Transcripts
1. Intro Misty Forest: Welcome to my class on how to paint a watercolor misty forest. This class is beginner friendly and we will go over
a whole bunch of different watercolor
techniques and put them all together to create atmosphere and depth
in our watercolor painting, we'll cover all of
the supplies I used, the paint colors, and some
helpful tips along the way. There will be two
class projects. We will first create
smaller studies of trees, and then we will move on to a
larger watercolor painting. By the end of this class, we will have developed
some techniques to create some very beautiful,
striking tree escapes. We will use layering
techniques and move from lighter washes
into darker washes. And we will also do wet
into wet and dry brush.
2. Supplies: For this particular painting, I used a minimal
color palette so that we could focus mostly
on the values. I used. Indigo, perylene, green, sap green, and touches
of Payne's gray. As far as colors go, the trees in the background
are a little bit more blue. And as I move into
the foreground, I add a bit more green. And then as we move into the
trees at the very front, those are much darker in value. And that's a mixture
of perylene green, indigo and some sap green. Throughout the painting, I'm mixed my blues and my greens so that it wasn't all just one row of blue trees or one
row of green trees. I felt that this
was a better way to showcase the natural variation
of the colors in a forest. As we work through
this painting, you'll be able to see much
of my watercolor palette, which is a very
messy butcher tray. But I think it gives
you a sense of how I work and how
I choose my colors. I like to mix them directly
on the palette as I'm working because I'm often
changing at the moment, deciding which
color I'm going to put where depending on
the layer behind it. Here are just a few
more supplies that I think come in handy when you're working on a painting like this. I used a fine mist spray
bottle like this one here. It just covers an even
light mist across your page so that you
can work wet into wet. You can also use tape
like this artist's tape. It's acid free, it doesn't
leave any residues. And although it's not as
sticky as masking tape, it won't tear your paper apart. For this particular painting, I used a watercolor block, which is just several sheets of watercolor paper bound
together on all four sides. And it's just
another way to keep your paper flat while
you're painting. You can remove each page
with a palette knife. It does occasionally
ripple when you work with really heavy
wet into wet washes. So sometimes I do
tape all the edges just as another
layer of protection.
3. Value Chart Practice: In this lesson, we
will talk about the importance of value
in a landscape painting. We are going to create a quick value chart and you
can use this as a reference. I'm just going to
clean my palette here. Now, if you have a larger
palette than this, like a butcher tray, that would be a
better way to work. But if not, just make sure
you have three areas. One for light, one for medium, and one for a dark
puddle of paint. In watercolor painting,
the term value is to describe how dark or
light a paint color is. And it also means
the concentration, the ratio of paint to
water or the pigment. Right here, I'm using a
very watery consistency. This will create a
very transparent, very pale, very light wash. The value here is very light. I believe I used a mixture of indigo and maybe
some Payne's gray. I'm going to add more paint to this mixture to create
a darker value. You can see by adding
more paint with the same amount of water
produces a darker value. Now I'm going to do
it one more time to create an even
richer, darker value. You can practice this chart with different colors just to become familiar with what it means to move from lighter
to darker values. Now this is just straight up paint pretty much from the tube. You can see how dark it is. It's almost black. It's a good thing to
keep in mind that your watercolor paint has a
different values naturally, there's some paint that
has a wide range of value, like the particular
indigo that I used. There's some paint
that no matter how thick or how
concentrated it is, it's always sort of
a lighter color. Take for instance, lavender, which is usually a purple
hue mixed with white. And that shade will
never be as dark as the darkest value of indigo. If that makes sense. What I'm doing here is
I'm practicing mixing my sap green with
my perylene green. The sap green is a very
bright green, a green, and I like to tone
it down with shades of blue and perylene green. Perylene green is very dark, very rich, and that has
a wide range in value. Also, the main colors I used
for this piece where Indigo, perylene green, and sap green. And each of these colors
has a wide value range, which means that at their most concentrated
straight out of the tube, the paints are
particularly dark, but they can be
diluted with water to create very
light pale washes. It's a good idea to practice mixing them together
just so that you can see the variation in colors you can achieve with
these blues and greens.
4. Special Brush Techniques: I'm going to show you a few different watercolor
techniques that I think are very helpful for
this type of painting. I'm also going to
show you a mistake. What it means to have
a thirsty brush. So let's get started. I'm going to make purple
trees just because it's fun. So what I'm going to do
is I am going to start painting a tree top
on plane, dry paper. I haven't pre wet
this paper at all. What I'm going to do is fade out the bottom using
a thirsty brush. Now in this painting
we will mostly be putting our trees on paper
that's already damp, especially for the lower
part of the trees. But in some instances
you'll see that I use a thirsty brush for many of the trees just to achieve a
slightly different effect. So I'm painting a
few quick tree tops with very saturated paint. And next I'm going to
take a different brush. Now, I'm using this flat brush
and I'm going to put it in my clean water and then
I'm going to remove the excess water and simply
drag the paint down. You can see it's starting
to create lines. This is tough to do. That's why I prefer
working wet into wet. But in some instances, I use a wider brush. It works better if you
have a wider brush, like a one-inch or
even a mop brush. But if you work quickly, you can fade out those lines. You can tell right here. The key is not to
have too much water on your brush because if
you have too much water, it will push the pigment away. Now while that paper
is still damp, I'm just going to do a quick wet into wet tree right here. The top remains dry, the bottom just bleeds. This next technique I like to
call meeting in the middle. It's simply where your
painting dry brush on paper, and then you take another
brush with clean, clear water. You just paint an area
directly below it that you plan on having
that color fade into. I do this more often than
the thirsty brush technique. It's just a bit of
a cleaner look. Is that technique again
called meeting in the middle, I'm going to paint a tree
top and then I'm going to take a damp brush and
create an area of water. I just want you to
be able to see that my paper isn't totally
saturated with water. That's why I'm moving
it back and forth. Now there's a space of dry
paper and I'm going to take my damp brush and just bring that wet area backup to
the tree and fade it in. Now, I'm going to show you
what happens if you have too much water on your brush and you're trying to do
a thirsty brush. Watercolor is a balancing act. So if you have too much water on your brush and you dab it
on wet paint on your paper. It will push that
pigment out and it can lead to some really
cool, exciting effects. And it might be
something you enjoy. So it's just a way to
manipulate the paint and water. Just a bit of a recap. A thirsty brush acts
like a damp sponge using adhesion and cohesion to soak up some of the extra
paint on the paper. Once again, watercolor
is a balancing act. And since there is more
water and paint on the paper than on my
damp, thirsty brush. The brush will essentially soak up those pigments
and that water and I can move it around on the page and even lift off
some of that paint. I'm going to show
another example of lifting using a thirsty brush. Now here I'm just going
to create an area using the wet into wet technique where I
just put down some clean, clear water and drop
in some paint color. And then I'm going to
take a clean brush, rinse it off, and
make sure it's damp enough so that I can then
soak up some of that paint. This is often referred to as the lifting technique
because you can lift the pigment off
the page to create beautiful highlights
and soft edges.
5. Mini Mountain Landscape One: In this lesson, we will create a mini mountain
landscape painting. This one will consist of three layers of
watercolor paint. We will let it dry
between each layer, starting with the
background mountain, which will be the
lightest and value, since it's the farthest away. As we move into the foreground, trees are values will
grow darker and deeper. It's important to begin
with clean, clear water. When I'm doing here
is I'm just creating an area where I will
drop in my paint color. And you can see I haven't
wet the entire square, just a section where my
background mountain will be. I'm going to use a
mixture of Davies gray, which is a very light gray, mixed with a touches
of perylene green. I'm using lots of water so
that the value stays light. I'm going to drop in just a little bit darker color
and value here and there, just to create some depth
within the mountain range. As you'll notice, the tops of the mountains
have a hard edge. And this is because
I've kept the paper dry just above that wet area. Well, my goal is to keep these background mountains
fairly lightened value, I am dropping in some darker value just
to create some contrast. The bottom of this mountain
range remains soft and misty because
there's enough paper that's still damped for
the paint to bleed into. Once your background layer of mountains has dried completely, then we can move on
to the mid layer, which will consist
of a medium value. Again, I'm going to use clean, clear water and just
create an area on my paper where I'm going to
paint my mid-range mountains. I made sure to create enough of an area so that when I
drop in my paint color, the bottom we'll
just fade and create a soft edge rather
than a hard edge. Once the water has time
to soak in and you can see the texture
of the paper, then it's time to start
dropping in your color. I'm going to make a
darker mixture of my perylene green
with my Davies gray. Because these mountains
are in the middle, they're closer, they're
darker in value. Just like the
background mountains, I'm going to start
dropping in color. And I'm going to keep the
tops a hard edge as well. Now while there's no
right or wrong way to hold a brush for this exercise, I like to hold my brush
so that the top is pointing up towards the tops
of this mountain range. Holding my brush like this
just allows me to give the illusion of
treetops poking out of this mountain range. You can see that my
color is already darker in value than the distant mountain
range behind it. Once this layer dries, then we will move on to
the foreground trees, which will be even
darker in color. One more thing that I like
to do is to tilt my paper at an angle so that the
paint runs down vertically. This helps to create
a soft edge at the bottom of the mountains
and a misty effect.
6. Mini Mountain Part Two: For this next section of class, we will be working on our
third layer of watercolor, which is the foreground trees. Now we will be working on the painting
that's to the right, since it's very similar
to the one on the left. And for some reason
I don't have footage of my foreground trees
in a horizontal format. But it's essentially
the same exact process. What I'm doing is I'm putting
down a layer of clean, clear water similar to
what we did before. I'm going to show
this again quickly because this is an
important step. I'm making sure that my clean, clear water is on
the lower third of the page in a rough U-shape. This is because
I'm going to keep the tops of my trees crisp. And as they move into
that wet layer of water, they will fade out and
create a misty effect. I'm using the darkest
value of perylene green. I'm using a number eight
pointed round brush. As you'll notice, when
I'm painting my trees, the top half of the trees
is done on dry paper. This is called dry
brush technique. As I begin to paint the
lower half of the treeline, I'm moving into that damp paper, that clear wash that I made. This part of the tree
will just slowly fade and give a misty effect. Sometimes I enhance it using
another brush like this. Round here, this
is a number eight. It doesn't have a
very fine point, but it's good for blending. I'm holding my brush upright so that the
tip is pointing up. There's no right or wrong
way to hold a brush. This is just how I
prefer to do my trees. I'm using a silver
black velvet round. These brushes come to a very fine point and they
hold quite a bit of water. They are also synthetic. Now my tree tops remain
crisp and that is because they were painted
directly onto dry paper. This is a good example of
creating a hard edge and the bottom of the trees
has a wet into wet effect. This is called a soft edge. So even if I start to
paint a tree trunk, it will slowly fade out. And that's the effect
that I'm going for with this misty forest. You can see that my tree
line bows down quite a bit. So it creates some
contrast between those distant mountains
and the foreground. I wanted to create
some variation in this tree escape just
to make it interesting. The color I'm using here, perylene green is a very rich green and when it's used
at almost full strength, it looks almost black. When you incorporate
these wet into wet techniques and
these fading effects. It's a really beautiful
variation in value. I'm just going to continue
adding more trees, making sure to vary
the height just to give the appearance
of a natural forest. I'm making sure to
concentrate most of my paint at the very
tops of these trees. Just to further enhance that faded misty effect down below. Keep in mind that if there's
an area of your background, mountains that you weren't
really happy with. You can indeed cover it up with this foreground
layer of trees. For instance, here I have a hard edge on my
background mountains. And so I'm just going to
disguise it and cover it up a bit by painting a few more darker trees
right in front of it.
7. Starry sky mini mountain landscape: For this landscape painting, we are going to be doing a soft background
sky that's rather dark with shades of greenish
blue and deep indigo. I use to phthalo turquoise
for my green and my blue. I did a mixture of indigo
with phthalo blue. I'm also going to be
using some white gouache. I'm going to start covering
my paper with clean, clear water just to get it damp because we're going
to start with the wet into wet technique. This is simply just
where you drop in your color onto the wet paper. The key here is not to
get your paper too wet. And you'll be able
to tell when you'll see the water pooling
on your paper. You want to try and stop up any excess water
with your brush. Sorry for the
out-of-focus thing there. You can also tilt your
paper and as long as you can see the texture
of your paper, then your paper is ready to start putting
down your paint. This technique takes awhile to practice and to get it right. So you'll see me going over my paper again as I'm
starting to notice, some of the sides are, the edges of my square are drying quicker than the
rest of the square. And I really want
to make sure I have an even coverage of water
over my entire paper. This will just make
sure that the paint doesn't have any hard
edges are weird blooms. I really want to try and get
a smooth application with, for this wet into wet technique. I'm starting with my green
and I'm just putting down some paint in a V-shape. It doesn't have to be this way. I just think it'll add
some visual interest. You'll see me tilt my paper up. And this is to help
encourage the paint to flow in a direction
that I want it to go. You can also prop your
paper up with something. It's also important to remove any extra paint
or water that you see pooling around the
edges of your tape. Now it's time to start putting
down your darker blue. When I work wet
into wet like this, at first it looks like
there's a lot of zigzags, but these will blend
and bleed into your, your paper and your colors
will flow and blend as long as you have your
paper damp enough. And if you encourage
it to flow by either tilting it or propping
it up with something. I also like to leave a little bit of whitespace
because I think that helps give some depth and atmosphere in
the background. I'm just going to drop in some more darker color as I'm holding my
paper at an angle. It'll just run down the page. I'm just going to drop in
touches of green and you can see how the paint is
really flowing nicely. It starting to pool
at the bottom. So I'm just removing
it with a dry tissue. While the background
is still damp, I can add in more paint. You'll notice that I made
an even darker mixture because this will dry lighter
watercolor always does. I'm using a dark
mixture of indigo and some of my phthalo
blue and I'm just putting it in a
few areas just to increase that depth in that
atmosphere in the background. Next, I'm going to use
some white gouache. And I'm going to just sprinkle it in there
with a stiff brush. This will just give the illusion of stars in the background.
8. Starry Sky Treeline: While your background
is still wet, you're going to take a brush and dip it in your
white gouache, or you can use white
watercolor paint. The key is to keep
it pretty thick so that when you spatter
on your white paint, it'll create these little
white starry effects. Now you can decide to
let your background dry and then spatter your stars
for a more defined look. But sometimes I like
to do it this way because you get more
of a halo effect. It's important to let
your background layer dry completely before
starting this next step. What I'm doing is I'm
applying a layer of clean, clear water with my flat brush. This is a one-inch brush. It just helps to apply
water in broader strokes. What I plan on doing
is painting trees into that dry paper so that
they retain their crisp tops. And then as I move down
into the base of the tree, the tree will just slowly
fade into that wet area. I'm using a silver black
velvet brush here. It's a pointed round. It holds quite a bit of water. And it also comes to
a nice fine point. Now the key here
is to work rather quickly because that
wet paper will dry in about three to five minutes using a dark mixture of
indigo and phthalo turquoise. I'm bringing that
line of trees all the way across the top
of that wet edge. And this will just
make sure I don't have one hard straight line
going across my page. I plan on making
these trees within about five minutes so
that I can blend them into that wet paper and
that this will help me avoid any hard edges
or unwanted blooms. I'm making sure to shape my
trees in a V And so that their reflections
forum the same upside down V in the water. So here's just a quick glimpse at how I did that in
this little clip. Just bringing some blue down into the sides
of the painting. To give the painting
some perspective, I plan on keeping the trees larger on the sides
of the painting. And as I move closer
to the middle, the trees will get
smaller and shorter. You'll notice that
the first thing I did before I started painting the entire tree line
is I brought in some color along
that entire edge, along that wet paper. Since I knew it would
dry pretty quickly. This will just help me avoid any hard lines or
any sort of Bloom's. Another thing you'll notice is that the white gouache
that I applied previously is pushing out the paint that I put
directly on top of it. Now that was technically a mistake that I made
and maybe I could have planned around it
by just making sure I painted a tree around
that white area. But I'm just trying to show you that I make mistakes
all the time. And this is just something that happens when you try
new things with watercolor. I'm really liking that lighter
area in my background sky. And so I plan on
bringing some of my tree tops into that area so that you can get a lot of contrast
between the dark trees and that lighter,
paler background sky. This creates a good focal
point in a painting. You'll see me switch different brushes
throughout this painting. Sometimes I use a really
skinny number four. And then I go back to my
number six and number eight, silver black velvet. It just keeps some variation
within the tree tops. I'm going to finish this
painting by just bringing that tree line up again as I get toward the right
side of my paper. In the future before I apply my white gouache
with the starry sky, what I plan on is deciding where I'm
going to put my trees. When I first started
the background, I wasn't exactly sure where
my tree line would go. I thought it would
be much lower. But as I continued painting, I just decided to switch gears and have it
go in the middle. So you can control where the placement of your
stars go by simply putting your hand over your
paper and blocking off areas. Or you can try to disguise it by painting a bird right over
it like I attempted here.
9. Large Misty Forest Part One: Let's begin painting. What I'm doing here is
I'm covering most of my paper with
clean, clear water. I'm using a soft
round mop brush. The key is just to
use any brush that won't leave scratches
on your paper. It helps to hold your paper at an angle towards the light. Then you can see if you
have an even coverage, you don't want your paper to be overly saturated with water. If you can see the
texture of your paper, then you're ready to begin
dropping in your paint color. Another helpful tip
is to prop your paper up on something so
that it's at an angle. This will allow the paint
to run down and fade. We're starting with
our background trees. And these will be
very soft and hazy. There won't be any hard edges because we are
working wet into wet. I'm using a number ten pointed
round by Mozart supplies. But you can use any
synthetic pointed round or even a natural
haired brush would work. The key is just to dot
vertical lines up and down and vary the
height of each tree. This will create a
more realistic forest. You can see in my butcher tray, I'm using a mixture of indigo and maybe touches of perylene
green here and there. Just to create some variation. I'm keeping the
value fairly light. So if you refer back
to your value chart, you'll see that I'm dropping in very pale color in
the background. It helps to lift your brush
while you're painting a tree. This just creates some
variation and texture. And it allows the paint
to naturally flow out. Just keep in mind if you want your trees to appear
fuller near the bottom, that you need to
add more paint in those areas so that
it can spread out. Keep in mind too, that depending on
the climate, urine, your paper may dry slower or
faster than mine right here. When I work wet into wet, I typically have maybe
five minutes to put in my paint color before the paper starts to dry and then
I get hard edges. But as it starts to dry, I am defining the
tops of these trees. Because as the paper
begins to dry, the paint will not
spread out quite as far. So you can get a little
bit more detail. I'm dropping in some
more color here, some more perylene green, still trying to keep
the value fairly light. Now on the far right, my paper is nearly dry and you can see this
tree looks different. It's, it's almost got a
hard edge to the top. And I'm going to soften
that because they don't really want
this to be a hard, crisp tree just yet. You can also use a
fine mist spray bottle to further soften that edge
and make that paint bleed.
10. Large Misty Forest background trees 2: For this next section of class, we're going to define just a few of the trees in
this background row. I'm using a fine
mist spray bottle. And while it's not the same
as laying down a clean, clear wash of water
with a brush. It adds a bit of
texture so that you can work wet into wet with added texture in
your tree branches. You'll be able to see this
technique demonstrated here. In order to create some
variation within the trees. I'm spraying and uneven
coating of spray on my paper because I don't want
it to be completely wet. I want to have some dry areas. This will help when I'm
painting in my trees to create some hard edges and
some soft edges. Depending on the type of
spray bottle you use. If you're droplets are
a little bit larger, you'll get a bit of a variation than what
I'm having here. But this is just another tool to add to your
watercolor toolkit to create enhanced texture
within your paintings. I'm using a smaller
pointed round. This is again another
Mozart brush, a size six. But you can use any
synthetic brush. Princeton are my favorite as
far as synthetic brushes go. I am using Princeton Neptune
most often these days. It also helps to have
a fine liner brush, also called a rigor. This is simply a skinny brush that allows you to get some
really fine lines and detail. While my paper is
not completely dry because I did use
my spray bottle, some of the paint will fade into the pre wet areas and some will be harder edged
and more defined. I'm going in and
softening some of these hard edges with
this other brush. My goal here is just to
create some variation within the tree and not create one solid tree from
top to bottom. When you use a spray bottle, some parts of your paper might be more
damped than others. In this particular spot, most of my paper
is pretty damped, so I'm taking
advantage of that and doing some wet into
wet techniques. And then as they move
up into this tree, the paper is dry
or so it creates more of a defined tree top. Now, I'm not going to paint every single tree in
this background road, just a few to keep the
texture interesting. You'll notice that my paint is a little bit darker in value, and this just helps it
stand out a bit more.
11. Large Misty Forest Treeline: Now for the middle row of trees, these are going to be
a bit darker in value. So if you refer back
to your value chart, it's about right in the middle
between light and dark. We don't want it to be too dark, but we want it to
be a step above the trees that are in
the far background. I'm starting to just
do some dry brush work right here with my number
six pointed round. And instead of painting water on the lower third of my
paper to let the trees fade. I'm just going to use my
fine mist spray bottle. Now. I'm spraying a
fairly even coating along the bottom
third of my page. I want to be careful
to make sure I leave enough dry paper so that
when I paint the tree tops, they'll have a hard, crisp edge. Then as I move down each tree, it'll fade into that wet paper. Since this row of trees is just a step closer
to the viewer, they are darker in
value and they are going to have more
variation in color. I'm using a mixture of sap green with, with perylene green. Perylene green is a
very dark rich green. And it can be used to tone down other greens to create a
more of a forest green. You'll see I often use my
spray bottle to create soft edges and areas where
the paper is still dry. I'm adding a bit more
indigo and dropping it into my tree just to create
some color variation. Another important thing
to keep in mind is to leave white spaces between
your tree branches. This adds more contrast to your painting and
more interests also. It helps to prop your paper
up a bit if your paint is starting to spread
too far left and right. And you'd rather
have it flow down, just prop it up at an angle. And this will help encourage that paint to flow
into your wet area. It's important to
keep in mind that you want your trees
to look natural. So instead of being evenly spaced apart and
all the same value, try and create some variation. Maybe make some trees a
little bit closer together, a little higher,
a little shorter. I also like to use
different brushes. Sometimes I use my fine
liner rigger brush to create some more delicate texture
and some skinnier lines. I like to hold my brush near the end of the
handle because this helps to create a little
more of a wilder effect, a little more of a
natural painterly look. I don't like to hold
it so tight and pinched at the tip because I feel like that makes my
painting too tight to composed. And I feel like this
gives me more of a natural look to my
branches and trees. I'm using a mixture of raw
sienna with my sap green. This is just warming up my green into more of an olive tone. One thing to keep
in mind to make your trees really
pop is contrast. Now the second layer of trees, I'm making sure that the tree tops are
placed in areas that have white paper or very light paper because
I want them to stand out. Not every tree top has to
be positioned in this way. But I'm just keeping
an eye out and making sure that my
painting has balance. And the way to make
sure it has balance is to keep an eye
out for contrast.
12. Large Misty Forest Mid layer trees 2: Let's continue working on
this middle layer of trees. As you continue working, your paper will start to dry. So it's handy to keep
your spray bottle nearby or a brush that's
loaded with water? I'm using my spray bottle
just to fade the bottom of this tree and a brush just to help direct
the paint where to go. It's important to note here that the mop brush that I'm
using is a damp brush. I'm using this thirsty
brush technique, which is simply a brush that has a tiny bit of water on it, damp enough just to help pull your paint color down or pull
the water on the page down. It won't add any more
water to your painting. It'll, it'll help direct where you want your
paint to flow. I'll be using this smaller
number six pointed round brush and my detailing brush, which is my liner brush. Not every tree has to be
straight up and down. Some of the trees might
be a little bit tilted. As I'm working on this layer, I'm always looking
for areas where I can amplify the contrast. This will help give the viewer a place to look and focus
on in the painting. There are some areas in the background where there's
a lot of whitespace. That's where I'm
going to put some of my darkest tree tops. Another thing to
keep in mind is that not every tree in this row
has to have the same value. I think it creates more interest when you can vary the value. Some areas will be
darker and some lighter. After this layer dries, we're going to move on
to the foreground trees, which will be the
darkest and value.
13. Large Misty Forest Foreground : We're going to get started on our third and final
layer of trees. Since these trees
are closest to us, these are the darkest and value. I'm mixing up a pretty dark
mixture of blue and green. It's important to try not to
get your colors too muddy. You can add little bits of brown or maybe touches
of ocher to warm it up. But I'm using mostly indigo
and some perylene green here. If you want to make it
a bit more neutral, you can add some brown. I should mention
that I did pre wet the lower quarter of
this sheet of paper, but it started to dry. So I used a thirsty brush and I just pulled some of that paint down to fade
the bottom of the tree. Spray bottle can
also come in handy here to further fade
out that paint. Now this is the
layer that will have the most amount of detail compared to the
layers behind it. Because these are closer to us, they are more vivid
in appearance. There have richer values and there's more detail
in the tree tops. As you're painting these trees, It's a nice effect
to leave a bit of whitespace within
the branches. Just helps that later paper in the background kind of pop. Always remember that
watercolor will dry lighter, so I'm dropping in some
more saturated tones, some indigo to darken up
these trees a bit more. Another thing to keep in
mind when we're adding in our third layer of trees is the other two layers
are gradually starting near the upper
left corner of the page. And they move down
sort of at a diagonal toward the lower right-hand
side of the page. With these trees, I'm going
to do the same thing, but not exactly in
a parallel line. I want to have some variation so that it doesn't
look too geometric. I'm liking how the
lower left corner of the page is wider and
lighter in value. And I could leave it at that. But instead I did drop in some darker colors and I decided to create that
whole bottom third of the page as a dark value. Since that bottom third
of my paper is still damp and there's some
dry paper just on top. You have that lovely effect of detailed tree tops
merging into a soft, misty, hazy layer down below. If you feel like
you're a tree tops are getting too
detailed into crisp, you can change it up
by fading some of them out with a damp or
a thirsty brush. Or you can use your spray
bottle and just spritz them a bit and get some interesting
watery effects that way. Another thing you can do
to add a bit of texture is to sprinkle some salt
onto your damp paper. What it will do is it
will push those pigments, those that paint color
out a little bit and create a bunch of little
tiny white, hazy dots. I'm just going to darken
this tree up a bit. I think it'll help create that diagonal line
from left to right. I'm just fading and softening
the bottom of that tree so that the tree below
it is still visible.
14. Large Misty Forest Foreground 2: Now because there
was more detail in these foreground trees, I decided to divide it
up into two stages. I worked on the lower
left-hand side first. And you can see here the
lovely salt effects that happened when I sprinkled
that salt into my wet paint. And I think it looks really
neat, really abstract. And you can choose to
leave it this way. I did ultimately paint
over it with darker paint, but that's an option. What I did was I sprayed the lower-right corner
of my page with my fine mist spray
bottle just so that I could fade in some of
these foreground trees. Now it's essentially
the same process that we did in the
previous video. The only difference is I'm going to prop my paper up at an angle upright so that the
trees will fade more dramatically
into that wet paper. If you choose to
hold your paper up, you can really decide where
you want your paint to flow and you have a
lot more control. So I'm often moving my paper
up and down as I work, especially with these
wet into wet techniques. Just keep dropping
in darker color and it just fades
down that page. And again, as some of
your paper might start to dry like mine does
here on the edge, I'm just taking a thirsty
brush and fading it out. Since I think that might
leave a hard edge, I'm using my spray bottle
just to help it along. I'll just put one more
tree in the middle here. We couldn't call this done, but I am going to
add another row of trees in that lower-right area where there's a little
bit of whitespace. I'm also just going to prop my paper up and let
it dry like this.
15. More trees 1: I'm still working on
these foreground trees. And you can see
that the trees on the far right with
that faded background, they just were a little bit
too light for my liking. So I decided that I would
have them be pushed back another layer
and I'm going to make a tree line right
in front of them. I really do like that
effect where the paint faded down as I
tilted my paper up. So I want to preserve that. And I'm planning on painting a few darker trees right
in front of that area, but still leaving
enough room so that you can see that
beautiful faded effect. Now this last layer of trees, I am having them get cut off
at the bottom of the page, so they still are very
dark on the bottom. They're not quite as faded
or light as the ones above. Now this is the area
of the painting that I'm going to create
quite a bit of contrast. I have a lovely light faded background and I think
it'll really pop if I put in some
highly detailed trees that are very dark
in value right here. I wasn't planning on putting in this additional
layer of trees, but I felt like it would
really make the painting pop. Since I've got some
really dark values in these trees on the
bottom of the page. The final step of our
painting will be to top it off with some nice
light birds at the top. And they're just going to
add a little bit of punch, a little bit of
contrast to our peace within that nice light
faded sky that we have.
16. Birds: It helps to practice first, what I'm doing is I'm using
a number six pointed round, and it comes to a very
fine detailed point. I'm using that to
my advantage to create a skinny wing
and then a boulder wing simply by lightly first putting down a
simple line and then pushing my brush down into the paper to create a
thicker, bolder wing. While it's still wet, you can dot in some more color. Let's use this same
technique with our painting. Again, we're just making
some light V shapes. One part of your v will be
skinny and the other will be thicker as you push your
brush into your paper. And you can make upside down Vz. Just keep in mind
that the birds in the distance will be smaller
and lighter in value. In general, I'm not making my birds too dark
in value because I don't want to take away too much from this
landscape painting.
17. Closing thoughts misty forest: Thank you all for
taking my class. I really hope you've enjoyed it. Please share your final
paintings with me. I would love to see your work. You can share it with me on
Instagram or a Skillshare or just shoot me an
email, anything works? Just keep in mind when we're
learning new techniques. It takes time. It probably took me ten paintings until I got something that
I was happy with. And it's a process. Watercolor is a lifelong
journey for me, at least it's something I know I can do for years
and years and always find something new and exciting
and something I want to strive to achieve like a new technique or maybe
even painting large. That is something that's
on my list of goals. I think in the future, I will make a painting like this that's a little bit
more abstracted because I really like to embrace some of those
mistakes and watercolor, like water that kind of pushes out the pigment
and creates these blooms. But it creates beautiful
abstract things that you can't really achieve
with any other medium. So anyway, that's, those
are some of my goals as an artist is to incorporate
some of those messy, the messy nature of
watercolor into my work. Just to reminder, to please posterior final paintings in the project section
of this class.
Katrina Pete, Watercolor Artist
