go through a couple of quick exercises and at the end we'll finish it off with a painting of a beach landscape is second part is the most important because we're going to go through a couple of exercises, really quick sketches, so that you can basically turn any reference photo into a painting. 8. Understanding Perspective: Especially in landscape painting. And the reason why is because we want to imply three-dimensional space that the other day, I mean, you can see I've got all these sketches that I add in this, shown in this book. Kinds of things in here. Just sketching. I did this for a session the other day. But for example, one of the big things, and I'll just show you for our course. Probably the most important thing for you to know. It's just some one-point perspective. We'll talk a bit about perspective, a bit about composition. Where to place objects as well. Let's go ahead. I'm just going to show you a quick little thing here. This here, perspective. The horizon line. The horizon line is basically the line that separates in a landscape painting the sky and the ground. So it's often and often call it as well the vet nine. And then we have a vanishing points. So kind of a point where everything just disappears here. It's a point on the horizon line like that. Now you can have horizon line that's high up. We can have it further down. This one's kind of in the middle here. For example, I might have a horizon line that is further up like this. Usually with the horizon line that's further up. It's basically basically looks like you're standing on a higher vantage point. You're kind of looking, looking down onto the scene until a whole bunch of people walking around. It could be something like that. Yeah. People just walking off to this distance, that kind of thing. That's the horizon line. I mean, you could have good building here or something. Let me look. Maybe like a building here. Building here that you have like a bird's eye view of people when you put the horizon line further up and the heads of the figures below that horizon line as well. I tend to use the horizon line in the middle like that. And if you don't want to, I guess if you want to indicate a flat plane and that you're looking straight into the scene. You're sort of at the same height of the figures. What you want to do is start putting the people in with the heads on the horizon line. Here's one, like that. There's one person here. And as we go into the distance equals you got to remember, people get smaller. Objects, people, it could be like a rock here or something. It could be a car. I didn't know what I mean what you'd be doing. Walking in the middle of the road like this, but it'd be a car here. Come here, maybe there's a logic high here. I think that logic. But notice the heads of the people all at the same point on the horizon line, then that's giving the impression that we're all, you're around the same height of these people and it's a flat plane plane. This could be, I don't know, somewhere in the desert or, or just could be some mountains here in the background, for example. It doesn't matter. Just making this obvious, we go, All right. This is the type of perspective that we're gonna be using in most of the paintings. I don't think I'll do too many of these other ones. I do some of these as well, but most of them are kind of like this, where I keep the heads of the figures all on the horizon line. It's more true to life like when you walk around and you look at a scene and when you might be on holidays or you might be be out with your friends just on the weekend or something like that. And you will actually find this sort of perspective to be the one that most, most commonly used because it's more relatable. Of course, if you've got a child, kids who are gonna be smaller, so their heads aren't going to be all the way up here on the horizon on their heads are gonna be somewhere here a little bit further down. And you just kind of like waist height as suppose on the unearned adult. So you kind of just gauge of figures. Sometimes of course, some people are going to be a bit taller, like that. Some people are gonna be a bit shorter, maybe like here, even as long as you don't do someone, for example, gigantic up. Because you have to keep things consistent. Some of the heads above and slightly below the horizon line is fine. When things start looking funny is when people, again. Make the heads too tall. So I might have this person's head up all the way up here or someone's head up the bag too high or too small. So they look too small or too large. So keep the heads over a bit. Quick little lesson, quick little lesson. Drawing is so important to the foundation of your painting. And if you can practice a few of these, you can really, really improve your painting and your composition skills. The other type of perspective that I don't really use all that much is basically a very low, low horizon line. That's the only time I might use this, is when I want to indicate like a like a lot. What you call it a, the sky, maybe get some stars in or maybe some. Just emphasis on the sky composition wise, where you place the horizon line also indicates where you want the viewer to focus. This is more balanced because you've got a bit of sky, you've got a bit of land. Figures are kind of all in the same place in the middle of the scene, as you can see here, because the horizon line is quite high, the focus is going to be here on the foreground because that's where most of the pennies, you at least a little bit of a smoother up here for this sky. Here we have tiny bit of, of ground, most of its sky. You've got to think to yourself, when you pick a photograph, where you pick a scene, when you want to place the horizon line, What's what's the scene that you want to portray? I mean, Jonah Jonah draw attention to certain parts or you just want something that's a bit more relatable like this scene over here. Sometimes as well, you can indicate that when you have very low horizon line that you're on like on a low advantage point could be an aunt or a child or something like someone like they just sort of looking up and there's people walking around it. These towering buildings here. Let's have a look here. It could be someone there. So you're kind of looking up. Looking up because they hints of the figures are above the horizon line. You can see that line here. Whereas here the heads are below the horizon line. You're looking down from a high vantage point here. You kind of looking up, you can really exaggerate it and you can kind of make that horizon line really, really high or really low. Again, it's all compositional thing. He has little one here. Could have people just all the way up here. It can be a buildings and stuff here in the distance. Sometimes you get, maybe have like a head here. It's almost have a play around with that. Can the horizon line B in the middle. That's kind of like the example here, where I've placed that horizon line right in the center. I tend to use this sort of structure for most of my paintings. Or I might put the horizon line just slightly blue and maybe at the, the 1 third mark apps here. But normally I use this sort of composition because when you're looking out into the world, this is normally what we see. People around the same height, similar height to ask with their heads around the horizon line. You can see a bit of the sky, a bit of the ground. If you were a small child and you're looking out into the world, you're looking out into the world from this kind of perspective, everything looks gigantic to you. For an adult. For an adult that's looking at a composition like this, this is going to make us feel a certain way. So if you want to create a scene where you make everything filled large, intimidating, maybe like grand, I'm around you. This type of composition can bring out that kind of feeling. Whereas if you want something that's a little bit more like a little bit more close to what we're used to, something like something like that. So I tend to I tend to go from about a third from the bottom of the page, a third to half. But sometimes when you go half as well, it can look too perfect. So you just got to be careful with that. I mean, I tend to just wave there between just above, above half what it usually just slightly below half. But these again, they're just they're just guidelines. Just a little bit of theory. I've seen a lot of amazing paintings out there that break all the rules. But I think denoted to break the rules, you need to also learn when they're most commonly used and what works in the traditional sense. So Kevin, you can go ahead and experiment out. That's one that I did. Demonstration once. Just a quick one. And you can see that horizon line is like, Yeah, I'd say it's like just about maybe a third or just slightly more than a third. The other day that's about halfway. Halfway point or just below halfway. Sometimes I just like to emphasize more sky in there. So we'll do, here's an example of a very low horizon line. Pretty low horizon line. But because we have the figures heads on the same point, roughly the same point on the horizon line, the ground appears flat. You can have a horizon line that's low and you're still feeling like you in a flat plane as long as you've got the heads placed on that, it around that point on the horizon line. Right about here. Got the heads really high. Again, you're going to make it look like you're a smaller or do change things around here as well. I mean, the horizon line is actually less, slightly less than a third, even great. Covered a bit of perspective. 9. Choosing a Reference Photo: Often you don't get people talking about how to choose a reference photo. How did they decide on something that's suitable because he choosing a reference photo is so important. You can have reference photos that I just have too much light in them, or they have, they're just too dark. I think in watercolors in general and composition, It's good to have a good combination of light and dark tones to keep things interesting, like almost like the full range of tones. There are some paintings that do so well with a limited range, but for beginners, it's very tricky for you to distinguish between subtle changes in tones. And so I tried to make things simple as possible, and we pick the lightest tones, we paint the lightest tones, we paint the darkest ones, and then we add a few little finishing touches to bring it altogether. But these first three steps, we were choosing a reference, identifying light and dark areas, and selecting the composition. The thinking process is so important because before you even start painting, if you've got a good plan of what you're going to do, it's more likely it's going to turn out well. 10. Watercolour: Building Confidence: Rome wasn't built in a day as they always say. It's, it's, it takes a really long time to become confident with your skills in watercolor. And it starts with these basic things and what we were practicing before, some of these basic techniques here. And a lot of people don't practice them enough. If you've got wet and wet, wet and dry. Just being able to handle mistakes as well. Like I said, sometimes you might have too much water here and just grab that brush, pick up that water. That's okay. Always aim to finish a painting. You learn a lot more from actually making mistakes and ending up with the paint doesn't look quite right, because that's something that you can look at it and think to yourself, hey, next time, I'll focus a bit more maybe on that tree. I was a bit sloppy there with that tree. So next time I can focus a bit more than that, but I liked this tree. Always find something good that you've done well, and there's always something you've done. We'll, even if you just finish the painting, That's a huge achievement in itself. Being persistent practicing Jews during the weeks really important to set aside a few days a week. And I say Monday, Wednesday, Friday, I'll do a little sketch, even if it's just something like that, just one little thing like that, that might take you five minutes. It says if sometimes when you're out of practice, you might, for example, I don't know. I played badminton and sometimes if I don't play for a few months, I'll get back into it and I kind of forgotten some of the things and you're a bit rusty and it takes a while to get back into the swing of things. So if you keep consistent, it puts you in a better position each time you want to paint. So you're not having to backtrack and then think so, I know a lot of you guys, you might have neurons got obligations and stuff like that in life, but I'm sure that you can spend 15 minutes, five to 15 minutes to do a little sketch. I mean, even something like this. That's a little sketch that I did, a five-minute sketch I did before my last demonstration. Let's just swing here. This is like a little, little sketch as well here. That right-hand side that took maybe ten minutes. Okay. 11. Project: Beach Scene: Let's have a look here. We've got this scene, this beach scene up in the corner. Up there as you can see, selecting a suitable seen or reference photo. The thing with this reference photo is we have got areas of light in the water, in the sand, the sky, and then got areas of darkness as well. So we've gotten good contrast here. It's kind of mapping really good for a quick painting or just a general watercolor subject. We've had some figures here in the distance, a bit of leeway to maybe add in some more here. But it's not too dark. There's not it's not overly exposed through the whole scene. So I think this is a good a good picture. It's not too zoomed in. So if we zoom in and it's just on the mountain in this era of the headland, for example, we've got a nice sweeping sort of seen where we can get in the context of location practice a few figures and what have you. So sometimes if you choose a subject that's too overly, too simple, you really have to make sure that you get into the details of debt subject because it's just so apparent. But if you're painting like, I don't know what's an example, maybe like a book. If you've got a book on your desk and you're just painting that book. It's right in the center of the scene. And you have to get a little bit more detail in there tip to make sure it represents the shape. Whereas something like this. Holistically, if we get the colors in, in the right spot, long as it's the lights and darks are in the right areas, you're going to be fine. Identifying the light and dark areas. Now this is a cool little thing I picked up over time that I learned. If you squint at the reference photo, sounds a bit funny, but it's just great that the reference photo you can actually reduce down. It starts to become easier to identify the light and dark areas. So really if we make this simple as possible, we've got the dark areas of these mountains are these headlands here and the light areas which is basically just the sky and in the grant, the sand and the water there. I'm thinking next step, looking at the compositional design elements. So don't want to change things around. Well, I'm thinking these figures, they're a little bit small and often the distance, I think. Okay, But I mean large them a little bit. For our painting, I might bring them a bit closer. What else could I put in? Maybe I could put in a dog or something that could be walking a dog. Apart from that, I'm quite happy with it. I might think, oh, you know, the sky looks a bit. It all maybe I can add in some clouds already thinking what I'm gonna do before I put that brush to paper. Those are some things I'm thinking already doing camera, not really planning out saying that it has to be exactly that way, but being a bit creative union to be using a bit of artistic license and few things I think as well to keep in mind rule of birds using odd numbers subjects as well. Something that they talk about in theory subplot in the two figures here in the reference, you can see they're actually really far back. You can't even see them. You don't need to worry about. Just look at the general scene. Look at where the sky meets the ground. So it's somewhere here and here. I was talking about the rule, the rule of thirds before. So basically I draw two lines coming across here, two lines here, separating the scene into these like 1 third components. So there's three parts here, three parts here where the lines interact. So these little edges here, these little corners here, That's where I like to put areas of interest. That's why I placed a couple of figures here. Also, you've got this kind of mountain climbing a mountain range, this headland, you'd have headland here, right? Then, something like that. And then we have a bit that just pops out, pokes out like that. I've got a bit of a section up here. We've got a bit here, a bit of interest there, the figures here intersecting with these little edges. Again, this is really just theory and we don't have to follow this exactly. This is just some art theory. Photographers follow this rule as well. When I go out and I take photos. This is something I really keep in mind. But it's not set in stone. As you can see. I'm just shading the rock. The rock is DACA. The rock is dark and maybe the water is slightly darker as well, but it's not not too obvious. Here's a bit of water coming in. Just a bit of land like that. Yeah, this is the sand that we have sky, we have the water, we have a bit of the sand, and we've got the figures carrying large the figures. These are some things that I've already in terms of the figures, that's probably what I've been main thing that I've changed. I've just simplified this bit of headland in the back as well. Okay, I might think to myself, Hey, I want to get some clouds or something in the sky, something, something a bit more interesting because I feel that it's missing something up there. First things first, I always just like to get in the simple stuff, the lights. Okay, So following that process, like I said, we've chosen the suitable seen, we've identified the light and the dark areas. So this is the dark areas, these mountain in the back maybe a bit of the bit of the figures. The water is kind of like a mid tone to a very, very light tone here. So, but mainly if we simplify it, really simplify things is just the darkness in the rocks and everything else, kind of light except for figures. We've chosen some compositional elements that we want to change with change to figures and made the figures larger. Emphasize make this rock a bit bigger. 1 third section there. Okay, so I've done that. I've changed things around. Now. We've got the sketch, Fantastic. Well we're going to paint the light. So let's put in a bit of paint at the top here. Not paint, sorry, just a bit of water at the top like this. Water just went down the top section like this. Now I'm going to pick up a little bit of it's kind of like a grayish color in the sky, isn't it? No, I don't want I don't want to have a bit of gray and they're dry. I'm just going to pick up a bit of cerulean, but dull it down a bit, dial it down a bit so that it's not too bright. There we go and just dropping in a bit of that cerulean blue into the sky. Going to be this cerulean around those rocks a little bit. And, um, I think to myself, okay. It looks right, but let's put in, let's, how about we put in some clouds? Remember, if we don't want the clouds to move around too much in terms of in terms of just spreading all over the place. Leave it for a bit to dry and then where the clouds. But if you really wanted to be clouds running through this entire scene, you can actually go down and do like a really big shape. Now, I'm picking up a bit of dark paint. I'm going to be going with just a bit of this same paint leftover. It's kind of like grayish paint, maybe bit of blue in there. Bluish gray paint. Maybe like I got some purple here. I love purple. What you want to do is keep your brush. You picking up this paint, and you keeping your brush is fairly dry. If it's two way if you brushes to wit, debit off on the, on your towel. And then going, what you don't want to do here is start and going in with a whole lot of paint is gonna blue cloud. You know, them on here. Near the horizon line, the clouds get a little smaller, smaller and lighter, that kind of thing. But up at the top, we can go into a bit more like that. You don't even have to put in clouds. If you don't want, you guys. Just something just to play around with, to again, practice, practice your techniques. Let's get in some of the water as well. I'm gonna pick up a kind of a turquoise color. You can just use any blue that you want. I just have some turquoise. And you got to remember the water here as well. It's going to be darker than the sky. If you look at the water at the back, right here where it meets the sky, it a sharp edge. The water is actually kind of like a mid-tone with some lighter bits in there as well. I'm going to try to leave in a bit of that whites in there as well. So you kind of just around a bit of that white. And if you don't get it only and that's fine. You can also just get some use some gouache later. I'm just trying to simplify this. Down. There we go and we can see the water going towards the shore here where the figures are walking. There'll be two that mine is looking a bit stormy now. Again, the composition choices that you make can change the mood and the context of the painting. I'm great. I'm going to, we've got this, we've got the water in, we've got the sky in. Let's go ahead and getting a bit of a lighter color for the yellow ocher. Cut around those figures and help to get it to join a bit along with the water. Just a very light wash of this yellow. Touch it onto the edge. How to get some of these edges to blend? You? Just catch it. Catch it while it's still wet. Catch the edge. Wallace Whit didn't like that. It blend a little bit as well. That's a lot areas with DOM, with the light areas. The next step is we're going to paint the shadows, all the dark areas. The issue with doing the shadows of the figures now, again, is because this area of the ground is still wet. So I'm not gonna do that yet. Let's go ahead and do the mountains. And not the mountain is basically the I keep calling it mountains, but there's a headband and the back. A couple of choices here. You can draw the entire thing, or you can just go in and accept that there'll be like a softer edge from the bag, which I'm gonna do. If I get an a soft edge, I'm going to pick up big brown. Use any brown that you have. Another thing you can do is actually use a bit of yellow and drop that into the mountains in some areas just a bit. Here in the back of little bits of yellow lead to more vibrant bits stuff. And then you can go over the top with a little bit of the darker bits. So it's actually, you can see I've just noticed that there are some yellowy lots of bits in there. Just a bit of brushwork and they're a little bit of dry brush. And just pick up that paint and draw the brush almost completely on the towel. And then just go in there and getting a few brushstrokes. Then I'll get some dark paint. Really picking up quite a dark paint that's about 80% paint, 20% water. This is just some brown I might put in some neutral tint, maybe the purple in there as well. Let's try. Here. We go there and, and get it in as quick as possible, efficiently as possible as well. Then just fill that in and leaving some of that yellowy color in there as well. Let me just blend in nicely here. Let's get a bit in here on the side. Like that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Cut around these figures as well so that you don't lose them completely. Leaving a bit of white in there as fine as well. They need to. Where are you if you don't color everything in? Finish up some of these edges and just rough up some of the edges of the top a bit more to just make it look more inconsistent sometimes with these rock-like shapes, you got to do that. Maybe some of them coming down further until the water like that. Just have a bit of a play around and change things up a bit. Now what we want to do is also adding a tiny bit of little bit of color for the figures. Let's do the figures. Let's do the figures in just in a moment. I'm going to draw this off. Look at that magic. It's pretty much dried. I'm finishing touches. We've got in the light areas. We've got in the dark areas. We probably could get in some more dark areas here for the figures. So I want to get some shadow is running perhaps to the left-hand side for the legs of the figures. But it's really just some finishing touches here so we can leave the top of some of them whites if you want or you can put in a bit of blue, just a bit of cerulean blue like that. Just a touch of that. Really liked something like that. Just indicate this person might be wearing a different colored shirt or something like that. I might go pick up a bit of a cooler, another bit of a cooler color, complimentary colors as well, guys, something that I mentioned a lot. We've got all this area in the ground which is quite warm. You can see it's all just warm colors in there. The yellow basically running through. If we have a bit of coolness running in for the figures, it's going to contrast nicely with the ground bit of color for the figures. I do this at the same time, just pick up bit of the darker paint and I'm just going to get into the legs like this. Try to get in with a couple of brushstrokes, perhaps like this. They're dry brush strokes. Then I'm going to just basically shedder running towards the left, please. Figures like that. Along the beach. Going up the legs a bit like that. I'm not in the beach as well. We do get these little bits of seaweed and stuff here on the, near the wash up on the shore. So some of this stuff helps again to give some context of the scene. Put in a bit of hair on the top of these figures like these can be there. Somewhere like a bit of a longer here, perhaps like that. Color for the faces might have come across, some of them won't. This person's arm might be to the side like maybe holding something back or something like that. We can put in a few little, tiny little birds flying around, just these little v shape birds in the distance like this. Just little v shapes here in the sky like that. These bits of rock as well here they have like kind of a texture to it. So I can just drag my brush, use the side of the brush, pick up a bit of brown paint that across some parts of this rock. Make it more interesting. Little bits and pieces. Textures that just add up. Dry brush, pick up some paint, dry the brush off on your tau, then go back in. Really at this stage, it's got a nice little composition. Of course, you can enlarge this out as much as you want. I mean, you can do another painting altogether and getting bigger, bigger one usually because I'm painting quite small, found that it's harder to include more details. I like to pick up a bit of white gouache. Tiny bit of white gouache, which is opaque watercolor. We'll put in some highlights. And shadows are running to the left, so the light source is coming from the right. I might think of dropping in a bit of white gouache here for the head and shoulders, or the right shoulder of that figure. For this one as well, we did the head and the shoulder of that figure there. Like that. Not so obvious in this one, but something like that. Sometimes you get birds that catch a bit of light as well. So in these dark areas, you can actually recover a bit of the white of the paper and just put in some birds flying around in there. Another thing you can do, of course, if you want to put in some indications of some waves. So as soon as crashing waves here on the rocks or something like that, doable as well. Getting this dry brush a bit of that on pickup into that whitewash and dry off the brush a little bit and then go back into it. Use it sparingly, use the glossary very sparingly because you can move or do it quite easily. I might even have a bit here with a water washes up, maybe you'd have foam or something here. But we have a huge range of turns here. We've got, again, let me zoom in so you can see what I've done. You've got the sky, which is basically lighter tones. You've got the water which is also lie to the sand he imbued with a lot of times in the headland and the back, really light tones with the white gouache. Some midtones here with the dark clouds in the sky. And we've got the full tones or a really dark tones in the legs and the figures in the mountains. In Atlanta at the back. A bit of this seaweed and stuff washed up. We really looked at it quite closely at times. It's just little bits, these little techniques that I was teaching you guys at the start of this class. All these little techniques, all these brushes is probably a 100 brushstrokes, and this entire painting probably, probably less, less than a 100 brushstrokes. That is the foundation of a painting. If you know where to put all those brush hurts and you're confident in applying those brushstrokes at the right time, at the right consistency. You can just create this. It's just a process since there's nothing magical about it. 12. Project: Landscape Scene: In step one, we're choosing a suitable seen or reference photo. This reference photo is great. We've got a nice bright sky and the reflection of the sky in the water. And why do I like this reflection will, because we've got contrast of light and dark. Latin sky lighten the grounds with the water is, and then we've got darkness in the reads, the bushes, mountains. We've got these trees in the background and stuff like that. Even in the trees you can see they have these little white branches which I perhaps want to use some scratching out and getting some. Let me play around with a bit of gouache as well. So there's lots of opportunities in there. That's why I pick this photo. Again, identifying the light and dark areas will squint and have a look. Well, let's have a look. Basically, there's two tones in here. If we were in a simplified, we've got the sky, the reflection of the sky and the water. The rest of it adjust all the darker bits the trees in the background, the reflection of the trees, the little reads coming up. That's it. It's about two tones, probably three if you look at the clouds and some of these trees are probably a bit lighter. But basically this is two times. I'm going to think, what do I want to change? What I don't want to change anything in the scene. I don't think so. I don't really think I really want to change things, but maybe simplify down. I'm going to go in and drop the horizon line in about 1 third of the way, like here. Let's get in this large group of trees on that right-hand side there as group trees and come down into the water like that. And there's a tree line up in the back here as well. Little simple tree line like this. All the way down there. Coming towards the side. Don't want to get some mountains. It's going to be another, another compositional choice. I might want to increase the signs of these mountains here in the back, make them bigger. Yeah. That's something new that I've put in these mountains. You knew, I've got these tree line up here as well. We've got, of course, the water that just runs down all the way through. Um, I just want to get into a little indication of where the water areas, That's it. That's the drawing. We don't need anything else their thought. And we'll go in firstly with the sky. As usual. With this area of the sky. Oops, got a bit of brown or green or something in that brush. But where a k, Let's grab some cerulean blue lights. Mix of cerulean blue. Let's say about 60% water, maybe 70% water, and 30% paint. Drop that cerulean into the sky like that. In this particular case, I think I'm just going to leave it. I'm not going to really put anything else in that sky, want to simplify it down. But you can of course change things up at this point you're thinking, Do I like it like that or do I want to add a bit more darkness and Dhaka clouds or don't wanna grab a tissue and just lift off some paint. It's up to you. It's a stylistic choice. Now what we're gonna do, we want to reflect some of that water into the bottom. I'm just picking up a bit of that blue, dropping it into the area here at the base. Dropping a bit of that. And we know it all comes all the way down. You'll painting leaves my errors. Maybe a bit here. That's it. That's pretty much all the light areas that you have in this scene. Next step, we want to paint the shadows. Basically the shadows or the darker tones in here. What we want to do is probably go and get the mountains off in the distance first. So if I pick up a bit of this paint, grab a smaller round brush because normally I use a bigger brush. But because we're painting quite small, I think it's better to just use a smaller brush here. And I'm going to create a bit of edge here in the background for these mountains blended until the sky, so that we've got a soft edge where the sky starts with a mountains begin. I mean, just carry that down. Just these mountains off in the distance like that. Leave the rest of it because the rest is gonna be like trees and stuff like that. Yeah. Around with it a bit. Point. You kind of things shift around a lot because it's still wet back there. So we'll drop a bit of paint in this. Don't like that bit of paint. That. Painting that maybe good to a point where you're happy with it. This is kind of painted weight into Whitney sort of scenes I love using went to width. So let's go ahead and do some of these trees. I've got some green. It's kind of like a dark and green undersea green box. I'm gonna lighten it a bit with some yellow. And we're going to draw pin this kind of dark green color on that right-hand side, especially where it touches the sky. We want to just dock and a bit more. Now, one thing you notice in the scene is actually there's a lot of sharp edges where the treeline tree, so to touch the sky, That's something I've just changes, will want to wait for it to dry. I'm gonna get, of course, softer elements where it touches the sky. But of course I can go in there afterwards and shopping it up once it's dried. Here on that left-hand side as well. We want to make the trees darker than these mountains in the background. Okay. How many brushstrokes can I use to just get this thing real quickly? Look that good. Let's bring some more of this green down here. Drag it all the way down into the foreground. I'm going to just put in a little bit more yellow to just create it, just make it slightly more vibrant. You can, some of this is gonna be wed steel, so it's going to merge. That's okay, but just try to preserve the blues in there. Trying to preserve some of those blues. We go like that dog and this has actually been essentially your favorite darker, dropping some more green in here. It's just all the dark bits, midtones and really adopt dog tones in here. Good. Really. The rest of it is just putting in the final bits of darkness and things summing. You notice they're these little reads that kind of go upwards like this. And so I just pick up a little round brush and paint through like that. Just drop that in these vertical lines. I've done this so many times that it certainly bit easier for me to do. But it's not like I just suddenly could do this. Just takes a bit of practice and knowing the right timing as well. Because this area is still not completely dried, you can see it's still slightly damp. I'm picking up a thicker paint, a thick, a sort of Dhaka paint here. I can get a bit more contrast and running through it. Pretty quick. Work here. Normally I spend a little bit more time actually on this, but I don't want to want to take all day. Good morning darkness and the trees, for example here, create a bit more darkness at the bottom as well. Maybe for like another veto, something like a branch running through like that. Something like that. By this time this area of the trees have dried. I can go in and get some shops shapes. Again, wet on dry techniques. This area has dried, the area of the sky is dried, whereas before when we were going in and painting the trees in the background, it was still wet. Pretty basic, pretty basic sort of seen. And again, if you've got that got that cod COD around, you can pick it up and just scratching a few of these little things here. Getting a bit of texture and a bit of light, variation, stuff like that. There we go. That's the second one done. 13. Project: Lillies: I'm using a suitable seen or reference photo. This reference photo I think is really good because we got contrasts. We've got the contrast between the ward and Louise and the whitewater, Luis and the green, the lily pads. They will form a nice contrast between the dots in the background. It's pretty, it's pretty simple, but there's a lot of water lily pads here so I can pick and choose. Remember once I have all of them in there or just pick a few of them, which I'm gonna do it pretty just pick a few. I quite like this reference photo and this was actually an enormous picture. And I cropped it to make it smaller. So again, that's a compositional choice so we know the light and dark areas. That second step, we've got the lights, greens and the whites. And then in the dock is by the blue of the water and the coolness of the water. We've selected the compositional design elements have a think, you can do something slightly different for me as well. So you might want to just pick maybe even two or three lilies or you wanted to do more, you want to enlarge them or make them smaller and make the water bigger. That's something that you can do as well. But I'm going to keep it kind of similar to this, but just simplify it down. Let's go ahead and do the sketch. Again. I'm going to start with this Boolean just getting very, very simple. I went to want to get on to doing that last project with everyone. But here's that water lily. It really simple there. Yeah, it's probably not the best drawing, but the round these lily pads, they're rounding is kinda slice taken out of it almost like a pizza. Something. These circles just overlapping with each other. See we simplify and just make them into circles like this. Kind of like ovals overlap with each other. That bat. There, there's another one that we might have another Lily here in the background in case something quick. And then we'll notice that the pads just gets smaller and smaller as we go into the distance. That just a little ones, they're not even thinking. I think that should be okay. Just like again, like a quick drawing. Sorry. Let's go ahead and we will do the do the lighter colors first. Paint the light. Paint the light. I'm gonna be using green. Light green. So I've got a bit of yellow that I've mixed up with my other green. Let's just go ahead and I'm going to just get in some colorful, these lily pads. Look green enough. There we go. Something like that. Just getting a bit of color on top. They're using a large brush. Let's get this one in here to here. The great thing about painting these Louis poses that they're the same shape as the brush. That's why I always recommend choosing a brush that's represents, if possible, the shape that you're trying to paint because that's one brush trick. I've just used a paint, most of these little ones at the back. Okay. Fantastic. So we are just about done with all the lights sections because I don't really think there's anything else other than I mean, there's a bit of yellow in here. The yellow in the center of the knee like that. And you might want to imply that their course, some of the leaves are a little bit lighter than others, so you can vary how some of them appear, some of them maybe lightness, I'm gonna maybe darker. At this point. I tend to, tend to sort of wait, wait a little bit, but I will dry most of it actually off with the hairdryer moment. The kind of dried but they're not fully dried. And especially the ones down the base here, I have basically dry them off a little bit, but there's still slightly wet. Most of them are drawn around the edges though. This is, this is the fun bit. I love this bit we're gonna be doing all the darks now, one of the things you notice also of this scene is that you've got kind of a little bit more, not as dark at the top than it is at the bottom of the bottom is really, really dark. What we were learning before we were doing a graded wash. So we're taking and we're making it darker or lighter as we go down. In this particular case, we're not starting with the dark, but we're starting with a light, kind of slightly lighter, but still very doctor. So I'm gonna pick up a bit of blue, ultramarine blue. Maybe. I'm mixing a bit of this green. It's okay to do that green. And I'm going to just cut around these Louie's like this. Doctor up the top. I'm just gonna make sure I've got enough paint in here. Certain lights are at the top. What I'm trying to say, we're going to cut around the luis. Please simplify them down. Okay. There we go. I like that. Kind of pick off a slightly larger brush, slightly larger mop brushes as well, something like this. Let us just flow, let's just enjoy the process. Don't worry about getting all these details of the Louisiana exactly like that. Got around their book. Even if you leave a bit of white on there, it's not a big deal as well. This is also an opportunity to kind of shop and up on a bit of the drawing that you did before, because sometimes you find that you may not have drawn them into accurately and what an opportunity to change that around. As I move down the page, oops, I've gone over that one. Accidentally. Lift that watt. As we move down the page, what I'm gonna do, especially once we get around the middle section, we're going to dock in the paint a bit more than it. Again, it's really tricky because we have to remember to leave some of these watt boots on here will be least. But even if you go over the top of that, remember we still got some white gouache that we can recover it. Around this point is when I'm going to drop in a bit more darker paint further down. But before I do, I'm just going to pick up a bit more blue, getting a bit of these ripples or just inconsistencies in the water up the top so that it's not just one color running all the way through. You're going to have some of these larger beats perhaps running through the top like that just to keep things interesting. Witton, Witton, of course. Then I come down more mixing a bit of a neutral tint to this blue. Okay, if you didn't have neutral, can just use it. Just use a gray. Mix you three primaries together. You can get a.com. Just mix it with the blue. There we go. And of course he is really here and I'm just going to cut around that. They're better, isn't it? Better than the other one? One's kind of disappeared down and again, just darkening this darkening these paint a bit as we go down further, because when we get down to the bottom, It's almost going to be completely, completely black. Some of these lilies is well, you notice, see, they've got these little elections in them like that. So you can just imply a bit of that going on. I don't want to only want to even do it. Something like that. All the water that water makes us still kind of wit, well, go around, cut around this one like that, and that's cut around that one there. This one here. Come up like lab, perhaps. Really dark at the bottom. I'm just picking up neutral tint, pure neutral tint and just darkening as much as I can near the base like that. During some of these other bits as well, we can just stay there in a bit of darkness at the top. But you can see kind of blend a bit from sort of air at the top to just coming down to these really dark washed down the base. Really dark wash down the base where I'm using like 70 to 80% paint in there. That's it. 14. Beach Scene: Paint the Light: The base landscapes and one of my most favorite scenes of all time. One of the things that I always go back to painting, I think it's just the beautiful contrast between the coolness, soft, soft sort of coolness in the sky and then the sand and the water. The life has world and just the movement of people running around the beach. It's amazing. It's also a very beginner's friendly subject because you don't have all that much. In terms of buildings or anything like that. You've got sky, you've got land and water basically end a few figures in a few little objects that you can practice like umbrellas, little bits and pieces. You can also practice shadows in this reference photo here. The first step of the process, again, it's just talking. I was talking about choosing a suitable seen. And I think we've got elements of light and dark in here. We've got lots of details that we can pick and choose what we'd like to include. I think the composition is nicely umbrellas right in the middle of the scene. Now, I may change that a little bit and move it towards the right-hand side. It's just kind of to smack bang in the middle. But again, you don't have to. Again, it's just finding ways in this project to apply what we've learned so far in all your techniques and planning. What I hope this process will help you long-term is for you to continue to persist through your painting. Because a lot of the time what I find with being a beginners and people painting is that they tend to work all the way up to maybe like the middle stage of the painting. Maybe the point where we were just painting in some of these lilies. Painting in some of the, some of the greens of the lilies and getting in a bit of that blue and stuff in the background. And then I think it doesn't really look like anything. The context of like these ones here, these little other scenes as well. They may have, may have just gotten in some of the lights and the darks. But if you have the process, if you use the process that I have, you may know that, Hey, I'm only up to the sketching bit or miss her. I maybe up during the the light painting the light. So it's not really going to look like much. It's kind of like if you're baking a cake and you've put all the ingredients together, you've got, have no idea how to bake. Don't ask me about that. But if you say if you've got all the ingredients, you put them all together, but you forget to put the cake in the oven. Well, it's not going to look like a cake, is it? Going to taste like cake either? The last 20% of the cooking, I guess the cape makes it into what it is and it's the same here with my process that I used. You paint the lights, you paint a bit of the docks and sometimes it just looks I don't know. There's just not it hasn't come together, but don't give up yet. Because you remember you got to put in all the little dots, little bits of the details, little bits of white. Just to give it more context so that your mind, your brain can sort of look at that and think suddenly identify it as what you want it to be perceived as. So in this case, a nice beach scene, some trees and some water, that kind of thing. So if you know roughly what stage you are up to in the process, then you can be you can rest assured that if I put in the extra time and just finish it off, it will come together. And I'll lot of the time also you finish the person and you kind of look at it and you compare it to reference photo, photo and you think, Jesus, I don't know. It doesn't really, especially with all the detail on the reference photo. You compare it and think that I'm missing a lot of this detail missing, listen that, but in the absence of the reference photo, close your book, come back to it the next day and have a look at it independently. And you'll be so surprised at times that what you can recognize in here and how detailed it looks away from the reference. I never tried to compare your, your, your, your painting to the reference. Maybe just in the basic elements like the perspective, the water, stuff like that. But don't try to think, I don't again, in every detail gonna make it look exactly like the reference because that's not what we're trying to do with the painting should stand separate from the reference. Enough. Chatting about that. I just wanted to talk a bit. Sometimes I get ideas come through my head, so I just want to share them with you. Relating to my purchase, that kind of thing. Let's go through, let's go through my process again. Let's start off with the reference. Okay, we've already, we've already talked about it and decided on the pseudo reference. Let's have a look at the lights and darks. So I'm just squeaks squinting, we've got the sky and the sand, pretty light. Those are probably the largest areas, but the waves, the soft white waves in the background with a kind of crashing a bit of the light on the figures, the right side of the figures on the umbrellas as well. Apart from that, the rest of it's just dark. We've got this line in the back for the water. Pretty dark. Bits of darkness in the sand as well, which will imply through some techniques and tapping technique, which I'll show you later. Let's do the composition drawing and decide on the composition at the same time. Composition wise, like I said before, I want to, I want to preserve this general seen him, I don't want to change too much of it, but what I will do, let's have a look. I'm going to put in the horizon line just below the midpoint, somebody here. So let's get that horizon line in first, the easiest part of the painting that decide on that. I'd recommend you just a little bit below in middle point or maybe just at the middle point is fine. To keep things simple. As you can see, the water level kind of kind of starts off like here and then it gets a bit wider at this side here. Slightly sought on V. I liked that actually just makes it look a bit more interesting I suppose. But you can make that water and the air where the water touches the sand straight as well. It's completely fine. We've got the area of the water between here and here. We've got the sky above. You don't need to touch the sky. Maybe they touch the water. We should have put the air with the water starts and finishes here on the sand on top here, where the water touches the sky, meets the sky. Now we've got the fun and games. We're going to put in the umbrella. And we've got an umbrella here. I'm shifting the umbrella a little bit more to that right-hand side. Think of it. It's kind of like when you drawing, think of it as shapes. I mean, it's think of a number. Think of how you can simplify it down into shapes. I'm looking at it and I'm thinking it looks a bit kind of triangular like that. During a bit of that, the bottom part there. He is a bit. The bottom part of that umbrella like that. That these little 40 things we comb little. I don't know what the colon just the bottom part of the umbrella here. Okay. Here we go. Underneath the umbrella. We've got the back part of it. You can see a bit of it like this as well. Just a little, something like that. Here we go. Then we've got the stem coming down here, hits the ground roughly here. And of course, let's start putting in the figures. We go to figure here, just sitting down next to the umbrella. Don't overthink it, just put in the head and then the body. Remember when we were drawing the figures before? Think about, think a little bit about the heads of these figures. Now. The horizon lines all the way up there. Because these because I'm not standing up there like further down. And kind of got also the photographer kind of pointing almost like pointing the camera upwards a little bit. So it's kind of funny little perspective to it. But look at the heads. The position of the heads are all below the horizon line here. Go to someone's sitting under the umbrella. Me just enlarge this head a bit more. Something like that. A bit of detail there as well. Coming around that kind of see a bit of the leg come off on the edge like that too. There's an affiliate here and just kind of come up supporting himself here like a shoulder there and then a leg up in the front like that. Good shade that in a bit. Legs there the scholar like a box or something he like something that maybe they could put a bag here as well. That's fine. Just put like a little bag. Changing up the composition. How about a tau? Let me just get into luteal here on the ground. Something like this. Yeah. Just tao would be nice. Miss you as well. Um, maybe that's getting, getting another towel here as well, just to even it out a bit. Something like this guys just lying on a tail on the spot decision. We got to remember as well the, the details underneath this umbrella, because we've got shadows running towards the left of the light source is coming from the right. We're going to have shadows running towards the right. This is, this man is going to be under the umbrella. Gonna be DACA. What we can also do is potentially getting some people with it walking around a bit. So for example, I might put in someone walking off here shortly. Let's get some shorts onto this person like this. Just standing around maybe with a T shirt or something. A person got a bit of shadow running towards the left. There's another umbrella kinda somewhere towards the left of this one. But you can change it around. You can just put in a bit here like that, just changed the location of it if you want. I'm trying to put these umbrellas roughly in that 1 third as well. And that little 1 third position. Remember the rule of thirds when we're creating, we're creating two lines running down like this. Across like that. Where they intersect is sometimes good to put in the areas of interest. Drawing just the spirit of the umbrella. The more bits of the umbrella like that. There we go. There we go. Got a couple of umbrellas to here. That might be enough for you. You might want to add some more. It's up to you. I'm going to go in here. Let's add in some figures here in the background. That's one. Sometimes you're going to have people just running and doing all kinds of stuff on the beach. You know, these two people might be playing, throwing a ball to each other or something like that. Draws someone with their hands up? Yeah. That running. They're running away or something like that. Just imagine a scene of what's going on and live and make the figures in the background smaller as well. Your need much detail for the figures in the background is more of the figures in the foreground. Again, we've got people who are sitting down here. There's a person sitting down here. There's someone sitting here maybe with the legs up like that. Like this. Just underneath this This beach umbrella like that. You've got a bit of something. There. We go. Let's put in some more figures. And you can always put in some more figures later is what you're going after the movie now, I also thought what would be nice? How about we put in some boats here, something like a yacht or something. Just going to put in an indication of a boat's shape. Something like this. Could be something limited. Make these boats row small as well. If you going to add any of the mean to make them too big, this could be just the lodge, a one off in the distance there. Fishing boat. You've got smaller yachts off in the distance, kind of just this triangular shape, some spots as well. This is my attempt to make something different interesting in here that's maybe not really there in the first place. And just see how it works out. Yeah. What else do I want to do? Don't want to put in another figure on logic figure. We could put in another figure here, just kind of walking into the scene. Coming into the scene like that. Just something different. Working in its launch and more towards the left a little, I'm hoping will be good because I can make a shadow cost of shadow a bit to the left as well like that. Something here for this figure. In that side, I probably just leave it. We've got a lot going on in here already, and I think we can continue and start with the painting. Remember guys, if you have questions, just leave them in the. In the chat. And I will get back to you. Let's get started with this painting. Let's follow the process, the same process that we've been talking about since the stats. Now we're up to the stage where we have sketched everything in, in pencil. We've decided on the composition. Times you actually change. You may want to change the composition during the painting. That's okay too. Sometimes you got to let the painting guides u times u. At times you want to have an image in your head, that vision in your head of what the painting will turn out in the end. I think that's really important to have that vision of this is what I want in the end. Then you reverse engineer and think, how can I get to that point? Which is what we're trying to do this essentially. But a lot of the time as well. You tend to figure it out along the way because you might have a plan. I want to say initially I thought I just want to get into water, but partway through, I thought instead of maybe crowding up this beach with all kinds of figures and people walking around. Maybe I can add some boats in the background instead, something different. So sometimes those compositional choices will change when you're doing your painting, when you're, when you're going through the process. Let's get started on the sky. I'm going to be picking up cerulean blue. But I just want to wet this area of the sky first and then dropping the paint. Remember to cut around for some of these boats, yachts here as well, just cut around the top of it. Like that. I'm going to go over this one like that. Just a little bit of cutting around because we wanted to leave them white. Again, if you don't manage to get the mean white, that's fine. We can always use a bit of gouache at the end. I think Peggy was mentioning before, like a bit of negative painting. Look at that. I'm just wetting this area pretty loosely. Let's get in some cerulean that it's pretty dark. Surround a bit. Shift that around, something like that. Just cerulean. The sky, the water that I'm using as well. It's good to change your water a bit more often. So I hadn't done that so much for the sky this time around. And so that's why you can see kind of a bit of a grayish tinge to the The sky over here, but that's okay. The sky isn't actually completely wide. This is kind of grayish tinges actually present in the scene itself. You look very carefully. I just want to get in more blue in the sky. Just drop in some more Boolean. Too much, but just keeping it a bit more shadow, a bit more blew up the top there and hope it just blends nicely in something like that. As we get down to the bottom, I'm just going to leave it and let it soften off there. I've gone right to the edges of a knife, at least one. Good. Let's go ahead and work a bit on the sand now. Gonna pick up some yellow ocher. Mixing up this yellow ocher. You don't have yellow, it could just mix a bit of your lighter yellow like a more vibrant yellow with a bit of white. That some Jews it down a bit. And I'm just going through and where I can find the just sort of in the background just stopping roughly with the meets the water and cutting around these umbrellas, especially it's pretty important because you're going to want to get into a bit of variation in colors for these umbrellas yet, cut around the figure's a little as well. Don't worry too much about the legs, but I'd say the torsos of them. I like to leave a bit of a I'm just a little bit of color on the top on that. A little bit of white on the torso is at time, so I can get in some other colors. There's a little bag here. I'm gonna cut around that bag and cut around this. Call it tau as well. Be cutting around that. Anything essentially that you might want to get in with another color, just cut around it. Wanted to make sure I get this only. Honestly. And using a lot of yellow mix is probably because with lots of colors like this yellow, you can mix a lot of paint into it and it's not really going to change the darkness of the paint as well, but I do use quite a thick layer of this yellow at times at the moment I'm using probably 50 per cent paint to 50% water. Not too thick, but it's definitely not super watery because sometimes you can put in too much water. But really if you want to create extra lights in the scene as well, just just add more water to the mix and paint will be lighter. There we go. Got a bit of that ground and now let's get in the water in the background. I'm going to pick up my just a smaller round brush. Let me just say a look at this pickup. A smaller round brush. 15. Beach Scene: Paint the Shadows: I'm going to grab some took voice. You can mix up turquoise yourself, just mixing a bit of green until you're blue, just getting a turquoise color. And I want this to be, let's think a color, slightly thicker color. Brush is losing some of its pursues. Some reason, this one, this one just didn't crimp it properly or something like that. So it's not holding its pursues. Just going to go in here and go and create an edge where it see where it touches the sky. Right there. I'm going to doesn't matter if it blends a little bit, that's okay, but I can always bring this up slightly. Bit of paint here, squirt of accumulated that off off the middle. Getting that line out the backfill cut around the white of the boats to super-important. And you might get a bit of this leading effect into the sky. So just if you've got that tissue, just soft enough that area to subdue it a bit. That's what happens when you're painting wet into wet. You do get some of these unanticipated effects. But I do want the edge of the water right at the back to be just kinda softer. I don't want it to be just shop. I suppose. There we go. Let's go in. And you notice as well that there are bits of whites and things in the water. You can do them now by cutting around the whites. But I actually like to do them after with gouache. Just makes things makes life a bit easier for me. But you can also just leave see like little bits of whites where you see in the water just a tiny slivers of white. That's okay as well. Like that. Going through carrying this wash down roughly to where the figures are as well. And then you can put in the figures off though. I'm trying to join this on with the yellow in the foreground that's starting the background. See that yellow of the water. Sorry if the same the water here and just joining it on because it's still wet. And you got to get it while it's wet because then it's going to blend. Just appear a bit more natural like that. Cutting around the figures, the boots, that leaving some of that Watson waves and stuff. We don't need to worry about that yet. We can, of course go in later and do it through that. But I'm cutting around these umbrellas being a thing. That figure. Here we go. We have got the water in. Really. We have got pretty much all the light colors. Come to think of it. We've got the lights of the sky, lights of the ground and the sand. This middle bit here of the ward arts do classifier is like the lie to a slightly lighter, but I'd say it's more of a mid tone. Probably other thing that I might do is also just getting a bit of colorful the umbrellas. So this is a lovely sort of might pick up kind of orangey color for these umbrella, orange and red. Have a bit of fun. Let's pick up some color that you might really vibrant color. This here is some orange, just dropping in that orange. Great. Make sure it's got, it's just juicy. Not there's enough paint in there. There we go. Be careful with we'll just make sure that the area around the umbrella mostly dried. Okay. Just a bit of color in there like that. If you've got a bit of mixing, it's okay, but you don't want too old to mix mixing. Then let's get into a bit of let me think maybe you'd have yellow umbrella here. Will be yellowy color in like that. At this point, we're not really trying to get into any details or just getting in colors. Anything. Lot wash of color, color of everything. The beach towels as well. We can pick up a bit of cerulean and just getting a few little lines like this, I find that kind of helps to indicate some of the detail and the towel. That wouldn't be that much right? Given this bag as well. Something like that. The figures, we can have a bit of fun and just drop in some colors. This is like a kind of orangey color here. I'll just drop in a bit. Orange for this person, maybe you would have read for the arms and the legs as well. Just a bit of red there. Oops. Red. Link a bit too much. You notice I sort of tap onto the page as well at times to lift off paint. Another thing you can do, just putting a bit of coolness into the bottom of his ****, bringing their own with the orange shorts. Just leave. The color is white color perhaps in something Something like that. Bit of red in the face. Touch red like that. Base. Coupled with figures here as well, I'm going to pick up some more red, just dropping a bit of reading for the faces and really the skin tone, whatever skin tone you want to put in there, I'm using a darker red, maybe a bit of brown as well. You can add in that figures in the background, just dropping a bit of that. Really at this stage now, where we're looking at putting in all the darker colors. It's kind of at the moment we're blending, we're in the middle of almost doing some darker colors for the faces, but still looking at some of the lighter colors with some of the other figures walking around as well. Just get some pink for this one. Put the chlorides on the person afterwards. Just a bit of flesh tones. Usually I just use a bit of this pinkish color mixed in with other, some brown or some yellow. At times. Brand new lipid blue sometimes does help as well. Okay, good, good, good. It's getting a bit of color for these other figures here in the background. These two here sitting down. Pretty light wash. It's mostly mostly just water. But some warmth in here. Especially as you can see, the background of the figures is like cooler color. The water. So putting in some lighter, warmer colors, which helps to basically helps to create a bit of complimentary color. In terms of complementaries and color usage, I simplify colors down to two types. Basically cool, warm colors. I'm not overly obsessed about colors because I found that over time that it doesn't make a huge difference. It's more than tones that I'd say that the most important thing. That's why I focus a lot more on that. Now, thinking what else we can put in here. I know what the umbrellas, there's actually slight bits of darkness in the umbrella like here near the base. So I can just drop in a bit of color here, little bit of boost like that to outline the images of the umbrellas as well. Some marks like this to indicate the two-pole it, the folds on the umbrellas. Given a top part of it like that. The stems of the umbrellas as well. Why not just get wanting now? Probably you have to redo it again after just getting a little stem of it like that. Pretty lot. Let's do this one as well. Get that stem in like that. Just a bit of gray. Maybe the gray. Good, good, good. A darkness in this umbrella is a little closer to our soil. I'm just trying to imply more detail. This one here. It's icky like Dhaka and enough the folds here. You'll notice this area is mostly dry but it's from a little bit of water and then you get a slight foreignness in areas which is fine. Just let it do what it wants to do. I think I've forgotten his statement. Let me get of a yellow here behind the bag. Combining. Good. Fantastic. Now I'm going to do a quick little thing. I forgot to include this in the list of materials, but I use a little spray bottle at times. Sometimes it just re-wet areas like this. Then what I can do is flip a bit of paint in there, getting some inconsistencies in the ground. Like this, just little bits of footprints and stuff like that. If your paper is still wet, That's going to be fine. If it's not wet, you can still get this in. Just want to dry off your brush a little bit. They actually quite sharp. I mean, these footprints are pretty sharp but I want to make them softer. So which is why I kind of like re-wet the paper a little bit. But they're actually pretty they're actually pretty sharp here anyway. So these are just footprints and that kind of thing. Little bits here, just picking off areas and dropping in a bit of paint like that. Dropping in a bit of paint gets smaller as we go up the back as well. So decrease the size of them. Little ones back like that. Good ones here through them in 11 stroke, just 1123, just touch and go. I'm making them smaller in the back because again, with perspective, you'll find that everything just appears a little small. I even the foot, middle footprints and stuff like that. See you can barely see him. Little speckles at the back. Okay. It's really important to do this, make them a bit larger at the front. To give that impression of a fan increasing size. Sense of depth in the scene. Don't overdo it because I want to make sure we keep that beautiful warmth of the ground in there as well. Let's go and do the shadows. Dr. Lynn Ryan says don't have to go. I'm having trouble with my umbrellas. They blend into the ocean and the sand around them. It can be, it can be it can be a little tricky. I'd say just continue on with it and you probably want to wait. That's why I was saying before we went to wait until that one or there is dried a little bit. Um, but if you also use a hairdryer, just dry it quickly, you have less of that, but unlike to leave the water a little bit wet so that we have some blending in air as it joins. What it does is that helps join the sky with the water and joined the water with the foreground and all the objects together so that nothing sticks out too obviously. That happens at times, but I will catch you next time. You can watch the replay. You can watch them pound nuts very late for you. Thank you for coming along at you. I'll catch you soon. Let's go ahead and finish off the shadows of this and I'm going to actually draw this off. I'm going to get the hairdryer to dry it off and I encourage you to do the same as well. All right, so it has all, let's draw it off now. I'm going to be using a small round brush and mixing up really just a dot paint and you've got your primary paints. Primary colors, mixed them all together. You can get a gray. Well, if you've got some neutral tint that works too, I'm just picking up this dark color. And what we're gonna do is get in the shutters, the final shadows, little bit of color on the left-hand side of the biggest likely it's because we want to indicate shadow on the left side of the figures. Here, perhaps touching the ground and legs touching the ground. Of course, this shadow that just runs across the ground like that for some of these figures. There's one. We've got this, of course, this umbrella which is dark underneath that. And it's going to cover this figure to the left, but the ones on the right here, we're going to leave a bit of what the right side of her. At this one we can just coloring pretty much just darker, leave a bit of red in there and there is so that it looks like it's gonna catching a bit of light. And the shadow running across the ground like this. Kind of towards the back with root for this one as well like this. It's kind of like the shadow for the umbrella as well. If you think about it. Of course, you've got this bag. And we can put in a bit of detail on the bag, that shadow on there as well. Picking up bits and pieces. Little Tau, which is going to indicate some bits on the end of that towel like that. Good a figure here. Let's get in some color for the good of shadow for the left side of the figure and lakes. And again, the shadow here on the ground and going towards that lift left-hand side like that. On the ground. We want to make sure all the shadows run in the same direction as well. Be afraid to go darker here as well to create more contrast. These figures here that'd be mostly in the sun, but just a bit of darkness on the left-hand side of them. And again, just this same shadow pattern running towards that back, like that. Vaccine. Of course, get that umbrella and a bit better. Starting to come together very slowly, but it's starting to come together. You've got these figures here in the background as well, which I'm going to just get the legs in like that. You can color some of them in a bit darker as well. If you want. Just trying to get into the legs of some of these ones, walking along in the back like that. Simple legs just moving off and on the ground will connect them up with a shadow as well, just running towards that left a bit like that shadow there. Let's go ahead and put in I think I should put in some little birds in the sky for, for the time being, I just want to add in a few little ones. Just a little dots, kind of v-shaped. And you can put the wings in different stages of flight as well. Sometimes the spread further apart, sometimes they're very close together. Really helps to indicate this beach look small, some bigger. We've got most of what we want in here really the final step is to add in some finishing touches, some little bits and pieces that will bring it all together. This stage can take really as long as you want. I mean, some people would be happy you just leaving it like this. But I'm going to go in and think of a few other things I want to add in here now. I do want to put some gouache into some of these areas in the background like the boats as well. So if I just pick up a bit of this tiny bit of this white, we can actually go in and sharpen up some of these boats a little bit more detail that we might have lost in there, something like that. Better. We can bring back a bit of that, bring back like that. Think of a way that you can just quickly getting a tiny bit of detail. The mosques as well. Rejig them, bid. Good, good, good. Little bit of this, these waves as well. I'm just going to just drag my brush across. Getting a little bit of waves in the water. Some vertical lines running across in the background like that. Good. Magic of white quash just saves the day. So many times to me, I think that water at the back is looking all right now, so I don't really feel the need to do that much else to it. Mainly I just wanted to sharpen up those boats a bit. What brings the painting together is basically these little details, these tiny bits and pieces in the back. That's what I really try to do. Let's go ahead and work. Maybe a bit more on the figures. I'm going to get in some hair. Maybe for this one here, just to touch like that. Maybe like this. Might also mix up a bit of pink like that. Just a bit of just getting some more lighter tones. And here's all because it's just a dog and off too much. In some areas. Just get a bit of color. Here as well. Cover a bit of that light. On that right-hand side of the figures. Nothing you can do is just imply things like maybe this person could be holding a bag of some sort like here, like a little bag like that. Tell more of a story. Look, sometimes you can put like little details for the shirt. Like that. These little lines perhaps get a bit more gouache. Please. I wouldn't be too thick. Wash them. Some Boolean blue mixed in with the squash. And we could, for example, have a bit of a blue for this figure. Something like that. Something different or something. To have a look. What else could we put in some of these figures in the background, you might sort of dropping a bit of blue for their clothing, something like that. Person could have something like blue shorts or something. Just draw that in, paint that in I mean, like that bit of blue shorts or something. The arms a bit more detail for the arms. I think I'll probably call this 11 a day. 16. Summary of Painting Projects: You should have done three paintings, three little paintings. And I can say, gone through our process of identifying a suitable seen pseudo reference photo, what I think constitutes a suitable reference photo that's probably a bit more easier to start with. Identifying the light and dark areas. Changing things up in the composition, changing what you want in there to portray a scene that works for you. Things in being creative and changing things around. Talked about sketching and showed you how I've sketched in pencil. You can use pen as well. Once the sketches in, we've talked about putting in all the light areas, painting in all the light areas. And then we've talked and we've gone through how to paint all the shadows and all the dark areas after that. Painting the light in painting the shadows in both of those components we've talked about and we've practiced Witton wet and wet and dry techniques. Then we've gone through and we painted the funnel really dark areas. Here. We haven't really done it. Say the bottom is pretty dark area, but in some of these other ones where we've got a bit more detail, sometimes extra third layer where we just put in there, the real dark details in there. It does help. And maybe a few little white highlights. 17. Class Summary: We've covered really a lot of detail where we've had sort of three parts of this session. In the first part, we've talked and we've demonstrated, we've practiced a lot of techniques, watercolor techniques. We talked about the witness of your paper, your brush using Witton wet techniques, wet and dry techniques to paint different types of scenes. I think we've done about five different paintings, pretty down about five different old or more paintings today. We've gone through painting water, painting clouds. What else have we done? We've done demonstration on landscapes, a quick landscape demonstration, lifting, scratching, different types of washes, flat and graded washes, and fading colors into each other, joining colors onto each other smoothly. Talked about perspective. We did a few exercises and perspective and composition, talked a bit about composition as well. We've also gone through things like loosening up and how to loosen up what it means to be confident in your paintings and loosening up with something. It just comes over time once you've learned the techniques in a bit more confident in applying them, you can paint loose, loosening, matte painting. A loose painting isn't a matter of just it isn't, it isn't a matter of just picking up any paint and painting really quickly. You still thinking about what you're doing quite a lot actually, but you're thinking of a more efficient way to get to the end result. And he talked about my process. We talked about the the what I go through such choosing a suitable seen a reference photo at what is a suitable reference? How do identify the lightened dark areas in it? How to change around the composition to your liking? What if you change the even the horizon line? What it does to a scene where you place objects as well. We talked a lot about that. Talked about the rules of rule of thirds. We've also talked about sketching, sketching and pen and pencil while we're designing our composition. Then we've talked about the painting process, painting the light or the light areas. Then we paint the shadows, paint the dark stereos and the highlights at the end. So that's the entire processor followed it for everything even in portraiture. Of course, we just finished our final project, which incorporates all the techniques that we've learned, as well as the process. Walk you through the process one last time. 18. Class Project: Your class project is to sketch and paint a beach landscape. This can be the same speech and the final class project video, or based on one of your own photographs or scenes that you've observed outside. You can also refer to the attached scanned drawing and painting templates. I recommend drawing each same freehand. Drawing is an important step in improving your painting skills. It provides you with an opportunity to compose and plan your painting. Once you've finished the drawing, usually watercolor steps and processes included in the class to complete your painting. Finally, upload your project.