Watercolor Landscape - Dreamy Lake Reflections

1. Intro: Have you ever wanted to paint a stunning landscape and watercolors, but felt it's too intimidating. Well, today is a chance to do it and don't worry, you're in good hands. Hi, I'm Trupti Karjinni, a watercolor artist and instructor from India, and I'm also the founder of Blue Pine Arts, a company that makes handmade artisanal watercolors and other art supplies. In today's class, I'll be teaching you how to paint a gorgeous misty forest reflected in the lake, and we're going to do all of that with just two colors. I'll teach you essential watercolor techniques like controlled wet in wet, blending, lifting, and also how to approach composition. This is the perfect class for beginners who are looking for an easy approach to landscapes in general. Are you ready to paint a dreamy watercolor landscape with me? Let's get started. 2. Supplies: This is my well-used palette of my blue pine arts handmade artist crepe watercolors. Out of this large selection of handmade colors, I'm going to be using two colors today. The first one is the scarlet ibis and the second one is the dioxizine charmoon. This dioxizine charmoon is a PV23 pigment watercolor. You can see how it's just such a beautiful dark valued violet color and the scarlet ibis is a beautiful middle of the road dry drag. You can see how saturated it is, and it tends out to this beautiful shape and both look so good together. Today I am using Fabriano artistico watercolor paper. Now this is an artist crepe paper which is 100 percent cotton cold pressed and it's 300 gsm. The reason why I recommend using an artist crepe paper like this is because we are going to use a lot of water and a lot of layers into this work. This paper is going to help you work with a lot of ease, but if you don't have artist crepe paper, that is still okay. If you're buying student crepe paper, just make sure that it is cold pressed and it is made especially for watercolors. In today's class, I'm going to be using three brushes. The first one is my one-inch synthetic flat brush from Rosemary and Co, I'm going to use this to spread the water around on the paper. The other brush that I'm going to use is Silver Kolinski random number six brush. It's made with Kolinski able hair, and it comes to a beautiful point, as you can see over here. It holds a lot of water and paint. I'm going to use this to paint the pine trees. The next brush I'm going to use is my Princeton heritage row number two brush, it also comes to a wonderful point and it's a lovely brush to get some detailing work done. I'm going to use this to paint the tiny boats towards the end. For a palette, I prefer using ceramic surfaces. So I have a ceramic dinner plate over here on which I mix all of my paints. The reason why I love using ceramic is because the paint does not bleed on the surface and it mixes beautifully. The second reason is that the paints don't stain the palette. I always use two jars of water when I'm painting and they're big jars of water, so I have a lot of water to wash my brushes. The first one I always wash my dirty brush in, so I get rid of all the color, and from the second jar, I always pick up a load of clean water. This is very important to get really glowing paintings without any muddy colors. If you're not going to be using a pad of paper, you might need a stiff surface to tape your paper down just so you have some support for your paper. I'm going to be using a regular block of plywood for that and you might also need some masking tape to tape your paper down. 3. Getting to know our colors: In today's class, we are going to be using two colors and make an interesting composition by combining these two colors in varying mixtures. The first color that I'm using, both colors are by the way from Blue Pine Arts, my own range of handmade artisanal watercolors. They're both artist great paints and they both light fast. The first one I have is Scarlet Ibis, and it's a lovely middle of the road red. Since we are going to be using these two colors and mixing them in different proportions, we need to understand more about these colors. What I'm going to do is create a little value scale, for the Scarlet Ibis. I'm going to paint a little concentrated swatch of it at the top, and I'm going to continue adding water to the mixture, and dilute it. Then I add more water to the mixture, dilute it, tint it out some more, lighten it, and then I'm going to study how it looks like when it's tinted with water. You can see all the gorgeous shades that you get in this lovely red. Then I'm going to do the same thing with the Dioxazine Jamun. It's a high valued, it's really strong color, it's really strong purple, and it looks almost black and it's [inaudible]. I'm going to do the same thing for this, and you can see just how concentrated and dark it is on the paper. I'm going to add a little bit more water and do the same thing, and right away you can tell that this color is dominating this color. Making these studies will help us and mixing these colors in different proportions and controlling the mixes, so that the purple does not obliterate the red all the time. I'm going to continue adding the water and you can see that I'm getting a far bigger range of values in this color than the red, it's because this has high tinting strength. More water, then a little bit more. Now that we studied our color, let's study the mixtures. I'm going to get this red and watch how little of the purple I need to add to change its hue. Do you see that? I'm just going to test the mixtures, add a little bit more water to this and see how it flows. Basically at this point, we're just studying our colors, so feel free to have fun. You don't have to paint your swatches in absolutely perfect rectangles. Just see what are the different kinds of mixes that you're going to get with these colors. Make a note about how much color you need to add to get what shade. I really love this shade. But what happens if I add a little bit more purple to it? A tad bit more red. Then you can see how you can get different mixtures. What happens when you place them next to each other? Do they pair well? What kind of mood or what kind of feel are they giving when they're next to each other. It's important to know these so that you can utilize them well in your art work. I love what these colors do with each other. This mixture I discovered quite by accident, one day I was just playing with my colors. I would have never thought of putting a red and a purple next to each other and mixing them to get these gorgeous shades. But, I did it one day and then I loved the colors that came out of it, and when I painted a landscape, I just gave a beautiful moody feeling to it, and so I thought today I'm going to pick these two colors and demonstrate the mixtures to you. Now, I'm going to let this layer dry and show you something interesting. Now that our paper is dry, you can observe this peculiar thing that the colors have dulled down quite a bit compared to how they were when they're wet. When they were wet, they were fresh, they were widened on the paper, but when they dried, you lost a lot of the saturation. Now, that happens to a lot of different pigments and watercolors. For some, it's more than the others. Watercolors generally have a drying shift. That is, when watercolors dry on paper, they lose a little bit of their saturation. But some pigments like this Dioxazine Jamun, that's PV23. They lose the saturation a lot more than, let's say, a bright yellow or even this red. The red hasn't lost much of its saturation, but the purple has. The resulting mixture is quite dull and it can be off-putting to a few people. But then it can be used to your advantage when you're painting a certain type of mood in your landscapes, and that is why I chose these colors purposely to demonstrate to you that even though a drying shift like this might be off-putting at first, don't let that stop you from trying the colors in different landscapes and see how they work for you, and if they don't, that's great, but you might discover that they will actually work for you in some scenarios, and so that's what we're going to see in today's class. 4. Let's practice the techniques: Let's practice our techniques that we going to be using in today's class. We do that first and then we move on to define painting. We're going to be using two techniques, the wet on dry technique. That is where you just grab some paint and put it on wet paint on dry paper and that's the simple wet on dry technique for you. The other technique that we're going to use today is the wet in wet technique, I'm just going to wet small part of the paper, I'm going to drop some color in it, you see how the pigment disperses and creates these soft edges, that's wet in wet technique, simple. Now, let's practice how we're going paint a tree line with two different shades and reading the mixtures. As I explained in the previous swatch video, I have my scholar ibis and make a pool of it over here, then I have my dioxazine purple, start painting these trees by mixing a lot of this red of very little of this purple, but you see how strong that purple is, it immediately darken my red, I'm going to add a little bit more red, it's a lot of red. Then I'm going to come back in with my brush, paint this tree, paint this pine tree. Notice how I'm using just the loose brush strokes, if you want to learn more about how I paint my pine trees, make sure you go dig my monochrome mystifying class, I show you the complete breakdown of my pine trees. Now what I'm going do is I'm going wash my brush, I'm going to bring in more of this purple to this mixture, I'm going to paint this tree right next to this red one, I'm going to touch some of it to the red tree so that we get this beautiful blend. Now, what I have to keep in mind is that the amount of paint, the wetness on my brush when I'm painting the second tree is the same as the wetness of the first tree on paper. I know it sounds challenging, but the more you practice, you get the hang of it, I promise. This tree is wet and if I want to get a seamless blend between the two, I'm going to paint this tree, the third tree, while my second tree is still wet, and have them touch each other. Clear, let's bring in some more red into this, I'm going make sure that I red the height of the tree as well. Because remember that's what's going to make it look natural, some more red. Dancing motions using the tip of my brush, and that's how I'm going to get my pine trees, I'm going to bring in some more purple. There we go, you see how I am using two colors, and then painting the trees, all I'm doing is just increasing red over here, decreasing purple over here, and then increasing purple here, decreasing red, and so on and so forth, I'm gonna do that as I paint, as I continue painting the trees, and also I'm going to red the heights of the trees. That's going to give us a very interesting looking tree line. We're done with this, and what are we going to do with painting the reflection is that we're going to use the wet in wet technique. For painters reflections, first we're going to paint, first, we are going to lead on some clear water, which is alpine lake.This is a beautiful alpine lake, let's say, and it's full of clear water, and I'm just laying this clear water using my flat brush, you can use any brush. What I want to keep in mind is that there's some break between my lake shore and the age of my water, so I don't want to touch it to the tree, to the entire tree line, but I want to leave a bit of these white gaps. Do you see that? That break of the white gaps is going to give us, the viewer is going to feel like the tree line and the line is separate from the water, and why my tree, my lake is still wet, I'm going to come back and I'm going to mimic the shape of this loosely into the water. Now, I don't want you to obsess about perfection, or am getting everything right over here, I don't want you to do that, don't stress, just pick up the shade that matches your tree, come back in, and all you have to do is two things. Match the shade and match the length of the tree in the clear reflection. That's all you have to do, preferably my reflection, I wanted to be a little lighter than the tree, they wanted to be as dark. Now this one is much shorter, so I'm just going to stop here, I'm going to bring back in terms of that purple, comeback here, tip it down, match it again, you can see I'm matching the height of the tree, and I'm also matching the shade, so all you have to do is that and if possible, keep it lighter than the trees at the top.. There you have it, it's as simple as that to paint reflections, and while this is still wet, I'm going to take my brush, I'm going to dab it on my paper towel so that it's damp, and I'm gonna come back in and lift some of this paint off, because I want to create the impression of ripples on the water, and this is going to complete the look of our lake. That brush going back in, lifting some of that paint, make sure you keep lifting until you get semblance of the white paper bag, as we go close to the shore, the ripples gets smaller, remember that the closer you are to the viewer, the longer the ripples. Now, look at the mistake that I just did, I went ahead and painted really wet reflection to while my trees was still damp, so what that did is the high amount of wetness, the more water here at the bottom, it flooded into the less water here at the trees and it created these weird looking glooms, now we want to avoid that, this is a useful thing about practicing beforehand before you move to the final piece, you realize the mistakes or potential mistakes. I just realized that I need to wait for my entire tree line to dry first and then come back in with the reflections in the water so that the water doesn't flood into the damn tree is at the top, that's one mistake learned and that's great. I'm glad that this happened because it taught me something that I'm not supposed to do in my final piece, and I want to encourage you to be open for mistakes like this, practice on smaller pieces of paper, practice on scrap pieces of paper and see what happens. Experiment with different things, and if a mistake happened, create you know what not to do the next time, so embrace your mistakes and learn from them. We're going to remember that when we paint the final piece, the top part of the tree in the forest on the line has to be completely dry before I come back and I paint the bottom half of the lake and the reflection. Now that we are all practice the stuff, take as much time as you want to do this, you can replay this video again and come back in and practice how to blend different colors in one tree line, practice how to do the trees reflections. Notice how my reflections don't even match the shape of the tree is right now, and that's completely alright. It doesn't have to be perfect, so don't obsess about things having to be perfect, I'm going to see you in the next section where we'll go ahead and paint the final piece. 5. Composition sketch: I'm going to quickly sketch all the composition that I want for today's printing. Today I want a shoreline where the misty forest meets the shore of the lake to be in the center, so that's going to be our divider line, so to speak. I want it to be the center over here, and as for the trees, I want my forest to be over here like this, and as it approaches this point, which is the one-third point, I want to decrease in size, that I want the trees to get smaller and smaller and then end over here. Just because I think it makes for an interesting composition. I know these look like mountains, but imagine that it's a misty forests tree line. Instead of painting the forest from like a top view like we did in the monochrome misty, misty pines class in my previous class, what we're going to do is paint the forest as though we're looking at it from the front. If you are the viewer standing over here, or if you're like holding the picture like this, you're going to see, the viewer is going to see it from this view. Our misty forest is going to be an overlap of a misty background, and then we're going to overlap it with more defined trees in the foreground. As for the lake water, we're going to have the lake over here and the forest is going to be reflected in the lake. The reflection is going to be start off here and then it's going to be like this. We're also going to create our ripple lines. Let's say these are our ripples. The ripples in the lake water are longer as it's closer to the viewer. The farther you move away from the viewer, you ripple lines get smaller. That's going to be the composition for today's landscape. Let's move on to the next section where we're going to tape our paper to the board, and then we can get started with the first layer. 6. Forest background layer: I've got a simple block of plywood which is going to act as a backing to my paper, and I've got my fabriano paper over here. I'm going take my roll of masking tape. Then dip it to the board. Masking my paper is going to do two things. It's going to adhere the landscapes like this. I put a little object, under my board and tilted a little bit so that my paper is inclined towards me. This inclination helps with the flow of paint in the water because the gravity pulls the water towards me. Then I'm going to bring in my Islamic plate. It has got my bands of buh-bye logs, Henry watercolors, these fouling ibis and the dioxazine jam, all trash, and we're going to start painting. As we discussed, our horizon line is going to be in the middle. I'm going to get in my guiding point on where I need to stop here. I'm going to draw a dot mark, so I know that I need to stop when I get to this point, maybe somewhere here, and lead on a clear wash of water on the top part of the paper. I'm only covering the top half of the beat patch. I'm going to bring in my round number 6, [inaudible]. I've told my colors here. I'm going to bring in some of this color ibis, it's a tiny bit of the spoken on the side. Using a very light value of this column mixture, I'm going to go in and paint the background of the tree red in red. Observe how I'm not concerned with if my tree shapes are perfect or not. All I'm doing is just coming in here with different color combinations, different column mixes between these two beautiful colors, and just having fun putting the colors red in red. Watching these beautiful bleeds and blends that I'm getting, all the while keeping in mind that I need to keep the value light. Very light because it's still the background. It's not the foreground, it's just a misty background. Just keeping it light, decreasing the height of the tree, because remember this mark, so I'm just going to come in and place this here, you can just go back in. Purple already in your left hand to solve in case of accidents, you can just lift the big beat up. There we go. It's just as simple as that. It's not complicated. We just painted a very easy misty background for forest, and we're done. Let's move onto the next section where we will come back in and being the four countries. 7. Forest foreground layer: Now that our first layer has dried, you can see that it's created this beautiful feathery misty look, and that is because we've been direct wet in wet, and it's created a beautiful background for the next layer first to come in. Now we're going to paint the foreground of the trees and we're going to do two things. First thing, is that we're going to paint it in a darker value compared to this. We are going to stagger the height of the trees, to make them look more natural. The third thing, that we're going to do, we're also going to change to different mixtures between the two colors, so that we get this interesting blend of different colors. I'm going to bring in my round number six again, I have a paint so I'm going to get a in a little bit of this color, ibis. Such beautiful red color. I'm going to get some of this dioxazine jumbled. It gets really dark you guys and it's so strong in mixtures. Be careful when you're working with a really dominant color like this, especially in color mixtures. I'm going to go back in and start painting the pine trees. I'm going to start right here at the edge, and paint over my masking tape as though I'm painting a full tree. But when I remove the tape, it's going to look like half a tree. I think it just gives it a more natural feel rather than just starting the trees entirely from this edge, just a personal preference of mine. I just going to play around with the brush. I'm just going to see what are the different actions of my wrist of my hand, what it's going to result in. I'm going to try stagger on my trees a little bit, so I want like a good tall tree right about here. I'm just going to paint this tree first. Then I'm going to paint another tree right at it's side, around here, and I'm just going to have a ball painting this you guys. Don't worry about getting perfect brushstrokes, just remember to have fun with the whole process. I'm going to continue painting these trees next to each other. All the while changing my color mixtures, having fun with them. Let's paint a tree that's bare and not as full as the other ones. You are going to need some of the purple, let's paint a dark tree here the middle. I have that exactly. I'm going to remember I have like a dot here, so I'm going decrease the height of trees as it come closer to this. Remember that at this the trees is all about the process than perfection. I want you to remember to have fun at this stage, don't forget to have fun because if you don't, it really, if it purpose of shows progress of painting the first phase, doesn't? So have fun, don't [inaudible] yourself what's happening, what's not happening? What I also want to do now is spend a couple of [inaudible] trees here, at the top. So I'm just going to bring in this. Make sure [inaudible] some of that excess paint off. I'm going to paint these [inaudible] to trees. I actually saw this while I was in Germany, just last month in January and too fascinating. I think they complete the look of a force like this. Because now we have a pretty forest, maybe just a few of these branches kid of popping up. Okay. That's it. So that's our first completed over here. Just going to fill this kind of layer at the bottom. So now that we have a foreground of the misty forest. We are going to paint just one tiny tree over here. I'm going to blend this edge out a little bit. Now that we have painted the foreground of the forest, I'm going to stop, I'm going to let it dry completely because remember our mistake from the practice sheet. I did not wait until this had dried and I painted the lower layer, and I created these weird looking blues. I don't want that in my final piece. I'm going to let this dry, comeback in the next section. We're going to paint these sections and the water, okay? 8. Wet the paper and wait: The first layer of our painting has dried. You can see how because I varied the mixture of the red and the purple over here on top, we have such an interesting looking pine forest and I'm loving it. I'm absolutely happy about how this has turned out. I'm also really happy about the misty background that we created. Everything is looking great so far. I'm going to bring in my flat brush and let's go ahead and paint the reflections. This part is really easy. Don't put a lot of pressure on yourself. Just watch how easy it is to paint the reflections. I'm going to get in a lot of clear water on my brush and spread around on the paper. While I'm doing that, I'm going to remember that I need to leave some of this white gap, towards the shore. I'm going to spread the water around and the trick to this layer is that we are going to spread a lot of water here at the bottom. Then we're going to let it wet, let sit for about a minute, a minute and a half until the water is soaked up inside of the paper. Now, why are we doing that? It's because today we are going to paint a controlled wet on wet. What I want is that I don't want the paint to feather out and to blend as much as it did in the first one that we painted you see here over here, I still want the wet on wet technique. The wet on wet paint and the wet water to hold the shape of the pine tree but still have a phased feathered look to it. That's going to give us the impression of a reflection. But I also don't want it to blend out and bleed off too much. When you put in a lot of water on a cotton paper and we let it sit for a while, the cotton fibers soak in the water and the paper becomes damp from the inside as well. It's going to give us so that result in the paper staying wet for a longer time. That's going to give us a little bit more time to paint our reflections, without having to worry about the paper drying and without getting all those ugly bleeds. Basically our time that we get to paint the reflections is going to be more. We can paint peacefully. 9. Painting reflections: The water has soaked through, if you find that your paper has dried a little too much the surface of the paper, just go in lightly with another brush load of water, but don't put in too much water at this point. Just wet it evenly. What you want to see is a wet sheen of water on your paper and nothing more. You don't want puddles of water in, lets say this dip, my paper has buckled a little bit over here, but that's okay. I'm bringing back in my round number six brush again. What we're going to do as we practiced in our practice sheet is that we're going to match the hue of the pine tree on top and then match the height of it, okay? I'm bringing in this red and dropping it in, and you can see how the paint is spreading down because of the gravity. Remember how we tilted our board. It's because of the gravity, the paint is tilting down. Just going to pick up the colors and try and match the hue as best as I can, but if you can't do it perfectly, it's still fine. I mean, don't worry about having a complete 100 percent match. It's fine if you don't. I'm also going to keep in mind that my reflections are of a little lighter value than my trees at the top. We don't want too much of a hard line over here. Going to bring in some more of this red to have this tiny tree here. You see how because of the control wet in red, we are still seeing that the pine tree reflection is holding its shape and not completely diffusing into each other like how it happened in the background. Usually when I'm painting pine trees, I go into this meditative mode and get lost in the process of painting this beautiful subject, and it's great. It's my mindful moment of the day when I'm painting these peaceful landscapes. I'm also remembering that I need to work a little more quick, a little bit more quickly, because I don't want my paper to dry out soon. Alright. We're almost towards the end. We made good time on this. Going to quickly grab this color and using a lot of paint on my brush, but also removing the excess paint. I'm going to paint this, I'm going to paint the tree over here. Doesn't have to be perfect again, please remember that you do not have to worry about it being completely perfect just go with the flow. If you can paint it, that's great, if you can't, it's still fine. So please do not beat yourself up about getting all of this stuff as perfectly as you can. Perfect. I love how this has turned out. I'm just going to take my brush, make it really damp and blend some of these edges here at the top. Just because I don't want a completely clean line, and I'm very happy with how this has turned out. you guys, I'm so excited, and while my paper is still wet, you can see that the paper is still wet because I got a red sheen, I'm going to bring in my half-inch flat brush and it's a synthetic brush. I'm going to wet it, dab it, very quickly and as best as I can, I'm going to lift some of this paint up in a horizontal direction, and that is going to give us the ripples that we spoke about when we were practicing the techniques. Make sure though at this point that your brush is in fact damp and not wet because otherwise the wet water is going to flood the damp paper and it's going to create these ugly blooms. Lifting up some of the paint, and we have a good impression of the boots. Now, I am using staining colors as in the colors that I'm using they stain the paper really fast, they soak into the paper really fast, so it's very hard to lift the color and get the white of the paper back, but it's all right because just a hint of these ripples is going to give me the impression that this is water, at the bottom of the beach and that in fact is land. We are going to continue lifting with the damp brush, and when I'm happy about this, I'm going to stop. It's very important to know when you're done and then you need to stop, and at this point, I'm very happy about how this piece has turned out. I'm going to stop, I'm not going to mess about with it any longer. I'm going to let it dry, and then I'm going to come back in and let's add some little birds flying out of the forest and into the distance, into the sky over here and we'll sign up this and then finish it off. So I'll see you in the next section. 10. Painting the birds: Our artwork has dried and let's go ahead and put the finishing touches of the tiny birds flying into the sky, and then we'll sign our artwork, and take off the masking tape, and look at the beautiful piece that we've created. I'm going to get in my dioxazine germon. Then get a very dark value off it. Because I want the birds, just the silhouette of the birds to be visible. I have a tiny brush, it's the two slash Rosemary and Co synthetic brush. But you can use any small size brush for this. If you want to know more in detail about how I paint my tiny birds. I also covered that in my monochrome mystifying class. Make sure you go ahead and take a detail look of how I paint my birds. Basically what I do is use tiny flakes of the brush to create these V shapes. Remember, how we used to paint the birds as a kid? I want my birds to be flying upwards in this direction. I'm going to remember that as the birds move here, they're going to get smaller and smaller. Just some small fix and you're done. Now, I'm going to try and draw up this. That's it. You guys, we're done with the birds. Only one important part is remaining. That is to sign your artwork. Because you are all artists. Now, you have successfully painted this. Go ahead and grab some of the paint and your brush. Sign your artwork at the bottom and do it with a flourish, do it with happiness because you've accomplished something great today. You took a class, you learned something, and that's a big deal. Make sure you're happy when you sign your artwork. 11. Final thoughts and pep talk: All right. It's the moment of truth. Our artwork is complete, and we're going to start peeling the masking tape. Possibly, the most satisfying part of finishing your painting. But make sure that before you pin the tape, your paper is completely dry. It should not be done at all, or the masking tape will rip the surface of the paper. If you're having trouble with the masking tape, pull it at an angle like this. We're done with the artwork. I hope you had a lot of fun during the class. If your piece did not turn out okay or if you're not happy with it, don't give up. That's what we do. When we have a fail painting, we get so discouraged a bit. Just give up on it and we never go back. I mean just to paint this project to you guys, the amount of failed paintings that I have for this is staggering. I almost gave up myself, but then I had to remember that I had to have fun and then come back, and then give it another try, give it another go. Try a different technique if the previous one did not work for you. I think I've painted about six failed pieces to get this one right. No matter how experienced you are or how inexperienced you are, mistakes are bound to happen. So don't give up. Have a lot of fun. I hope you did have a lot of fun into this class.