Transcripts
1. Welcome to class!: Whether you tend to paint
too tight and get stuck in details or too loose
and feel a bit messy, unsure how to find
the right balance. This class is all about helping you paint
realistically while embracing the magic and freedom of watercolors
loose effects. I'm Francois a self taught watercolor artist who used to paint very tight
and controlled. But over time, I
learn to loosen up without losing the detail and
style I bring to my work. I've been teaching watercolor online on YouTube,
Paton, and person, and with you today,
I'm excited to share the simple three step
painting process that guides all of my paintings. This isn't just a technique. It's a solid framework that I developed over
years of painting. And we'll keep things simple. No need for lots of supplies and less colors or hours spent painting because
loose realism is all about working
smarter, not harder. We'll start by planning
your painting. Then we'll create a loose
and realistic base for both background and
subject so they contrast nicely and we'll learn how to place just
the right amount of detail to finish the art. This process is perfect for late beginners and
intermediate painters who want to gain confidence and develop their own balance of loose
and tight over time. So if you're ready to
loosen up and add depth and life to your work and enjoy painting more,
let's get started.
2. About The Class Project: For your class project, you'll be painting a seascape with a boat as the main subject. This project is designed to help you practice painting
the key elements for mastering loose watercolor with just the right touch of
detail to keep it realistic. Skies and water are perfect
to work on this skill. You can download my
finished artwork, the reference photo, the sketch, and a list of the supplies
in the resources section. Love to see how you make
this landscape your own. So when you're ready
and if you'd like to, feel free to share your painting
in the project section. And remember that you
can always reach out for me for support
and feedback anytime. Next, we'll dive deeper into what loose realism really is and why it matters.
So see there.
3. Why Mastering Loose Realism Matters: Why lose realism? Because it gives you the
best of both worlds, and watercolor is the perfect
medium to achieve that. When you learn to master it, you're not stuck between copying
every detail of a photo, but you're also not guessing your way through
abstract shapes. And oftentimes us
watercolor painters struggle with one or the other. Lose realism lets
you suggest reality with intention while keeping
your brushwork expressive. And what's great is that from
landscapes to portraits, it works across subjects. But landscapes, in my opinion, are the best way to
practice the skill, especially water paired with a clear subject that gives
structure and focus. And that's exactly why I went with this reference
to get you started. Mastering loose realism
changed everything for me, and you're about to learn
exactly how I approach every painting with my three step approach
to achieve J that. But first, I want
to share with you what supplies have
worked best for me, so we'll meet in the next
lesson for a quick tour. Oh
4. Recommended Supplies : In this lesson, I'd
like to introduce the supplies I use
all the time to paint loose realism with watercolor
and for every subject. And these supplies are actually useful for any watercolor
painting style as well. You will find a list of everything I'm going
to show you here with exact references in
the PDF that you can download in the resource
section of the class. So first, let's
talk about paper, and we'll go for Watercolor
paper every time. What I recommend is
100% cotton papers, cold pass with a weight of
300 grams/square meter, simply because they
hold water so much better that you'll be able
to work on them for longer, and you'll get a much
better experience and much better results
in the way that colors mix and
interact together. This doesn't mean you cannot use any other watercolor paper
type, but that's all you have. So for example, if you
have hot press paper, which is a bit smoother
than cold press, that would do is just going to dry a little faster, so
just be aware of that. I might make it a little harder to work on wet for
a long period of time. You might have to just
dry your sheet and wet it again and pick up
where you left off more often to get
to the same result. And it's going to be the
same with silos papers, the ones that are going to
be a bit more affordable, but tend to bear less water and dry
faster as a consequence. For our project, we'll need a seven by 10 " sheet or
18 by 26 centimeters. If it's a tad, bigger or
smaller, that's just fine. And if you need to
practice color mixing, a loose sheet of paper
might be useful. Now let's talk about
paint brushes. My recommendation will be to go for water paint
brushes that have natural hair like these two here or that are an imitation. There are a lot more these days, and they tend to do pretty
well because just like paper, these paintbrushes hold
water a lot better. Well, synthetic
paintbrushes don't have as much capability, but if that's all you have right now, don't worry about it. One important thing that
I'd like you to keep in mind is that you want
to pick paintbrushes. They are going to fit
the size of your paper. So, for example, it will be very easy for me to paint a background
with such a paintbrush. While, with a very tiny
paintbrush like this one, it will be a lot longer. So those are things to think
about before painting. This is why I will use
this flat paintbrush to wet my sheet because it's going to make it very fast
and easy to do. Then I'll use this
round paintbrush to paint the background
because like I just said, I'll be able to cover a lot
of ground very quickly. And finally, these paint
brushes here that are round and pointed will
be used for details. That's why I don't need them
to be very big and actually, I want them to be
small enough to paint details in the boat that'll
be located around here. Remember, you can
check the PDF and the resources section to find the exact references
for what I'm using. When it comes to
waterclo paints, I recommend student or
artist grade paints for practicing is just fine. You don't need to have
professional paints every time. What I would go for though, is a well known
watercolor brand. Other than that,
paints won't make as much as a difference as
paper, for instance. Even the colors you use
are not that important. I mean by that,
you don't need to use exactly what I'm using here. That's why I would
recommend to go for any bright blue you have that would look nice
to paint the sea. This one here is
ultramarine blue. It's actually pretty
common in watercolor. You could use cobalt blue or
anything else that you like. Then I decided to go with this bright green it's
fallow green lights. It's a sanity color as well. There's a smart
color choices lesson later on in the class
and I'll show you how to get the same color type if
you don't have this one. Then I picked crinodrenon gold, but even just orange or
a bright brown would do. And finally, indigo is such a great color to make
everything look darker, especially for a seascape. Again, I will offer some alternatives in the
Smart color choices lesson. A mixing palette
will be convenient. You can see I'm using tubes here and I actually like
to use them more and more, but you can use watercolor in pants is actually
the same thing. Two waterjars are also a must
for watercolor painting, as well as paper towels, we'll just need a few. I use them to keep the surface I'm working
on clean from paint, so I just lay my paintbrushes
on them like that. And then paper towels
are also very useful for certain watercolor
techniques and you'll get to see this
during the class. You will need a pencil, a ruler, and an eraser for the sketch, and I'm really not using
anything fancy at all here. Just a simple two B
or HB pencil is fine, regular eraser and
regular ruler. Masking tape is
very nice to have, especially if you're
working with loose sheets. It won't be the case for me
here. Don't be surprised. I'm working on a block that's
glued on all four sides. So I don't need to stretch it. I don't need the masking tape. Because what the masking tape
is going to do is going to help to keep your sheet from moving around
while you paint, and it also keeps the paper from buckling too
much when it's wet. Now, I would like to
talk to you about supplies that are going
to make your life easier, even though they're optional. In this class, I will be using drawing gum
or masking fluid. That is going to be
very convenient here. If you have that,
that'd be great to apply it because it's
very sticky when it dries, I like to use a color shaper. The tip is silicon. That's why it's very easy to clean whenever I
use this product. Now, if you have an open brush, use specifically for drawing gum or masking
fluid, go for that. I can't live without
my heat gun. It's a scrapbooking tool. If you don't have
one, you can use a hair dryer instead and
that's going to help you work on your watercolor painting without having to wait for a wet layer to dry because we can use this tool to
do it a lot faster. And then tools I love to
use, not all the time, but can be handy or white
gouache or a white el pin, and that would be handy for
those bright highlights that are hard to preserve in a waterclo painting
and that we want to get. I'll use them for final touches. I'm not even sure
I'll need them here. Maybe I want, but it's nice to have one or
the other around. And that is it for the supplies. I will meet you next for step one of my painting
process where I'll share how to plan a painting to
achieve loose realism. Oh
5. Step One: Plan Before You Paint: Step one is all about planning before you
even touch a brush. All the time, you'll notice
that it becomes habit, gets easier and easier. But honestly, going to keep growing with each new
painting just as I am. So for me, planning
means a few key things. First, looking for a reference
photo and preparing it, so it speaks to what
I want to paint. Then I do a quick sketch to map out the
composition, and next, I pick a palette
that feels right for the mood and the colors
of my reference. And finally, I come up with a painting
strategy, basically, how to get started
on the right foot, so the process flows smoothly. This step sets the foundation for everything that comes next. First, we'll start by diving into how to make the most
of your reference photo, so see you in the next lesson.
6. Make the most of your Reference : In this lesson, we're going
to touch on reference photos. This is my reference, and there are things I look
for when I pick any photo. The first thing is to
look for contrast and contrast comes in many shapes
and forms, you'll see. For Waco painting in general and what's going
to work for lose realism, look for contrast in shapes. For example, you
have that crisp boat in the foreground that pops against the faded mountains and the soft sky and sea. And there's also
contrast in color. Again, that white boat
in the light sky this time contrasts against
the much darker blue sea. One thing to be aware of is
that as watercolor artists, we have the power to enhance
contrast through painting, which means that even if a photo doesn't show much contrast,
you can create it. But if you can find a reference
that already has the, especially if you're in
the late beginner stage, for instance, then that
would help you a lot. Another very
important thing with reference photos is to
look at composition. Position does not directly
relate to lose realism, but it's important to
magnify the sense of balance that we'll
be creating in the next two steps of
the painting process. For this, I use the
rule of thirds, which is what
photographers use as well, and that's going to help a photo or a painting look more
pleasing to the eye. We'll be painting on a
vertical format like this. I'm just going to
demonstrate what this will look like if you're not familiar
with the rule of thirds. You have your sheet here. And you want to divide it
into three equal parts, so they're not 100%
equal, that's fine. You can just use your fingers to check be something like this. Then you'd want to do
the same vertically. This grid is going to help you place the main elements
in your painting. In a landscape like the one
we're going to work on, I always look at
the horizon line and in the original photo, I didn't like how it was placed. What I did was just
crop the photo to have it match this
upper line here. The horizon line could
be up here or down here, but we do have a boat, so we need room for the boat. I made more sense
to place it here. You'll notice how
the cropped version actually matches this. Then another thing is subject placement and the main
subject here is the boat. These here where
the lines meet are focal points and as a good idea to place a main subject
on one of them. Or like I did because we
already have a horizon line, we can place it in the center. We won't be painting the
small boats that here. What I would have done
if I had decided to paint it would have been
to place it in that area. You can see how this
can really help you place your
subject and again, call the shots when it comes to how you want to use
a reference photo. Another important thing
that I want to touch on is keeping everything simple
throughout the process. You'll notice that
simplicity is my guide when it comes to painting
loose realism in watercolor. That means for a reference, I'm going to keep
what matters most. For example, that small boat up here is not that relevant. We could paint. There's
no problem with it, but adding that boat won't add a whole lot to the painting. Here in particular,
for this class, I wanted to leave it out
because it is very tiny, but it's still
white, so that will take more effort on
our part to actually paint it and it will take away a little bit from the
main subject as white as well. I prefer for us to focus
on the main subject. Painting this boat also over here might lead
to wanting to add more detail and
that might lead to increased tightness
in the painting. That's why we're just going
to work on larger areas like the bigger boat
here and that's going to help us keep that
looseness around. You might wonder
why in this case, I would want to keep the buoys because the buoys are so small. But for me, they're part of what's going on up
here in the foreground. And for me, they'll add to the main subject rather
than taking away from it. Sometimes a little
secret is I also remove things out of convenience if it seems too hard
or complicated. There again, you can
do whatever you want, and it doesn't really matter whether you keep
something or leaving out, it's up to you to decide what
you feel comfortable with. In the next part,
we'll start sketching and I'll share my
best tips, S there.
7. Sketching Tips: For sketching, we'll rely
on simplicity once more. We'll keep things minimal. That's why in watercolor
painting that we want to appear loose and
realistic at the same time, we're always going to look
for the main subject, which should be
the boat here and draw that, draw the shape. And possibly look for
anything that will help us paint that will
act as a guide for us. And that might vary a little bit depending on
your painting level, but you'll notice
that we can add most of the details
with painting alone. We are not going to need a
very complicated sketch. That's why in a
landscape like this one, the horizontal line is always
going to be very important. And I would use
once Mart the rule of thirds to decide
where it's going to be. To be somewhere around here. Again, remember,
it doesn't need to be exactly a third of the sheet. I'm just going to trace it. I wouldn't press too much when I sketch with what
I could painting, and how much you press is going to depend on what
you're going to paint, how dark the color
is going to be. For example, the blues in the sea are pretty
strong over here. So the line wouldn't be
to be very, very light. But I'll still stay away from pressing very hard because
if we want to erase it, we want to be able
to do it easily. Then you also want to press
hard enough that you don't lose your sketching line later because when we apply
that base layer, if the lines too
light, it might get buried under the paint and
we might not see it anymore. It happened to me so many times. The horizon line here is
important because it's going to guide us
with color contrast. Remember, the sky is
going to be very light, and the sea is going
to be much darker. So it's going to help us separate both of
them very clearly. It's also going to help
set the scene much better. We need that horizon line here. We'll also be able to place the mountain, and
now we have it. We also know how
to place the boat, so you can see how one
thing leads to another. It's kind of like a puzzle. You just need a few
pieces to begin, and then we do the
rest with painting. So now the second puzzle piece is going to be the
main subject here. And I'm going to keep away
from adding any detail. Sketch the boat itself. So first, you want to look at where that boat
is going to be. So this is where the
bottom of it could be. We need to take into account there's a reflection down here, so we need to make sure
we have room for it and still room also to paint a
little bit of the water here. Now, it could end
somewhere over here. You see I'm doing this in a way that's very approximative. And now I'm going to center it, so I'm just going to measure. So this is the
metal of the sheet. And I want to make sure there's enough room on either side. So I think something
like this would be nice. We need to also think
about the buoys, make sure they're not too
far off to the right here. Now I'm just going to sketch
an approximate shape. It doesn't need to be
perfect to begin with. We can refine it as we
go and we can actually just shape a crescent. So for now, I'm not worrying
about specific curves. I'm just shaping
it very roughly. I'm really looking at the
reference here going back and forth between my sheet
and what's on the photo. Noticing we have a curve here, but it's not as strong
as what I made it. So I'm going to soften
it a little bit. And here, it curves
upwards a little bit. So we want to render that. Over here as well, we have a slight curve downwards
and now upwards a bit. And from there, we can just
keep refining the shape. So here I'm trying to imagine the ripples will be hitting the boat this way here
is going to help me. I'm noticing the tilt
is too pronounced. I'm refining it more
and more and more. Here, the curve is also a
little bit too pronounced. I'm going to fix
that slowly refining the placement now it's becoming very easy
to add more detail. We really don't need that much, I'm just drawing these
lines to make sure my boat looks accurate
next to the reference. Noticing this part here is a little thicker than
this one up there. And this will be actually a very thin part of the boat underneath.
So kind of fix up. This is more than enough for
the main shape of our boat, and we're going to
mask it anyway, so any details will disappear
under the masking fluid. Now, you'd want to
also draw the buoys so we can mask them as well so that they are located
somewhere over here. They're just resting
on the surface. And right now, just two
circles will be enough. Can refine that later. Might also want to preserve
some of the reflection. Also, before we do anything, check the placement
of your boat, make sure that the way it's going really matches what
you see on the reference, which seems to be the case here. You can even use a ruler
on your reference to check that this is how the tilt is. Seems
to be correct. And anything else
that might look odd, you might want to take a
closer look at the reference. So here is going to be the
start of the reflection. And it's going
something like that. We don't want to mask
everything, though, and I'll show you my
techniques to get some natural whites
back afterwards. But here now you can
see we have something looking good and centered. So that's the main goal here. I'm just going to erase the
lines that I don't need.
8. Smart Color Choices: Oh how to pick colors for best results with
loose felism and watercolor. Again, simplicity
will be guiding us with a limited color
palette and color mixing. First, we're going
to look at how to create a limited
color palette. And what it is is actually
three to five colors, which is what a lot
of other artists actually vouch for because it will help you focus more on the painting process and
less on decision making. It will also help with
great color harmony and more balance
in your painting, which is great for
loose realism. Then we also want to look for light mid and dark tones in
our limited color palette. And I'm going to
show you how to do this with just three
to five colors. If you want to practice this, you will need a scrap
piece of paper like this, a paintbrush, water
jars, and a paper towel. If you want to rest a
paintbrush on top of it, so my recommendation and what I do is to always start
with mid tones. And for me, the mid
tones are going to be the main colors that you see in your reference or the ones that you want to appear
in a painting. So if you take the reference, the main colors here
would be blue and brown. Blue and a washed out
brown, maybe green. We're not sure. I've
actually decided to pick green because if you look at the
bottom of the boat, you can see there's a turquoise color at
the bottom of it. And I thought green
was also going to be a great addition
in the mountains, because, remember, we
want to enhance colors. That's why I rely for the
mid tones on bright colors. If we enhance them, we're
going to bring more looseness, freshness in the
painting, and get more of that watercolor look. So here are mine
ultramarine blue, fallow green light,
and crinodrenon gold. You can see they're very bright. After this, we want to
figure out the dark tones, your shadow color or colors. So here I've picked indigo. And what that's
going to do is that, first of all, we need
strong shadows for realism. So that's going to bring the
realism in the painting, and that's going to
depend on your style. But I find that having colors that are not
super bright all over like that is actually good to create a
little more realism, to have more naturalness
in the colors. I feel like it's good
to have bright colors, but a lot of them won't make the painting
look as realistic. So you can see how
that depends on you and what you
want to achieve, what you want your
style to be like. I like more natural
colors in my paintings. And my dark tone
is going to help me through color
mixing, get that. You can see, for example, if I take a little
bit of that indigo, not only can I get darker tones, which is great, but the colors appear a
little bit more natural. There's also more variety, and variety is key
in lose realism. So now let's do it
again with this color here and see how easily we
can get a darker green now. Same with blue. We can get a dark one thanks
to color mixing, which will be great for the s. It will add depth
and realism to it. I'll show you how we'll do that. Generally, one shadow
color is enough, but sometimes I'll pick two. It depends on the reference
and what you want to achieve on your style. Today, I could decide
to pick these colors, and tomorrow I might feel like
picking different colors. As long as you have light,
mid and dark tones, it works. So now, what about
the light tones? The light tones are going
to be these colors here. With more water added. So they look a lot lighter. For example, like
green like this, we could do that
with other colors. And the light tones
are also going to be the natural
whites in the paper. That is key in loose realism, and that's why this
reference photo I picked is great because you
already have the white boat. Remember, you have the power to decide whatever you want
to do in a painting. So even if the reference
doesn't have bright white, you can decide to
create some or to just emphasize light tones by making them a
little bit whiter. We're going to elaborate on
this more in the next lesson, and I'll show you how I
actually preserve my whites, so see you there. Oh
9. Your Painting Strategy: It's nice to have a strategy when painting with watercolors. It helps us being well
prepared and more confident. And my process relies on wet and wet technique a lot
for looseness in particular. And the downside of this is that there's little
time to think, and it's more tricky. That's why it's good to have a rough idea where
our colors will go. We figured that out already
when we pick the colors, and it's also great to ensure
great contrast overall. We already have our main
and our dark tones. So we want to think about the light tones now
and how to keep them. For the sky, it's
going to be easy. We just need to add
more water to our blue. But the boat is the tricky part. Should we just wet the entire sheet and avoid
it as best as we can, or just wet the sheet but contour the boat or
should we mask it? The choice is going to depend on you and the actual reference. You can see the boat
here is very white. It contributes to added
freshness and looseness, and it makes
everything pop more. It's also a clear shape. And that's why I think
it's important in this particular painting to preserve the white
as best as we can, to not risk anything and
just go with masking fluid. Because if we wet everything, the paint is going to bleed in it and it's not going to
be as white as we'd like. If we contour, is going to
be tedious, time consuming. And chances are
it'll be very hard to keep the edges sharp anyways. Even though I might use those two options
once in a while, especially for subjects that are not as light as that boat, I think here, the masking
fluid is much better. So you want to grab whatever
you're using to apply it, either your old paintbrush
or a silicone color shaper. And now I'm ready to mask this. I like to apply my masking fluid in very thin lines if I can. We want to mask all of the boat and some
of the reflections, whatever's closer to
the actual subject. It's very hard to mask something this small
very precisely. That's where white gouache and the white join will
be very handy later. If we need to refine the edges, there's going to
be nothing better than natural whites
coming from the paper, though, especially
for lose realism. Not going to be worried about
the reflections that much. I just want to get some of
the masking fluid on them. I might leave a little gap here between the boat
and the reflection. You can see there's a shadow. This will help us keep the shape of the boat when
we remove the masking fluid. Remember where it actually ends. Can start drawing some ripples, but really not much. We just need a bit of it, and then we'll do the rest
directly while painting. We are done, so I
will see you in the next part for step
two of my process, which will focus on a loose
base for this painting.
10. Step Two: Paint a Loose Base First: Step two is all about
creating a loose base, first layer that sets the mood and background
for your painting. And starting with
the inout technique, lets the paint flow freely, blending softly and keeping
things loose and fresh. This loose base is key for landscapes and other
subjects because it builds atmosphere
without locking you into details too early. The goal is to limit
the layers here, avoid overworking, and leave
space for the sharper, more realistic details
to come later. See you next to paint the space. M
11. First Layer: We are ready to tackle our base layer here
on this painting. I tend to paint on wet for
a while because I'm using 100% cotton coal press
vapor from Asha. Now, if you use any other
paper type and that you notice that your paper seems to dry a lot faster than
mine, don't worry. First of all, I'm used to
doing this kind of work here, so it might be also why you have that impression
and the paper, of course, is going
to play a part. So it's not you or you doing
anything wrong at all. It might be just a
lack of habit and speed and also the paper. So if that happens, what you want to do is just
dry your sheet completely, wet it again, and then pick
up where you left off. So what we're going to do
first is mix our colors. We'll need just a
little bit of green, a little bit of crinoenon gold. Quite a bit of ultramarine blue or any bright blue
that you picked. And some indigo,
further shadows. So what we want to achieve in terms of consistency
when we start painting is something
creamy, like milk. So I would just on a
wet paint brush and then pull a little bit of paint or go activate
some from a pan. And you will want to
go with something like this that moves around, but still very colorful,
very pigmented, because it's going
to dry lighter than it appears now anyways, and we do not want to layer
a whole bunch of times. So here we go. I'm going to make more of that mix. That's going
to be the main one. For the other ones, I'll
just pick up the paint as I go because it's already
fresh from the tube. Makes it easier. But if
you feel more comfortable, you can prepare such mixes
with the other colors, especially if you
work from pans. It will save you
time. Just don't make them as big as this one. We don't need as much of the other colors as we
do ultramarine blue. Paintbrushes, we will need mostly the flat one
to wet the sheet. Although you could make do with just a round paintbrush
if it's big enough, but this is going to be more
convenient, at least for me. So we're going to
wet everything, and then we'll paint with
this round brush here just to layer blue here for the sea and a
little bit in the sky. And then I'll use this
smaller paint brush here to start shaping
the mountain. And I'm picking up clear water now with my flat paintbrush. I'm going to wet
everything really well. So at first, the paper
is bare, very dry, so it's going to take you a
while to actually wet it. And we're going to do a lot
of back and forth like this until that water seeps inside
the fibers of the paper. And once it does, you'll feel like it's starting
to get dry again, and that's when you know the inside is starting to be wet. So I'm just going
to keep doing this. So we want it to
penetrate inside. I press a little bit with my paintbrush to
push the water in. I don't want any
puddles, either. Sometimes I like to change direction to make sure I get
all the nooks and crannies. Here I can feel
starting to get dry, so I'm going to do it again. I'm adding a little bit
of water on the surface now so that colors can flow
and interact together. And you can see the
paper buckling very slightly since it's
stretched on all four sides. Now you have that.
We're going to work with a round paintbrush,
so I'm going to wet it. I make sure it's wet
but not too full of water to not dilute the
paint more than necessary. Then I go pick up the paint. And remember, for the sky, we want something
actually pretty light so we could just dip our paintbrush in water and directly remove a lot
of the paint from there. I'm just making sure it's
not too wet once more, and then I'm going to go ahead and add a little bit
of paint up here. We have a very solid sky. You could decide to make
it a little bit more of a cloudy sky if you want to with some strokes like this,
maybe more color. I like a little more color
in my skies, actually. Remember, we can change things, however we like it to be. We don't need to follow
the reference completely. That's why if I want to, I can darken the
top a little bit, even though on the
reference, it doesn't look like it's that dark. I'm rinsing my paintbrush. And I'm going to soften
this a little bit. And right now,
it's pretty light. So now before this dries, we want to work on the water. So I'm going to start
from the bottom up do a lot of back and forth. So you can see I'm not
worried about the boat at all since I've maxed it. So now I'm going to stop right
there where the line is. Don't worry if some of the blues are going into the sky as long as not much because
we're going to place the mountains
there anyways. What matters here is that we managed to re wet our
sheet all in one go, and that helps maintain
the humidity on it, which is going to help us keep
working on it for longer. I'm rinsing my paintbrush. I might like to add a
little bit of indigo to the sky very little for more
of not really a moody feel, but maybe something
a bit darker. I rinse my paintbrush again. Make sure there's
not too much water. We want to match the
level hole humidity. That's on the paper
with the brush. Now starting to dry already, so we don't want to add
a bunch of water to it, and I've just softened my addition there so you
can't even see my strokes. Now I'm going to start
adding a little bit of indigo to the s by mixing
it to ultramarine. G start over here. I'm even going to
add more of it. And we can start placing
some strokes here that suggest how
the water moves. It almost seems like
it's moving in this way. So we can take cues
from the reference to do it as we please. What's important here is to keep some light parts in the sea. You can see them clearly over here and have some
darker ones too. Just to add contrast. We don't want it to stop though. All of a sudden, that's why I'm placing some strokes
here to kind of break that blank area and add a little
bit of color to it. And this is not finished yet, so we still can add a lot. Can see I'm going from light to dark as we always
do with watercolor, so that it's easy to make more additions or change things
in the way that we want. Now I'm picking up indigo, adding some towards the bottom. And I'm going to keep
shaping the waves here. And we want the paint to be
thicker and thicker as we go, which means we just
add less water to it, and that happens
with the paintbrush. You can start adding
little ripples. And see, even with
that kind of detail, we're still keeping it loose, which is very important. So that's why it's
so important to use the wet and wet technique
for loose realism. And I talked about
variety before. It's key, even in
terms of strokes. What kind of strokes
you're making. So sometimes I can have
some straight strokes, sometimes curvy ones, as long as it makes
sense, it's fine. Here I'm going to pick
up a little more paint. And see here I'm making
some horizontal strokes. You can also tap your paintbrush
over here in the water. To create, not really waves, but ripples are a little
bit less straight. We don't want to overdo it. Add a little bit to this water. Remember, this is what is going to help the boat stand out. So it's very important to
get it to look dark enough. And that's why I'm going to keep adding to
it with indigo. It's just easier because
it's so much darker. And the more I work on this, the least paint I add, there are areas I want to
leave so that they stay light. So here I could already
paint that area here beneath the
buoys and the boat. Here also we have some kind of a shadow, so let's just add it. And that will help make the boat pop too to have some
dark colors underneath. The more I paint
the lease the paint spreads out, which is great. It allows me to place
dark blues up here. And we can still
refine that later. So now I'm going to switch
to this paint brush here and I'm going to start adding a little bit of the mountain
which is at the far back. So I want to use a little
bit of unodrenon gold. And again, we don't want it
to be too full of water, so it doesn't spread
out too much. And I'm going to press a little bit with
my paintbrush and start shaping my mountain. Now, we have this doesn't look very nice as it is by itself. So we can add a
little bit of green. And I add it in places, not
necessarily everywhere. I want to enhance
the browns a bit. Actually, maybe have them
look a bit more vibrant, so that happens
when you don't add too much water in
your paint mixes. You can also refine the
shape of the mountains. So something I didn't mention is that I'm
painting the mountain last because it's easier
on a sheet that's almost dry because you see the paint doesn't
spread that much, but it still is very loose,
and that is very nice. I look at this, how
beautiful it is. That means we want to add a little more paint
with not much water, and we can get that same effect. I'm going to add some over here. Touches. You see, I'm trying to not do the same everywhere. So there's nothing
too predictable. And you can also create
texture when you do this. I might add a little bit of indigo just to make
this a bit darker. Again, we need shadows, even in something like that, that's supposed
to be very loose. I'm going to add more
crinodrenon gold. Don't worry about the
paints over here. We'll cover that up later. So here by adding some
more paint as the strides, some areas going to
look very faded and others a bit more crisp, not really crisp, but you can
see the edges a bit better, more color, and that is
great for lose realism. Over here, I feel like I'm
missing a bit of colour. I might want to add
some green step. If you want, you can lift some of the paint if you don't like the
way that it's spread. So I'm just rinsing
my paintbrush, making sure it's
almost dry here, and I can clean up this
part if I want to. So it's very easy to fix things. Pause the sky is super
light already, so it helps. I keep rinsing my paintbrush, as I do this, can also
reshape those mountains. I think that looks great. And now I'm going to lift some over here
just to clean it up a bit. Make sure your paintbrush
is not too wet, otherwise I'll create blooms, and I will cover that up
later with more paint. So we got ourselves
a nice base now, so we're going to
dry this completely. And now it's entirely dry. We're ready to add a
second layer to this, so see you in the next lesson.
12. Second Layer: A second layer is going to help us fix some
things and also add vibrancy to a painting
which is very important to make it loose
even if there's detail. You can see here there's weird whitish area that looks a little bit unnatural,
so I want to fix that. There are other
things too that I want to work on
increase vibrancy, maybe depth down here. So in some cases, I will just re wet everything and just
work on everything. Here, I really want to get this part without
having to worry about what's going on on top and the paint spreading over
into the mountains. What I'm going to
do in this case, since the sky satisfying, I don't really want to touch it. I'm going to just wet the
bottom and it's going to work because I'm going to stop
underneath the line here, which is very important, so we don't get any paint bleeding over onto
the other side. Let's just do that. You
want to rewet this quickly, we don't need to take as long as the first time and then
stop somewhere over here. That looks good and it also smoothed out the previous layer. I'm going to use this
paintbrush here for more precision to
cover this area there. I'm going to use indigo and a little bit of
ultramarine and I want it quite thick so it shows thicker than the milk consistency
I talked about before. Now before this dries,
that's important. It's just Go ahead
and paint that. We do have some nice shades here forming green, sexually, okay. And now, I'm going to
refine some places here. And keep working on this. So we can even keep this paintbrush here because
now we're just refining. But we want to be quick
before this dries again. I'm just taking care of the bottom to really make
sure I get that depth. The smaller paintbrush
is going to help me create some ripples.
It's very interesting. Remember, you can have
a few straight strokes and some slightly curvy ones. We want to keep some
highlighted areas, which means we are not painting over everything we've done. As I go up, I'll just mix a little bit of the
ultramarine into the indigo, so it's not as dark as the
bottom whereas just indigo. Now I keep going. I'm trying to hurry here because I don't
want that sheet to dry. I'm making some more
horizontal strokes there. I also want to fix that area. Like I said before,
here we need to bridge the gap between that light area here
and the dark one there. That's where you can space out
your strokes a little bit. Before it dries, I
keep adding to this. Over here, there was
a shadow to make sure appears so that that
boat can actually pop. Even all around, actually, it's good to have some blues that show so that
that boat pops. I'm going to keep refining
this with more strokes, more pain added more
indigo towards the bottom. And some in the darkest areas. Adding some final ripples
with more indigo. Targeting those areas where
there are more shadows. And the more it dries, the
more paint I add, so it shows going to work on
the area up here. Remember to always bridge the
gap between light areas and dark ones by just adding strokes and space them out more
and more as you go. Notice now we have a
very straight line here. It doesn't look that
great and it looks tight. So what would you
do in that case? We can reinterpret the
reference and just add to it. We can do that if we want to, and I'm going to
add more mountains. This is almost dry, so I don't
really mind to add it now. I know the paint won't
bleed into it that much. I'm picking up a little
bit of crinodenon gold, and I'm going to get
another paintbrush. Can be the bigger one or
a small one if you like. I think I'll pick
up a small one. I make sure that
paintbrush is wet, clean, and just damp,
which means I just remove some of the
water, not all of it. Now I'm going to
shape some mountains. I'm doing that now so that the line here will be less straight because it's
still a little bit wet, but colors won't really
bleed into it that much. Now with that cleaning
down paintbrush, I'm going to come here and soften some parts
of the mountains, not all, so that some are loose and some
are still very crisp. So try and not shape your
mountains in the same way. It will look a lot better, a lot more natural this way. See here how tight this looks. That's why I like to remove those harsh edges with my cleaning
down paintbrush. But I don't feel like I
need to do it everywhere. That helps me retain
some of the realism. This looks much better, but I want a little
bit of shadow. It doesn't look natural when the color is all
the same everywhere. Now I'm adding a
little bit of indigo. You can use the clean and damp brush technique
if you like there, too, especially the
mountains are already dry. Another tip that I can give you here that would look
good in a painting, but that's not necessarily
there on the reference would be to clean a
paintbrush completely, remove the water out of it. And when it's still wet, which should be the case here, you're going to lift a
little bit of paint right there to emphasize
the separation between the mountains
and the sea. We don't want it to show
very much everywhere. If it shows in
places, it's great. Once more, notice the pattern here and the way that I paint. I never do something
the same everywhere. No same edges everywhere
in the mountain, not a straight line
everywhere, either. I emphasize some areas, others stay the same. I'm even going to add
more shadow here. With indigo. And again, suffen with a clean
and damp brush. Now, that line that I created doesn't look as
perfect as it did. I even managed to
make it look thinner in places, but it's there still. And thanks to more shadows in the mountains,
you can see it. I may add a little bit of green. I'm getting rid of all
the lines that might look like I've added something
by just relaying on top. Be it for the background,
so let's try it. Now astride, we'll be ready
to move on to the next part. If you want to share
your work in progress, you can do that in the project and resources
section of the class. You can also ask me for
feedback, feel free to do that. See you next. Oh
13. Step Three: Bring the Main Subject to Life: Now it's time to bring
your main subject to life. And we do this in steps, gradually adding
sharper details and more contrast to bridge the
gap between the looser, more distant backgrounds, and the closer and more
realistic subject, the boat. This gradual balance is what gives a painting,
energy and focus. So let's dive in with the
base layer on our boat, CNX.
14. Base Layer: We are ready to take care
of the boat in this lesson, and I'm going to use these paintbrushes that
are better for details, and we also need a paper towel to remove the masking fluid. So I like to make circular
motions when I do this, make sure the paper
is completely dry. So right now, it looks odd. Don't worry about this at all. We're going to make
it look beautiful. So you want to maybe zoom in on the photo if you have it next to you and take a look at
the detail because we need a little bit of shadow in that boat to
make it look natural. We want to keep the white, but we don't want
just bright whites. So I'm going to
prepare a paintbrush that's gonna be clean and damp. I want to use maybe a little
bit of that turquoise color. So let's just go ahead and mix a little bit of the
green with the ultramarine. So we want more ultramarine in this mix to have more of that
turquoise look like that. Now we have some. We're going to use it to create our Tet. And I'm going to do that
directly with a paintbrush. So first of all, I'm noticing that there's
a part on top here. That's slightly colored. So I'm just adding a little
bit of paint and fading it. So it looks very light.
And here you can see it. There's a little curve that
kind of goes like this. That goes all around. So
we make sure to place it, but we don't want it to
be too harsh or too dark. That's why I'm
adding water to it. Now I'm going to follow
the curve of the boats. We don't need to
make straight lines. That's another thing
with loose realism. Straight lines look very tight, and lines are continuous from one way to the
other look very tight. So you want to make it
look like it's broken. See in places, I
didn't draw it at all, and that will look a lot better. Softening that color into the whites to make sure I
retain the bright whites. Here we have a shadow area. I want to make sure it shows. That's why I'm going to
add more color over here. I'm not going to
fade it as much as the other parts going to
make it more visible. Then I make sure the end
of my line here softens. I'm suggesting. I'm not painting
absolutely everything. Over here, we have another
detail. That is important. Gonna make sure to soften
those lines again at the tip. And now I'm going to add that turquoise color
towards the bottom here. I insisted on amar this time. I'm going to soften some of it. I'm going to add more of that
turquoise color over here. We might want to
add a little bit in the reflection.
I would make sense. And again, soften it. One. Over here, I have a straight
line that's weird. It's a drying line,
so I'm just going to remove it by just
adding water over it, pressing a little bit with a little bit of back and forth. There we go. And now I'd like to switch
to quinodrenon gold. As a shadow color for this
light turquoise here. I'm going to add some over here. This is going to make
the boat look more natural once more having
several colors helps. Here in particular, I really
want this colour to show. So I make sure it's
thick, so it shows, and there too, we want some
towards the base here. Have some of it here, too. Don't worry about the
reflection looking so hard. Right now, or use a technique to soften it to make
it look more natural. Right now I'm just making those white he less
white because that's how they appear to be
in the reflection. We can even make some ripple shaped marks with
a crinogenon gold, and I'm going to use
it for the buoys. Actually, I think I want
to add a little bit here. There. Now some
here in the buoys. Mostly at the base here, there's a big shadow
between the two buoys. I'm again going to soften this. It helps me remove
the harsh lines, but also helps me get a lighter version of
that unodenon gold. Remember, variety is key. So we need to see rinodnon
gold in its pigmented form, but also in its washed out form. So I'm adding some
in the reflection, and here I noticed that I
forgot a detail right there. I'm also going to add here. I might want to add a little bit of the
crinodnon over here, too. So I'm just going to
pre wet that area, drop a little bit of
paint and clean it up. So it's just a hint appearing. And now we're going to dry this. And now I want to
improve my reflections. So we're going to need
so we're going to need a paper towel and our
small paintbrush. And we want our paintbrush to be clean with a little bit of
water on it, but not too much. And now I'm going to
soften this part here. Add ripple shaped forms. I use my paper towel
to lift the paint. And that's going to help
finish the reflection. I'm insisting a bit more on those areas where we can
see the harsh line between the sea and the masking
fluid preserving the paper. So what that is doing is making
this look more realistic, but also finishing
the reflection. You can see it's a lot
whiter at the base than it is as you get away
from the boat. So we'll have to insist quite
a bit to get it to work. I insist a bit. Over here, I want
more whites as well. We need to switch the side of
the paper towel we used to lift it gets dirty quite fast. You see, with a little
bit of insistence here, I managed to get some
natural whitespa. Same over here. There we go. So now you can see that we got something
pretty decent here. And what we're going to need
to do now is to work on the final details for this boat and maybe even see if we want to
add some things. So I will meet you in the
next lesson to do just that. See you there. H
15. Final Details: In this lesson, what I
would like to do is add a few things to make this boat even more
pleasing to the eye. So first, let me add some
ripples with a little bit of indigo and ultramarine
mixed, especially over here. We do need to soften it with the clean
and damp paintbrush. I'm going to add some
more over there. We can even layer on top
of the reflection a bit. It's going to be important here, too, to up the shadows. That is crucial. For example, here, you can see clearly. We have a very dark part, so we can pick up indigo. And redefine the
bottom of the boat. That is crucial for realism. And you can also run
the finest shape a little bit while you're at it. It also makes the colors
look less vibrant, which in a way is good because I feel it
tends to look less realistic when it's very flashy. So I find that helps. I'm adding a few ripples. To show this is a reflection. Can even add some over here. I always soften them. I'm strengthening
the shadow here. Oh, what's softening
the strokes. Might want to add a few
ripples over here, too. So it doesn't look
like there are only ripples by the boats. Here, it's important to add one, I feel like because
then it shows where the boat is actually sitting and that's
on the water on the surface, so it gives us a sense of that's the surface
of the water. I'm strengthening the
shadow over here. Also, as you can see, adding
a little bit of a line. You want to keep it discrete, but it helps when it's there. I will still add
a bit over here. So, I like to soften
some of the ripples, not everything just like I did in the mountains.
Same strategy. And I want to add some
detail around the boats. We can imagine that
parts in focus. So we see more of
the ripples there. And they kind of fade away as
we get away from that area. We can get them to look a
little bit darker as we get closer to the
bottom of the page. You can see adding
darker ripples adds to the realism
and the water, too. Can even shape those in different ways to
suggest movement. I'm going to add more
of the indigo down here and soften it
into the background. So gonna wet that area and
do the same over here. I feel like something's
missing over here. Something you can do is
sometimes take a little break. Take a step back and come
back to your painting, see what you feel
might be missing. There you see now by
adding dark paint, how even places are not
that white look whiter. And that's how you
get loose realism, combining strong whites with subtle white through lifting, through adding dark paint
next to a light area. I want to work with
qrinodnon gold to emphasize some
areas over here. Adding a little bit
of it in the water suggests the fact that this
is a reflection even more. I might want to add a
few ripples up here. I want to space them
out quite a bit. Now I want to add
some white guash to this boat here to maybe refine some edges
a little bit more, even though we don't
need it that much, but I just want to show you we need it pure out of the tube. That would be the
best way to use it. And I'm going to grab, again, a clean and
damn paintbrush. So I'm picking up my guash here. You should be able
to paint with it, so if it's too
thick, you need to add a little bit of
water, not much. And I'm going to
refine some edges. We wouldn't want to add too
much of that, just a bit. And soften that addition into the rest so nobody
can see you've added it, especially if you
don't use a lot of it. You can even correct some areas and more highlight in
if you've lost them. Here I want to make my line thinner so I can do
that with guash. And if you like, you can add a little bit
to the reflection. I wouldn't recommend to
overduet just a little. Add some ripple shaped lines. No, no, no, no, no. And you can even reshape
those buys a bit. They're very hard anyways to
preserve. They're so tiny. There are a few details I forgot about that I'm going
to trot with rinodrenm gold. And again, I'm using a
cleaning down paintbrush. So here we might want to add a little bit
of a detail here. I'm mixing indigo to
get something a bit darker get this to
look a bit better. There. And then adding
a slight line here. And finally, the rope. See you again, if we don't
add any shadow to this, it's not going to look
realistic at all. That's why I'm picking up
a little bit of indigo. Adding just a tad,
we don't need a lot. Is actually enough. And if you want to
make it even better, we can add a bit of a highlight. Why not try the white job. And we could do
that with gouache. So I'm just adding a little
bit of white immediately next to the quinnon gold and
indigo touches here. And now you can see, all of a sudden, we can see
that rope a lot better. I'm gonna make it look like it's falling into
that area here. And that is it. Maybe a little bit more indigo, right there, but it
won't be very visible. And that's it. I'm trying to check
for maybe more to add. Maybe a stronger shadow
underneath here. The stronger shadow should
be immediately underneath the boat to really
make its shape pop. I might add a little more of that turquoise color over here. That looks great, and now
I'm going to show it to you. So we have loose
mountains there, which contributes to the
looseness in the painting, as well as the sea and see how everything
contrasts very much. And the boat now is a
lot more realistic. See how subtle that is,
the reflections there, but the gouache a
little bit of detail, but never too much. And see how the lines are never full lines
are kind of broken in places that looks good to
avoid a very tight painting. So I hope this was useful. Feel free to share your art in the project and
resource section of the class and ask away
if you have any questions. I will see you next for final
thoughts on this class.
16. Before You Go: Oh Thank you so much
for taking this class. I hope I've shown you how fun and rewarding
waterclo painting can be and that inspired
you to give it a try. I'd love to see what you
create using my approach, so please don't forget to upload your artwork to the
Project Gallery. You may also leave the
class to review to help potential students decide if
it's the right fit for them. And if you want to stay updated
on my upcoming classes, make sure to follow me
here on Skillshare. You can also find me on YouTube
and my social media under the name Painting
and Chocolate and follow me there for
weekly inspiration. Happy painting and
see you next time. H
Francoise Blayac, Professional Artist
