Watercolor for Beginners

1. Intro: Hi, my name is Kolbie and I'm a self-taught watercolor artist. I'm so excited that you've decided to take a peek into this class because this is watercolor for beginners. If you've never picked up a brush before, but you've always wanted to learn how to use watercolor to create magical paintings, and to create light and color blends, this is the class for you. In this class, we go over some of the very most basics of watercolors so that you can have a great foundation on your watercolor journey. We're going to talk about my favorite watercolor supplies, and we're going to talk about how to fill up a palette that looks like this. Then we're going to go into some of the most basic watercolor techniques, like the wet-on-wet technique and the wet-on-dry technique. As we learn those techniques and practice them, we're going to put them to good use by painting three projects. First, we're going to paint some fun watercolor patterns, and then we're going to paint the trunk of an aspen tree. Finally, we're going to have some fun with this colorful watercolor mosaic. If any of this sounds like fun for you right up your alley, I would love for you to keep watching. 2. Supplies: In this video, we're just going to briefly talk about the materials that we're going to use in this class. First, when it comes to paint brushes, if you're just beginning but you do want to start off on a pretty high-quality foot, I would recommend starting with this Utrecht brand synthetic sablette series of paint brushes in round shape, and I would get sizes 0, 6, and 10. These are the sizes that I use in all of my beginner workshops and I almost exclusively used only these three sizes for at least the first couple years of my painting, and still to this day, these are the sizes that I reach for the very most. One reason why I like this brand, this synthetic sablette series, is because the bristles are synthetic, which means that no animals were harmed in the process of making these brushes, and they hold their point really well, and holding a point with your paint brushes, really important so that you can get a lot of details and really get the most out of your brush. If you just want to know what to purchase as you're starting off your watercolor journey and you want to start with some good supplies, this is what I would recommend. Next, let's talk about paint. When it comes to watercolor paint, there are lots of different kinds. I would recommend purchasing your watercolor paint in tubes because I think buying your paint in tubes is a slightly more cost-effective way because you get more bang for your book, and then buying permanent red deep, lemon yellow and Prussian blue. Red, yellow, and blue are the primary colors, and with red, yellow, and blue, you can make over 100 other colors just by mixing them in different amounts. All these three are professional grade watercolor. My two favorite brands are Winsor and Newton Professional Series and Daniel Smith Extra Fine Watercolors. There are lots of different other brands though that you can purchase. While I'm using professional grade paint in this class, you don't necessarily need to use professional grade paint to make really beautiful things, and you don't need professional grade paint to make the most of the lessons in this class either. Now let's go to the other most important supply in our watercolor journey, and that is paper. There are basically two different kinds of paper. There's student grade paint and there's professional grade paint. For student grade paint, I always like to buy this Canson XL Watercolor Pad, £140 and cold press, so it's specifically watercolor paper, and for professional grade paint, my favorite is Arches, 100 percent cotton, £140 cold press paper. But especially when I was starting out, I was totally fine and learned these techniques using the less expensive and more affordable student grade paper, and then I eventually moved on to professional grade paper when I was ready to create some really nice final projects. Regardless of whatever you start out with, I know that you can make beautiful things with whatever you have on hand. That covers the very basics of the materials that we have. Now I'm just going to talk a little bit about some nice to have extras. I always like to have Q-tips around in case there are puddles because if you have too much water on your paper, enough so that it forms puddles, that is going to cause some problems. So I like to have Q-tips for that reason. Then typically when I buy tubed paint, I squeezed it onto a palette like this, and it's handy because you have a mixing palette right on here, so you can mix all the colors that you want. But it's also nice to have, instead of just a plastic palette, a ceramic or a porcelain palette like this one because sometimes in plastic palettes the colors bead up and don't mix very well, but they always mix very well on the ceramic or porcelain ones. One of the benefits too is I purchased this from a small business, so it makes me feel good to support other makers. In addition to the mixing palette, some extra supplies that are handy to have are a pencil and eraser for when you're sketching things. [NOISE] This is just a regular plastic eraser by Tombow, but it's also useful to have when you're doing watercolor, what's called a kneaded eraser. A kneaded eraser is this more stretchy material of eraser, and basically it takes off a little bit of the pencil on your paper so that your pencil sketch isn't quite so dark, basically you roll it over the pencil and it makes it lighter so that when you paint with your watercolor over the pencil, the pencil doesn't show quite as much. Some other fun materials that I like to have to mix and match for mixed media pieces are colored pencils, they can be watercolor pencils or just regular colored pencils, I like to use them with watercolor to create fun [NOISE] textures and patterns. I would also recommend having a micron pen and archival permanent pen with just a small tip because using watercolor with ink can be also really fun. Then gel pens can also be a lot of fun to use with watercolors. This is just a Sakura Jelly Roll white gel pen. I also like to use sometimes white gouache with watercolor. We're going to talk about how to use white with watercolor later in this course. Hint, usually you use whitespace, but I also sometimes like to use this Dr. Ph. Martin's bleed proof white to add some really stark contrast. Then other essentials, you need to have water on hand. I usually like to have two cups and I often keep my cups in a heavier jar. You can do it in little mason jars like this, or if you have mugs at home. I like to keep my water in mugs or heavier glass containers because that way they don't tip over as easily. Then I always have two so that I can have one that's clean and one that's dirty as I'm painting. Then I always have a paper towel off to the side to blot off extra pigment or water from my brush, and then sometimes I use this embossing heat tool to dry my layers of paint in-between so that I don't have to wait for hours and hours for the paint to dry. This is totally optional, I bought it for $10 on Amazon, I don't even remember the brand anymore, but it's typically used for embossing, but I use it to dry my paint layers in-between. I like to use masking tape to hold down my papers sometimes, especially if I'm doing big washes, or sometimes they even use washi tape, like skinnier washi tape to create fun patterns and use with the watercolor, and we're going to talk about that in later modules as well. That about sums it up for all of the materials I like to use and the materials that I'm going to use for this class. I will see you soon. 3. Cutting Paper from Large Sheets: In this video, I'm just going to quickly show you how I take large sheets of paper and cut them up into a manageable size. I take my scissors, this big pack of papers from arches. I got it from Blick.com and it is 22 inches by 30 inches and five of those sheets come in a pack. I just take the big sheets. I cut them in half, and then I cut them in half again. I do that once more until I have about probably a little bit bigger than five by seven. But this method works really well for me, especially as I'm just practicing and wanting to whip out some fun little small pieces. Then I have a paper cutter to the side of me if you can which I'd recommend using if you want to have straight edges, I just eyeball it with scissors, but there you go. That's my method for cutting my own sheets from large sheets of paper. 4. Grip (How to hold your brush): Before we start painting, let's talk just a little bit about grip. By grip, I mean, how to hold your paintbrush at different times. I think that it's sometimes confusing because you might be tempted or think that you hold a paintbrush, like you do a pencil and that is for the most part, untrue. If you painted while holding your paint brush like a pencil, it'll be pretty difficult to do all the techniques we're going to practice in this class. Plus you'd probably overtime lose the coveted point at the tip of your paintbrush. As we talked about in the previous module, that the tip is always something you want to preserve as long as possible. That speaks to, number 1, as much as possible you try never to use the paintbrush with a lot of pressure directly on the tip. I would never use this round paintbrush and jam it into the paper. If ever I need to create dots or anything like that, I would hold it at an angle and create the dots like this so that I could preserve the tip as long as possible. That brings me to my preferred method of grouping the paintbrush. Just for the record, I normally hold a pencil like this, so I know most people hold a pencil like this with the pointer finger right on top, but I usually have my middle finger right on top, just because it provides me a little bit more control. The way that I hold a paintbrush in position number 1, is very similar to that, just a little bit looser. I usually hold the paintbrush a little bit like towards the middle of the handle. But instead of having my fingers and my hand wrapped around it very tightly like this with my middle finger almost perpendicular to the handle, I hold it a little bit looser and have my fingers spread out. If I held my pencils with my pointer finger, it would probably look like this. I hold it like this just so I'm not using too much pressure on my paintbrush, but also so that I can make wide strokes and exert just amount of pressure, but still have enough flexibility and leverage to use the bristles all the way. Having a more loose grip position like this, helps you to actually better control your paintbrush, especially with watercolor because you're trying to, instead of control the paint, you're really just trying to guide it gently. Typically, this is my first position for holding a paintbrush. Position 1, is with my pointer finger and my middle finger and my thumb wrapped around it, my other two fingers supporting it underneath and I'm all flexed out like this around the middle of the paintbrush and this is how I paint. Typically, if I'm painting sideways or big washes are trying to make loose strokes, this is the position that I use and this is probably the position that I use most often. But the second position is just as important. Instead of holding it loose across the brush like this, the second position is a little bit more controlled. The difference is slight, instead of having the handle rest gently between my pointer finger and my thumb, the handle is more above this knuckle right here. That's so that my pointer finger can have just a little bit more control over it. This is the position that I use when I'm trying to paint specifically pretty detailed things. I'm actually going to paint for this one and demonstrate both of those positions too. The first position where I'm holding it pretty loose, the handle is resting in this groove between my thumb and my pointer finger. I would use this for big washes and like laying down some paint and just generally letting loose and having fun with watercolor and letting the watercolor have fun with itself too. That's the position that I'd use for big washes. Then, the second position we just talked about, is more for detail work. I move the handle up right right, and this is the position that I use to paint leaves. I'm trying to paint some leaves. I hold my paint brush like this so that I can simultaneously keep my paint brush at an angle to preserve the point, but also have enough control to gently guide my paint brush across the paper. When I'm painting with details, typically, especially with a larger brush where I have to preserve the point. I'm just pulling the paint brush across the paper and that's what this position helps me do. This position also allows me to, if I need to have even more control, I can move the handle further up my pointer finger and move my hands a little bit further down even onto the [inaudible] and have as much control as I need, typically this second form of the second position. If this is the first form of the second position where the handle is resting above my knuckle, the second form is where it's resting in this second knuckle right here, and I typically use that. I move it up a little bit so I better control the pressure. Especially when I want to create very, very thin lines. Just slightly moving this paintbrush allows me to keep my paintbrush still and use it to create very fine details while still preserving this point. That's where that little amount of pressure comes in handy because the least amount of pressure that I used while using the point, the longer the point is going to stay. That is the second position. Then the third position is one I use when I'm trying to get big washes and I'm trying to go all the way down the paper. This is a completely different way to hold the paintbrush. Instead of holding it in my hand, sideways like this, I actually hold it so the handle is in my palm and my fingers are wrapped around it. Just like this. If I were to live in J.K. Rowling's magical world and use the magic wand, this is how I imagine I would hold it. I typically use the paintbrush like this so that I can get big wide washes across the expanse of paper. Again, this angle is optimal for going from top to bottom with these big washes and keeping the paint brush at an angle to preserve its point while still using the full capacities of the bristles of the brush to get a nice smooth wash. This is position number 3, with a handle in my palm, just like this and my pointer finger and my thumb on top and to the side of it so that I can control where the brush is going while still holding it almost completely flat against the paper so that I can preserve the point. To wrap up, position number one is where I have, my fingers loosely around the middle of the brush to have some control when I'm doing big washes, but also have a little control as I am trying to get into the details. Then position number 2 is where I move the paintbrush slightly up on this first knuckle right here, so that I can use my paintbrush to create specific shapes and more in detail and then position 2B is where I move it slightly up again to be up on this second knuckle, to get even greater control over the details. Then position 3 is holding the handle directly in my palm and using this position for big washes. Those are the three main grip positions that I use to paint with watercolor. 5. Taking Care of Your Brushes: Before we get started painting in the next module, I wanted to spend just a brief video talking about how to take care of your materials, particularly how to take care of your paint brushes. When it comes to paper and paint, it's pretty easy to take care of them. Paper obviously you shouldn't get more wet than it needs to be and if you are trying to take care of a painting after it's done, then you should probably frame it or put it somewhere where it's not going to get ruined. As much as paint can be light fast, I would still recommend not keeping it in direct sunlight if possible. Paint if it's in tubes just to make sure to fully close the cap when you're done. If you put some paint in a palette, I would just make sure that it dries out all the way before you put it in an airtight space. This palette is not airtight, so it doesn't really matter. But if you have an airtight palette, and you squeeze some paint into it, then make sure it dries out all the way at least three or four days, I would say before you close that palette, because if there's any moisture left and you close it while it's airtight, then mold will grow on the outsides of the paint. While that doesn't completely ruin the paint, you can scrape off the mold, it's pretty gross. That's how to take care of your paint if you're using an airtight palette. But really the most important thing I want to talk about is how to take care of your paint brushes because, I think that these are very often overlooked. As a child, as you are painting you may have developed some bad habits. That habit number one is using your water cup to store your paintbrush. You may have done this lots of times. Pretend this is filled up with water, but if you were painting and decided to keep your paintbrush just sitting bristles down in the water cup, that is a big no, no because remember how we talked about in the paintbrush deep dive that the shape and maintaining the shape of your paint brushes so important to keeping up its quality, especially when it comes to keeping up the point. You want to try to preserve this point as long as possible, because the point on the top on your paintbrush is what allows you to create really thin lines and delicate details with your paintbrush, and so it gives you, it increases longevity by a long time. But if you decide to keep your paintbrush bristles down in a jar like this, you're immediately going to ruin, like, not immediately but after a short amount of time, the point is going to be get less and less pointy and you're going to find it very difficult to get the thin hair lines that make these paint brushes so high quality. Never keep your paintbrush bristles down in water over for any period of time. Just never do it. As you're painting if you decide to switch brushes, just lay your paintbrush down flat like that. Or if you'd rather have something to put your paintbrush on, you can purchase what's called a brush rest. I have this little brush rest that I got from some Etsy shop a few years ago. Basically it's just something small with a little groove in it that you can keep your paintbrush off of your desk if you don't want to get the paint on your desk, but it's still flat so it maintains the point and shape of your paintbrush. This is to keep it while it's painting. Now, after you're done painting and before you put your paint brushes away, make sure you let them dry flat. By letting them dry flat and allow the water to evaporate on its own, you're also maintaining the quality of the brush. If you like me, keep most of your paint brushes in a mug like this. I keep my paint brushes standing up on the handle like this. If you keep them on the handle, if you store them like this without letting them dry first, then water is going to seep into the ferrule, remember this middle-class, into the ferrule and eventually it will loosen the bristles on your brush and ruin your brush. Before we don't want the water to seep down into the ferrule as much as possible, and so makes sure to let them dry flat. Also makes sure to fully wash them after you're done painting. You don't have to. There is such a thing as watercolor brush soap. You don't need to purchase those soap cakes. I think I would maybe recommend washing your brushes with the soap once every few months. But really the most important thing you need to do is wash it out with clean water. I would not just use the dirty water from your mug as a significant source of clean water. Instead, I would walk over to your kitchen sink or your bathroom sink and hold your paintbrush under the sink and under a gentle stream of water, just use your thumb and your forefinger gently to massage the bristles out from the ferrule outward through the belly of the brush. Just to gently, make sure you shake loose any pigment from the paintbrush. Don't be too hard though when you're massaging the brush because that can loosen the bristles as well and ruin them. One more thing as you're painting is, when you're trying to get the paint off of your brush while you're in the middle of a painting session. Let me just grab this mug right here. You don't want to jam your paintbrush all the way down to the bottom to loosen any of the pigment particles. You can gently use the bottom or gently use the side to get off any paint particles, but if you do it too hard then the bristles of your paintbrush will again eventually come loose, or you will lose the shape of your brush. One trick that I have and the other watercolor artists have is, to get the pigment off of your brush because sometimes it just doesn't work to shake it back and forth is to do a figure eight shape or an infinity loop in your water because it provides different directions for your paintbrush and it is actually pretty effective at getting the pigment off of your brush without having to use the sides very often or the bottom very often. Then once you've done that, then just go ahead and use a paper towel to gently wipe off your brush. Once you're done painting and you've gone to the sink to fully wash out the brushes best you can, then just leave your paint brushes to lie flat on your desk for I would say probably a few hours. Usually I do about 12 hours. I let them dry flat on my desk before transferring them to the storage space where they sit handles up. If you want to avoid this altogether though, you could store your paint brushes flat in a drawer somewhere. For me, that's just not super feasible because of space. But that is how to take care of your paint brushes and how to take care of other materials that we're going to use for watercolor. I just wanted to give you that overview because I learned the hard way by ruining way too many brushes, making these mistakes. If you just incorporate these pretty simple care steps into your practice of painting, you can make your materials last a long time, and that's what I want for you. Thank you for watching and I will see you in the next video. 6. Filling Up a New Palette: In this tutorial, I'm going to show you how I set up a brand new palette using a plastic palette with 20 different wells and a bunch of tubed watercolors. Watercolor in tubes. I have an assortment here of Winsor & Newton and Daniel Smith, and I will go through the colors and my process. Why I chose the different colors. Why I choose to organize them and lay them down in a specific way all in this video. First, let's talk about the colors that I chose. If I'm going to create an everyday palette, basically a palette that I can pull out onto my desk every day and use for just about anything that I'm going to paint, I would choose this 20 well little plastic foldable palette that I picked up from Blick Art Materials because it's compact and it's small enough that it doesn't take up a ton of room, but it has these nice mixing palettes in addition to the wells where your paint is going to go. I have found this to be a really handy palette, especially if you are trying to keep a budget because this folding plastic palette, I think is about $5. Just for reference, I've been using the same exact palette using various colors for about a year. I think this has last me actually, a little more than a year. I've had to fill up a few of the wells again, but some of the wells I haven't used as often. Because of my experience with that old palette, I decided to make a new palette knowing which colors I reached for often, which colors I didn't use very often. This is a new and improved set of colors that I would definitely recommend you have on hand. As you can see, I've ordered it in a rainbow order. Let's start with the bottom. My set of reds and pinks, really, in this first little section here, are opera pink, quin rose, and permanent red deep. I think that having all of these variations of pink and red can help me get some excellent mixing options there. Then for my orange section, I have scarlet lake, which is like a red-orange, and Winsor orange, which is more of a light orange. Then toward the yellows, I have yellow ocher and permanent yellow deep, and lemon yellow. Then moving toward the green, I have phthalo yellow-green, and hookers green. These are the more yellow-greens, which is why they're blending into the yellows over here. I organize all of these colors in the ROY G BIV order, which is if you don't know, all of the colors in the rainbow. ROY, R-O-Y, red, orange, yellow. G for green. BIV, blue, indigo, violet. This first half of my palette are my reds, oranges, yellows, and half of my greens. Then we move up here, and this is a more neutral side, but it's the other half of the rainbow. I would say this side has most of my bright colors and these are more of my neutral colors. I'm starting with Prussian green right here, which is like a blue-green, but not quite as blue-green as phthalo turquoise right here, which is more a traditional blue-green, a really stunning turquoise color. Then we move on to the blues. I have Prussian blue, which is probably my favorite everyday blue. Then indigo, which is a darker blue, and Payne's gray, which is like a navy blue. It probably has some black or gray pigments in there. Then perylene violet is like a maroon-ish color. Ultramarine violet deep is a more traditional violet purple. Then finally, we have the classic neutrals; lamp black and burnt umber, which is brown, and I actually switched the two so burnt umber is here. These got mixed up a little bit, perylene violet is here. Then I also like to have one well of white gouache. Even though gouache, if you want it to be opaque, I would use it while it's wet, but I like to have a dried well of white gouache in case I want to make a tint of any of the colors that I'm using. You make a tint of a color by adding white to it and that can make some fun like pastel colors with all of the colors in this palette. Those are all the colors I'm using. Now, let's get down to how I place them in the palette. If I'm starting with opera pink on my colorful red, orange, yellow sides, then I'm just going to twist off the cap of my opera pink, and I'm going to squeeze a glob of this pink right into the palette right here. You can squeeze any amount that you want but to make it last, I would make it a decent-sized glob. I'm squeezing a little bit of that opera pink into this palette, closing the cap. Then this is a trick that I learned this year while I've been experimenting with this method, I'm just going to take the end of a paintbrush here, and I'm going to push the paint into the size of the palette and just flatten the paint on the outside. I don't want to waste much of the paint, which is why I'm just using a handle. You can also use a brush if you want, like the bristles' side, but I'm pushing the paint down to be a little more flat. That's because when you're painting with watercolor, one of the most important qualities to maintain on your brushes is this point right here. When you can maintain the point on your paintbrush, then it lets you be more flexible with your paintbrush and you can make a lot of really fine details. One way to maintain this point, to preserve it as long as possible, is to never jab into your palette. If you can have your paint more on a flat, even surface, then you can pick up your paint more at an angle as opposed to having to jam it into the palette. That's why I like to, or rather I've decided for my palettes moving forward to once I have the paint into the palette to smooth it out as much as I can into more of a flat surface. I'm just going to go ahead and do that for all of the colors that we have. There you go. Here is a brand new palette. The only thing left to do is to wait for it to dry. Typically when I let my paint dry, I set it out for at least 24 hours, but honestly, I usually let it dry between two and three days. If you use this plastic palette from Blick, it's not airtight, so you don't have to worry about closing it. But because this palette, the paint is still in liquid form, I would keep it open if I were you. Set it up on a high shelf or somewhere where you're not going to accidentally knock it over, especially within the first 24 hours as the paint is still in this liquid paste form. But once you let it dry for a few days, the paint is going to shrink a little bit. It's not going to be quite as big inside the palettes as it is now, but then it'll be ready to use. Then the final step will be to swatch all of your colors so that you can have that color scheme in front of you whenever you pull out this palette. I'm going to let my palette dry for a few days and then I will do the color swatch. One note before I go let this dry first is initially I had Winsor orange, this light orange included in my lineup. But I decided to take it out mostly because I think that this permanent yellow deep is similar to Winsor orange and also disclaimer, I forgot it in the line-up as I was filming this video. Instead of Winsor orange and messing up my rainbow color scheme here, I might involve the colors I could have forgotten. This one was not important, which is why I forgot it. But instead of Winsor orange, I included Daniel Smith Payne's gray to add onto Winsor & Newton's Payne's gray. That's because Daniel Smith Payne's gray is darker than Winsor & Newton Payne's gray. Honestly, Daniel Smith Payne's gray is almost black. I just thought it would be fun to have both of these two versions of Payne's gray, especially because I know that there are different in my palette, and I use Payne's gray a lot. It seemed like an addition that made a lot of sense. Just to sum up before we let this dry, over here, we have our reds and pinks and then oranges and yellows and greens, and then some blues over here. This one is turquoise, but then Prussian blue and indigo, and then dark blues and purples with violet and perylene violet. Then finally our neutrals with brown lamp black, burnt umber lamp black, and some white gouache. The white gouache, some of the binder came out in a little liquidy as I poured it in. If that happens as you're pouring in any of your paint, it's no big deal. You can totally mix the binder back in with the paint, and it'll be completely fine. That's exactly what I did. Now I'm going to let these guys dry before I use them again. It's been a few days and my palette is mostly dry. I would probably let it dry since it's been about 48 hours and I think I would let it go maybe 24 hours more before I think it's done, but I am ready to swatch it. It's dry enough so that I can swatch out the colors and see where I am and then I'll let it dry some more. I'm just going to take my paintbrush and get it really wet and dip it in the first well, and then just paint a little square of opera pink to see what that looks like. Then I'm just going to do that with all of the colors right next to each other. There you go. There is the swatch chart of this palette that will be like an everyday palette that I have to use. Sometimes I like to hang swatch charts above my desk or where I can see them so that I can see all of the different colors together when I'm deciding which ones to use. They can also be fun mementos to have throughout the years for memories as you keep changing your palate order and the colors that you keep in your palettes and they can be fun. That wraps up this little tutorial on how to prepare a palette and start using it with 20 wells, 20 different colors. I hope this was helpful for you. 7. Prepping the Scene: Before we can paint, I know that some of you may not have picked up some watercolor in a lot of years and so even figuring out what to do when you first start might be a little confusing. I'm going to go through my process for how I get the paint going and put it on the paper and how I prep my paper beforehand. We talked a little bit about masking tape and I want to say I don't always use masking tape to tape down my paper beforehand. Usually we only do it if I'm going to have a big wash over my papers so that a lot of watercolor is going to sit on the paper. Or if I know that I really want crisp lines because also occasionally, I like to do big washes without tape just for the effect of the messy strokes on the outside of the painting, but just so that you know how to do it, here is my method for putting down tape. This comes from experience of being frustrated because believe it or not, there is a frustrating way to make sure you have masking tape or painter's tape or washy tape, any kind of tape that will be nice to your paper and then go ahead and put your tape down as in a straight line as possible. That's obviously not necessary but it's helpful, especially if you're planning to use this painting to frame or to show off and you want to have nice clean straight lines that said you could also want to frame something that doesn't have claimed straight lines. Just know that especially if there's a big wash on top of this paper. Once you take off the tape, you're going to see the white space underneath here that's kind of framing the painting. Next, you might like I did at first think that, I'll just put my tape on the next side over here and here's why you shouldn't do that. If you put your tape in the order of bottom side, top side where you just go sequentially like that, then you're going to have this piece of tape is going to be on top of this piece of tape, but the tape up here is going to be on top of this one and they're all going to stick together and when you eventually take off the tape, it's going to be hard to take them off one at a time. To avoid that, I always do pieces of tape that are parallel to each other first, so either top and bottom and then side-to-side or side-to-side and then top and bottom. But that way the pieces of tape aren't sticking to each other so that R or rather aren't overlapping on different ends so that you can take off the pieces of tape individually without worrying about accidentally lifting another piece of tape. As you're putting on the tape, I would just try to maintain the same distance, the same white space edge around your paper. This just takes practice. I don't measure it usually, I just borrow it and I don't always get it exactly right. It doesn't have to be exactly right and you don't even have to really care about that. What I would recommend is putting your tape down so there's about half an inch of white space around your painting area and that's just so it keeps the paper a little more taught you if you don't want that much white-space because this much white space may show up in a frame. Then you could do just like a centimeter around the edges. But note that the less white space, less paper you're covering up with your tape, the less taught the paper is going to be, the more white space you can cover, the more flat your paper is going to stay. That that's why I usually do about half an inch, maybe a third of an inch. For paintings that if I don't really have a specific need for that smaller frame edge. Now, I'm going to show you how to activate your palette. As I discussed in the introduction video off to the side of my painting area, I have two mugs full of water and one I keep clean and or at least try to and one is my dirty water. If I'm painting for a while, then sometimes I have to go and replace my dirty water but usually you don't have to do that for a while because even if your water looks dirty, it might not be dirty enough to really fully tint your paint or mess up your blends. But I always have a cup of clean water for sure so that I can have clean water to use to make my pigments more vibrance and more pure as much as I can. Then I have a paper towel off to the side. To blot off any water or excess pigment as I'm painting. First things first, pick up a paintbrush. If you have a size zero, size six, or size ten, the three sizes that I recommended earlier, I would probably pick up a size six. Size six is I would say like an average sized paintbrush. Next, take your water and just give your paintbrush a little swirl in the water. Just to make sure you pick up a little bit of you get your bristles pretty wet. Then you can just lightly pull your paintbrush to the side of your mug to get off a few excess droplets. Don't do this too hard. We talked about this in the brush care video in module one, but you don't want to do this too hard to help take care of your brush, but you can do it slightly to get off any excess water. Then once you have that done, your paintbrush is ready to paint. But what about the paint? If you start trying to pick up pigment without getting it wet first or just with this wet brush, you're going to be able to pick some up, but it might not be as wet as you want. My recommendation is to, with your paintbrush, dip it in your water and then leave some droplets on whichever well you're planning to use and then mix those droplets in with the paint to make almost like a little puddle in the well of paint and that is when in my experience, your paint is really ready to paint with. Once you do that, then you just go ahead and start painting on your piece of paper. Instead of using your paintbrush to transfer droplets of water into each individual. Well, you can also get a spray bottle if you have one and just lightly spray across your palette to get your paints ready to go. Just a few light sprays across the paint to activate it a little bit before you get started so that your paint is nice and smooth when you are ready to pick it up. Once you do that, and then you dip your paintbrush in your water that's off to the side here. The water that's on the paint well, in addition to the water that's on your paintbrush, is going to make your paint ready to go. When you first start painting on the dry paper, you might find that you get some streaky brush strokes. That's because you don't have tons of water on there yet. If you want to get the more classic like really watery watercolor textures, we're going to talk more about that in this course but the key to that is always more water. Either more water on your paintbrush as you go to paint, as you go to pick up more paint or more water, transfer more water to the paint well itself and just leave it there to create like a little puddle in your paint well or more water on your paper and sometimes you can do that by taking off your paint, getting your paintbrush clean in the water, and then just painting with water and adding more water to the paint on your piece of paper. Throughout this course, we're going to discuss everything we've talked about in this video more in depth, including water control and painting on dry paper versus painting on wet paper. If you're still a little confused about the techniques I'm talking about, don't worry, because this lesson really was just an overview on how to prep your palate beforehand and how to actually get started once you've picked up your paintbrush. With that, I'm just going to wash off my paintbrush like we talked about in the Brush Care video. I'm going to swirl it around in a figure eight to get off the pigment and then lightly tap it to the side. Then use my paper towel to add an angle to get off any excess water and lay my paintbrush down flat to dry. Thanks for watching this Getting Started video and now let's move right along to some basic techniques. 8. The Wet-on-Dry Technique: Now that you know how to hold your paintbrush, let's put that knowledge into action by discussing the very basic techniques of watercolor. First step in this lesson, we're going to talk about the wet on dry technique. The wet on dry technique is what happens when you use watercolor, which is inherently wet. That's the first wet in the wet-on-dry technique to paint on dry paper. I think that at least for me when I first started painting, the wet-on-dry technique is typically what I thought about. When I thought about painting. The paper is usually dry. You use the paintbrush to control exactly where the watercolor paint is going to go. The wet-on-dry technique is characterized by really crisp defined lines and keeping the watercolor contained wherever your paintbrush goes. This technique allows you the most control over your subject matter, what you're painting, and where your paint goes. This technique is typically how you create very crisp details. You often use it in conjunction with layers and layering so that you can create really complex pieces that have a lot of depth and intricacy. The trick with the wet-on-dry technique is that even as you're painting with dry paper, it's important to think about how much water is on your paintbrush and in the paint that you're using because that will dictate what the result will be as you're painting on the dry paper. If you use paint and a paintbrush that have a lot of water, you're going to get a really watercolor blend or wash or whatever subject you're trying to paint. Wherever you put the paint down, it's going to stay watery for a little bit. That makes it more malleable as you combine other techniques. But if you don't have that much water either on your paintbrush or in your paint, then what happens is you can get streaky [NOISE] This rough texture, often this is called the dry brush technique if you're using it on purpose to create [NOISE] this streaky stroke on your paper by using an almost dry brush. This can be a really good way to provide texture into your piece if that's what you want. But if you don't want this streaky uneven stroke or texture, then it's important to note this only happens when there's not enough water in your paint or on your paintbrush. If you're painting and you really want more of a smooth watercolor wash like on some of the other ones we painted earlier in this video. Then you need to add more water either to your palate where your paint is or you need to maintain more water on your paintbrush. That's the wet-on-dry technique using wet paint because watercolor paint is always wet to paint on a dry surface, usually, it's paper. The wet-on-dry technique creates crisp lines and details because the paint only goes where your paintbrush tells it to go. With that, let's move on to the next basic technique. 9. The Wet-on-Wet Technique: Next up, let's discuss the second most basic watercolor technique. It's called the wet-on-wet technique. Similar to the wet-on-dry technique, it starts with wet watercolor, but before you lay the watercolor down the paper that you're painting on or whatever surface that you're painting on is already wet. That can be wet with paint or it can be wet with clean water. Either way, when you paint using the wet-on-wet technique, the paint no longer has any limitations as to where it can go anywhere on the wet surface. As opposed to the wet-on-dry technique where the paint only stays where your paintbrush tells it to go. The wet-on-wet technique allows watercolor paint to naturally explore where it wants to go as long as it's going wherever the paper's wet. That's one important rule to remember about watercolor in general, is it always wants to go and explore where there's water, where your paper is wet. The wet-on-wet technique painting on a wet surface allows the watercolor paints to bloom, and soften, and blend into your paper. If you're painting on a surface of your paper that's already wet with paint rather than just with water, it allows colors to blend together and into each other. This knowledge is going to be very important throughout your watercolor painting. In my opinion, the wet-on-wet technique is really what defines watercolor and sets it apart from every other painting medium. It is the most tricky part of watercolor because it is much less about controlling where your paintbrush goes and developing skill in forming exact structures. It's much more about embracing imperfection and seeing the beauty in art as it naturally happens. In my experience anyway, the more you try to exactly control watercolor in the wet-on-wet technique, the more of a muddled mess you're going to get. Instead of controlling watercolor if you just gently guide it in the wet-on-wet technique, knowing some of the rules that we're going to keep discussing, then you're going to come up with stunning results. The wet-on-wet technique I find is also helpful if you're looking to use watercolor as a form of relaxation and creating beautiful blends that are just a delight to paint. Watching watercolor blend in with itself is probably one of the most relaxing things I can think of. If you're ever looking for a way to de-stress and watch beauty inaction. The wet-on-wet technique with watercolor is typically how I would do that. That is the basics of the wet-on-wet technique, painting on a wet surface. One other thing important to note is that not all wet surfaces are created equally. You can have depending on the amount of water that you are using. The water can either be on your paintbrush, on the paper, or in your paint. Depending on the amount of water that you're using you can create different blends. I would say that this blend right here is pretty typical, where there's not really a whole lot of form to the watercolor. It's moving around on this wet surface, but it's not out of control. You can still see some places where the white space is showing through so the paint is not infiltrating everywhere. But it's infiltrating enough that it didn't keep the shape that I made when I first painted inside of it. I don't want to classify anything as normal per se. But this is probably a decent medium amount of water where I got the paper wet enough that it's stayed wet for over a minute and the paint can move about fairly freely, but it's not out of control. That's not the only version of the wet-on-wet technique that you can paint though. If that was a quote, unquote normal amount of water you can also use even more water and even less water. Both of those give you varying amounts of control. Generally, one thing I would say is that the more water you have on your paper, the less control you have over where the paint goes. I'm getting this paper really wet. It's almost paddling on the paper, my water is. Now I'm going to pick up some paint. You see how instead of blooming like exploding onto the paper, the paint is just sitting on top of the paper. It's just sitting and swirling inside the water that's on top of the paper and that's what happens when you have too much water. When you have so much water that it just puddles. If you can see puddles on your paper, then that's typically too much water. For watercolor A, especially if you're using professional grade 100 percent cotton paper. If your paper is not thick enough to withstand to soak in this water all at once, then it's too much water for professional-grade paper. I will make a note that if you're using student-grade paper, you get more puddles than you would with professional-grade paper. But there's still not good to have around because the paint doesn't stick to the paper. The paint just moves around in the water that's resting on top of the paper. Puddles also make it so that if especially you pull it, see look how I had the paint all in different areas, but now that I've tipped the water, so gravity pulls all of the water towards the end of this section. That's also where most of the pigment is too. Because we know that watercolor wants to be where the water is. If there's too much water on the paper it's not even going to stick to the paper until all of this dries. It's really tricky to paint with watercolor that way unless you want to create, do what I'm doing, and put a bunch of water, a bunch of colors in a big puddle like this, and swirl them all together. That can be an interesting experiment and it can be fun. But typically I tried to avoid puddles as much as possible if I'm trying to paint something very specific. That's what happens when you have too much water. But what happens when you have too little? If you want to create something that is slightly blurry. It's not quite as defined as if you're using just a straight wet-on-wet technique. But you didn't want it to have quite that chaotic blend that happens when you use a normal amount of water like with this piece that we did earlier. Then what I would do is put down a wash of water and then wait for a few seconds, maybe like 30 seconds if you're using professional-grade, less than that, if you're using student grade and then paint right on top of that paper. You see how it's still wet. My paper is still wet. As I'm painting on here, I get those fuzzy edges, those blurry edges that are characteristic of the wet-on-wet technique. It's not maintaining crisp defined lines but it's still keeping my line as opposed to this wash over here. These lines are blurry but they're very clearly still lines. That's what happens when I use very little water, both in my painting on my paper via the wet-on-wet technique. I can get fuzzy lines like this blurry lines. Blurry shapes doesn't have to be lines that still, for the most part, hold their form. Those are the three varying stages of water control when you're using the wet-on-wet technique. I would definitely spend a lot of time experimenting because the wet-on-wet technique as I mentioned before is in my mind, the defining characteristic that sets watercolor apart from other paint mediums. As you master the wet-on-wet technique, you can unlock the potential of your watercolor art history to an infinite degree. One thing about having too much water, if you find yourself having puddles in your piece and on your paper, and you're not sure what to do about it. You can use a Q-tip or paper towel, and just mop up the puddle, and mop up the excess water. Once you do that, then you should have enough water leftover to maintain the wet-on-wet technique. If not you can add just a tiny bit more and use it to form what it is you are trying to do with the soft wash or blends without having the chaos of too much water that causes the paint an autistic to the paper. Q-tip, or a paper towel, or anything else to just mop up the puddles and move right along. That's the wet-on-wet technique. Now let's move right along. 10. Glazing: Next up, let's talk about another basic technique of watercolor called glazing. This technique is when you paint on a layer of watercolor that's already dry. One of the characteristics of particularly professional-grade watercolor paint is it maintains permanence on once it's dry. That means that when you paint on top of it after it's already dry, it's not going to reactivate, it's not going to get blurry, again. One caveat I will note is, if you use a lot of pigment, a lot of color, and you don't wait for it to dry for a long time, [BACKGROUND] like if it's only been a little bit dry, or if you used a drier to dry it and try to paint on top of it right then, some of the pigment might shake loose. But for the most part, if you have just a fine wash of paint and then you paint right on top of it after it's dry, then the bottom layer is going to stay dry and keep those crisp lines. Glazing is what happens when you paint on top of that dry layer, and particularly when you use that dry layer and watercolors transparency to your advantage to create something new. Different from a lot of other kinds of paints, watercolor has a transparency because of its reliance on water. The transparency meaning, usually, depending on how dark of a pigment you're using, you can see the layers underneath whatever you're painting. Glazing is helpful if you want to utilize watercolor's transparency to create new subjects or change colors, or to create complexity in your piece. With this painting just now, my blue circle was already dry, and so I painted yellow circle right on top of it, and that allowed me to create this middle portion of green because yellow and blue together make green. Because of yellow's transparency and blue's transparency, instead of just seeing yellow on top of this blue, I have blended the two colors together into separate layers. That is one of the most important ways that you can use glazing in watercolor painting; utilizing different colors of layers and using glazing to make even more colors come through and have even more complexity and depth to your pieces with those different colors. Just as an extension of that, I have this slightly orange wash right here. To show you what I mean by glazing, glazing is when you paint on a layer of watercolor that's already dry, and you can use either the wet-on-wet technique or the wet-on-dry technique, meaning, instead of just painting on this dry layer of watercolor, I can get it wet first and then use my layers that way, and try to use the wet-on-wet technique. One way that I like to do that is with gradients or sunsets. If you have a layer that's already dry, you can use the wet-on-wet technique to create a second layer right on top of the first dry layer to help create a smooth gradient, meaning a smooth transition from one color to the next. When I paint sunsets, this is the way that I do it a lot. We're going to talk a little bit more about this technique and about gradients later on in the course. But I just wanted to demonstrate to you how this is glazing. It's glazing because, first of all, I'm painting on an already dry layer underneath, but I'm also using the paint to create this blended portion of this gradient that I'm creating so that it starts with this earthy brownish orange, and then I have a middle color in between before I get to the bright pink on top. That's what glazing and the transparency of water helps me to do. Glazing at its core, though, is still painting on an already dry surface, and so on an already dry layer of watercolor paint. It's just what happens when you paint multiple layers on top of each other, and so you don't necessarily have to always be utilizing different colors. Instead, you can just see glazing as breaking down watercolor into different layers so you can create what you want one layer at a time. You don't have to do everything all at once, and that's what's true with this little illustrated leaf. So I can paint my watercolor leaf and then let it dry, and then paint veins right on top of it. This is also glazing because I'm painting on a dry layer of watercolor with more watercolor paint. That wraps up our basic overview of glazing and watercolor. To sum up, basically, it's using watercolor's transparency to your advantage by using multiple layers to bring out the depth and complexity of a piece. At it's root, it's painting on top of a dry layer of watercolor. Glazing is really important in terms of putting together the two basic techniques : the wet-on-wet and the wet-on-dry technique, and building complex pieces on top of each other. Glazing is an especially important topic to remember for watercolor because using layers in watercolor is slightly trickier than with opaque paints like acrylic, or gouache, or oils. With watercolor, because of its transparency, you have to be careful about how you layer things and in what order. But watercolor also, because of its transparency, has an incredible potential for amazing emotional depth and vibrancy. We're going to unlock a lot of that potential in this class. That is my lesson on the intro to glazing, and I will see you in the next lesson. 11. Project #1: Relaxing Patterns: In this video, we're going to paint some fun patterns and do some fun exercises using all the techniques that we've learned in this module. The wet-on-dry technique, the wet-on-wet technique and glazing. This lesson has just little tutorials for four different patterns that I think are really fun to paint and a fun way to explore color and shape and movement of watercolor. Let's get into it. First, I'm going to start with some fun with the wet-on-wet technique. To get started, I taped down this piece of paper and I'm going to use my number 10 brush, and I'm getting it wet. I'm going to make an array of colors basically in stripes across my paper. Some of these stripes I'm going to activate on wet paper, and some of them I'm going to paint at first on dry paper, but then watch the colors blend together as I paint next to them. I will show you exactly what I mean right now. I'm just getting the top like fourth of my paper wet with water right now. Then, I'm going to pick, just in general, if you're trying to do colors that blend well together, colors that are next to each other on the rainbow always blend really well. I talked a little bit about that more in the color theory portion of this course. But for now, just remember that colors that are next to each other on the rainbow always blend together really well. I got my paper wet and I'm just going to paint a little stripe in the wet paper just like that. Then, wash off my paintbrush. Notice how the stripe in the wet paper is blurry around the edges. That's because we're using the wet-on-wet technique. The paint doesn't have to stay in crisp, clear lines. It can move around and be a little blurry. Now I'm going to pick up some of this red over here, this dark red and just write next to that first blurry line. Leaving a tiny little bit of whitespace, I'm going to paint another line. I'm just going to keep doing that, going across my palette until I get to this quin rose right here. Then I'm going to go back to the purple and quin rose. This is going to be just a little pattern of wet on wet reds. I'm going to go back to phenylene violet, which is like a maroon color. I'm just painting these wet-on-wet stripes right next to each other. I'm on the wet paper already and watching as how the stripes blend in with the paper and blend in with each other. Here's my last one. It's going to be like a 1.5 where some of it goes on the tape also. There's my first layer. Now, instead of getting my paper wet first, I'm going to paint on dry paper. Now, I'm going to paint a little swatch, but I'm going to paint on dry paper first, make sure it's really watery, so it doesn't dry immediately after I start painting it and you can just have it touch the top of that wet area if you want. Then while it's still wet, I'm going to pick up the next color on my palette and I'm going to paint right into it. It's like I'm making an extension of the first color and because of the wet-on-wet technique, those colors will blend together. There's yellow, and now I'm going to pick up some greens and do the same thing. The same pattern. Just blend it right into the wet surface while that little stripe is still wet. I want to make sure that this is still wet before I move on and pick up another green and just blend it right into that wet stripe. Even though I'm painting on dry paper, I'm getting a blend in-between these stripes because I'm pushing, basically extending the wet area of the paper with my paintbrush using wet watercolor. I'm going to do a little bit, add just a little bit of a darker green and then go back to yellow ocher over here and keep pushing, just pushing into the previous stroke. Just like that, and we're done. That method, of making stripes is one of my favorites to make this a single blended stripe all the way across my paper. Now, let's practice making stripes without completely blending them but having them just barely touch. I'm going to use this hookers green to start and then go right into my blues over here. I'm going to make a stripe. Just like a single stripe like that. Wash off my paintbrush. Make sure that stripe that single stripe is still wet before you go and I'm picking up my next color, which is Prussian green. Then I'm going to make another stripe and have it just barely touch the stripe next to it by moving your paintbrush just slightly into that other stripe so that they're blending together in that one place. But they're still maintaining their own space, their own striped shape because of the wet-on-dry technique. Wherever the paper is dry, those stripes are going to maintain their shape. Next I'm going to pick up some of this phthalo turquoise. As you're painting these stripes try to make the places where they touch different and make the size and the slight shape, like the width and the length of the stripes different. Also, that variation is going to really provide some fun play for the eyes as you're looking at this. That's just one thing, when you're painting patterns like this to pay attention to. I'm doing four colors. I did hookers green to start, and now I'm going back to hookers green. Some of my stripes like that one was a little sideways and it touched this blue stripe in two places and maybe this Prussian green one, I'll have be a little shorter and just have it touch at the top. But see how, especially when you just touch in one specific place, you get cool view of how colors blend into each other and bleed into each other so a bleed is what happens. It is really what we're practicing right here where you let the colors just naturally move into each other and it's not in an organized, smooth way. It looks more like a burst or a slight bleed into that next shape. That's what this particular shape and warm-up is helpful for. There's my blue stripe and then back to green I'm just pushing that one down. Always consciously trying to add some complexity and diversity. I'm going to make that one a little sideways. Then I have just one more room for one more stripe. Just like that. There's our third stripe pattern using the wet-on-dry technique and the wet-on-wet technique having these slightly bleed into each other. Now for our last little warm-up exercise, we're going to try to utilize glazing to complete this page full of stripes. If you recall, glazing means painting on layers that are already dry. This is going to take a little bit longer to paint because either you're going to have to wait for the shapes to dry, or if you have a heat tool like an embossing heat tool that I have sometimes hairdryers also work, you can dry the layers in between, but just know that that's what's going on. I'm going to move right along from this blue to indigo and I'm going to paint a little stripe like we've been doing, and then I'm going to let this dry before I move on. That square is dry. I'm going to pick up the next color in our sequence, which is Payne's gray. I'm going to paint right on top of it at an angle and paint another rectangle. I'm going to make sure because this is Payne's gray, it's a little darker than indigo. I'm not going to use a ton of pigment because I want the transparency to show through. I'm going to leave it just like that and continue painting in this way wedding each rectangle dry, and then going on to paint the next right on top of it. There we go. I'm going to zoom in a little bit so you can see all of the layers that we created with these glazed rectangles. Here are these rectangles that we painted using glazing so that you can see all of the shapes underneath. That is made possible because of watercolor is transparency. While we're at it here is an up-close look of all of the other patterns that we created in this lesson using the wet-on-wet technique and the wet-on-wet technique on dry paper. With the wet on dry with just a little bit of wet on wet bleeds and then some glazed rectangles. These are all really fun patterns to practice and fun warm-ups to do if you're trying to get into color play. I hope you enjoyed it. I will see you in the next video. 12. Project #2: Aspen Tree: We've learned a little bit about the wet-on-wet technique and the wet-on-dry technique and now, just so we can cement that in your brain, let's try putting it into practice by painting an up-close view of the trunk of an aspen tree. First, we're going to start with a layer of wet-on-wet. Take your number ten brush and paint the middle section of a trunk of a tree. Basically paint it like it's a rectangle with rounded edges is what I would say [NOISE] and then fill that whole rectangle in with water. Because we're using the wet-on-wet technique, we're going to paint on wet paper and that technique is going to allow us to lay down the first layer of the subtle contrast in the bark on an aspen tree. Along the border of this wet trunks, you can see where it's wet, it's shining, the light shining on it and the dry paper, we're going to glide gently, pull our brush along the edges allowing the paint to move in toward the wet area of the trunk. If you'll remember, we talked about the wet-on-wet technique means that watercolor wants to move wherever it's wet. Because only one side of this trunk where we're painting is wet, that's the only place that the watercolor paint is going to move. Just to blend this paint in a little bit more, I washed off my paint and I picked up some clean water from my cup and I'm just manually blending in this paint by tapping in the pigmented areas always at an angle to maintain the point of my brush. I'm tapping in the pigmented areas just to move the paint outward a little bit. One thing to note as you are painting is the trunk of your tree may dry before you get a chance to paint at all and if that happens, no worries, just re-wet it with some more water before you get going. You want to make sure that you re-wet your paper before you start painting if it starts to dry because if you start painting on it while it's dry, of course, you're not going to get those blended pigments on the trunk. It's going to look like dry lines and once you've painted on the dry paper, it's going to be tricky to make it look like the wet-on-wet technique again. Re-wetting your paper, keeping track of what parts are wet and what parts are dry is going to be an important part of this process. Once you've re-wet your paper, just continue doing exactly what we were doing on both sides, so this side and then on this side, on both sides of the trunk, by gently pulling up your brush that has a little bit of the pigment and pulling it just along the very edge of this wet space and then washing it off and with clean water, manually blending in this paint into the wet trunk area. When you have both sides of the trunk outlined in the dark color, then we're going to keep painting using the wet-on-wet technique. You still want your trunk to be a little damp, but this time pickup some slightly more pigmented paint. [NOISE] Over in my palette right here, here's my Payne's gray. I'm picking up some slightly more pigmented paint and then along the trunk in various areas, paint lines extending toward the middle of the trunk and because we're still using the wet-on-wet technique, we want them to be blooming outward like clouding up exactly like they're doing. Just paint some lines so that we can get these blurry lines. You can do a few long ones like this. But also make sure to do some short ones. What we're doing, remember, is painting the bark on an aspen tree. Aspen trees have this really unique look, where the bark is white with black or dark textured cracks in it almost. In order to capture that texture, we're going to do some wet-on-wet lines and some wet-on-dry lines, and we're going to do them in different layers and so that's exactly what's happening right now. This is the wet-on-wet line so that we can get some of the cracks in the bark to capture the effect of the cracks in the bark that have tendrils seeping up and they aren't quite defined using the wet-on-wet technique to give a loose representation of that effect is a fun way to try to capture the magic of these aspen trees. Once you have painted different sizes and different shapes of lines, let's do one whorl. Aspen trees have like little eyes, like little whorls sometimes and so on this line, I'm going to paint like a circle basically, so that there's a little eye in the trunk of this aspen tree and we're going to make it a little more defined in the next layer. After you're done with this layer, let it dry and then we'll move on to using the wet-on-dry technique. Once your painting is dry, we're going to use a smaller detail brush. This is a size zero and still using Payne's gray, we're going to paint some thin wet-on-dry lines. Now remember that wet-on-dry, if we're going to use the wet-on-dry technique, it means we want thin clearly defined, well, it doesn't have to be thin, but we want clearly defined shapes and lines and because the paper is dry, we know that the paint is only going to go where our paintbrush tells it to go. Using very thin lines and when you want to make thin lines, it means you're using very little pressure. Paint some little cracks along the side of this trunk. It can be on top of the wet-on-wet texture that we created or it can be elsewhere. It doesn't have to just be along the side, some of them can be through the middle as well. I really wouldn't pay too much attention to the composition so much of where the lines are because, and this is one of my favorite things about nature, trees are not perfect. [LAUGHTER] They look crazy and I'm just trying to exactly replicate that is just going to cause probably a little frustration, especially if you're a beginner. I prefer to just lean in to the imperfection and paint wherever and just let my hand land at various places without paying too much attention to where I am. Just paint a few wet-on-dry lines just like that and in some places I do have a specific pattern that I want to create and that's own that's particular to this world, so the eye of this aspen tree. I'm going to use C curves a little bit to make it look like there's a little eye coming out of here. Using the wet-on-dry technique on top of the wet-on-wet technique creates this really cool depth to the piece. This rough texture is helping to make this tree looks slightly more realistic, even though I would probably call this more of a loose form of watercolor. There you go. Here is an up-close representation of the trunk of an aspen tree and we using the wet-on-wet technique for the base to create these blurry background and we outlined the edges of a wet-on-wet trunk so that we can help create like this rounded shape of the tree trunk by going from a subtle dark to light gradient on the inside, and then the white of the paper acts as the white of the aspen tree bark. Then we just needed to add some of the little cracks and the details along the bark to create this whole effect and we enhanced those cracks with wet-on-dry marks all along the trunk here. This is a good project to help you practice using the wet-on-wet technique in specific ways with boundaries and using the wet-on-wet and wet-on-dry techniques together in the same painting, which is how all paintings are formed as I talked about earlier. Thank you for joining me for this project and let's move right along. 13. Project #3: Mosaic: In this watercolor tutorial, we're going to practice making a mixed media mosaic using some skinny washi tape and our watercolors and some gel pen. First, after you've taped down your sheet of paper with normal masking tape, take some skinny masking tape or skinny washing tape or some skinny tape that would be nice to paper and make some kind of geometric design on your paper. I didn't have a plan in mind before I put down the tape. I just laid down some lines and got going. Once you have the tape down, take some clean water and get your paper completely wet even on top of the tape. I usually use my big number 10 brush or bigger for washes like this to put down some paper and make sure to, as you're going over the tape, that you're using your paint brush at an angle so that your bristles don't catch on the tape and ruin your brush. After their water is done, you can start laying down the paint. There are basically two ways you can do this. You can go one shape at a time like I'm doing in this one, you can stay within the confines of one triangle or a parallelogram or whatever it is that you've made. Use the wet-on-wet techique to create some fun blends. Or you can paint all across the tape and just paint it like a big wash of color on top of your paint. What really matters here is making sure that you're keeping your paper wet, making sure that it doesn't dry before you get a chance to create some blends. Another thing that matters is to make sure that your color blends are, they look nice. Paying attention to what colors you're mixing where, trying not to mix complimentary colors as much as possible. In the square on the left, I mixed green and orange, which don't really go well together, at least as well as other colors, but I think it provides an okay contrast and it was fine. If you do accidentally mix colors that might not create the prettiest of blends, that's totally fine. There's no rule that says you have to use analogous colors together to create color blends. Just put these colors together using the wet-on-wet technique and using strokes of clean water sometimes to blend the colors together. That's what I did when I put the green and pink together in the top right right usually green and pink do not go well together because green and red are complimentary. But in order to make that gradient work, I used a wet brush to put a buffer in between those two colors. Once you have put all your colors down, use a Q-tip to mop up any excess paint or any excess puddles, any extra things that you might see and then let your painting dry. I'm using a heat gun here because I don't always have patience to let my paintings dry on their own. It usually takes me, I would say about two to three minutes of painting, maybe like six inches or so painting, drying six inches or so away from the paper to get my paper fully dry. Sometimes I don't get it completely dry, so I have to go over it again like I'm doing here. But once I see the papers start to shift and move and bend to flatten. Again. It usually warps a little bit and then kind of flattens and then I know it's dry and I give it just a little stroke. After it's dry, take a white gel pen. I'm also using a gold gel pen throughout this and just trying to draw some patterns right on top of the watercolor in the shapes that you've made using the washi tape. In one triangle, I made just a little grid pattern in this kind of parallelogram shape. I'm doing some line drawn florals. If I don't have tons of tutorials online drawing florals, but I know a lot of artists who do so I will link my favorite artists, who do line drawing florals in the resources section of this lesson. But I draw some line drawn florals and then some polka dots with the white gel pen in another. Then I'm going to pick up my gold gel pen. Once I'm done drawing some polka dots in this triangle, I'm going to pick up my gold gel pen and paint some more polka dots. I say paint, draw in some more polka dots in a different triangle. Then once I'm done with the polka dots, the gold ones, I'm going to do one more geometric shape with the gold gel pen. I'm going to draw some lines, not in a grid pattern, just some vertical lines in kind of a scribbly scrawl kind of way. Not straight, they're kind of messy lines, but I'm just going to draw those right on top of that little triangle. Then I'm going to leave the rest of the shapes. Just paint. Once I'm done drawing on the inside of the shapes, then it's time for the best part, the tape peel. Go ahead and take off your tape and reveal the white space of the paper underneath separating these fun geometric designs that you've made with your paint and your gel pens. This technique, making a mosaic out of watercolor and other mixed media. Gel pens that I use is a really fun way to just play, to play around with color blends and play around with shapes. Then using the whitespace to reveal something really beautiful that stands out and is just so fun and playful to look at. This is one of my very favorite methods of experimenting and playing with watercolor and I hope that you enjoyed it. Let's take a quick look at some of these patterns. I will see you next time. 14. Recap: Thank you so much for joining me for my watercolor for beginners class. I hope that you enjoyed yourself and I hope that you learned a little bit about watercolor and a little bit about yourself. I think that watercolor is such a versatile medium and personally, it helped me learn to embrace my imperfection and learn from supposed failures and figure out how to move forward despite, or maybe because of all of the chaos that the world brings. Watercolor's magic lies precisely in the fact that it cannot be controlled, and that's what I love so much about it. Watercolor helped me to embrace my own imperfections and love myself and my art for exactly what it was. I hope that this class helped you along your journey and helped you embrace and explore your creativity just a little bit more. If you want to keep learning from me, I have lots of other classes on Skillshare and I also have other resources and tutorials on Instagram and YouTube. You can check out my Instagram, my handle is @thiswritingdesk and you can check out my other work at www.thiswritingdesk.com. Finally, if you want to share any of the projects that you've practiced in this class, I would love to see them. Please post them to the project gallery writing Skillshare and I will be happy to leave a comment and leave you some feedback. You can also feel free to start a discussion if you have any more questions and if you decide that you want to post your work to Instagram or anywhere else, just make sure to tag me so that I can give you some feedback and possibly share your work. I usually do some Skillshare features in my stories once in a while and I would love to share something that you've painted. Thanks again for joining me and I will see you next time.