Transcripts
1. Intro to Rocks and Grass: Welcome to how to paint rocks
and grass with watercolors. This is part three of the
beginner watercolor series. And we're going to dive into various ways
you can paint rocks. Then we will look at grass. And I will show you
many techniques you can use to enhance your
landscape paintings. Not only that, but we will
also look at the masters and see how they use these
techniques in their artwork. These easy to follow lessons. Again, we'll start at
the very beginning, show you the basic concepts. Then along the way, we're
going to build upon that and teach you more
intermediate and advanced ideas. Grab your watercolor brushes, paper and palette, and
let's get started.
2. Grass Painting Basics: All right, we're going to do a few studies here for grass. The first one is going to be, just think if we had this
huge meadow way in the back. Say this is your design. There's massive meadow. There's a little barn back here and a couple of
trees or whatever. But all of this
in here is grass. You want to capture this golden green looking grass
in that case, you couldn't just paint
that with a flat wash or gradated wash because there's not enough information there. It wouldn't be enough for
that mass of the painting. You need to make that grass, that meadow look
engaging somehow. And we're just going to
do like a section of it. We'll take a section
of it here, paint it. And I'll just show you some
different techniques you can do to make this
long, wispy grass. Let me get some clean
water. There we go. Now I'm going to
pre wet the paper. There's a few marks on here, but for what we're going to do is not going
to hurt us a whole lot. Pre wet it. I probably
got too much there. I can see it start to pull up. So I'll clean my brush really good so that it's
drier than the paper. And it should sponge a lot
of that off the paper. Okay, now I just
want to stain it. That's all I'm trying to
do with this first coat. I'll just take a
little bit of ocher, a touch of turquoise. I'll do various colors. I'll do maybe a little
more yellow back here. Maybe a little more blue
back there as well. Again, just to get some variety, maybe a little more yellow, intense yellow as it
gets closer to us, just dragging some
green into that. Now I can blend that
in just a little bit. I can lift a little bit dry my brush off, remove
some of this. Just in the end we get a nice not random because everything was
intentionally done. It's less predictable and
it's not a flat, boring wash. It's got some variation to it. I'll dry this and then we'll
come back and get busy. All right. A lot lighter. We have all these little
subtle things to work with. Now. The chances are a lot of that's going
to be painted over, but it does set the tone
for what we're about to do. Now with this technique, I would recommend
a bristle brush. This is a brush that I think belong to my
kids at one point, it just ended up with mine. I've got these acrylic brushes. The size of the brush is
going to be important. I'm working on a very
small piece of paper here. If I were working on a large
half sheet, full sheet, then I'd want to go with a
much bigger brush that I don't have to make 1 million strokes to do to get the same result. If you're not sure
how brushes will respond with this technique, just take a scrap
piece of paper, just play with it. You can see the looks
like blades of grass. And that's all I want to do
here is create that illusion. I'm going to start with
a very pale mix here. Just some browns. I can add a little bit of
sienna into that, maybe even a touch of red
to give it some body. I'm going to start with
the wispy grass stroke. Go in different
directions, go here, go up and out, leave a little bit of space
in between everything. Cover up everything. Notice
how I'm leaving some of that initial wash in
a few places there. Something like that.
Starts to set the tone. Also think about your brush
strokes creating movement. Don't just do your grass
up and down like this, so give it a little curl. You can work both
ways this way, okay? And get that grass looking
interesting and not. Boring. Now, while this is wet, I want to start to think
about my next color. I'm going to take a
little bit of this Umber, a little bit of neutral tint, little touch of
blue, a little touch my Alizarin crimson to
get this violet color. That's going to work,
I think pretty good, but I'm going to knock that back just a little
bit with some water. Timing is going to be important if I go into this right now, especially like right in here, I think I'll lose a lot of
the definition that I want. Obviously, I think
up here where I use less strokes is
less likely to do that. But I don't want a lot of dark values up here,
but maybe a few. What I can do is just start to hint at a few dark
notes in here. You start to see that effect
of wispy grass already. Then it's getting close. It's nice to have
that dry pieces of paper you see where I
didn't go over at all. Now that's going
to allow me to get those hard edges that's
looking pretty good. Again, that's getting
too much the same. I'm going to load
my brush up and make all of this one
mass right in here. Again, just connecting
and joining things so we don't get too much
of the same size. You don't want all of your
sizes to be the same. You got to have
some small, medium, and then little, medium and
mix it up a little bit. Notice where it was really wet, how that's bleeding
a little bit, but we're getting hints
of enough hint of blades in there that
we're going to be fine if you want to
diffuse some edges, I can take a clean
brush and just wet it, soften a few of these edges where
they're just getting a little bit too hard
all over the place. We'll see how that diffuses some of those hard edges and it just sits a little bit
quieter on the paper. It doesn't just scream
at you that Roberts, trying to paint 10
million blades of grass, that's looking pretty
good already, isn't it? We've already got that
feeling of texture again. Imagine this is
just a section of that huge field then that
would work good at this point. I just think we really
just need maybe one more layer thick
paint in there. But I need that to
dry a little bit. If I go in there right now, even with thick paint, I'm going to lose
that edge quality. So I'm going to let this dry. I'll hit it with a dryer
for about 10 seconds. I'll be right back. Okay. I think I'll use this one again and I'll go
into some neutral tint, A little bit of brown there. Siena burnt sienna. A little bit of violet here. Maybe a little more blue. Again, we're going to go with a few darker values
in here, I think. So maybe just a couple
in here that'll work. I can take a clean my
brush so I'll still damp and just soften
a few of those edges. I'll go one more pop of
dark violet, neutral tint. All right? I'll clean that off. I'm going to do a few techniques
here that you already know with a smaller brush. I'll get in here with my, take some of these
medium tones here. I can do some negative
space painting, so I can get in here
and paint the tops. Some grass. I can pull this up into join it, This is good. Now we're combining techniques. I'm pulling some positive
grass and then painting some negative space here
for the tops of the blades. Like that, again, wet my brush, feather that out some negative
space painting there. I can do a little
bit up here too, so I can get the
tops of some blades, soften that edge a little bit. Maybe come in here,
do some positive, go up and come down, do some long and short. Yeah, now you've got that
feeling of some grass in there. That's all we were after. I can take a little bit of
this neutral tent under. I can get in here,
negative space paint into these darks where there could be some blades
in here as well, maybe a top of a blade there. So now it looks a little
more sophisticated than just doing a bunch of
positive grass shapes. Okay, So it starts to look
a little more layered. All right. Now another
thing we can do here is scratch into
this wet paint. But I want to do that
mainly in the foreground because that's
probably where you're going to see a lot of detail. I'm going to hit
this with a dryer, but it can't be fully dry. I'm thinking like 85% or so
and then I'll be right back. All right. So I'm going
to flip it upside down. Scratch. Scratch. Don't want to go too far here, It'll just look over work. But I think scratching
a few blades like that, obviously we can it's a
little bit too dry in there, so that's a waste of time. Yeah, we can use
the exacto knife. I can even take my
little rigger here, maybe do a few positive
shapes in here. I'll just put some water on the brush there just
to phase this out. I can take that shape and run it into some negative space, some negative space,
grass like that. Doing some positive
and then letting the bottom become negative. I'm going to work
a little bit more on that in the next lesson. But again, if this were
a giant field and what we're looking at
is as close to us, and then it fades
out into less grass, less blades gets into this. Then that would have good depth. So this would show good detail. And then as it gets back in here that all these dark
tones disappear, dark values, there's not as much starts to break
apart into just patches. Anyway, that's one technique I wanted to share with you here.
3. Grass with Splattering Techniques: All right, we'll
do another grass, one just for practice, but also to show a little bit different
technique and different things we can do to take a grass
painting to the next level. Let's go ahead and start with. I'll just use my mop brush and I'll just pre wet the paper. All I'm doing now is
setting the mood here. I'm getting a base tone that's
probably a little too wet, so I can even blot that out
for no particular reason. It's not like the blotting
does anything there. What I'll do here is put
a little color down. Now I want this grass to
be maybe more of a green. I'm setting that mood
to get more of a grass. Look, then I'll
whack away at it. Here, again, very
soupy mix there. I can go back into it while
I have a little bit of paint here with some of
that I can splatter. That's good. Now I've
got a big hot mess, which is what I wanted, various values, different shades of green and that sort of thing. What I'm going to do is
more of a dry technique. In this one, I will let this wash move
around a little bit. I'll encourage it by
lifting the paper. Sometimes it's nice to
tilt it the opposite direction so it doesn't settle
as much in certain areas. When this is dry 100% we'll start adding the
next layers. Okay? Okay, draw to the touch, and I'll basically use the same colors and this time just mix it up
a little bit thicker. And notice I'm using
this dirty water. It's not so contaminated
that it's going to ruin it. I don't want my grass
color to be too intense. If it's too intense,
then then it just starts to look a little bit too cheesy or doesn't
look like nature. I'm going to put a little
bit of red in this as well. I've got a few stripes
of grass there. I did it with a little
bit thicker paint. Now I'll go even thicker here
and run some lines here. I'll go even maybe even
a touch of neutral tent. I'm also using some ultramarine, which will really give me
that smoky green look. I've got those streaks going on. I did that again with
my large mop brush. Now this one I'll just from these edges, let me wet that
just a little bit. Make sure you get a lot
of that excess water off though and just creating that
movement of grass. I'll get into some of
these dark notes here. It's wet and wet.
Obviously, we're not going to get perfect. Grass blades are going
to be very soft, it's understated a little bit. Now, I can do some
negative space by make sure you use the
corner of the brush. When I pull down like that, then that creates the
tops of some grass. I can do that in just a few
places and all that does is just mix it up a little bit. Again, this was dry, let it come back over it with some
thinner layers of green, little bit darker
layers of green, and then finally, even darker. Now it's really wet. I don't want to do a
whole lot with it, but what I can do is take
my small brush here, clean water, and
I'll remove a lot of that moisture just with a. A wet brush but not
over saturated. I'm not going to suggest a
few blades of grass in there. Then I can come back with
my paper towel clean and blot a little bit where I made those
marks with the water. That's going to remove a little
bit of the excess paint. At this stage two, we can scratch a few blades. I wouldn't go too far
with that because you're typically only going to see that detail in the foreground. Now I'll get this dry again and we'll come back and add one
more little layer to it. All right, we got that
nice illusion of grass. I'll add a little bit of
neutral tint to this. Maybe a little bit
of my umber touch of blue touch of my yellows and
just go a little bit darker. Just hit it with a few more
positive grass strokes here. I think we're good as
it gets back here. We don't want that many, if any, but I'm going to remove a
lot of that excess paint, but there's still a little
pigment on my brush, so you can see it
leaving strokes, but make those
strokes a little bit smaller to create that
illusion again of longer blades in the foreground and then gets back in here. All right, last
thing I'm wanting to show you what this is. I'll take my sword. You can do this with any brush. I'll clean it, make sure
there's no pigment on it, and then get some water, remove some of the excess, and then splatter maybe more in the foreground here
and less in the background. Now what I will do
is just give it a second to let that water loosen up the
pigment a little bit, then I'll just blot, I'm just removing some of
that excess water. I'm not doing anything but
just blotting the paper. Then I can give it
a little scrub. These create that illusion
of like little flowers or just something that could be happening in that grass meadow. You can put a bigger
blot right in here. Maybe again, give it a second, let it loosen up that pigment. Then once it's nice and loose, I will blot, then we can rub it a little bit. This is where good paper is going to pay
dividends for you. If you have inferior paper, student grade paper,
things like that, you're not going to
get the same effect. And also you're
probably going to get little bit of damage there
in the tooth of the paper. You can see the paper to
break apart a little bit. Could even splatter some
green paint there and just do a few last little marks
and then that's good. Again, just different
approach to painting grass and a little splatter
technique if you want to add that feeling
of some flowers or just different field
quality that we had before and just building upon
the basic grass techniques. Okay, so that's that.
4. Grass Using Shadow Techniques : Okay, a quick study here to show another great
grass technique. You'll see this quite a bit once I pointed out to you
and other artists work. But let's go and crack forward. I'll bump the tree
line back in here. Well, you know what, Maybe
I will move that down here. Let's see, do a little tree, a couple of little trees in this area and then maybe
just a few back in there. I'll take my Motler here, clean it off really good. I'll do a simple
gradation for the sky. A little bit of cu in there too. I'm going go, if you look at it, there's some blue in
some of those trees. I didn't like go around
it really tight, but I left some of the
white there for the trees. And I'll do a little
gradation maybe at the top, take a little bit of this ochre spread into the
bottom of the sky and then just pull that
right down into this area. I think for the grass
I'll just give it a good shot of green here. I'll go ochre,
cerulean turquoise maybe put a little more
gold shine into that. You see me going right into the yellow there in the ochre. I'll bump that one up in there. Okay, it looks really dark, but that's going to draw
quite a bit lighter there. That's good. We've got the
light value of the sky, A little simple gradation is
all that's happening there. It's not smooth, the values are up towards the top and they trickle down a little bit. Then I've got a gradation in the grass if
you find it's too, even like there's too
many darker values up here and it's not really, maybe lighter as it goes back. I can always just take
a clean brush here. While it's wet like this, just force some of that
color to come down. If you get too much
building up down here, too much water, just
dry your brush off. Come down towards the
bottom, you're good. Now, this is grass. So it's so many
different varieties of grass and so many
different conditions that you can get away with
this stuff really easy. I'm going to dry this off
and I'll be right back. Okay, so we're dry. Got a couple of little beads of water and wet
paint down there, but that's not going to
hurt us a whole lot. I'll take my pointed round here and we've got this
golden yellow. I want a different hue back
here. I don't want it green. I'm going to lean this more towards the blue violet
in the distance here. Yeah, maybe something like this. And I'll pop a little
more blue into that, like that again, think
distant hills here, I can merge a
little bit of that. Green in there is fine. I'll just do some scumbling
here. Distant trees. I'll go around these guys there. Then maybe towards the bottom
I'll mix all this up here. I'll maybe go a
little bit heavier. Notice how I left
a little bit of a space there was by design, so now I can do some positive
space trunks in there. I also left this little
mark here on purpose. I did that for the future. Just trying to think a
little bit about how I'm going to do
indicate some trees, maybe some positive space trunks and then we'll do some
negative space trunk soup. But real simple back there you don't want
to a lot of detail, those trees are in
the distance anyway. Now that needs to set up, but if you want to charge
it a little bit while it's wet and let's say I want to
take some blue green here. Just drop just a hint of green foliage in there,
and that's good. But majority of it,
cool gray violet. Now what I will do, I can go
in and work on the grass. This is why we're here, right? I'm going to get a
little more blue here. I can just use some cobalt
for this. That'll be fine. We also, I'm going to put a
little more cena out there. Okay, So what I want to
do now is do a technique where we use our shadows
to indicate grass. I'm going to take a
little bit of blue here. My cobalt, a little
bit of turquoise, a little bit of these yellows. I want to come up with
a nice rich green. That's about the value
I want and the color, I just need a little more of it. Wow. Okay, now let's say
there's a shadow that comes in along foreground
here, something like that. And there's another one
that trickles back in here. And then let's say we even have a couple more back in here, and then we have our trees. These trees give us an
opportunity to do this as well. I'll just scratch a few more
back in there. All right. Now, while that's wet, I'm going to flip
this upside down. I'll take a little bit of paint on my brush, but not much. I want to pull just a few
blades from this shadow. Okay? Now what I can do is pull down and I'm
going to rough that up. I'll pull down and use
the corner of the brush. I can use the flat part and do some positive and
negative space grass. Then as these shadows get
further and further away, you're not going to
see that detail. Don't go crazy with it. Just hit and miss it for now. And then we can always
come back and add more. Now, while this is
still wet back here, it's a perfect
time. I missed it. I missed it. There's
not much I can do. I wanted to scratch
into that paint, but it just dried too fast. I'll just do one
right there instead. I just wanted an
opportunity to combine some techniques here that we've learned that will give
us the chance to do it. Now we've got that
scratching into the paint. Now I'll go real weak because this is pretty
far away from us. And add some of these little branches and
different things like that. I can pretend this
is another one. When we leave these little
guys like this behind, they give us opportunity to, I can connect that
with the shadow. I can bring that down and
connect it with this shadow. But they really give us a chance to do these
things like this. Just again, playing around with those techniques we've talked
about before with trees. I can do some real
light foliage on these. Very transparent splattering is a good way to get the job
done without doing too much. Then I can take a
little bit of umber, a little bit of burnt sienna,
a little neutral tent, a little bit of burnt sienna, touch of ocher, maybe even a
touch of this cobalt here. We've got our tree here. I'll make this one a little
more on the brown side. I can even touch some of
that brown into there. Watch my stroke. Speed, how I get it down there really fast. I get that texture of the paper. That's a nice way to show. Again, a different technique. I can get a little
more darks in here. A neutral tent browns, maybe a touch of blue. I can play with a shadow
side here like that. I can take some of this
and mix it all up. Come up with a little mid tone. We can do a few blades
here and there too. This is still a little wet. Just doing a few dots, maybe we'll see a
little more of that. I can scratch a
little bit of grass, but again, if you go crazy, you'll probably end up
just doing too much there. And that's usually what happens. So I can take a real weak, maybe even a blue violet here, drying my brush, load it, and we can do a little
negative space painting there of some tree branches, different things that
could be happening. But again, I want to do a ton of them because you
don't really need them. We're just bringing up some of these techniques we've learned and trying
to incorporate them. Get a nice white there on
the paper so I can use that clean my brush, soften a few of
these edges in here. That's good. What the main lesson
was about is trying to incorporate this grass
into the shadows. Again, this is a
technique that's used quite a bit effective. It doesn't even have to be
shadows that can just be a subtle change in color. You can have like
this pale green and maybe a little bit
darker green coming in. It doesn't have to be this dark. It can be like this shade. And then maybe a little bit. And then do these
blades of grass, you got to play with this stuff. You can't just be
introduced to it. And then say, oh, I
got it, I saw it done. And expect these things to make their way into
your art that easy, I'll just indicate
maybe some houses back here maybe get a
little shadow there. It's fun to have
those white spaces because they'll give
you opportunities to do some abstract painting and make something out of them. I can do a little bit of
green here, touch of blue. Maybe this would be to me, a good spot to do
some splattering. Again, with some of
those, we can make grass out of others. Just let it go. Anyhow, that's that we can
scratch into that wet tree. Get a little bit of high
light there if you want. But for the most part I
think we're good here. We can pull down
negative space painting of top of some blades
there like that. But again, I think the common
mistake is to go too far. So we'll just throw it
in there a little bit at a time and try to find that happy medium where
you get it incorporated. And I would say go less and then remember that you can
always add more, that's that.
5. Field Rocks with Layers : All right. We're going
to do some rocks. I'll start with
some field rocks, geometric and hard edges. Then we'll get into like some riverstone things
are maybe that are a little more smooth
along the way. We'll tie it into some of the other things that
we've talked about as well. Let's start again with the field stones
and go from there. I'm just going to focus
on the rock itself first. And then we'll branch out into
tying it into a landscape. Let's start with just drawing just some
very jagged edges. These angles are like that. I'm not doing rounded shapes. Everything is a line here. That angle that goes up, angle that goes here,
comes back this way. Don't try to do too much with the rock right now in
terms of defining it. Just get the basic overall
shape in there and then we can pull some
definition into it later on. That's probably good
for number one. Then we'll again add to
this as we branch out here. Maybe I'll add one
more back in here. Again, just having fun
really, with the shapes. Whenever we do these things, we tend to, I'll put a little
small one in front here. We tend to copy what we see, like if there were a field
of stones out there. But truthfully, just like when we are painting
skies and stuff, we use things for
inspiration and we try to look at it and
learn the character of it. Like hard edges, this thing, the angles, and then eventually
the tones and the values. If we can absorb
those things from our subject and then put
down an impression of that as so much better than
trying to copy the subject. What I will do is I'm, I'm going to paint
light to dark. I want to warm and cool colors. When we look at rocks, like in the field stones, there's a lot of blue grays in. If you really start
looking at it, you'll see some cans and
brown colors as well. It's nice to inc colors and hues, just do that. I'm going to clean my brush
that can pre wet this. What I'll do is I'll start
with this pre wet surface. Again, the goal here is
to paint light to dark. What I'll do is I'll start weak, weak with a value,
something like this. I'll actually maybe
go up here again. If you pick a value that
you think is right, typically is going to draw
to dark a few notes there. Now, just to get these
browns to a cool hue, I'll just need to
add a cool color. But before I do that,
I'll get a little bit of the sienna and maybe even a
touch of umber into that. We'll get some of these reddish brown notes in there as well. Again, add water because you
want this first wash to be very subtle and
very transparent. All right, now I can take some ultramarine blue and just mix it all up. That's fine. Plenty of water, I can
test out that color. That's not bad. I'm going
to push it more towards a cool color to do that. As I mentioned before, we just added a cool hue. Any of these blues or greens, something like that would work. Yeah, that's getting
more towards a blue. Just go with this. I'll touch and dab some of that in
here. Just like that. At this point, everything is
weak and everything is dry, dry, everything is very wet. I can't really do much
until things start to dry. Because if I go into this
while it's wet or too wet, then I'm going to start
getting those soft edges. With a rock like this, we're after these
hard edges like this. The first wash was
just to put some color down and think about local
color like the tans, the browns and the cool blues. Then once that dries
or starts to dry, then we'll come back
over that and add more. But what I can do
though is I can start to think a little bit about a field and maybe there's some grass or something
like that down below. While it's wet, I can start to add that it's good that those connect
along the bottoms, that they bleed into
each other a little bit. You don't have cut out rocks on top or in
front of the grass. Things need to blend, bleed a little bit
into each other. What I have to do now
is be real patient. Again, I'm under
film lights here. This is going to dry quick, but if I take a
hair dryer to it, I can probably push it
along a little bit faster. But we just want that
glossiness to fade. But we still want it damp because the next layer is going to still bleed
and run a little bit. It's not until that last layer that we really want to dry, but in that way we can pop it with those real
chiseled hard edges. I'm going to hit it
with a dryer for just a few seconds and
I'll be right back. Okay, we're good to go there. Still slightly damp.
And at this point, remember we can't drill this
thing with a lot of water. Whatever mixture we mix up here, it needs to be a
little bit thicker. And don't go dipping your brush and water and
put it in that wash, or it's going to
completely destroy it. I'm going to work more
with cool colors. Now, a little bit of neutral tent, cerulean
and ultramarine. I don't have any on the palette, so I've got some umber there. I'll just put at the bottom. I'll take a little bit of
this earthy Umber in there. There's your finger test.
Maybe a touch more water here. And I'll throw a
little blue over here, maybe a little
turquoise down there. Still using my big brush here. The tops of the rocks
are catching sun. Okay. We don't want to put too much, we really don't want to put
any more color into that. As I add this next layer, I'm starting to chisel
out some of these rocks, what's in front of each other. So I'm going to put this
rock in front of that one. Then maybe chisel
out a few angles here and then maybe we
can see a little bit, let's see edge like that. We have to be careful about using the same
color everywhere. I don't want to use the
same wash on all of it, it will start to look flat. What I'm going to do is get a little bit of a violet color. Go on here, make sure it's nice and we can mix that violet
in with everything else. Then that's going to create
a little bit different hue. I can take just some
blue neutral tint here, a little more umber,
and touch that into. The wash as well. So
we start starting to see some nice wash technique versus something
that's very flat. I'm putting this sneak
in that rock behind. And notice how when
I go over this rock, I'm leaving it white. White, but I'm leaving that original wash that I just did. Maybe we'll do another
one right in here. I've got a couple
more over here. I just have a little
bit of fun with your shapes and brush
work a little bit. Don't try to panic too much about painting little detail. Keep that same flow of like painting clouds
where we just have a lot of freedom and how we use
our brush technique. And just let it rip a little bit and don't
get too tight with it. Now while all of this is wet, I'll go to my sword brush here. I'll mix up some of these
field color golden grass. And again, we can
negative space paint. I can do some blades in here. Just blending that in a few areas with the
shadows on the rocks. Again, we can paint
a few blades, but just a little bit. Okay. We can, it's probably too early to scratch
into that paint. But again, little by little working the texture
of grass into that, again, let those things bleed
a little bit as well too. Don't try to have too hard
of an edge where they meet that grass
and those stones. They've been there
for a long time. They've grown together. I know rocks don't grow, but they've gone through years and years
together in that spot. I'll get some of these
violets. Neutral tense. We have an idea of some of these darker hues that were
used now at this point, well, I'll have
these colors down. I can start to put maybe a little bit of detail
into some of these rocks. So they have the crevices
and these little cracks, all these things that
are make it interesting. I can drive my brush
off really good and just get a little
bit of pigment. I can drag it across the surface
like that and we can get that feeling of texture
on the surface. So I can get a little
more paint there. This is what I will start to
make it look like a rock. We can take a few
darker notes here, start hitting a few areas. I'm going to change
that to more of a blue now for the same reasons
we've talked about, We don't want to use
the same hue too much. If you use the
same hue too much, it'll all start
to look the same. It'll just look really flat. Notice here, these violets
just hinting at some of those little cracks and crevices that could
be in these rocks. Again, that's pretty good. That's giving us that feeling
that we're looking for. Maybe I could make two
rocks out of this. I could extend that one down. Just taking what the sketch is giving me and
working with it. Scratch a few
blades up in there. Now everything's
still wet and I need to let this set up
for the last layer. For the last layer, I'm actually going to
allow it just to dry 100% and then I can add
the finishing touches. Okay, I got everything
a lot drier. Now, I'm going to switch
to my small pointed round and mix up some
darker notes here. I've got some brown,
some violets, some blue, some neutral tens, clean
my brush, dry it off. There's your finger test
there. Nice and thick. You can even just have a few warm notes here on the palette in
case you needed them. But something like
this will work now. We just want some
good hard edges. Again, our light
source is coming from the top left here or
something like that. And maybe this back edge
is getting less light. Just chiseling out again, a few shapes, almost
negative space painting. Some of this as well. We don't need every one to be
completely chiseled. It can just be some. I'll get some of these red notes here. I come across, create
that hard edge. Now another little thing you can do is let's pretend there
are some trees up here. If I were painting
a background here, I could put this against
a really dark background. Maybe it's just a lot of
things of that nature. Then you would have this really nice light against
dark happening back there. Look how those rocks are
catching a lot more light. Now that's something you'll see quite a bit with water colorist that do a lot of nature
scenes and stuff. They'll design their
work to where you'll see the light notes that can do some negative
space painting to do some tree
trunks or whatever. But yeah, they'll design
it in a way that you get these super values of the rocks silhouetting
or contrasting, I should say, against the
dark of a background. That's just first step, first introduction
to painting rocks, Working with that pre, wetting the paper, getting
some notes in there. That's a traditional
watercolor painting and stuff, a technique we worked on a lot. Pre wetting and then I can do some few dark notes of grass tying that in
some negative space. Painting positive
space but pre wetting. And then working as into that wet paint and wet
wash as long as we can until we've got to move on to some more dark
or drier scenarios. But so that's a technique you're very familiar
with and we worked on, but there are other ways to do it and we're going
to do some of those. But I think before we move on, let's do one more
similar to this, so we get some practice and we'll change the rock formation because I can't
paint that again. That was done in a
very random way. I sketched out a few
angled edges, hard edges, and then started my wash, and then let the wash
dictate the rest of it. Let's do that again and we'll get some more practice and then we'll move on to a little bit different technique.
6. Field Rocks with Alternative Techniques: '. Okay. Now we're going to do a little
bit different technique with painting rocks. It's going to involve a credit card or maybe
a membership card. These are hard plastic. Basically what we have to do, what we've been doing
the whole time really, is focus on our timing. I'm going to start with just putting some color down here. Maybe I'll do a
couple of versions. I'll do one over and here
we'll get some blues, blue gray in there. Something like that
we can make work. Take some of these erlian blues, just drop it in there. Those blues will go a long
way near those warm colors, just like the warm colors
will help out the cool. I'll do a couple of versions. So a big set of rocks, small set of rocks are
not really connected, like sitting somewhere near
each other in a field, they're just two
different studies. One, two, I'll do these
at the same time. It's good to do things
in a different scale. You don't want to do
like small all the time. I see that with students, they'll get a nine
by 12 sketchbook and they'll do these
little small studies, and then they go to something
like a half a sheet. This is 22 by 15, or even a quarter sheet, where it's 15 by 11. They get lost because
they're not used to painting on a different scale. I think that sometimes
can be a problem when you're simply doing studies on a small
scale all the time. Okay, So that I'll give us
a couple to work with here. And as you can see, they're just blobs of
paint at this point. And I need to get it a little bit wetter,
especially up here. So I'll get some of the reds, because we really want
that to be nice and wet. Because here's the
drill. What we're going to do is scratch
into this paint. But the timing has
to be perfect. We need to do it at a time where the
pigment is still damp. And speaking of damp, if you get these areas pulling
up down here like I have, try to lift them now so that they don't slow you down later. It's okay to lift
some of this anyway. It's not going to hurt us a
whole lot, but not too much. We're looking for
even wetness now. What I was talking
about a minute ago was that these pigments are
going to stain the paper, even right now, even
though we just put it on. If I were to submerge
this in water and scrub it and bring it back
here in a dry state, you would see the
stain of these hues. And that's what we're going
to do. We're going to basically let these things
stain the paper and dry. As soon as the shine is
off this we can start to scratch rocks into hues. Even like up in here, it's starting to get dry. So I can take my
credit card here. It's nice having a
small one and scratch into that wet paint and look how it reveals these
rocky formations. That's looking pretty
good. This is a still wet. I'll let that do its thing. This is all too damp to because what happens sometimes
if you do it too soon. Because wherever you
scrape the paint, basically what you're doing
is you're moving it to a certain area that will again leave the
stain on the paper, but it's also going
to leave a puddle. You have to be
careful about leaving too many of those puddles
in there. Let's do. One in here, maybe
one there there. You're starting to see how
that techniques going to work. Everywhere you
scratch almost you're revealing that rock formation. So let's do one in
there. All right? So that you see all these
little subtle changes. We can go into it and make it a little more interesting
in a few places, but for the most part, that's a great start through our rocks. Then I can come down here
and do my other one. I'll just make really
interesting scrapes, almost anything goes and it's good to clean your
card once in a while. If I didn't say that
earlier, I apologize. Just a lot of fun to work with. If I had to pick a technique, I would probably pick
this over the former. Because I just think
it's so effective. I typically don't do
gimmicky stuff like that. But that's how can
you resist that? We can soften edges. I'll clean my brush. A little bit of clean
water get in here. And so a few edges in here. Not all of them, but just some. Then we can come up
with some darker paint. I'll just get this
umber neutral tint. I'll get some of these reds
off to the side over here. Some siennas, Ochs,
get some blues. We can start to do the shadows
on these rock formations. Take what it gives you,
that's the beauty of it. We can reshape things a
little bit if we want, but for the most part, if you just take what it gives you, see how I'll put that rock
in front of this one by just drawing a shadow that becomes
that edge of the rock. Maybe we have a little
rock here. I love this. This is, so it's
much more creative than trying to paint a photograph in a
picture perfect way. I just think if you can find techniques that get the job done without having to sit there and spend all day
painting five rocks, you're better off
because then you can turn out more work. It's good stuff. These rocks are just as
effective and no one really knows what that photograph or what our inspiration
looked like. No one really cares. All right, so now I can take
my small sword. I can do a few little
craggy messino in these rocks. I
can dry it off. Just get a little
bit of pigment. Do a little texture
of the paper there. M, I would say if you think you've
gone too far, you probably have gone too far. So you have to have a
switch and this alarm clock going in your head that says you've been
in it for too long, you know it's time to stop. I'm pretty much
getting there now. So there you go. So
that is a wonderful way to do rocks again. If I had to pick
one over the other, I would definitely go here. Imagine this is, we had
these darker values. I could do a lighter,
I could go with lighter notes in the
beginning versus those dark, rich saturated notes,
and it would have very faint colored rocks. But in this case,
it turned out dark, could come in here with
a really spring yellow, even leave a few
whites here and there. If I were doing a
whole piece there, I could do that little
spring yellow and then maybe do a little negative space
painting for a few trees. But again, keeping that
value fairly light, That would be dark
against light. All right? You get a couple of ideas to play with
there for painting. Rocks, explore colors. Ideas where you put this, really, I'm doing
this in a cool color. These really light values, everything is really watery. If I were to run my
finger through those, you're getting the back fill, you're not getting
a lot of pigment. You could even mix up some
oranges, a little more water. You start getting
this real soupy mix. Do some violets if you want, which I won't do
because I'm running out of places to mix. But letting that dry, then coming back with a card is going to give you rocks that are much lighter in
value than all of that. And then maybe you want to play something dark behind that. Just some things to
think about there. Again, you can start there,
that's way too soon, but for weren't I could
scratch into that. And you would see
even at this stage, how much der it would be
than the rocks there. Just by starting with
a different color, I'll leave it there.
7. Round Rocks: All right, let's talk
about some round rocks. And to do that,
I'll just give you a very simple demonstration first and then we'll
get into some details. Round rocks obviously have
smooth edges, so for example, if we looked at these
chiseled rocks, maybe you would
see the hard edges like that, like that. Again, that's the nature of rocks that have these sharp contours
and edge quality. Having said that, if
I did a similar rock here and then I'll
just get some, maybe greenish gray, I'll
do a light color here. Then maybe I'll do one more darker tone like this and we'll
do something on top. You have those hard
edges like that. All you have to do really
is just take a damp brush, clean it, remove a lot
of the excess water, and then just the
edges and smooth out some of those
angular strokes, okay, if I just round that out, maybe do a little cast shadow
and that's a round rock. And rocks have their own shape. But if I just did, let's just
say a basic rectangle here. I remove just a
little bit of that. Maybe something on top
here with this one to two, your light source is
coming from up here. With this one coming
from that angle. Let me put a little more
value on the side here. We have that blocky look. Again, I can round round this automatically, it starts taking on the
character of a rounder rock. Okay, that's the gist of it. You have to know what it is you're painting and
get the character of it. And then on top of that you just understand the medium you're dealing with with water color. We can do these hard edges
by painting wet and dry. When we're putting wet and wet, then things are going to blend. Then on top of
that, you just have to make sure when you
go in and you blend. I'll do that one more time
just so we're clear here. I'll just make any
old thing happen. I'll get this brownish color whenever you go back into that. If you have a really wet brush,
it's going to be a mess. It's just going to puddle
up and you're not going to get the results in
the control you need. But if you use a little
bit thicker paint, maybe we go in and
we clean our brush, remove the excess paint and then smooth it out
while it's wet. Then we can control
that edge quality and control a little bit of the results without getting
the ballooning. All right. Now having said that,
let's look at a few ideas. Instead of painting one Brock, maybe we're painting
multiple rocks. I'll put a little bit of
water down to begin then. I'll just do a very similar
approach as before. I'm just going to take some
really weak notes here of some yellow, some warm hues. Mix it with cool, we have this little wash
happening that's very random. The only thing in my mind is some of these rocks
have a bluish tint. Some of them have a wish
earthy tent, I could say. Aesthetically, it'd
be nice to have maybe even some violets
in there so I can drop some violets in
a random way as well. Let that dry. This right here will
be a separate study. We'll block this off, make it its own thing there. Here, we're just looking at
rounding edges, obviously. This one has that jagged look that you would see more
with a field stone. These are getting more along the lines of a round rock
and we're just using that good technique of wet and wet and knowing how much
water to have on your brush. Okay, very important. Now below this one, I'm going to do these a little bit quicker because
it's not really anything different than
what we've talked about. The only difference
is we're creating round edges versus hard edges. If I went below this, now I'm going to get
some of these red, some of these Earth tones, maybe a touch of blue into that. A little neutral temp. I drop some hue down,
I'll get some blues. And notice that this is
much darker than that. If you remember, when we scratched into the paint
with our credit card, we started with that
really dark tone. And that's because I knew
whenever I scratch that off that it was going to
remove a lot of that pigment. And this will be the same thing. I can let that
wash bleed and run around and I'll just drop
a little more in there. Very random. Again,
I'm not looking at a photograph copying
every rock I see. When I look at a
photograph of rocks, I'm saying, okay, well, what's the local color like?
Is it more blue? Are they more warmer rocks
and things of that nature? In that way, I just get
the colors that I want, maybe extracting
that from the scene. Then I can decide how many I want to put and
how much definition I want and where I want to. But I'm going to let the wash determine the shapes of the
rocks and where they go. Because once this
dries as this dries, it's going to start revealing shapes of rocks whenever
you're doing this. Again, you're not copying the
rocks in your inspiration. You're just simply
going to do it in a more random way so
that you're not stuck painting a field or a landscape scene that has
300 rocks individually. I mean, that would be
a complete nightmare. If you do that, then you're
better off, in my opinion, just doing oils or acrylics, or grabbing a camera and just photographing
it and be done with it. Let the water color exude
what the medium is good at. Watercolor is very random, is very loose and
it likes to mingle, it likes to play,
it doesn't like to be controlled all the time. I think that's a
much better approach than trying to force
it to do something. It's just really not
that great at, again, if you want to spend two weeks painting rocks in one image
and that's up to you. But for me, I'm
going to find a way to get the idea down and then get on down the
road to the next thing. That's just my opinion. This is setting up nice. I'm going to do this
one first because this still needs time to dry. Now, if you remember
right, with this one, I did these very sharp jagged
lines with my rocks here. I'm going to do more
of a curved slide. Okay? So that can be a rock. Okay. This looks like a
nice rock here, so I can pull it up
and I'm going to come back and shape these. There's a round rock
and get it clean. There's a round looking rock. Okay. Here's another one. So if I were by
the river bank or something and I had
these sort of rocks, I can lift a little bit
with a paper towel, soften some of those edges, get a few high lights. But if I were
around a river bank and these roundish rocks
with that bluish red colors, then this is all I need. Because chances are there's
going to be some water. There's going to be some trees, and the rocks are
just playing a role. That's all they're doing where I've got this straight line and these hard lines
where it looks like a more of a field stone. If I wanted to smooth those out, I just clean my brush. Make sure there's
no paint on it. Get some water on it. Make sure it's just damp. I can soften these edges. I can soften that one, soften that you start to
get the point of how easy it is to take that credit card. I can lift you. Remember that? I can even like do a little bit
of this splattering. Let that water settle. It's settled here and the lift get that whiteness of white
of the paper back so I can blot and then try to get some of that back. That is a great start then if you wanted
to add more detail, I can get some of these reds. Touch a blue for the shadow, then carve some of out. I can see my rock
formations happening. Maybe there's a shadow in here. Clean my brush, damp it, and then blend it out. Next shadow will be
more of a violet. So I can do this, smooth it out again, go as deep as I want into this, depending on how much
detail I want to do. But having these soft edges
is what's going to ring true. In terms of it
being a round rock. Maybe I want more of a
brownish, earthy tone there. There's my rock,
getting my shadow, getting a nice, nice hard
edge maybe forming there. You see just taking what the wash is giving
me going for it. Maybe there's another one here. Smooth it out. Smooth
it out. Smooth it out. So maybe there's one here. All right. So you're
starting to get that feeling of round boulders and
up here we're dry. I've got these blues, things like that work and I'll put a little
violet into that. Maybe get some blue grays. Clean my brush and
start carving out rock. I can start to see some
rock formations in there. Do that, smooth it out. Maybe a cast shadow
coming across this one. Maybe a week shadow
there on that one. Once you paint one or
two and it's believable, the rest of them can
just fall apart. Honestly, we'll talk about that, I'll point that out to you
once we start looking at the master's art in a landscape like I was
alluding to earlier, the rocks are probably
just part of the scene. One ingredient, you suggest one or two and the rest,
again, fall apart. Some shadows, cast shadow
coming down on that one. That one, smooth out that edge. Here's another one, the rocks
are painting themselves. Maybe one more in here that again, it starts to take on
the illusion of rocks. The credit card method here, just basically carving them
out of a variegated wash. I can get in here
with a damp brush. If you have good paper, rub it and lift. If you don't have good paper. Obviously, this technique
may be a little bit impossible for you to do
without ruining your paper. Again, here, just
rubbing it out. Maybe I can rub out a
highlight here on a rock. Start making some smaller ones here suggesting them splatter, lift a. I'll let that dry a little bit. We can come back
and add one more, little pop of highlights. But even in here I
could take that out, rub it, I can make this one
maybe a little bit bigger. I'll cut into that shadow. I can come back with
really thick paint. Because the thick
paint is not coin to budge as much as thinner paint. I can really get a
nice hard edge there. A few hard edges. He started to get the point. He can paper towel there, blot. Let's see if I can. It's not going to let me rub
anything out of it because I think it's just too
dry. But that's okay. Sometimes you can use that
splattering technique and remove some of that paint. We got the good old
credit card technique. If you had dark
stones like that, you could come back with something above it like that if you have light stones
or if you have dark stones, you can come out with
something light above it. I think that's what I said. I'll do one more here, maybe more, Papa Yellow, a little more water, adding in some trees or whatever that could be back
there in the distance. Then conversely, I know if this were lights, stones and maybe I would want to put something dark behind it. Negative space painting, right? You get the point there. Hopefully, again, I wanted to add a few more
dark touches in here. Maybe carve out a hard edge or two just to get a little
more believability. Clearly that would be possible. It's just up to you again
how far you take that idea. All right. I'll
leave it at that. I think you get
the idea of how to differentiate round
and hard rocks. I can come in here and
do some darker shadows, take it to the next level, all that stuff but just get
the point across people. That's all you're trying
to do is subject. Suggest things to
your viewer and not spell out every single
detail. We'll leave that.
8. Master's Grass and Rocks: Let's look at a wesson here. I'm going to move to grass. The main thing I want
to point out here is this lovely use of
negative space. Let me get to some color here. Let's go with this red.
Look at these shadows. This is the use of
shadows for grass. We've got this wash
of green up here. We can see it over here
too in that grass. Then the shadow coming
down right in here. But look at that negative
space to indicate grass. That shadow goes right on up. Then it creates even more
negative space, grass there. And it trickles up in here
and then it softens out. That's a nice thing. Even
this tree back here is used. But how it softens in here, really nice touch into these warm notes.
But it gives that. It could be a rock,
it could be grass, but it has that feeling of
negative space painting to it. We've got this
shadow back in here, that's negative space for
the edge of the tree, the side of the grass
hill or bank like that. And then it morph or
blends into this and then we've got this bare
tree coming out of it. Wesson was notorious
for using shadows and dark masses around lighter
values to indicate texture, but it's a very subtle way. There are some, a
few little flecks in here just to suggest
positive grass. But the majority of the grass in this one was more of a
negative space painting. But we can see these
little thin flicks in there on the left hand side, we probably got
this really light green wash that was applied, then came back with a
slightly darker one and suggest grass texture negative space painting to
get that in there. And then all the way
through back in here, we can see bits and
pieces of that. Again, a great use of a negative space
painting and shadows and darker values to create grass. This is an Edward Sego, again, very similar to
what we looked at before where he did these
negative space painting trees. Again, we're just going
to focus on the grass. We can look at the trees, but you can do
that for yourself. You can see this
positive tree coming up and then probably
lifted all of this. You can see how soft
that tree structure is, but that was
probably just lifted out of that darker value. But when we look at the grass, we've got a light value here that was probably
the original wash, a subtle darker note of green. This is all positive
space grass. Then it comes up and it becomes negative space as it
does the top of that, we can see that all these
darker values in here, these browns, that's all
negative space painting. The edges of that grass, not too much texture. We get a little
bit more up here, but not overstated, very subtle. Another good use of
negative space painting, just laying over this
value that's just a smidge darker than what's
below it to suggest grass. That's a good point. This
doesn't like Reek as a shadow. It's not like a cast shadow is blasting across
the foreground. This is just more of
using a different, a slightly darker
tone in a way that, okay, well this is just a
lighter value grass mass back here and this is
slightly darker over here. It's not really a shadow, that's probably in sunlight, but it's still a he started with his lighter
value and went maybe a value darker and more green to suggest grass over top
of that light value. It doesn't always have to be a strong contrast like
you get back there. With these darks over
in front of the lights. It can be very subtle
the way you use that, but I wanted to share
that one with you. This is one we looked at before. But that snow scene and how this brown color here was
to negative space paint. The suggestion of some grass, frozen grass structure
there that goes up. And we can see that
here where we get some positive little thin lines in there that
suggest that grass. But I like how that was lightly
suggested on that bank. It could be just some
really tall weeds and grass left over from the fall that were never
cut down and they're just poking up through that snow. This is another lovely image. Here we can see
there's more contrast. This is another Wesson. This seems like more
of a cast shadow coming across the foreground. Look how subtle it is. Painting is much more, painting is so much more
enjoyable to look at When things become subtle
and they're not overstated, I'm going to remove
my red lines. But look how this
is very subtle. There's nothing
there, nothing there. Then when we get back in here, it turns into
positive space grass. Then as we get in here, it ends positive and we
get positive, positive, positive get a little bit of
negative space right there. A little bit of
negative space here. It's not like you have
to do that all over, you just do it in a few spots that tells the
viewer that there's some texture grass
in that field. But I just love how subtle
that was done in this piece. It was done more or
less through shadows. They look more like shadows coming across the grass
than anything else. Then we get this positive
darker grass under the trees, under the trees, maybe
things get more shadows. We've got the shadow coming down on the left right hand
side of the tree. Then we use that to do negative space
painting there for that little touch of grass, then it turns into
positive grass. We can see that positive grass here turns into
negative space there. Again, you can see
those things in action. I pretty much do it for grass and now we'll
look at some rocks. Rocks love this. I absolutely love it. There's
like two layers of rocks. There's these dark
umber rocks back here, and then we get these lighter
blue rocks in front of us. I love the layering effect
that was probably done, this idea of depth in
the landscape but also stacking layers and thinking in terms of value, for example, if I just represent this
light value gray over here, that represents this layer of rocks that are closer to us, that has a value
something like this. But the thing about
it is that water is a very similar value if you just ran that
value into the water. And I'll just do it real quick. I'll drag that over here and just pretend
it gets a little bit darker as it goes
back, obviously. But let's just say this
is all the same value. What happens is you
don't have any contrast. Even though one is more gray
and then one is more blue, the values are the same. The water would, the
painting would be bland, it wouldn't be eye catching. If you did it that way, then what artists did
here took a band of darker color that may not be dark enough and put
in there and made it, of course, interesting edge, using it as negative
space painting to capture and sculpt out
rock shapes, right? But then also positive space
painting for the top edge of the rocks and all these
little different weeds or whatever that are
hanging up there. Then you've got
that, then we've got this lighter value through here, and then we've got this
darker value back there. Then that would be the
water and the distance. Then we have this
gray sky above it. There's a band a
little bit darker, I think, than the rocks. This is a lighter
than the rocks. And then this midtone
gray in there, look how clever that
arrangement is of values. Okay? And that's what's
happening there. And then of course
you have white that up a lot of this mass. And here, those white tones that are busting that up
a little bit and darker. We get a few dark notes
in the rocks too. We get a few darker notes just to negative
space paint rocks. But I wanted to point
that out to you. I know this class
isn't about design, but whenever I see these things, I get so excited and I'm like, oh man, this is like so awesome. But if you don't
know they exist, then you will just
look at this and say, all right, that's
pretty awesome. I am going to do a class of a workshop with water color
where we talk a lot about design and working
with these bands of values and thinking about it
and the arranging things in a way that we create
this interest within the painting just by understanding value structure
and things like that. But back to the rocks. The rocks on this
are just incredible. Look at all, We've got this light wash
that was put in there, a little bit of teal in there, a little bit of warm yellows, and then came back
with the grays. But look at that gray wash right right here, closest to us. And looks little
bit darker there, little bit lighter
there up here. Look how it changes to more
of a vibrant blue here. But it's about the same value. All these are roughly the
same value with a few notes, things that are just
a different color. If that was all gray like this, it will be very boring using a little bit
of blue in there, changing it up in
a very subtle way makes that more interesting. I talked about that quite
a bit in this class. Being able to have
subtle changes, don't always use the same
color and try to mix it up and even have a little
bit of a warm shadow there. But all of this was done really with
negative space painting. Looking at that now how you could just put
these lighter values in there and then come back with the darker notes and
chisel out rocks. There was probably
rocks there, obviously. I would probably say he didn't sit there and copy
the rock formations. He just suggested rocks. We got maybe one here, maybe one there, one
there here, here. And the rest can be whatever, but it's just like, it's such a subtle
suggestion of rocks. And as we get behind that
into the darker rocks, it's the same thing, umbers,
These lighter umbers. And here were painted first, then go behind that and do
some positive space to get that edge of the rock and to really sculpt
it a little bit. You're seeing a lot of positive and negative space painting throughout these rocks. I just think it's
a great example to study because there's
detail there. There's dry brush like all
of these little flecks here. Just dragging that brush along the texture of the paper
to get those little dots. We got the t cragginess
going on here. Just coming in with a finer
brush and drawing out just a few little notches
in there to finish it off. A great, great study
there and a great piece to study for rocks, we're going to look
at Winslow Homer. This is a wonderful rock study. We're getting a little
bit of hard edge, a little bit of round shape. We're getting the round
shapes in here and then we get the hard edges in
here around the subject. Those hard edges to really
show pop the subject. And then we get some lost edges, and these are all a
little bit more subtle. We get a hard dark edge there, bringing us up into the subject, but the values are wonderful. In this, you can start to see all the negative
space painting. We've got this lighter value that was probably
added originally here. You can see the light values come back with probably
a value like this. Do some negative space painting, carve the top of that rock, run it into here very light, and then come back with a
third wash that's darker, and then drop those darker notes while it's wet into here. We can see this is probably in the dry little bit
of line work to show that cragginess of the
rock probably added when that wash was dry
all this stuff. But you can see the positive, negative space painting
happening in this. And if you went back
to the same spot, I'd probably say
these rocks probably. Or if you were standing there
watching the guy paint, you wouldn't see
all these little, this exact detail in the rock. I think you place your subject in there
leaning against a rock. And then you start to add that first wash
and then bring it forward through negative
space painting. And a little bit of
positive space painting as well when you start adding
darker values like that. But I like the hard soft edges, the mix of angular lines
versus more rounded lines, and really gives you
that mix of the two. Another good piece to study, just to really appreciate the negative space painting
and things like that that goes on and positive
spaces like this, let me put another
layer on this. Start with a positive space
that I'll just make it black. We start positive, then
it becomes negative, it starts to carve out the
top edge of the rock below. It's such a great way to paint, as I was talking about before, look how it's a positive edge here and then it becomes a negative space painting
around that shirt. That's great stuff. Whenever you can
start to do that in your painting and really mix that positive
and negative edges, positive and negative
space painting, in your work at technique to employ it really takes your art
to another level. But I had to point this out
in this piece. All right. John Singer Sargent, again, a very complex technique, but we can see in this that things were painted
probably light to dark. We've got the lighter washes
of gray like back in here. I'm going to switch
to my yellow. We've, we've got the white
of the paper number one. And then we get
these light values that were probably added. Then you can see some
things are wet into wet. Some of these washes and
lines are all wet into wet. Then probably as it dried, you're starting to get some
more of the cragginess and definition to indicate
some of these rocks. But look how we've
got a round shape, we don't see too much
of that hard edge. Maybe a little bit
right in here. I'll get rid of that
so you can see it, but for the most part very soft. Then we see a rock, like I'll go around in red here, I'm over here, I'll
go around this rock. But look at that hard
stroke right there, Gray to indicate that more
of a square geometric rock, negative space painting here. I'm up here, top right, to show the top edge. Look at that light
value of the rock. Again, light value of the rock and a dark
mass over top of it. Negative space painting to
show that same thing here. A dark mass over this midtone rock to show that, to show that negative
space painting. And then of course it turns into positive as we get to the top of the hill and mountain
lovely piece, look at this stroke right here and then it turns into
negative space painting. Nice loose brush
stroke, very loose. But when we really look at this, there's a lot of detail too. I just think it's really awesome to study the,
sorry about that. To study the Masters
and see how they employ their techniques and painted these objects that we've
talked about in this class.
9. Projects and Recap: Congratulations on
finishing the class. I know it was probably
a lot to take in, but if you were able to
paint along with me, then feel free to post a class project that will
help me see what you did. And of course, if you
have questions, concerns, or any comments about what I shared with
you in these lessons, feel free to add that
to it and I'll respond as soon as possible. Okay? So thanks
for your support. If you want to learn more
about watercolor landscapes, I have other classes
here on skill share. Just check out my bio or perhaps there are some links in
the class description. Okay, bye for now.
See you later.
ROBERT JOYNER, Make Art Fun
