Watercolor Masterclass for Painting Mist: 7 Different Landscapes

1. Introduction: Watercolor is a unique medium and has been on playground for many artists over time because of its unique properties. Light, light, fastness, transparency and liftability. How about exploring all of these properties in one single class? Guys, I am Dana Ten artist instructor, mother, skillshare, teacher and brand owner of Fibrin Parcels where we manufacture and make sketchbook artist right pains as well as giveart classes E people who are joining me for the first time. I go by the name watercolor illustration dot letter on Instagram. Most of my articles are displayed there. You can also find me on my Youtube channel by the name for the Corona. I give out videos every week to the class, we are going to touch upon one of the most important topics which is water control. Along with all the other properties that I have stated earlier, We are going to understand how much optimum water should be used in seven different kind of landscapes. Get a moody as well as misty effect. This brings me to the major discussion point, how to differentiate between a puddle of water and how to have that optimum amount of water on your paper that will not allow your colors to move a lot within the paper and stay in the basic aspects which we want our pad. Start with our basic materials, what all we need to complete this class. Then there are seven days we are going to follow. Each day is going to come with its own set of techniques as well as color. The organization of the lesson is an increasing order of difficulty level. But you can start out with any day. As each of the days car real time videos, we can follow along and paint with me, all the watercolor enthusiasts who wants to enjoy the flow of water and water colors. Let's come and enjoy this glass and paint our heart out. 2. Flow of the Class: Let's understand a simple flow of the class. We are going to start out with our materials required. Every day is going to be a challenge. Day one starts with the lowest party level, and it's a painting with Mooc. As we progress with day two, day three, day four, I'm going to not only include various colors, but also tell you how to work with analogous split. Complimentary and different kind of colors do follow along with me from day one to day seven. Do not go by the length of the class as it might be a bit overwhelming. Each and every day is covered in great detail, so you can select any day as your day one. 3. Materials Required: Let us understand all the materials which we need for completing competing. The first would be our water. First, you need two jars of water. The second is going with 100% cotton paper. The third would be upper colors. The brush set would be important and major thing that we need for completing all these paintings. The rest are which I'm going to discuss next. You already know about all the supply size. Just give you a rough brief about what I'm using in this particular painting. I'm going ahead with an five size arches paper. This is not the exact size, it's a nine to 12 inch pairs. Five size is half of your four size, and hence it is way more smaller. Let's have a look at the exact size of the painting that we are going to do. This is approximately six, and then I would go ahead and check eight inch into six inch, that's the I have gone ahead with. You can also select the same size or five size is also good to go. I will say 100% cotton Tus paper is something that I have always gone ahead with. This is 300 GSM and we really need 300 GSM or else the heavy washes will not be possible. This is basically a pack that I have. You can go ahead with even bigger blocks of paper, put it in to the exact size that I've told you, and then do your painting on top of it. This is a very important thing. It is microlic board. If you are painting along with paint, you will need a board. As this board is very important for sticking your paper to the surface as water is the only agent we are going to use for sticking our paper to this acrylic bar color. Exactly what are the colors you will get to know from the painting, but I would give you a input about this. This is a custom palette that I made for myself and it has various shades which I use for most of my paintings. You can also go ahead with pants if you have, or else even squeeze out paints from tube like this. I do not have this neutral tint within this palette. Hence, I piece out from, from the cue for the Neutrot, you need two jars of water. Two jars of water is the most important thing which you need for all paintings, one for fresh supply and another for washing your brushes. I have a ceramic palette. You can go ahead with any other palette of your choice, though I would be teletingbout the colors, et cetera. But having a palette by site is always a great idea. This is a really thick brush that I'm going to use for many of my paintings. Six Neptune brush from Princeton. You will see a variety of brushes, but frankly, you do not need a, you just need one thick brush brush like this, the Vinci Casino. A thin brush would be very handy. Either you can go ahead with squad zero size brush or else go ahead with quaye. There is nothing that's written anymore. It six brush that I've been using, it's been many years that I've used. Even the written part has gone out completely as an extra. I do like to keep the Vinci brush if I am blending in colors. Casino brush brush, these are all round brushes, is 1.5 inch Princeton brush. I don't need a masking fluid by my side. I'm going here and using the Winsor and Newton art masking fluid. Always, always tip your brush in a soap before you use your masking fluid. I have this coda with me. I will be using I would be dipping my brush into this and then only picking up the colors. Picking up the masking fluid, And never pick up the masking fluid directly from this jar. Always pour it in any kind of a ceramic pallet and then only use it because if you just again pour it back, all the soap that was there on the brush will get into it as well as it might react with the masking fluid that you have. This masking fluid may not last long. It happened in one of mess and in your masking fluids or I'm very particular about using the masking fluid in the correct way. The most important thing tissue, we will use it in various occasions and that's one of the reasons have issue by a side. I've already told you about the I have made the smaller cars for a reference and these are great when you are referring to the colors. You can also make a few of them, otherwise we are also going to keep her sketchbook very handy for ourselves, where we are going to try out all our colors. We are going to try out what or techniques we are learning. This is a sketchbook from vibrant parcels. It's arches, 185 GSM that I need. 4. Day 1 Solitude Techniques & Color: Super excited to start with our day one painting. I have kept the painting absolutely simple. It is all about working with one single color that is neutral tech. You can go ahead check each and every value that we are going to create. Next along with it, we are going to use the same values in our painting for folly and misty mountains. The name of day one is solid values is one of the very basic concepts that we need to explore in watercolor techniques over here. Today we are going to the values for one single color that is neutral tint. I will just go ahead and draw a very simple outline where we are going to go from the darkest value of this neutral tint to the lightest value while we go towards the bottom. Let's start with our darkest one. I have taken freshly squeezed out paints into my palette, and now I'm going ahead with my darkest value which has less amount of water in it. I will just go ahead and apply it on to give me the darkest value of this color. It's always great to go ahead with freshly squeezed out paint to get the darkest value orals, you might have to just spray some water and moisture paint before you go ahead with the color. I'm going ahead and adding lighter shade of this into my value part over. This is like a value card which can help you to explore each and every color as you progress. I'm adding more water, applying it on my schedule. I've already added one more shade lighter, adding water, you can see how the colors are becoming more and more light. As we progress, this is one more shade lighter. Now you can dip your brush in water and just go ahead and get a shape that is one more shade lighter. Last shade is all about whatever we had in our brush. We are going ahead and adding it on the paper. This is the whole value scale that we have created for my particular color that is neutral t. Let's understand, what do we mean by puddle of water and what is the optimum amount of water that you need on paper for creating a painting? Now let's go ahead and take a very thick brush like this one, and we will apply a layer of water on our paper. Don't worry, it's a bit brownish in shape, but that's absolutely okay. My brush, I think, had some paint which is okay. No issues. Now you observe water on the sides and they're moving. Now, these are mainly known as your puddles of water. If I apply a new color on top of it, it will move a lot where it can even give you backgrounds, which we really don't want in our painting. See how the colors are moving here and there it will be all over the place in case you want to create a painting where you want a controlled approach for water. This is not exactly the way you can move along. Wherever you add water, you will see that it will move a lot. What I usually do in this case is going ahead with a flat brush of mine and applying a layer of water like this. You have way, way, much better control in this case because it's an even amount of water that you have applied on the Cole surface. Now, when you try to apply the colors, you have to first see how much water is there on my paper. If there is a lot of water, do not go ahead and apply your colors because that will not give you good results. This is the optimum amount of water that's shine that I see. Now, I would go ahead and just start blind my puddles. You will see that I'm getting the optimum amount of colors for the sheets that I need for my painting. Even if I move my sheet a lot, the colors will not move in this case. Okay, I have added the colors till the end. I'm moving my colors a lot. You can see how this puddle is reacting over here. This is moving so much. Whereas you can see how beautifully the moving on the bottom part water is doing its work and we have got a beautiful outcome. This is all you need in your data. We will go ahead and start with our data next. In that case, I will really tell you more about the colors, mixes, et cetera. You can also go ahead with any other shade of your choice. Like you can also go ahead with O. If you do not have a flat, I think this would be equally misty and nine spect that we can get. This is one of the alternate colors that can be used. 5. Day 1 Solitude Painting: Day one, and it is painting one wet on wet is more like an experience as you grow old in your watercolor journey. You will understand that wet on wet can create a lot more magic on paper than you can really create with wet on dry. I have started this journey about five or six years back. And still I would say water color has been a beautiful journey where I'm learning more and more. All I have come across is lots and lots of accidents when you are doing a wet on wet here. Today, we are going to apply a lot of water on the back side of the paper as well as on the front side of the paper. Both sides will be completely wet and we are going to create mist and fog. Through this class, you are going to frankly learn everything about mist and fog in various kinds of landscapes. So that's the major idea and that would be the flow of our class. As you all know that it is always an incremental order of level. We are starting out with quite an easy one, where we are just creating a simple, foggy effect. I'm going ahead with my thickest brush and applying some colors. This is really light wash up colors as my brush is really thick and it can hold a lot of water, just applying some random colors here and there. You have to also be very random as you progress with your water colors. And this particular painting, don't think much, it's all about creating fog. Fog is also natural and it is random. It will appear in a few places, it will not appear in few places. Some of the hills you will be in a position to see and some of the hills you will not be in a position to see. We are working with one single color that is neutral tent. You can go ahead with Eagle Black, Mars black, or any other lamp Black. Whatever is available with you. Many of you might also want to use blue. I would say one of my favorite sheets of blue isn't on three blue. Or else you can also go ahead with crucian blue. Another important color is paints gray. If you are someone who loves color in between blue and indico, it would be paints gray. Another color would be indico. So these are the shapes that can be used if you do not have neutral tent available with yourself. Why I have chosen this particular one as our first painting because there will be a lot of water, puddles of water which you might like, which you might not like. We will be experimenting a lot and going ahead with a bit of a easier painting in the first floor would be helpful. Okay? Adding more and more paints here and there. Some of the areas on the lower side, of course, would be darker and on the top side would be lighter. Whenever you are painting, you have to keep this in mind that the top carrier will be lighter in shade. As the mountains are par, away from us, we will see it more blur. Whatever is closer to us, we will see a much more darker value. I'm moving my acrylic boat here and there. Acrylic boat really helps my paper to stick on it for a longer period of time. And it will keep my paper wet for a longer period of time compared to any other surface. That's one of the reasons I always, always say that get an acrylic boat for yourself if you want to ace your wet on wet techniques. I will remove my extra water onto my tissue. As you can see over here, I do tilt my boat towards the right and on the tissue I will put all the extra water now for can be in any direction. That's something I would like to tell you that you cannot frankly control. You cannot even control water. What we can do is with the flow, if my water is flowing downwards, let it flow downwards, but the darker area is downwards. It's better if your water flows sometimes from downwards to upwards and let's from upwards to downwards because that way you want to keep your top area more lighter. Because the bottom area is more darker for this particular painting. Yes, there can be various paintings where it can be darker lighter depending on which area you are concentrating on going with some more of the spots here and there and dropping in a few dots. It's absolutely fine if you are even getting any cauliflower effect. Once your paper is completely dry? I think those are things which we cannot control. We can just clear out the areas which has water on the side of the paper. That's all we can do on our own rest. I guess it's all up to how water wants to make its way through this painting. For me, this looks really dreamy and moody. Now, I would let the paper dry off completely and then add three layer of mountains. All the three mountains will not be seen equally. It is pretty uneven. You can go ahead and do a rough sketching as I am adding right now, orals just go with the floor and paint along with me. That's absolutely fine. I always like to lay a framework, I mean, with the help of my pencil and then only go ahead with the painting part that helps me to gain more confidence rather than just going directly with my brush shots. It's just the way that I have learned though. If you are becoming more and more confident, you can directly go with your brush paints. I would leave that decision up to you, how you want to play with your watercolors. Watercolors is, frankly, a playground and you can play as much as you want. For the Foreground Mountain, we will have a small tree and that's it. We are going ahead and adding that tree, few branches here and there. And once we have added those branches, we will just add a few drops of our paints on it. Blending the colors will not be much of an issue at this stage because we have already applied the darkest value. Then once we have applied the darkest value, we will blend it with our blending brush. You can keep always a bigger blending brush by your side for blending your colors. That would really help you to have a very, very smooth blend with the background. This is something that always, always keep in mind. If you see, I am using the tip of my brush to blend the colors, and I will pick up any extra colors or extra paints wherever I feel has gone into the painting or blend it with some more clear water. I have two jars of water always by my side. One is clear water and another one is where I usually wash my brushes. That's how I go about it for my paintings. Blending might appear a very simple and easy technique. When we are learning, we always love to learn more of difficult techniques progressing in our journey of watercolors. But frankly speaking, most of the easy things teach us a lot more than the difficult techniques that you learn in future. These easy techniques can really help you to ace through your watercolor paintings at a big medium or even as an advanced artist. Okay, I guess this is it, and let's continue with our painting part. Some of the areas are more darker in this particular mountain and some of the areas would be lighter. I will continue with my blending process and I will blend, blend it. And blend it till the colors of my background and the water that I've had it right now become similar. Why I say that they should be similar? We do not want that The fog looks different or the mist that you're painting over here looks absolutely separate than the pole of these mountains which are coming out. Now this is from my experience that I have seen some of the areas are completely not seen because of the clouds or the mist and fog. And some of the areas of the mountains are always seen whenever you go to any regions of Himalayas or you go to hill as well as if you can even see, see this kind of phenomena during the autumn and Winter season where it's pretty cold and chilly, you will see that the far off things will become more plur and in some of the areas fog is more and some of the areas it's a bit less all those things, of course, we will keep in mind as. Is a natural phenomena. And I have told you earlier also anything that appears naturally will be more random compared to what we do. Like buildings, buildings will have a particular shape size, architecture, et cetera. Whereas trees will not have any shape size, et cetera. They will follow whatever way they see. They just want to reach the sunlight and they will grow any shape size that they want. That's the specialty of working around with nature and how much you are influenced by nature. I would say that always, always try to observe nature. Nature has so much it will automatically give you so much more in terms of the understanding and how you should progress with your painting and how much you can get influenced from nature. I really can't tell you what extent I am influenced date from nature and how much it has changed my painting and how much I have grown as an artist because of what I observe and what I see in nature. One of my early learnings during my school days, I would say when I was taking these art classes in school, it was to observe. Baa teachers told me, the better you can observe, the better you would be able to paint during that time. If of course it did not strike me. I was very young. I mean, 56 students, you really don't get the depth of it. But as you progress with your journey, as you become more and more mature as an artist, you get to realize that that's where the whole of the beauty lies. That whole of everything that you do lies. It's magical. The space which you get to feel and understand when you start observing things, when you get to realize that, how much they can add value to the content that you create or to the work that you do, makes a lot of difference to you as an artist, as well as to the spectators who observe your work going ahead and just blending it further. I usually, what I usually do is just blend it and ***. But some of the areas I do even like to wet it, that the painting looks more organic and the paints can flow. They can get a better area of flow. That's one of the reasons I would just apply water in some of the other areas too, though you might not feel the need of it, but still let us do it. I can tell you it will add a lot more beauty to your painting. Having said that, I think some of these spaces, which I feel are a lot more lighter while we paint the fog. Initially, I would like to make it a bit more darker. Go ahead and first applying the darkest value on the right side, and then again blending it. See, water will get absorbed slowly and steadily by the paper. If you are in a region where it is more drier, I would say that your paper will not remain quite for a really long period of time. And hence, you might need to apply water at regular intervals or go for washers as I did over here. It's absolutely fine. You just need to know how and when exactly you have to apply water. That's all rest. Everything I think will fall in line applying some of the darker values even for the fog area. While we are going towards the bottom, you will see that I'm applying it towards the bottom area over here. As I blend my colors and take it a bit below, just above the mountain which is closest to us, we will apply some of the darkest value of the fog. Now that is because our way, the darkest value is coming up and we want to have the same colors almost over here as well as towards that particular area. Okay, blend it. And blend it with the background. This important. I'm even adding a bit of the mountain on the left side so that there's a continuity which you can observe. Even on the right side, you can see that there will be a continuity. Beauty always lies in how you want to see it and how you want to even add it in your painting. Some of the areas you have to create, the depth. Depth can be only created when there is a contrast. For us, it's a lot about values. I know that you guys already know a lot about values and we have also discussed it in our technique section. But when I discuss about values, all I want you to understand. As you go deeper or as you go more and more towards the bottom area, your values should become more and more darker. And if you have this one single thing in your mind, I think the rest or the whole of the painting will fall in place. I really did not want to create a hard edge. That's one of the reasons I'm using my flat brush just to make this particular area more softer. If you are someone who is like me, you will understand that the beauty of this whole painting lies in the softness that we have overall created now with our water, as well as the colors, everything moving, flowing and nicely creating its magic. It's like the water is dancing and you are letting it dance on its own. The pigments are flowing. It's something that I have always, always loved and I love to explore it in that way. Only it's the last mountain, the foreground mountain, and that one is the darkest of all. I'm going ahead with my darkest value right now and adding my mountain, of course it's darkest. So go with the darkest value that you think will work for you. Whether it be blue, black, whatever color you have taken for creating the mist as well as the backgrounds, it's absolutely okay. Go ahead with it and keep creating creativity is most important. The painting is very important. Rest everything will happen and it will flow on its own. Do not worry, you just have to be at it. As I always say, you will make it happen only when you start paint things. So pick up your paints, brushes and always paint your heart out. That's all you can do. I know managing time can always be difficult, but still just adding that one small single aspect to your daily rife or routine can really change a lot in terms of even the balance that you strike. It gives so much more happiness to me when I paint and I really miss it when I don't. Not as my profession, it was never initially my profession, but even as an artist or even as a person, I love to paint my heart out and see something creative or paint something more creative from my heart. It's the creativity that gives me so much of happiness. I hope that it also does to you. Continue adding some drops of water in the bottom area. We are just creating some texture in our mountain as well as it would help you to show that foggy effect that we have already created in the top part of the mountain rest. Once this part as dry, we will go ahead and start adding our tree now. That's the last part. To be frank, the tree is solitude, which means that there's a single tree as well as there's a single bird that we're going to add into this painting, though it might appear, why have I given it or done it in that way? But this whole painting, I want it to be simple yet interesting. And it is all about strength. Strength of one single color and how much beauty add. So why not a single tree and a single bird for the top area? That's it. Let's go with that thought and continue with our painting. This is my escoda optimobrushny of, you already know about it. I have been using this brush for many, many years now. Most of my classes have seen me using this brush. Many of the students have seen me already using this brush for a longer period of time. I don't know. Now, I think it was the sixth size of the optimal brush from Escoda. If you are ever thinking about investing in a good brush, this is one of the brushes that you can always look forward to. For me, I love to go ahead with a good and nice tip brush, and this brush is really comfort for me. Some brushes are your comfort zone, and this is one of them, which has always been my comfort zone. Going ahead and adding a few branches, I usually break it towards the top and keep adding more and more branches. As we progress and go towards the top, go ahead and make the Stem on the trunk of the tree more thicker. Again, this is at a distance, you will not observe a lot of detail in it. Keep it simple, easy, as I always say. Then add a few leaves. Once you are done with the whole of these stems, et cetera. Those leaves will add the strength that you need in the tree. For the a few drops of colors here and there. And that's it. Use the tip of your brush. Tip of your brush is something that I always say that you should use it for your watercolor paintings. It can really create so much of light beauty as well as happiness that you usually see. Once a painting is over, you can really feel that this brush was standing by me and I could complete a good painting with the help of it. Yes, brushes are important. They are one of our best friends in water color journey, any of the other mediums that you are using. I think brush is very important. Going ahead and I would do a rough sketch of my word. Once I'm done with the rough sketch of the word, then I will go ahead with my painting. I think few more of the lines are important for our smaller areas of the stem as well as I will make the tree trunk a bit more thick. That's also there rest. I guess. I'm pretty happy with how it has turned out and how it looks on the top right side. We will make the bird as I've told you earlier. Also I will do a rough sketch. I'm a person who is a bit more conservative compared to many others you might meet. Though I like to always let loose. But let loose with a small constraint of having a framework in place that really helps me to guide through my entire painting and get a desired result that I have always thought about continuing with my bird. Now, once this bird is done, I would have a fun look at this painting. Super happy with how it has turned out and how the whole of the thing right now, once you're done with your day one, which was more to go with the flow, we will go ahead with day two. There is a bit of a learning in terms of what is your vanishing point, as well as how do we paint our defender fields. Let's gear up for day two now. 6. Day 2 Lavender Love Techniques & Colors: Sunsets are my favorite through this painting, we are going to use multiple colors to create the sunset along with it. We are also going to understand basics of sketching like line as well as basing point. What I will do is I will just make a small square box over here as well as I will make a small square box over here. Not exactly square. It is frankly rectangular. We will drop in a few p. This is majorly to understand our horizon line vanishing point as well as the rule of hours. Now these are basic and very important concepts in our painting schedule. And you will get to understand how it is so important when we work with our watercolors or line over here. This basically differentiates my sky with water or land. This line, which is differentiator of both the sky and your water or land, is known as your prison line. A very important concept when you go ahead and understand your water colors. This is a basic line that you need for most of your paintings. And therefore, this is something that you should keep in your mind while you pick. The second concept is all about dividing your paper in an approximately nine equal halves. I will not say that it has to be nine equal halves, but yeah, we need somewhere close to nine equal halves. Have tried my best to get the nine equal halves. Your subject should lie somewhere here. These are basically your focus points. These are my focus points. This is also known as the Rule of thirds. Say that you don't place your subject just in the middle of your painting. You will either place the subject on the left. You will either place the subject on the right or somewhere here, here, here, and here. Either above or below is the concept. That picture, though there will be deviations that you might find over here. But this is one of the major important concepts. Let's go ahead and understand our vanishing point. We will directly go ahead with watercolor and understand this because I want to re, teach you how we work with this aspect with watercolors. Rather than going ahead and again, doing it with watercolors to it over here itself. Now it's a simple concept. We will go ahead and take Fencil, draw a few lines. Now all these lines have to converge to one single point. That single point is known as your vanishing point. Now, where all can your vanishing point lie? Your vanishing point is not lying over here. It lies somewhere over here. All the, it lies somewhere here. You will see that all the lines I'm meeting it somewhere here. It can lie anywhere on the paper, it can lie even outside the painting that you are doing. You will see in my lavender painting over here, the vanishing point. He's lying somewhere outside. It's not lying within the paper. And that's a very, very important concept. You do not need to make your vanishing point lie on the paper, can lie anywhere. Even outside of painting, I am going ahead and applying my ultramarine blue towards the top area of the sky. This is a very dry and rough one because I have not applied water and this is wet on dry that right now I'm doing My surface is dry, absolutely. And I'm going ahead with my wet car on top of it. Let's go ahead and apply some maple yellow where we are towards the water medium. Equal amount of water and equal amount of pigments at every place off the paper. I'm going ahead with my burn Siena now and applying it in few parts. I will start from the bottom, apply it. I can see that there is a lot of water that has gone into the painting. We might need to go ahead and just freeze out some water. I can just take off the extra bottle, another with my darkest value of brown. Again, applying it from the bottom area towards the top. We'll go along the line and try to add my darker value of shades of brown. The darkest value of brown, which is more or less the bendik brown moving along the lines that we have already added. If you are not happy with how it is out, just pick up your colors on the tissue and then start applying it again. I have also this concept in many of my other classes, but since many of you do have doubts about this concept, and this is the major important concept which you need to understand. Therefore, I would like to iterate it again and again. All I'm working right now is wet on wet. I am not going ahead and adding any wet on, dry, wet, dry. What happens is I will get darker lines and that's what I don't want at this stage of my painting. I would keep it absolutely soft and subtle. All our paintings are absolutely. That's one of the reasons I have just done it in the way which you can understand rest. It's more to do with the sketching which you will get. It's a very simple sketching and I have gone ahead and made it really simple. As you progress, you can see how easily they are moving into each other. The colors, as well as the lines, they all will converge to one single point. Let us understand all the colors which we need for completing this beautiful Levendar field. I am keeping a spread of my colors. This is more to do with colors which are close to each other. Which means that they are analogous colors and they lie close to each other on your color. We, if you see one is ending yellow, then is net yellow sending orange quinan. You can also keep, think if you need composed violet is one of the other colors. These sheets are almost close to the ones that we have on this particular paint. For my windmill, I will go head and keep Bernanke Brown. You can also keep ultramarine if you don't have ink down. When you mix your ultra maline with your ciena, you will get a shape that is darker then you can also apply it. Your painting post is my Indian yellow. I will apply a bit of finding yellow, then I will apply a bit of my Naples yellow. Let's see, how do they react with each other? They react pretty well. Then I will give some amount of my orange. You can see that all the colors are pending pretty well. Going ahead with quad coral, this is a beautiful shade from Daniel Smith. You can also go ahead with compost coper to add one more shade, something like this. Then we will go ahead with purple. Finally, if you are wanting to add some more darkest value into your painting, either you can go ahead with your green screen or else you can also go ahead with neutral tent in three blow. These are the sheets that we are going to apply. Always try the colors on your graph paper before you go ahead with your final painting. This key is going to be your At. 7. Day 2 Lavender Love Painting: Day two. And it is painting to painting missed in various different landscapes is something that I have always loved. And this is day for you guys. I am super excited to share the whole of this sketching as well as painting. Many of you are already aware that I do a lot of wet on wet and wet. But the most important aspect of any painting stands at the base level, which is majorly the drawing. So what we have done is we have got a small line. First of all, it is around 7 centimeters in length. Along with it, I have marked about 1 centimeter on the left as well as 1 centimeter on the right. From the top it's about 1.5 centimeter and while at the bottom it's around seven centimeter. That's what I've to seven to 8 centimeters. You can keep in your mind while you are drawing this, I will just add a few lines towards the top. And once I'm done with the top, I will go towards the bottom area for me. Whenever you are painting a lighthouse or windmill, the most important aspect is to draw a middle line. Now that is usually my baseline, on top of which I start adding all the other lines that are important. Always keep the left side of this middle line exactly the same as the right side. They both should be equal, as this is a structure which is manmade and whatever engineering that usually we do always are equal in size, shape, et cetera. If you are making houses, then you need to that in mind, you have to have equal size on left as well as on the right. You are bound to do that in this particular way, only if you are of course painting nature, then it is pretty random. And once you're painting nature, you will exactly get to know how random it is. I will show you over here. All the nature paintings is random as they have their own kind of mist, the background which is majorly in the sunset time, you will see that the mist has done so much of magic in this painting. All the plants or all the background trees that you watch have become really blurred and wet on wet. We'll do all the beautiful things in this particular painting, okay? Going ahead and adding two more lines on the left as well as on the right. You need to add this. And once you have added these lines, we will go ahead and make other few smaller structures. Now, this is a windmill and we need to even add different wings, I would say, of the windmill, or you can say the fans, of course, of the windmill that has to move, otherwise you cannot generate energy. This is usually seen in many of the older places of Europe or in many other areas where you do have. The windmill now is very different than what it usually used to exist earlier. Even in Netherlands, et cetera, you can find tulip fields, the windmills, et cetera. All of this, of course, is existing. And that's one of the reasons whenever I go ahead and think, I usually take the inspiration from whatever is already existing. I do a lot of changes to any reference picture that I have in my mind because I really do not want to associate to the reference picture that I have seen or I do not want anyone else to come back and say that again. You have exactly painted the way it is in the reference picture. That's something which I always, always keep in mind while I do my paintings, whether it be watercolor, whether it be any of the other medium. Going ahead and adding these lines, now these lines basically add perspective to my painting. And they are originating all from the left and going on the right, you will see that they all are meeting to one single point which is outside the paple. This is the whole of perspective. Now you all know how I have worked with perspective through my other classes. If you haven't gone through the other classes, please go ahead and check out the vanishing point in some of the other classes where I've taught exactly what and how the vanishing point works. Now in this particular painting, I have told you that this is outside the plate. We do not need to worry. You need to just see that all these lines converge to one single point that is outside of it, Adding some of the trees for my background. And this is going to be absolutely in a very, very light manner. I'm going ahead and adding the trees form my background mist. And you know that usually mist occurs during the winter season orals, even when the colors of the trees are changing. That means your days are becoming more and more cold, colder, that is, in the autumn or from autumn to winter when we are moving between seasons as well as in places where there is water. Now, water can really generate a lot of mist. Or even in the mountains where you will see a lot of water pouring down or you'll see the clouds creating all the beauty of the mist. They do have a lot of auty in itself and I feel that mist in various, I would say that each and every mist that you paint in our different landscape has a different feeling and it conveys something absolutely amazing going ahead and adding the fans of this particular windmill. Once we have added these, then I would go ahead and make a few lines. It is a very easy way that I just had more of shading areas which are pretty dark. Whereas I leave it, as I would say, more lighter. Once you are moving into the spaces that we do not need to make more and more darker, I add some of the darker lines you have already seen, as well as you will see even in future painting, where we are going to paint one of the water falls. We have rocks and some of the areas of that particular rock I have added in darker values of my pencil continue to just darken the lines that I have already added as one point perspective. Or you can also say that this is the vanishing point that we are adding towards the right. Most of you already know about it. If you are not aware of even the rule of thirds, I would say you have to go through Rule of thirds. According to that, I will never place my subject in the middle of the paper. I usually try to place it either on the left side or on the right side. I usually keep my corners also pretty boring. These are a few things that I usually follow in most of my paintings. Let's continue with the sketching. It's basically just sheeting a few of the areas and adding a bit of irregularity towards the bottom part of the window because that particular part does have some crosses and all adding the fence towards the left side as we have added ready on the right side detailing of a small hot light structure on the left again. Then once it is done, just clear out your page to have a wholesome look at. Hope your sketching has turned out. Adding a small horizon line in the background above which I am going to add my trees. Now this horizon line is very important. It really separates our land from the sky. Always, always keep a horizon line in as many paintings as you can. If you have sky, then your land, or sky or water, this becomes a very, very important aspect in any kind of these paintings. In the meantime, do wet both the sides of your paper. This is very important for a wet on wet painting. Now, wet on wet painting is something where we will be using water to our advantage. Continue to add water even on the side you draw, so that the water is evenly applied on both sides of the paper. As well as this water is really going to help us create that misty and beautiful wet on wet effect which we are looking forward to. And frankly, I am looking forward to it. Like anything, I have picked up some of my Naples yellow. Naples yellow is one of my favorite colors for sun set kind of a painting. I'm adding a bit of a yellow, but I'm really happy with it. I might go ahead with Naples yellow again and take off all this extra Indian yellow that I've applied earlier. I think naples yellow is something that makes you fall in love with the painting. It's subtle, nice as well as if you are even working with blue. The advantage of it is that it would not react with the blue to give you the dirty mixes. Now for these positive aspects that you see in the painting, it's important to try your colors beforehand on paper that you have by your side, rough paper, and then only go ahead with the final painting. Now, why I say this often, because many of you have complained in the past that the whole painting did not exactly turn out the way I have told you, et cetera. That's the reason of this extra caution that I'm giving right away. Okay, Going ahead with my Quinacrodone coral. This is a beautiful color. It's in between the orange as well as the compost opera, which I'm using now. And then some purple. I will play with these colors on the top half of my sky as well as I will take it towards the bottom. Super happy with so much of water that we have on this paper. It might appear a bit tough at this stage. If you are just a beginner, it might be how I'm using such a thick brush and it is around size ten. You can go ahead with a thick more brush for doing this painting. You will see that the beauty lies in the wetness of the paper, the better you have or the paper is more wet, easier it is to work with it. And that's one of the reasons I always say, go ahead with 100% cotton paper. Even 185 GSM or a 200 GSM, 100% cotton paper cat give you a lot more than what you can expect on a cellulose paper or else even a paper that is 300 GSM but not 100% cotton. Please, please do go ahead with all these paintings only on 100% cotton paper. I know I am iterative about this process, but yes, the final results are going to be good. Only when you have the correct paper by your site. Correct colors by your side. Correct colors doesn't mean that you need to have the same palette. But an artist's great color would be really helpful. When you are doing a wet on wet method, what happens is the colors really go to shade lighter than it appears right now. You are also going to witness it as we progress. I am using the tip of my brush for adding the background trees. It is good to continue with it, and you do not need to worry even for the middle part where we are exactly going to draw the windmill. It's there for us in the background and there is no need to worry on it at all. While I am not very happy with this guy, I've got a few line like structures. Blending is very important and hence, I did go ahead and just take off all the background bushes that I did add. We can of course add it till your paper as well, so no need to worry at all Adding some more of our work. Acrodone coral. This is beautiful color and I have been seeing how much beauty it adds in any kind of painting that we do. Whether you talk about your florals or you talk about your landscape, I have been using this color everywhere possible. I have this one single palette that I always use for most of my paintings. It's not that I do not go ahead with any other palette, but this is my favorite palette for my paintings. Going ahead again with the Quinacrodone coral and then we will continue adding some amount of pink and purple. Another question is, why do we mix colors? This is very important at this stage. If you continue to mix your colors, you will have various values coming up in various areas of the painting and that becomes really very interesting in any watercolor kind of painting. Okay, continue with somewhat darker values and take it one or two drops here and there. Even on the left, you have to continue adding all of these darkest values. That is a mix of your purple as well as your pink. Go ahead and add some of the purple, the purple that you usually observe. I'm using is bright valet or else you can also go ahead with any of the other valet. The only request is if you add a bit of any blue shade that is either your age gray or else if you add some amount of your indigo in it, you will get a darker value that might be needed in few of the areas of this background bushes. Continue adding it and adding some more line. I would even lift off the colors from few of the areas wherever it is necessary. So I will even do that at this stage. I'm frankly, very happy with how the painting is turning out. We will add some lines towards the bottom. This is basically the line that I did tell you earlier. They all converge to one single point known as vanishing point. I'm going with the free hand along with the lines that we did add during our drawing process. To be frank, I cannot see much of lines at this stage. My pencil is drafting pencil. And sometimes I do feel that this drafting pencil really doesn't work much when I need the darkest values to be seen. Anyway, I am pretty okay drawing these lines because I have done it pretty much earlier also and I'm pretty well versed with it. But if you are someone who is not aware of this, I would like you to use a bit more darker pencil. Maybe a two B pencil will be good, or else at least an HB pencil rather than a drafting pencil. I like to keep my graphite marks low on my watercolor paper. That's one of the reasons I always use these kind of drafting pencils. I do not usually get any graphite marks on the paper as watercolor is a very transparent medium. And we really don't want any of the graphite marks to be seen. Now I'm going ahead and clearing out the area just below my bushes of the background, that is the trees in the background. Then again, I would go back to the vanishing lines. I would say the converging lines that move to a vanishing point. Now, these lines are really, really important for this painting, because for the bottom area, we only have this. We are not going ahead with any of other details. And hence, while you paint to make sure that this really shows our fields, you can see that this can be any kind of field. It's just the color palette that I've chosen. It can be a floral field. It can be a field where we have the greens. Just the color palette remains for the sunset. Okay, adding somewhat darker values towards the bottom of our beautiful and the nicest of the windmills that we are going to paint ever throughout this painting, we have only done wet on wet. Now, what is exactly the wetness of the paper? You already know we have done it in the mature techniques section and I'm just using the tip of my brush to add this smaller and beautiful details to our painting. This is majorly the grasses, or you can say this is majorly the plants that we have for our background. I'm going to add more of this On the other lines too that you observed, I will mix a bit of my paint scray or else you can also take Inigo into and then continue adding it slowly and steadily. Now this is more of a meditative process. All I can say, I just go and add it and then see what water does. Water is a huge player on its own. We frankly do not need to do much in water colors. As I always say, water cups earlier than colors. If you know how to play with water, you exactly know how to play with your colors. Okay, I will add more of longer lines while I am towards the left side of these lines. And while I go towards the right, they will become smaller and thinner because that's how you see perspective. Anything that is closer to us appears more bigger. And whenever they go away from us, it becomes more and more smaller. Continue working in the same area. In the same way as you see this or as you see me working over here. And then add a smaller to as you progress towards the right side, continue again. On the other lines too, it is pretty iterative. And I say that many of you might feel that, okay, why it's so much of iteration in this process. But frankly, this is the only way out. We do not have any other way to work through this. Adding some more depth in the left out spaces and try to make it look like beautiful fields. That has been my idea always, that if you even give me a blank piece of paper, we need to make it beautiful. As artists, we have the responsibility of doing or showing off our creativity on a white sheet of paper. Here you are. You have so much to work on. You are already observing how beautiful this wet on wet method is. Continue to work on it. You can see that I'm lifting out the colors from the bottom area of my tree. I did allow these first dry up a bit. Right now, my paper, it's not very wet but it's still wet. I will not say that it's not wet. Now, since we have been working for about five to 7 minutes on this paper, you can easily see that in some of the areas they might become more and more dryer compared to the other areas. Yes, While I say that, to make sure that your paper is not completely dry it up when you paint on it. If your paper is drying up, just let it dry off completely. Again, apply one layer of water with very light hands and then start doing this whole of the process. I'm of course, the arches 300 GSM paper, I have told you that you can also do it with 185 GSM paper that might need two to three washes. This I am actually doing within the one wash that you observe or we might have to go ahead and apply washes in few of the areas which are drying up. Adding the darker value of purple towards the bottom area of our beautiful bushes that we have in the background. This is majorly to add depth towards the bottom area, you will see the bottom areas are darker compared to the top area that you can always find in a picture that you paint, et cetera. Okay, Going ahead and adding some more bushes towards the left side, because I can see that water has done its work very well and the bushes are completely gone. We need to go ahead and again add it on the left. We are going to go ahead with a beautiful color, as usual, acrodon coral. I love to use this color for all my sunset paintings. And this is another one which I am in love with right away even doing it for this painting. Now, there are usually a few colors that all of us do get back to, and this is one of those colors where I do get back to very often, whether it be a floral painting or whether it be any of my other paintings. As I've told you even earlier, going ahead and adding some more bits of purpl and then cleaning up the space wherever it is necessary while you observe me cleaning up a lot of space towards the bottom area, because that really shows the mist as well as the fog, which usually prevails on autumn or a winter day. Now, the whole idea of this class was majorly to depict our autumn and winter season as we have the colors of the trees as well as the weather changing. And I really wanted to add that even in our paintings, this wouldn't have been possible without, I think our brush and watercolor paper, this is one of my favorite mediums to show all the beauty that we have. In any kind of painting, you can see I did splatter out some. Water on the paper. Now, my paper is semi wet. Now, semi wet is a condition where you can say it is damp, but it is no more having a flowing kind of water. You can see that the whole of this smaller dots have now dried up completely. We are now going to go ahead and paint our middle part. That is the beautiful windmill. Okay, starting with our brown now I will go ahead and add my lighter value of brown, which means burn. And slowly steadily, I can add some amount of blue as well as purple to make it darker. I always say this, whatever colors you have already used, you should always go ahead and use the same shade. Even for the darker values. It's not important to use CPA or any other darker brown to create the darkest value of brown that you really need. I have mixed my paint spray with the burn sienna and got a darker color, but in case you are getting greens, because some of the pain spray do have a lot of blue. And if you have any kind of yellow in your burn sienna, it might turn a bit on a greener side. Yes, in those cases, you might go ahead and just mix any of the other shades, maybe neutrotint or any of the CP, et cetera, to create the darker values of the brown. I'm going pretty slow in this process. As you can observe, there is no hurry. Take your time and understand your complete painting, then slowly add the colors. Use a blending brush to blend your bottom area with the background. I use a pretty thick brush for my blending because this is an five size paper, approximately. Not exactly. A five size paper is a bit smaller than that, but still it is a good sized paper where I can use this part brush to create the u spell as the fork and help me blend the colors pretty quickly. I'm adding a very dark brown color now for the top of the house part that is on the left. Go ahead with Nike Brown. Or you can also go ahead with any other Brown of your choice that's available in your palette. Or else you can also mix a bit of your ultra men into the brown that is existing. And then create a darkest value that you want. Once it is there, just blend it with the blending brush or with some bottle, it is just mixed up with the mist. Now that's something which I always say when you are painting mist, everything needs to get blurred and the blurring effect you can only do with the help of your blending brush. Okay, you can use any kind of brush, of course, for your blending. It can be a round brush, it can be a flat brush. Any brush is workable for blending. Either you can go ahead with the same dark brown color that was already existing on your brush or else with any of your paints, grey or black color, so that you get a darker brown shade once you start applying on the wet surface. Now the paper is still wet and it will remain wet for a longer period of time. As we did apply water on the back side of the paper, just the way we applied on the front side. Now the back side of the paper really helps to keep the paper wet for a long period of time. I'm to go ahead with my darkest value of brown at this stage. And this darkest value of brown is going to create lots and lots of beauty into this windmill. Why I say this? Because the paper is still wet and my colors will flow automatically. I do not need to do much. In this case. I will try to keep one of the sides a bit more lighter and the other side a bit more darker. That's all I need to work on though. During the mist, it's pretty much a dull day and we cannot show the light and shadow effect very well. Exactly the way we usually show during the days where it's a lot more sunny and nicer. Having said that, we will try to still keep it a bit darker on one end and another side a bit more lighter. Because light and shadow really helps to ace your painting to, to another level altogether, I would say. Rather than just making it a very simple flat wash in an area. Flat wash is good when you are just starting out. But as you progress in your journey of watercolors, we have to move on to more of blending as well as mixing of colors on the paper. Mixing of colors on the paper can really help you to get various shades just on top of the paper, rather than doing it or mixing it on the palette and getting it on top of the paper. So your first stage when you're starting out with watercolors is going ahead and sing your flat wash. Once you're done with your flat wash, you can go ahead and understand. On the blending techniques. Once you're better with it, you can start mixing your colors on the palette. And then the fourth stage is majorly working with mixing of your colors on the paper. That's how I have realized the whole of the watercolor thing works. And I am just trying to even teach all of it to you guys so that you don't have any issues while you figure this out. Because it's been a really long journey for me to figure everything out on my own. But I want to simplify things way more for each one of you who is going ahead and observing this class, okay? I guess this is it. I am pretty happy with how this blend has turned out. We are not going to change to a great extent in terms of the colors, shades. We are going to keep it limited. At this stage though, the whole of the painting is not a limited color palette. It is one of my favorite palettes that I always go ahead with. And you will see quite a lot of paintings that we have done with this palette in this particular series. So yeah, a lot more coming up. And just go ahead watch the other days. It's all available, so just check them out. I think you will also fall in love with the other days, equally the way you are or being in love with this one. Always remember, whenever you are working with watercolors, the loose and soft approach needs to be mixed up with a bit of your hard edges to practically show the painting in a better way or give, I would say, mileage to your painting. Because some of the places needs to be defined and that you can when you add the herd, which is just the way we have added the fence as well as we are going to add in the similar way the blades of this windmill particularly, we are going to do that. Once that part is done, then we will mix up. First I'm adding, you will see this light brown color on top of it. I would go ahead with my dark brown color. That's how I always go about in terms of the painting part. This light brown is the base and the dark brown would be basically the color that I would add for defining all the blades that I'm adding right away. When I add the lines of these blades, you would see some of them are absolutely broken. I do not want to go ahead and add all the lines in a way that they are not broken or they are absolutely parallel and you can see everything because I told you already, it is missed and the mist will not allow you to see everything. Well. As well as for watercolors, the more you leave it. A combination of your loose as well as your hard edges, it would be the finest possible painting that you can create. Each and every blade that I'm adding to this particular windmill is done in exactly the similar manner which you observe me painting the first one in the similar exact way I would be doing the second as well as third. So you can just follow along and paint along with me. We are almost and we are about to finish off the painting. Believe me, this is one of my favorite paintings. It will take you really less amount of time. Leave it as loose as possible and just go with the flow. Enjoy the momentum. I'm telling you the soft and the beautiful flow of water, along with the colors that you observe in these paintings. I don't think that you would be in a position to absorb it on all the other classes, at least that I have given. So there are only a few classes where I have frankly let loose everything. And this is the class where you should let loose yourself and go with the flow. Let water color do its chop. You just enjoy and understand a bit about colors. Understand the nature of your colors, the flow of water, the flow of your colors, and let water do its chop. Understand how much moist your paper should be and how the colors should flow. There should not be much of puddles. If there are puddles, your colors will flow more. So this is more to do with control of water that you have and I think you will see through all of it. Okay. Keep adding a few more lines and details wherever it is needed and then you will go ahead and have a fun look at our painting. You can see some of the cauliflower effect on the right hand side. But still, is it really important to understand that why these quliflower effects are coming, or is it really hampering the piece or the joy that we get from this whole of the painting? I think it is not actually changing anything. In that case, we can let it go and we can let things just take its own way. Continue with the painting. I hope that you I hope you are also enjoying whatever we until now add some more lines. As usual, you're breaking most of the lines we are not trying to add. Absolutely. Just the way we observe in any architectural painting or drawing. I guess this is it and now is the moment of truth. Whatever you have got to be proud of yourself and just know that you have nailed your painting. This is a lot that you have worked on and you do not need to think much while you continue with your journey of watercolors. It will take some time and you will get a hang of it throughout all these years of watercolors. One thing that I've learned is that you have to be proud of whatever you have created. Because it takes a lot of effort, as well as understanding, to create something and you guys have done it. So you should be proud of yourself and do not forget to submit the projects in the project gallery. I am really waiting for each one of them. Let it dry off completely and then remove the painting. We will go ahead with the next one. 8. Day 3 White Swan Techniques & Colors: Here we are going to tackle one of the most difficult and dreaded subjects painting, ripple water and a swan in it. Along with it, we are going one more step ahead and creating the reflection of the span into the rippin water. The background is all about creating that misty and beautiful pine forest with a lake flowing in front of it. Today we are going to understand two basic concepts. One is creating ripple water. Another one would be going ahead and just taking off all the extra over here. Because I want an even wash, you can see a shine. I don't want any puddles on the paper. I will let the water in a lot on the sheet because we really don't want any puddles in our painting. Okay, going ahead and applying an even coat of wash, then we'll go ahead and apply some blue. You can go ahead with any blue. I would choose from any blue just flat wash that I would add on the background follow. Okay, applied this flat wash. I would start out with another simple thing. That is, we'll work with our darkest value. And let's go ahead with some paints, gray or indigo. For the wattom part, what I would do is I will let my colors and let the water move all settling town at one place. If something like this happens, you can always go ahead and pick up the colors with the help of your tissue. I will take one of my darkest value now, then start applying it is making a few straight lines to make it look more like tree. Okay. Whenever you want to pick up colors, just go ahead and pick up the colors. Do take it off on a tissue. Wash your brush again. Come back. Just wipe off all the extra water on your tissue. And then again, your brush is ready to pick up your colors. You see how beautifully the colors are getting picked up. I'm picking up from a lot of areas and I'm making it a bit more dry. As you can see, head with my test value again, lies some drops of it here, while my bottom will give more like a misty effect. This would allow me to create some darker trees towards the top area. The bottom area will remain more misty and foggy, so misty and nice. You can see the complete effect how it is coming, how in few of the places I have lifted out my colors, and in few of the places it is. As such the way we want, the darkest value exists. That's it for our lifting out technique. Let's go ahead and start applying a clear wash for our bottom area, where we are going to paint our robs. You can see that there is some amount of granulation in my color. That's because I'm using a French ultramarine and it has some amount of transulting factor in it. One of the reasons I just thought to keep this as my background color. Going ahead with my donstering, what we usually do for our ripples is whatever be the broader ripples they would be towards the bottom. When you go towards the top, they will become more thinner and thinner like this. I have to allow my paper to try off a bit or else I will see the colors and moving into each other, which I don't want for any of this part. Let's try off a bit and then we will go ahead and apply the darkest value and create the rifles that we want. Another way to clean up the area where you really don't want your colors to move around, Use a platfor to clean up this area. Again, I'm going ahead with my darkest value. That is my pain screen. I did wait for a while before I'm going ahead and you can see that the less movement of water on the paper compared to what it was. So again, I'm picking up some paints and adding it towards the bottom, medium. Okay, I will also add some evolve like this and let it dry off. You'll have more broader ones towards the bottom and less broader ones as we go towards the top. I will add some smaller lines there and that's it. Understand all which you need for completing the painting. The lightest value that taken as ultramarine. But you can always go ahead and pick up the colors like your royal blue or else you can also go ahead with Ta. These are the other two lighter sheets that you can use for adding a lighter value to your painting. Then you can go ahead with Trained Three Blue, which is either of this you can use it for the darkest value. You can use any of these. It can be composed valedic or a neutral tampico. It can be even paint screen. These are the kind of alternate colors that can be used for this painting. 9. Day 3 White Swan Painting: Three. And it is painting three. Today is another new day, and we are starting out with a new composition for me, First important part is to actually define our horizon line. I never defined my horizon line in the middle of the whole of the sketching. Either it is a bit lower than half of it or it is a bit on the top. I go by this proposition that it should not be in the middle, as well as the whole of the swan that we are going to add in this painting should not be also completely in the middle. That's how I go about it and I guess this would really help you. There is a golden rule of thirds where you have to actually divide any paper into nine equal halves. And then at the intersection of each of these lines, you will see where is basically your focus point. This is a very, very important rule, and if you can really follow it, I can tell you it's going to do wonders though I have actually marked my line a bit below. But while I paint, you will see that the bottom area has become more broader and the top area has become a bit smaller. Now, these kind of changes can happen when you actually go ahead and do your final paintings or do your final edition of the subject, et cetera. Those things can always happen and you should not think much about that aspect. Okay, going ahead and making an L. Now the L that I'm going to make has to be big. And I'm taking it from the right and moving it to the left. This is also perpendicular angle type that you can go ahead and add. I will then make one small oval over here as well as I will make two to three ovals more, which you will see how I do the whole of the drawing. I usually try to break it in very small and easy steps that none of you have any difficulty in following it. One aspect of your painting is to have a good framework. And a good framework comes up when you have a good sketching by your side. If you have a good sketching, it becomes way more comfortable for bigger artist, anyone to go ahead and do the final painting. Though many of you might be also going ahead with a free hand rowing, et cetera. But for this painting, since we are working with more beg nurse, so I just thought to go ahead and give a complete break through of how I do all the sketching edition of the swan then whole of the painting, it is step wise and sll as it is real time. So you do not need to worry, just follow each and every step and you will get the final painting. Absolutely. In an amazing way, I have captured it, a way that is easier for you to understand, but you can always go ahead and try on your own. Whatever reference image you have by your side for your swan is actually a span from the side that you see. Of course, you can go ahead and use any kind of reference image of your choice to work through that. Okay, I have done my first oval and you can see now there is a second big oval. Now these are bigger ovals that we are doing for defining the body of the swag. When I already have two ovals by my side, what happens is I just need to join a few lines and that's it. We are already having another framework for us to work with. It is way more easier this way to have a final good sketch for yourself. I guess if you try this, you would be able to nail it for sure. Okay, once this part is done, we will cope with the lowest bottom part of my swan and we will extend it towards the bottom left side. Because the swan is floating on the water, the bottom area would be a bit more broader. That means it would be longer. And you will see that it is more darker. Also, while you go towards the bottom, because of the shadows at this stage, you will notice that your duck is summer, so great extent, which means that we are not going to see the entire part of the body of the duck. And hence, some part might look a bit disruptive to you, but believe me, that's not the case. You can go ahead and keep adding a few lines for chewing the floating part of the tuck. And when you add your shadows, or even the reflection, you will understand exactly how the whole of the piece comes together. Okay, having said that, I will go ahead and start adding a few lines. These are basically to denote the places where exactly the darker values will hit my swan. This you can go ahead and take out all the extra profit marks that we have on this particular swan. Once this part is done, we will go ahead and start with our masking fluid. Now, masking fluid is very important for this particular painting as the complete background needs to be really, and my swan is really masking, cantar becomes very, very important. I will draw out my reflection a bit for the swan into the water. Though this is not of much use when it really comes to the actual part of the reflection. But still, let's keep it for our reference. The reflections are really going to be dark. And that's one of the reasons, even when you paint water, the area becomes so dark that this might not be of much use. But sketching is always a framework. As I say, having something by your side is a great help. Okay? I guess it's time to just mark the horizon line. Now, this horizon line is basically going to help you to define where exactly the pines will be as well as where you need to paint your water. Okay. Great. I have already masked out my swan and I have applied water on both sides of the paper. I'm going ahead with my color, and this is my ultramarine along with it, some amount of royal blue or bright blue, whatever you want to say. It is basically a really light blue from the brand white nights. And I add it with this shade to get a color that you observe right now. Okay. Going ahead and adding the color on the top part of the sky area. Going with a gradient wash, you guys might have already done gradient wash. It's not a flat wash that is going from the darker value while you come down. It is basically the lighter value. You keep on adding the lighter value as and when you come closer and closer to the horizon line, you can go ahead with the same color towards the bottom because it is water. And even in the water, we are going to add the same color going ahead and again drating the same process. There is nothing much different at this stage that I'm going to do. It's just the blue color that I will keep adding to my water area, even of the swan. Once you have added these lines, the whole of the swan can float very easily. Yeah, basically what happens is then your water is pretty much real now and it has ripples. Water is usually of three kinds. What I have seen one is like having a lot of motion into it. Now if it has a lot of motion into it, then you frankly can't get much of your reflections, et cetera, in that case. The second type is your rippled water. What we are going to paint over here, I have added a bit of my purple into the shade. Along with it, you can also go ahead with another blue of your choice. Maybe Bart or On three, whatever is available for me. It's on three. You can see adding it with a bit of purple. Some of the spaces, I'm keeping it as white. And rest of the spaces, I'm adding this blue. The third kind of water? Yeah, what we were talking and getting back to that, the third kind of water is basically calm water. Calm water is something that's pretty difficult to to be frank. Why? Because the whole of the reflection is absolutely falling in the same way on the calm waters as you observe it. It's like you're painting, um, a replica or a mirror image. Painting a mirror image is not so easy in any case, I will not say that that is a very difficult, but yes, it's not a very easy way to go about it. I'm going now with the darkest value of the blue. It is majorly my dontrine blue. Or else you can also go ahead with some amount of your purple mixed with dontrine blue to get a shade that looks like on the left part. Even mixing some orange with your dontrine blue will give a wild a shade that you observe. Once you have this shade available with you, just start adding it on the water area. It's sent to mark the horizon line and then head and paint our trees for the background. I will go with a very simple motion. You can see that my cloud or the paper is still wet. That's one of the best reasons that I have and I can literally work with the painting very well at this stage. I'm going ahead and adding the colors. Over here, I will be alterating the values to a good extent because altering the values really helps the painting to come live and it becomes pretty much more real. Going ahead and adding more and more colors. As you can observe, I am just making some random motions towards the top area. That is it what I'm going to do and I'm cleaning up some of the spaces, whatever is needed. Rest. Let's go ahead and now paint exactly the way we want. It is very much about creating mist and fog. You all have done it earlier, and believe me, there is nothing new except the fact that we have to clean up the edges to a great extent because some of the area we need to show in the white kind of shade. Of course, your watercolor is a transparent medium. And that's one of the reasons your white paper will come to your use to a great, if you're using the white of the paper, what happens is that it really gives an edge while you paint. The white really helps you to show the mist in a better way. And you do not need to apply any ash or white color that many artists might be using for their paintings if they are working with any of the opaque mediums. Okay, going ahead and adding some warm misty, I did allow this paper to practically become absolutely dry, and then now I have applied a very thin layer of water. Once I have added this, I would go ahead and start adding small, small lines like this and some dots to show my trees, all the pines. While you see me painting these pints, the only one important aspect that I kept in my mind is not to get overboard with the whole process. We are just trying to add some lines and it's all wet on wet that we are adding over here. I am just making a few of the brush movements on the wet surface which makes it look more dull. The color that you are using will fade away to a great extent. The whole idea is to show the mist in a better way and that you can only show once you have a wet surface. Mist usually does a very simple thing to our eyes that it blurs whatever we are trying to see Because of that blur, we need to also add it to our painting. I hope you guys can also see what exactly we are trying to do over here. I do alter the values to a great extent, some of the places you can see in darker shades and some of the places you will see in lighter shades, the whole of the area is still wet. And that's one of the good reasons that I can still paint on my paper. If you are facing any issue in terms of the wetness, I would ask you to go ahead and add some more water with the help of your flat brush. This whole exercise needs to be done on 100% cotton paper. You should not be using any other paper for this exercise. I know that the whole painting will not turn out as you want. This is my only request through all the seven days that you are painting, do not go ahead and just use any kind of paper for these. We need paper which will stay wet for a longer period of time, and that's what you should also look forward to. Okay, adding some more lines. And you can see my brush movements. Sometimes I'm keeping it at an angle of 45 to 50 degrees. And sometimes you can see that my brush is absolutely perpendicular for making the lines. I have a good control over this brush. That's one of the reasons I'm using this particular brush. I would always ask you to go ahead with brushes which is good for you, which means that you have a better control over those brushes rather than going ahead with brushes where you are trying something new, et cetera. Okay. Adding some of my water again over here, because the paper, I think, got really dried off while we came towards the bottom area and the colors were not blending well. We really needed to blend it well. You can see I'm already working at least four to 5 minutes already into it, and still the paper is great. I can work on it. Now is a very important time we are going to lift out some of the areas. This lifting out practically helps to blur the pines in a better way. Another way of observing whatever is there in the background and making lighter and darker tomal values as you will not find all of it in darker or lighter, or any particular one single value. Again, I'm ordering the value if you see to keep it more organic in shape, size, et cetera. For the front piles, you can add some lines you can do or you may even skip. I would leave that up to you, just that the vision should be lower. And that's what I have always kept in my mind. I have mixed two colors. One is Indnthrem blue and another is my orange. Now you can also go ahead with any of your dark violet colors for this, adding some more ripples into the water. Now, ripples is a very, very good concept that I would say many of us know or many of us are aware and unaware of that now was rippled water. Now rippled water is basically various smaller mirrors that you can see. The reflection will be in a way that each of these mirrors will reflect the image that you see on the top. Now, water doesn't have a color of it now since this is more to do with a day that is not having any sun. Hence, the color of the particular swan that you see in the water might be way more darker than what you can expect. Most of us might think that it should be in white, but it is usually not in white. It is usually in shades of blue, and you can see that reflection into the water. Another aspect of while you paint the reflection of the bird into the water is to not have same image that you see on the top of the bird. If you have the same image, it is calm water. If you have a moving water image as the image has to also shake and I will show you exactly what we do. But right now I am just adding some shadows just below the bird. I just below the san that we have. Yeah. Let's continue with this process. Once done, we will go ahead with the removing of the masking fluid first, or else you can also go ahead and paint the reflection. And then finally, do your bird. My paper is completely dry now and it's the correct time to start adding the shadows. Or you can say, this is practically the reflection that I was talking about till now. For the swan that we want to add, I'm going ahead with a movement that is not constant or it's not consistent with the shape and size, exactly what you see for the swan. I'm going a bit differently. I'm trying to add the shades, or you can say the darkest value of the color. Towards the middle point and then leave a few spaces in white. And again, I would do that while we move towards the bottom area. This is done in a manner which will show that there is water and water is rippled water. There is no constant particular shadow that you see in this case. Okay. So I guess that was my intent and I think that you can actually go ahead and paint it along with me. It's simple. Movements, do not think much while you go ahead and paint this. Some of the areas, of course, I'm leaving and then adding the lines in some of the other areas. This is absolutely fine. You can also continue with it. Now, rippled water. The ripples are not consistent throughout the entire part. So some of the areas, if you are making in lightest value that you observe over here, it's perfectly fine in some of the areas you can do. In the darkest value, I do remove a bit of the colors and then again add it back in few of the areas. Okay, continue with this process and once it is done, add a few lines here and there just to make it more consistent with the process of rippled water. And showing the rippled water. I guess this is it which I wanted to teach in this particular part. We will go ahead and then paint our swan. Now the swan is of course, masked out. You have to let this area again, dry off completely before you work on the swan. Do not try to work on the swan. If your paper is not dried off, that's something you should always remember. Clean up the areas or you should always, always clean up the areas of the swan that you have masked out. Now with a damp tissue that will allow you keep the paper white as the swan is also white. That is really helpful in this case. Okay, Add some lightest value of brownish color. I would say you can also go ahead with bond or if you have that, you can mix a bit of yellow occur into your CPR and get a shade that looks similar to the one that I'm using. Blend it with a blending brush and add some of the darker values towards the bottom. You will see how I keep adding it. I would leave this portion to you because I know that you are going to really, really love this part altogether. I also love painting this part as it was more about blending, adding the softer values. I did not frankly add a lot of my lines at this stage, which means we are planning to keep the swan also equally soft, just like the way we did for our pines. Except a few areas like the beak and the eye bag. You have to add some hard edge rest, all the other parts is going to remain really soft and nice. Okay, let's continue with our painting. The paper is wet. We have a damp brush and I'm super excited to continue working through it. I don't have much to explain over here, so you can just paint along with me, sir. Time to work on my favorite part, which is majorly the peak. I will go ahead with Seneliar orange for this part. You can go ahead with any other orange that's available with you. If you do not have an orange, you can always make that orange with the help of your red, as well as some amount of yellow. I'm adding a small and beautiful eye for this an so that it looks absolutely organic. Now, let it dry off after this and have a final look at the painting. 10. Day 4 By the Lake Techniques and Colors: The four is all about using your complementary colors. How about split? Complementary. Okay. Here we are going one step ahead where we are going to use one set of colors. One is your yellow and another would be the orange on the dark side. I'm going to use neuro neutro. De is usually a mix of your black as well as purple. It's going to give me an absolute contrast in our painting. I've already mentioned about the colors and how you are going to split complementary colors for this. These are usually the four colors that yellows and orange, naples yellow, neutrotint. You can choose two out of them, that is naples, yellow, orange, and retrotin. For getting the colors soils, you can also use this, usually split complimentary colors. You will take the color just on the opposite side of the color wheel. We will take a warm as well as a cool shape that we get. I usually split the yellow into two, the various shades, that is naples yellow or orange. You can also go ahead with the Indian yellow and senil. Those are the kind of shades that we are going to use along with it. Let's understand what are the techniques for this part. There is less amount of technique because the technique you have already learned, The most important aspect that I'm going to tell you is all about the masking fluid. I'm going to use your bins nutrient masking fluid, pretty thin and run. You can see it from the whole exercise over here that it is pretty thin and running. First of all, before you use any kind of masking fluid, always, always shake it and then only take it out. Usually they have this tendency to settle out in the bottom. I usually shake it and then only pick up a small amount. Either it be on this, either it be on a palette. Usually you can use a Porcine palette also to take out your masking fluid. This is one way of masking. Another way of masking is using a masking tape. We are going to exercise both of them. One is using a masking tape where we are going to mask out this area. And another would be using a masking fluid where we are going to mask out this area along with it. I would even tell you how do we blur out these areas while you paint. But first, what kind of paper is suitable for a masking fluid? 100% cotton arches. Paper is what I'm using. Whatever paper you use, first check your masking fluid on top of that paper, whether it can be easily or not. I will use my masking fluid eraser to pick up from the place this masking fluid. But before I even pick up my masking fluid, since there is some amount of paint on top of this masking fluid, I usually erase out the place of the masking fluid and then only pick up my paints. That's how I go about my masking fluid painting. And you cannot pick up your masking fluid, your paper is completely dry or else you might just rip off some parts of the paper. All colors will move it here and there. Those are the aspects. The second part is all about using a masking tape. Now there are 23 aspects. Now what happens in a masking tape is sometimes the colors move over there. Sometimes what happens is that some of the places the color spin, which is usually not the problem with masking fluids. But removing your masking tape is way more easier compared to your masking fluid. Many papers do accept masking tape, though they may not accept masking fluid exactly the way it is. Before I use the masking fluid. I always dip my brush in my Escoda soap and then only go ahead by dipping my brush, my masking fluid and then using it on the paper. I wash it at regular intervals. And then again, I have to dip it in my solution in a soap solution, or you can use an Escoda soap that I usually use for cleaning my brushes. And use it over here for applying my masking fluid. That's how I preserve my brushes or else you cannot preserve your brushes. I think this is I wanted to tell you about the masking fluid. Let's go ahead and start out with a painting. 11. Day 4 By the Lake Painting: It is painting. You all have been working with so much amount of water. So in a way, I would say that's like a really generous amount of water that we have been working around with. Another painting where we are going to work around with a lot of water. This is a sunrise painting and the major colors that are going to dominate this painting is Naples yellow and your paint scray, if you have a paint scrap blue in it or else you can go ahead with Neutritant and your Naples yellow. Those are the two colors that's really going to dominate the whole of the painting. I'm going ahead and adding my sun towards the top area. And once I have added the sun towards the top area, I would go ahead and add my bushes in the, a bit below the middle. You know that I have already added my line. Now this is basically the line which will define my horizon. The definition of horizon is always important because it will help you to differentiate between the sky and the line. The sky or the water. Whatever you think is important at this stage. If you are define your water and sky, horizon line will do that for you. It becomes way more easier if you can define your horizon line in your paintings. Secondly, I have just used right now my rose maybe brush as well as I've gone ahead with my, this cota, so really helps me to protect my brush. And then when I pick up some of my masking fluid on my brush, it will not actually ruin my brush, which it already did earlier. But having said that, I know that brush do get ruined if you are not regularly dipping it in soap, water, or sub solution, or using a soap. These kind of things do happen and it's absolutely fine. I'm using a pretty old brush of mine and that's the rosemary brush. I'm applying water on both sides of the paper. I can only do this once my paper is completely dry off. That is basically the area which I did use to protect my son. So if you are going ahead and using a masking fluid, make sure that it's completely dry before you go ahead and apply water on both sides. Once I've applied water, I'm going ahead with a really thick brush, just the way exactly we did for our first painting. A lot of, lot of water that you have. We are going ahead with a mix of my Naples yellow as well as the yellow. Yellow is a bit needed at this stage because it is going to help you to create that environment of the sunrise or else you can also give it at sunset. But for me, sunrise looks. So let's go ahead and create the sunrise. As I always say, sunrise and sunset palettes are quite similar. You don't need to think much. But I really wanted to create a contrast in this particular painting. That's one of the reasons I have chosen the colors, which is one that is absolutely dark and one that is absolutely light in and around the sun. Try to make it a bit more yellow. And then people go ahead with some of our orange. You can also add some of your red if you don't have the orange. And then mix it with maple yellow to create a color that looks exactly similar to the one I have on my palette on the right. Go ahead on the left and just mix your colors. Blending your colors. H is very important. You can always tilt your paper because it is on an acrylic board. An acrylic board is movable, so go ahead and give it a nice tilt so that the water helps to move the colors here and there. It will automatically blend on its own. We don't need to do much of work at this stage. Once the area in and around the sun is done, we will go ahead and start applying the yellow color towards the area just below our sun. And then go ahead with our paint spray. Now the paint spray that I've used becomes more on the greener side. I really did not like it, and hence, I went ahead with my original color. That was the neutral tint. Now the neutral tint doesn't have any blue in it, and that's why once I have added it, it did not react to give me any color of blue or green. I really wanted to avoid any muddy mixes at this stage. That really helped me to sail through this painting pretty easily. If you want to try these colors, do try these colors on a separate piece of paper and then come back to your painting and check them out. It's a very important step. As always, I say that every step in water colors is important. And at this stage, what happens is if you choose your colors without much of thought, it might give you the final colors that might not even suit you. The color of the top area, which is the sky, will get reflected in the water and I will go ahead and start applying the same colors into my water. I am going ahead and blending the colors till the top area, just below the sun. I have applied some amount of naples yellow initially, and then going ahead with my orange a bit towards the water area. Okay, let's have a look at our beautiful color, which is majorly myeutritent. I have been using this color for quite some time now and this also doesn't react with yellow to give me a really bad or bunny mix. It has a bit of valet, but that really doesn't change anything in terms of the shade or doesn't give any bad mixes. You should be aware of the colors that you are using in any kind of painting that you are doing. That's one of the most important steps. And before you even just go ahead and mix the colors, know the pigments that are there in that particular color. Sometimes what happens is we have the colors on our palette and we are just going ahead and adding, or just refilling those tubes. The places there are tins, right? So we will keep refilling it with the tubes. So sometimes we are not aware of, okay, what we did refill or we do not recollect it. It's always good to just squeeze out some new paints onto your palette in that case, and then go ahead with the painting, or else there's a property that you might miss out or might create a bit of an issue. Okay. Some more, blending with some orange that I really want for this area, and then blending with some water. Do you know the fluidity of watercolors is something that I have always enjoyed. And this fluid nature makes its whole experience, makes this whole experience absolutely unique for each one of you. The whole of the painting is done in a way that we are utilizing the complete paper, and there is no edges also that we are leaving out along with it. This paper stays wet for a really, really long period of time. And as we are moving or as we are working more and more, you will see that I'm adding more and more depth as well as adding more pigments into it. On the first floor, I never went ahead and made it really, really dark, because that's how any big no should work with watercolors. You should not go ahead and make the whole painting absolutely dark so that it becomes tough for you to work through it later on. Okay, great. Let's continue with our painting and then add some more darker values in few of the areas wherever it is needed. I'm going ahead with my thickest brush. You can use a 1 " two inch, 1.5 inch brush, whatever is available. You can also use a Hark brush. I think this is a Princeton brush. And I'm very happy with this flat brush. I've used it over years and it has remained exactly the way you see right now. Okay, Clearing some of the spaces. This white space that I always create for showing the small amount of mist as well as fog is very important in every kind of watercolor painting that we are doing in this series. The series is not only about flow of water colors or just flow of pigments. It's also about how you can work through different kinds of landscapes. And every landscape is unique in itself. Every landscape has a story of its own. Every landscape has something unique to offer you. Initially, when we were learning, it was all about simply creating the fog, mist, et cetera in our first painting. The second painting went on to set a bit more where we have added our fields as well as a small windmill. The third painting, where we actually did a beautiful swan in water. And the fourth painting is again about water, but it is all about different color mixes that we are adding and how we are creating this kind of a foggy effect along with it. I will also teach you not only to just have a clear white space of the area which you have masked out. Because many of you have complained to me that once you start removing the masking fluid, it turns out pretty dirty, the area that you have applied the masking fluid, I will give you. How you can actually keep it absolutely clear. As well as there will be some use of our masking tape in this painting so that we can really get a few spaces even after applying our first layer. Saying what I suppose as being the base layer, we will protect a few spaces in our second layer by adding a masking tape. That's the idea. Let's go ahead and continue with our painting. And it is going to be an absolute delight. I can tell you, I can see the colors. Colors that you observe right now will become at least one to two shade lighter once this paper dries off completely. Be aware when you are applying the colors to go one or two shades darker. If you are going ahead with your artist rap pants. If you're going ahead with only your student rap paints, then you might have to go ahead with layers to create it. Okay, adding some more areas, clearing up some of the areas, and creating the mist wherever it was necessary. You can see a pure blend of colors in the bottom area. And this pure blend really gives me so much of happiness when I have a look at it. Not only it's about the happiness, that also adds a lot of warmth in the painting. Yellow, actually, yellow, orange, this all really adds that warmth. And this color of darkness that has more to do with your neutral tint. Add that cool wipe to this painting, which we really need it, okay? You can see a very nice mist that is just below our sun. I would leave it at this stage and I would remove the cap on which my boat was tilted. You can always tilt your boat. That would help you to go ahead and have a nice flow of water from the top towards the bottom. Okay. Clear out some spaces, create the white wherever it is needed. I do it a damp clear keep a tissue very handy. Go ahead and clear this brush on the tissue exactly the way I do every time you clean up this area. Once this part is done, I would allow the paper to dry off and then cut out a few small strips of my masking tape. And then apply it on the paper exactly the way you see over here. I'm going ahead with some clear water and again, applying it on the paper just for not only to add the wetness on the paper, but also to add the colors for the mist. Now one layer of color we have already added for the background. But there is another layer of color that I want to add for my foreground, or you can say for the foreground force that we see in the foregrounds, but not exactly the foreground. I would say it is a bit at a distance comparatively. It is foreground and hence we need to go ahead and add that on the painting. Okay, time to do it. Once you have applied a clear wash of water, we will start out with our beautiful shade called as neutritent. Sometimes you may see me using more of the bigger brushes if I want a pure blend. Now when I don't need an exact blend and I want more darker shades, it's good to go ahead with thinner brush than what you have already applied. Keep a blending brush by your side that would help you to blend the colors with the background and create the effect of the mist in a better way. Okay, I'm using the other brush now for my blending the colors, and slowly I'm going ahead and adding my background. Now the colors that I'm using is pretty dark. As you can observe, it would blend and once it becomes drier, you would see or once a paper dries off completely, you will see that the color is way more lighter than what you observed right now on the paper. You might always think that how much water we should go ahead and add, forgetting the exact way that you observe right now. Now something that I've learned over time is that once you apply the water, and if your paper is 100% cotton, 300 GSM arches Saunders, these kind of high end paper, you may wait for three to 4 minutes that would allow the water to move anymore on the paper and settle down at the particular place where you have applied it. If you are using a flat brush to apply your water, it will not stay wet for a longer period of time. Whereas if you're using a round brush to apply water that holds more water or it will keep the water more on the paper surface for a longer period of time. That's how my experience has been and that's how I have learned that if I'm using a flat brush for applying a very thin layer of water, I need to work quickly and let the colors move at that point in time only. Whereas if I'm going ahead with a round brush and applying generous amount of water, then I can wait. Or I have to wait for four to 5 minutes before the water gets absorbed a bit. Or it doesn't move much and the puddles don't look like that, My colors will flow left, right, center. Okay. Going ahead and applying a darker layer, just in between the places where I have applied the masking tape. Now, masking tape is equally good masking fluid. So that's what I wanted to show it to you. That always you do not need to work around with a masking fluid. You can also work around with a masking tape exactly the way I am doing. I've gone ahead and added a bit of orange and then I'm now going ahead and adding a bit of my neutritant into the orange, the color of the bushes needs to get reflected even in the water. I am doing the same over here and applying a bit of the neutral tent here and there. It's a very regular kind of thing that I have been doing in most of my paintings. And adding a few lines at this stage really helps to define the painting in a better way. Always, always remember that wetness is most important at every stage for a watercolor painting where you are applying a lot of water. Now, if you know exactly that at this stage, you will go ahead and paint on it. I think your whole painting will come in place. You have to go ahead and wait for a few minutes before you just add your paints on the paper when you are going ahead and adding so much of water on the back as well as on the front side of the paper. That is something which I have learned over these years of my painting experience when we are doing a complete wet on wet kind of a painting and wetter, wet is the most beautiful way of adding colors to your painting. Frankly, I'm not going to touch much on top of the area where I did apply my masking tape. Just a few lines here and there. And then we will go ahead and add some more lines towards the top area wherever it is necessary. It's always a good idea to remove the tape once your paper is dry, but I guess if it is masking tape, you can still take a chance and remove it, even at this stage. I did take a chance and remove it because I wanted to see that whether the whole painting is coming together the exact way I wanted it or not. That's one of the reasons I yeah, remove it. At this stage, I am just blending the colors a bit more. So these kind of accidents will happen if you are just going ahead and moving it before time. And we have to cover it up with the colors or a few lines for the water area here and there. I think that will always keep happening when you're working with watercolors, some of the happy accidents are supposed to happen, and if they are not happening, then frankly you are not going with the flow. If you have to go with the flow and love your journey, I think these accidents continue to happen. We will continue to overcome it as we progress, just adding some of my water on the bottom area. And then we will go ahead with the reflection. This might be something new that before even I create my bushes, I have created the reflection. I exactly know where I have to create the small grasses that we usually see growing in water, here and there, when it is more of like a standing water. It's not like there is a lot of movement in this water. Yeah, some plants do here and there, and we have to keep that in mind. Once your paper is wet, then only you can do this. For the reflections. I am trying to keep it as soft as possible. I will go ahead and let this paper dry off before I have to apply the darker value. Or you can say I have to make the bushes and the plants that I want to show over here. One thing that I want to tell you is that always clear the area which you have masked out the masking fluid with a damped issue. And then use your brush or I mean the removing fluid remover or eraser in a way that you're just picking up a bit of it and using your hands to just to take off the other bit of it. If you keep on erasing it at the same place, what happens is that there might be some lines because the masking fluid does have some amount of colors on top of it. And those colors will appear in the white space, which we really don't want. I'm going ahead with some yellow, as well as with some orange to create the sun wherever I think that I want to keep it more white. I've just removed the excess colors with the help of my thick brush. Any thick brush you can take or any other brush that's available with you, you can use it for doing this part some more orange, for the warmth of the sun. As I would do one more small exercise, I will go ahead and use a flat brush just to blend the color of this neutral tint with the orange that you see in the sun. Now, why do we do this exercise? Now, this exercise you may even skip, but what happens is if you skip that, there will be a hard edge which we really don't want. If you don't want that hard edge, then I guess this is something that you can try out and I'm pretty sure about it, you would be very happy once you see the final result. You have to just go ahead use a damp, clean brush to just blend the colors with this particular space. All of this can only be done on 100% cotton paper. Believe me, you cannot do it on any of the other papers, whether it be a mix of your silos or not. 100% cotton, your paper might rip off because of the masking fluid. So be very sure of the paper that you are using. That's something I have always said a lot of times in most of my other classes to paper is the fundamental of a watercolor painting. If your fundamental is strong, your final results are going to be great. In case you are unable to frankly have a good fundamental for your painting, then the whole painting might not come out exactly the way you want. That will always remain as most important and the first step for a watercolor painting, going ahead and starting with upper bushes. Now it's a very loose kind of a painting where we are not going to define a lot in terms of what we are making or how we are making, et cetera. It's just going with some of the lines here and there. And just adding it on top of the area where we have created the reflection of the grasses into the water. You can see that this particular painting is done with a limited palette. And limited palette actually helps me to get rid of the tension in terms of what colors I should add. How the, if I will get the correct color also or not, the muddy mix should not affect my whole of the palette. So there are a lot of things that really like which goes on in a person's mind or at the back end of the artist's mind. And you can get rid of all those tensions in this way. I do believe the idea that the whole of the painting process should be stress free and it should be lit. You can add all that happiness and lit into a painting when you don't have much to think about when you're painting. If you continue to think about your colors, your mixes, et cetera, it becomes really difficult for anyone to work on with the painting or with paintings that you observe that way. It really, really difficult task. Okay, adding some more grasses here and there. And once it is done, we will just blend it. Blend it and blend it. Blending is something that I have learned will take a while and you cannot do it just on the go or on the first day, you will not learn it. That's one of the reasons we have so many projects in this particular class altogether. I did not want you to wait for all the days. All the days are there available for you. You can select your day. You can select the techniques that you want to learn. Because every day comes with its own set of techniques that we have used in that particular painting. Yes, go ahead, learn that. Yes, you would be good. All the paintings are easy. It is just a bit of time taking classes, that's all. And they are short at different angles so that you can get a complete view of how to do this whole of the painting in a very simple and easy manner. I think I would go ahead and make some smaller grasses here and there. And then again, blend it with the background blending. Of course, blending. I've told you so many times how important it is and how important it is. I have been stressing on it more than I think it is required. So yes, just follow it. And you can change the brush to add the thinner lines that you want. For the grasses over here, always add a few thinner lines. It is a mix because randomness is constant for nature painting and that's what you should always go ahead and even add. I'm going to add a few small breaking lines here and there to show that the water has some ripple effect in it. That's it. And we are going to do it with the darkest value. That is our neutral tint. Now this neutral tint, of course I've told you is from Winsor and Newton. But if you do not have this neutral trint, you can also go ahead with mass plaque. As I've said also that it is a good replacement the color, but do check it how the colors react with the yellow and the orange that you have applied for the top area. Or else it might be difficult for you to control the colors or the mixes might not turn exactly the way you want. Some more lines and some more beauty that we continue to add into our painting. It's a small and easy process. It is time taking. As I always say, water colors is easy, but the drying time is a bit more. Let it dry, let it cool down, let it just enjoy the time that you have in your hand. Enjoy a cup of coffee when it is drying up, or come back to it the next day you will have all the love and happiness coming up. Believe me, if you take breaks when you are painting, that's the best thing you can do to yourself. That way you not only give yourself some time to as a breather, but it is also good. You can step back, realize if you have done any kind of mistake and if you want to change those mistakes. If you want to go ahead and change something in the painting, you can do, you can add something. You can even pick up the colors if you want with the help of a dam. All those things can be done in a very simple and easy manner. That way adding some more lines towards the top area. Two, I'm breaking these lines because I don't want a constant flow. It's a rippled simple effect that I want to show. Never overdo a painting once you are done with these lines to stop it and come back to it after a minute or two. See that if that is enough or do you really want to add more. Overworking is something that many of us do and it would create the problem of sometimes is more. And I go with this idea that is, go ahead and just leave it at this stage, let it dry and have a look at it. 12. Day 5 The Monument Techniques and Colors: We have already used complimentary colors. How about using now some analogous colors? Analogous colors are practically the colors that lie just close to each other. Hence, I'm going to use yellow, orange, red, burn sienna, and dark shadow brown to create a whole monument where you will see misty background. We are going ahead and creating the background. Now my background is going to be very simple. I will go ahead with any brown or any kind of darker value. Then we will see how water will create its beauty on this space. Now we can go ahead and do a simple blend to like over here. I would can go ahead with some CPA or when I came brown and create the darkest value towards the bottom. I'll just change my brush. Now, this holds gallons of water and I don't want to continue holding so much of water. I've changed my brush and this is my more brush that is size zero, more rush from the Inc. I have used it earlier also, but just giving another idea about it, you can even go ahead with the darkest value like pain spray or anything like that. And towards the bottom, let your paper dry off. After this a bit, you have to wait till the paper becomes damp. There is this thing where your paper will become damp. It should not be wet. You see how the paper is, how the glazes, you have to wait for two to 3 minutes to make it bit more damp. Till then what we will do, we will go ahead and apply the same thing towards the bottom area. Now the dampness that's there on this. Now we can directly work on this piece just by adding a bit of salt. Because we are going to create the salt effect towards the bottom area, I would go ahead with some salt. What usually happens in a salt is that the colors will move from that particular part and go to the other spaces. This particular area will not have salt. Now you see how the dampness differs. This has more water. This has been more or less water here. The water is still moving here. Water, which is moving because I gave it some time to rest now, will go ahead and just not allow the colors to move into this space. Go with some clean water and allow to splatter. You will see that you have created some beautiful marks. Now I really wanted to show the difference between this water splatter and the difference when you are creating splatter bit more. Okay, Now this is one way of creating texture and this is another way of creating texture. I would let this paper dry off before you go ahead and see how the water has created, or what water has done to this space. You want to have one more set of splatter. You can see that again, the paper has changed. The shine has become way more or less right now. Still we can work with it because the paper is wet. Let's go ahead and splatter one more time. Let's see my cash. See how the colors move. You can actually keep working till the papers at this stage where there is a very light shine, it's wet. Now this part of the paper is more wet compared to this paper, and you have to just charge that part, and then you're done over here. The softness that I get because of the splattering is different than what I get over here. Here, we do not splatter, we have added salt. Hence, the salt will do its work, the soft will not be. As we get over here, I always prefer doing this, but you can also try out sort if you want in any of your future projects and paint. That's one of the reasons I wanted to give you this comparison. You have already created texture. Let's look at all the colors. This is more to do with analogous colors. I would take yellow, siniliar orange. You can also go with red if you want. Then is my bona brown and Neuro ten. These are the shades that I would go ahead with for creating the whole of the painting. You can even avoid neutral tint if you don't want to, you can go directly with always go ahead and try your colors before you use it. In your final painting, I'm going ahead with my yellow and trying it over here. Then I would mix my orange. You can also use some red, because anyways, red will give you that beautiful orange which you need. I would leave that decision up to you. I'm just going to suggest you the colors that you can use. Some amount of quina coral. If you want to pink in the colors of the sunsets, then I'm going ahead. Beautiful burn cena, some vendi ca brown. Or else you can also use CPR along with it. The last color would be nutritint. I don't have this on my palette. I would use it directly from my tube. It's absolutely fine as such. Just to know the colors that you use. This is color, the shades that you are going to use in your final painting. These are the shades that we're going to use one after another. 13. Day 5 The Monument Painting: Five. And it is painting five. D five painting is something which is not only a level up compared to the D four painting, but it is more to do with the structures, architecture, et cetera. And hence it is closer to the one that we did on day two. We are going to draw two smaller structure. This structure is majorly going to be our main focus area in our painting. Hence, I'm not going to place it just in the middle of the painting, as you always know. I would go head with a line which is around three inch and I would divide the line into one a two inch and one a two inch. One a half inch will basically denote the bottom part and the rest, one a half inch is going to be the top part. I am going with a very simple and easy flow. On the left I've taken 0.75 inch, and on the right I've also gone ahead with 0.75 inch. Then I would just add a simple line as of me adding it over here, just to add a straight line. If you are unable to draw a straight line or if your hands are trembling, you are shaking, you are not sure of how to go about it, please use your scale to add the straight lines. It's absolutely fine to use your scale. As I always say, scale is always great for any kind of painting that you want to do. The more you are confident with your drawing, the better would be your final outcome. That's one of the reasons whenever you are working with scale, I do not stop you. I always say whatever resources that are available with you, please use them for your own benefit. I would go ahead and make three small half circles on the top area. And then on the left side also, I would not exactly three. I mean two are already seen, so we will add just two of them. Like this is going to be really small semicircles that we are adding and go ahead with the top area after this. My style of painting for this particular one will be absolutely lose. I'm going to work more wet on wet. This means that we are going to use a lot and lot of water or a really generous amount of water, which you might have already used earlier in the other paintings. In a similar way only we are going to also complete this particular painting. The important part in this painting is that we have a bit more structured, I would say architecture for the painting. I have two small architectures that I've added to the painting and that really is the focus of the painting. So the colors that we're going to add over there is the major dominating colors. Of course, it's a sunset or sunrise painting. Whatever you want to say, for me, this would more look like a sunset painting. But I would leave that decision up to you. What you want to call. I would be going ahead with colors like your warm shades, yellow, orange, red. Or you can also go ahead with pinacrodon coral. And the last one would be brown or adding some ultramarine in it to get the darkest value of brown orals. Go ahead with any kind of neutral tint to create the darkest value of brown that you need. In the meantime, let's go ahead and complete the top area. Whenever I need to add a tomb kind of structure, I usually create a small circle, and then my circle is more tilted towards the top area, which means that only a bit of it lies below the line that you observe me adding over here. You can see it very well that only a part of it is downwards and most of the other part upwards. That's how I go about my sketching. Now, this is how I have learned to sketch, but you may have your own way of sketching. I think there's always some good amount of takeaway when we sketch is basic framework. As I always say, if you are struggling a bit, even with the sketching, let it be. Let's struggle. Because we want to have a good sketching by our side. It would really help us to have a good outcome in the final goal. Continue with the sketching part a bit more, and once it is done, we would go ahead and add some windows, even on the bottom area. Going to be really simple. I would just mark the windows a bit more darker as it would be in the darkest value. No point just leaving it like that. What happens is when we apply a lot of water, the whole of the graphite mark goes away. And sometimes I need to think and figure out how I'm going to add these graphite marks again or where exactly I need to go ahead and paint. Painting becomes very tough in those cases. Are aware where exactly the graphite mark was and where are we going to apply. So yes, having said that, we are going to go absolutely in a simple and easy manner. I would again add one more long window because each of these arcs that we have added will have one window around it. We are going to add even smaller windows, and there would be one door that I'm going to add in the middle. It's simple, easy, and I think all of you can nail this sketching. We have gone really simple with our sketching in most of the areas except the swan, which I try to break as much as possible for you guys. Even the last painting is going to be a bit tough. It has two cows who are grazing. It is the winter season, you can say the autumn winter, both mixed season, that you see the mist, fog, you can see very well there. You might struggle a bit initially, but I've tried to break down each and every part of the sketching into simple simple steps as you even observed over here. I will even add another small house like structure with a small tom on the top. It is way more smaller than what we have already added. So there should not be much of a tough. I would say it is not as tough as you might have found the initial part. Okay. I would again change or shift the camera so that you can have a thorough look at it. Do not worry if you are right now only observing, you can observe. Stop yourself when the camera moves and then you can draw. I would leave that up to you. It's always good to first go ahead and have a look at the painting at any speed of your choice and then go ahead with the final sketching and painting, because it's a great idea to just observe how everything moves around. Every artist or every instructor has their own way of progressing with watercolors and their individual step, hence, just following a bit. Going with the flow may be a bit difficult sometimes. Sometimes it's a very, very easy painting, so you can just nail it at the first floor. It's a good practice to observe, see, and then start with the drawing and painting. That's how I have been always going about it. I still learn from many artists and I do see many videos about how they mix their colors, how people work through the flow of watercolors. How to do it in one single session. The whole of water colors, all of it. Yes. Having said that, we will have our individual way and you might have your own way. I will not deny it, but observing and then going ahead with the final painting is method to follow. Okay, adding some trees for my background and I'm going to add some background bushes too. I'm adding a simple line to show where I want to add the background bushes, but maybe a bit more below than what I have marked initially. Going ahead and erasing some of the paths which is not needed, then just adding the graphite mark. Again, I am now going ahead and changing my camera. Now you can see how exactly this has turned out. I'm adding a small square on the top, again, the circle, as I did tell you earlier. Going ahead with it, making the tomb like structure and then adding a small line on top of it. This is an easy way to always make your circles. When you have a Dom like structure, then this is a very, very simple way to go about it, rather than going with any of the other ways. I am just adding a few windows over here. Again, these are three smaller windows. Once this part is done, let us just erase any extra graphite marks that we have, and then apply water on both sides of the There is an acrylic board, which I have at my end. So it becomes pretty easy for me to stick the paper to the acrylic board going ahead with my Indian yellow. Indian yellow is one of my favorite colors, and I mix it with a bit of naples yellow. Naples yellow provides me with the softness that I need in this painting along with it. The brightness of the painting comes from the Indian yellow. Naples yellow is a bit more dull compared to the Indian yellow color that we are adding along with it. We will go ahead with our sineliar orange. I go with my lightest value initially, and then mix it with one more shade darker value. That is my orange, though This orange will turn much more darker than what you observe right now. But it's good to always go in steps rather than jumping the step. And then when you want to come back in water colors, it becomes really tough. Some more yellow and maple yellow on the top area, I think it has turned way more orange than I would have thought, just mixing it with some more of my Indian yellow. Blending it towards the bottom. I'm using a round brush. You can also use a flat for doing this process, but I am so much into this brush. Or you can say this brush is one of my comfort zone, kind of an area. And that's one of the reasons I have been using it. For many of my paintings and all my paintings, you can see that I have been using the Vinci Casaneo brush. And if you ever get a chance, you can go ahead and just invest in this brush. It is going to give you way more returns. I would say it's one time investment. But the final outcome that you get with this brush is super amazing. It can hold so much amount of water. I would say it can hold gallons of water in it altogether. And still help you get the colors that you want on the paper very quickly because of the water that it holds in itself. Going ahead with Quacrodone Coral, if you do not have this color, please go ahead with red that is available with you. I have permanent red with me, but I just love the mix of the pink as well as the red that I get in this beautiful shade of Quinacrodone coral. Blending it with my Burn Siena. And then I'm going ahead with my CPR orals. You can also go ahead with Bendik Brown. I would leave that decision up to you. I would be also using my Umber while I do the painting of this part of the structure, architectural structure over on the top, I think many of you can relate to it. I have of course, this exist, this architecture and it's from Russia. I would leave it up to you to guess. You guys know it. I know, but still Yeah, I would leave it up to you to guess it. I am going ahead and just blending the colors on top of the paper. As I've told you initially too, that blending the colors on the paper might appear a bit tough initially. But believe me, this gives one of the best results in any watercolor painting compared to if you just blend the colors on your palette. I directly use the colors from the pants. But the basic reason for using the colors directly from the pants is that this is the first layer. And the first layer, I am controlling it way more than what I could initially because of the simple fact that the first layer is having a lot of water in it. And we can add more water to make it go lighter and lighter. I do clean out the edges every time I paint. That's very important to clean out the edges. Cleaning up really helps you to have a better outcome as well as it would help you to avoid the cauliflower effect that many of you are aware of. If you are not aware of what happens is that there are backgrounds which means that the water moves into the paper even if it is not required. Yeah, so that's the background which we do not want in this painting. I have a lot of space which is really dark, which would be very, very dark towards the bottom. I am happy keeping my edges very, very simple and easy. You can see all the corners of my painting be very simple. That's how I love to keep it simple. Easy, as well as more boring. I want the whole focus to be on the architecture or to be on the monument itself, rather than it being anywhere else. I have taken some amount of my neutral tent and I'm adding the colors towards the bottom area as well as I am just. Making straight lines, lines here and then a few dots that it simple. We are trying to make the colors absolutely random. And on the paper I'm mixing all the colors. I'm not mixing it anywhere else. I'm not very happy with the brown towards the top. So I'm just applying some orange to blend it a bit more into the background. You can keep blending the colors till you are satisfied until your paper is wet. That's something you need to always observe. Keep working on the paper till it is wet. If your paper is not wet anymore, you should not work on the paper. Stop it there itself and go ahead with the drying process. Once the paper is absolutely dry, you can again re wet the paper and start with your painting. This is something that I have learned over the years. Never work on semi wet kind of a paper. If you're working on a semi wet kind of a paper, what happens is that you will have lots and lots of hard edges that you don't want. The whole of the painting should be soft and nice. And the same approach I will also keep for all the paintings in this series, I will keep the middle part just below the architecture as well as the monument. Way more al, because that is the part which has lot of fogy effect. And you would see exactly where the fog settles. That area looks way more compared to where there is no mist or fog. Mist and fog is something that I never used to paint earlier. But over the years, I have learned that mist and fog can really create a lot of magic in your paintings. You can practically learn how to paint mist and form. Then you can not only paint any nature painting, you can also paint any kind of street or any kind of window painting. All of this can become way more easier for you. For the tree part, I've just taken a bit darker value of my brown and then I have gone ahead with a really dry brush to add those brush strokes, going ahead with the darkest value, and that is my Neutro T. I am dropping in one or two drops of neutritth here and there, and even adding a few dots here, and that's it. I am not thinking much while I do add these colors to my painting. Small, small lines, small, small dots, and that's it. We are going to keep the randomness intact. We are not going to change it much over here. I would even splatter some clear water, and then we will allow this part to dry completely. Before we go ahead and start adding the colors to the top area, I will take some burn number and a mix of my burn and how for this area. And then I'm going ahead with my size three, the wins brush to add this color to the background or basically to the foe ground. I would say this not the background, this foe round of the monument part. And then taking it towards the bottom area. I would make some amount of my ultramarine even into it. As the ultramarine really plays a great role when you are working with watercolors. It gives that kind of granulation which we need for any kind of a monument, architecture, building, et cetera, as there is a lot of wearing air that we all observe whenever there is a old architecture. And this granulation really helps to depict that in a better way. While I go towards the bottom. I have tried to keep it more darker with the granulation of the ultramarine working for me positively. And then I'm going ahead with some of my burn siena towards the top. Again, just blending it with some amount of my ultramarine while I go to the bottom. Now this is a simple process and you can also do this, even blend it with some burnt umber. If you have the color or else I think burn ciena is also good enough to work with it. I will go ahead and use a blending brush to blend the colors while we go towards the bottom. This is very, very important. I always have two jars of water by my side, one for washing my brush, and another for just adding the clear water whenever it is necessary. Exactly the way we did now. Sometimes a large brush can come to your rescue. Like anything, if your paints are still moving and you do not want your paints to proof, you can go ahead with a really thick brush to blend your colors while you go towards the bottom area. Again, I'm adding some amount of my Burn Siena for the top area of the monument on the side. And then blend it with my blending brush wherever it is necessary. Whenever you are going towards the bottom. Anyways, you have to blend it with the blending brush. If you add ultramarine into the brown, it will automatically start granulating on its own and you will get colors exactly the way you observe on the paper right now. Okay, great. I am very happy with how it has turned out. We will go ahead and just add one more shade darker value towards the left area, basically shades of brown that I want to add over here. Once this is done, we would go ahead and just add some more brown towards the top part of the architecture over here. There, of course, needs to be really dark and we will just add some amount of our ultramarine. Or else you can also work with the neutral tint that we have on the palette. When your surface is semi wet, that is, your colors are not moving a lot. And you use your thin brush to add a few lines here and there. It really gives a beautiful edge to your painting. And that's what we are going to do in part of the painting. Our paper is still not dry completely and our colors will move if we add it on the paper. It's a damp kind of a situation that you observe. It's not completely dry, it's not completely wet. It is semi dry state or else it's damp state where we can work with the colors as well as still have a good outcome with the softness that you need in this painting. I really love to explore the softness all ways that we have in any kind of a painting like this. You can also observe it well in this particular area or this particular parts of the painting where I'm using my damp paper or a semi damp kind of paper and it's completely wet. Not completely dry and still we can get a beautiful soft outcome. Of course, when the whole painting is done, you would be in a position to see it in a better manner. We will finalize our windows on the top area along with it for the tube area. We would go ahead and again add some more ultramarine, or else you can also add the neutritant, as I've told you o. Now, sometimes these problems do happen and these are happy accidents. I pick the color up and then just go ahead with my almost and some colors on it to create the effect that I wanted for my windows. Okay, great. Let's go ahead and add the colors for the top part. While we work on the top area of the Tom, it has to be with the darkest value and I want to have more control over it. So I'm using my thinnest brush that is size zero and then leaving it like that. Okay. Just creating a clear blends. With the help of my thickest blending brush that I see, my paper is still wet. That's one of the reasons you can see the colors moving. And I'm also just blending it with the background or with the colors that we have already added on top of this area, adding some lines. Now, these lines are basically going to denote my trees. They are absolutely random lines. Just the way I did add with my graphite mark. These are thin lines. I am only going to use my thinnest brush, that is my size zero brush for creating all of it. Yeah, you can also use a bit more thicker brush if you have more control over the tip. But at this stage, I really did not want to take any chance with the painting anymore. The whole painting has turned out so well, and hence taking a chance and not creating the bushes well will really give painting a complete novo, which I really, really did not want. And hence, I went ahead with my thinnest brush to have way more control over these thin thin lines that we want to add. I did alter the value to a great extent. If you see some of the areas, I did apply some lightest value. That is, with my burnt umber burn, Siena, and some of the areas I did go ahead with a mix of my neutral tint and burnt umber as well as a few of the areas. You can only go ahead with your neutral tint If you mix up your colors, that would really help you to ease through the painting in a better way. Because some of the trees will be a bit more lighter, some of the trees will be a bit more darker. They are at a distance, they are closer to you, some of them. So always try to do a mix of it that makes more sense and that actually holds the randomness together. I will keep blending the bottom area of this tree even with my blending brush. Now the blending brush is very important at this stage. And adding some lines here and there will really help the painting look great. Okay, going ahead and adding a few more lines. I am adding a straight line. I'm adding a curved line. So that's all I go ahead and add in this painting. I'm creating more and more trees. This is more of an iterative process. I would just stick to the music. You can create these trees, and once this part is done, we might have to go ahead and make the background bushes bit more darker that we will see. Once this part is done, we will decide on that part. I'm adding some amount of burn sienna on the part. Again, for this monument piece you can see because the background which we did add for our background bushes can be seen within it and I don't like that fact. Going ahead with a very simple wash and then bleting it as we go towards the bottom. I will again go ahead and blend it a bit more. Let's continue with our blending process then. We will just add some of the darkest value as I did tell you earlier, for our background pushes, it looks really dull. And that's one of the reasons I would just add some more darker value, U. As you see that we are working with a lot of water. That's one of the reasons sometimes even when we add the colors, they appear really we have to go ahead with darker value and with a smaller brush so that we can take some concentrated amok To create the bushes that we need, I would apply a clean layer of water, even on the left side and do the same process, apply some amount of gumbert of my value and that is my neutritent. You can go ahead with ink brown or even you can go ahead with a darker value like paints gray, et cetera. My pain spray has blue in it and that's one of the reasons I did not use my pain spray for this painting. I am taking it a bit towards the bottom. And then I again blend it with my blending brush. I hope you have enjoyed the painting. If you are painting along with me, do not forget to upload the projects in the project gallery. I'm waiting to see each one of them. Secondly, the whole of the painting that you're going to do tomorrow has more to do with adding people, et cetera, into a painting, but in a very simple and easy manner. So let's go ahead and start with our next stay now. 14. Day 6 Soft Sunset Techniques & Colors: Let us understand all the techniques that we need for six today, I'm going to touch upon a very simple aspect of how you can use your brushes to attain the kind of design or the, I would say shape, size, et cetera, which you would like in your painting. Now we are going to draw two trees over here. One of the trees I would be using my Optima brush from, I would be making some simple lines over here. Smaller, bigger. Of course. I would be changing the size, shape, et cetera, get the leaves of the trees. And then I would draw the trunk of the tree. We will see how this brush and the next smaller fan brush can be a bit different while you paint your tree and how the fan brush makes your tree looks more fuller. This is a practice exercise here, I would say. This is very, very important for everyone who just wants to know how much brush is important in your painting. If you have various brushes, what happens is that you work becomes a bit more easier compared to have lesser number of brushes, then the work is a bit more tougher. See all the other techniques, whether it be lending, whether it be creating ripples, then how do we even have our sun masking, et cetera? We have touched upon everything possible. But the importance of a brush still remains in your painting. Though I have not touched upon this subject much in my past, in all the other classes that I have given. But overall, with time, as you improve as an artist, I think this is one of the things that you have to look into. I would be using my fan brush. I will make it a bit more drier and see how I'm getting these lines. I will just pick up some more of these colors. It's simple burn sienna. And now I will start making these lines. These lines are very simple. It's pretty dry brush. I am again dipping it in some water, taking off all the extra water from my brush. And again doing the same process. The process remains same, but this whole of the tree looks much more fuller. Whether you are making a palm tree or coconut tree, this tree will be much easier for you as most of the strokes are taken care of by the fan brush. It's just some amount of additions that you have to go ahead and do in terms of your lines, et cetera. Though you need two of the brushes, that is your round brush as well as your fan brush for completing this whole part, I do always leave out some of my loose lines here and there. These loose lines are great, in fact, they look great when you are working on a painting, as it gives that loose effect in your painting, which we always want. Now, this whole of the tree looks more fuller and nicer me as my understanding what I have seen, if you can experiment with more kind of brushes, I think your final outcome may also differ accordingly. And hence always keeping yourself open towards using new brushes, colors, paints, paper, everything can help you to improve your watercolor process. Okay, I guess this is it that I wanted to show you. Let's go ahead after this and see what all other colors that we are going to use. Though the colors for day six is quite similar to day two that we have used, at least the sky and the background. You will see more of our Naples yellow, Indian yellow. Some orange compose opera purple. Which can be done with the blue but a different of course, we have to go ahead with one sub green, then one of the forest green, for the browns and for the dark brown. I have used my nutritive. I would use the nutritive even for the human beings. 15. Day 6 Soft Sunset Painting: The six. And it is painting six, watercolor is magical, as I always say. Today's day is going to be unique in itself. We will be using all the learnings that you had earlier as well as the techniques that we have learned in the last section. Overall, I think that this is one of the most important paintings where you get to learn how to use your fan brush. Though there are two ways of using your brush. One would be creating the palm trees with the help of your fan brush. Uh, palm trees, coconut trees, whatever you want to just go ahead and add. The other one would be by using a round brush for creating these trees. There's a bit of a difference I will not deny, but I think the outcome looks fantastic for both things. You do not need to worry, just go with whatever is available with you. I have taken a coin size sun, and coin can be your own currency that you are using. I have just masked out that area with the help of masking fluid and let it dry off. Then I'm going ahead and adding a horizon line just below the horizon line. Added one more line which is majorly going to be my foregrounds. Going ahead and adding three trees. Now, trees are something that this particular painting will have a lot more impact in and around it. Why I say this? Because there's, that is just adjacent, or that's just in between these trees. There are three palm trees. I placed them towards the right side, whereas the subject or I would say the two people who, whether you can say it's a sunset, sunrise, I would leave that decision up to you. I am more concerned about the scale of the people that you add in your painting. They should look more organic for that. What I usually do as a trick is if I am placing something more on the foregrounds, they are taller and longer compared to I am just placing them in and around the tree. You will see the size would be more smaller. That's all you need to keep in your mind while you add these people in your painting. See, adding people is a good but yet a very tricky aspect of watercolors. It's not that I have done or I am doing it in all my paintings. Having said that, if you are not adding people or any kind of subject into your painting, it looks very flat. We don't want to keep our paintings flat because all of you have already neared all the paintings to date, which is the first five paintings. They have not been a cakewalk. I'm pretty much sure about it. You guys have your own struggles while you paint. I have mine always. Every artist has got their own creative journey and every creative journey will come up with its struggle. Do not worry or do not think much when you have these struggles. It's going to happen for everyone. I guess that is it. You need to keep in mind and let go. I think some of the paintings where we hold on very tightly, don't think much, just let go of your fears, whether it be your fears, whether it be, if you haven't performed. Well, just let go of things then. Start off with a fresh mind. Start off with a net, I'm pretty sure about it. Every painting over here is real time and you will be in a position to name each one of once you are going with that open mindset. Okay. I guess it's time to now add my people. I'm drawing a very small circle, I would say not exactly a circle, it's oval shape. And then adding the body of the people along with it. I will even add simple clothes to them. Of course, they are farmers and they are returning from the farm. It is a scene from Bengal itself. Here there is a good chance of wearing Ungi or, or the stuff by the people who are farmers. I mean it's a natural thing for people to wear these kind of bottles in India and therefore towards the eastern side, of course, it's more worn. That's one of the reasons I wanted to keep it like that. Going ahead and adding a line which shows the tools that they are carrying along with them going back home or just running right away in the morning for doing their work. Adding hands, this is simple. Easy. It's just that I am trying to. Be a bit more precise with my graphite marks. This is the darkest color that we are going to add. You do not need to worry. Go ahead and even shade the body if you want. I have shaded most of the areas, even in the trees where I'm going ahead with the darkest value. Because once I apply the colors, it really doesn't matter. And the graphite marks usually goes away as there are heavy washes that we are going to do in our painting. Going ahead and working on my second person, again, it's going to be a very simple process. One of the legs is going a bit in the front and other what is in the back. That's how I go about it. And then add the tool, of course, in his hands. Simple. Easy. There at a distance. You do not need to worry much. Sunset gives you a lot of opportunity to make it darker in value. Again, you do not need to worry much about the light and shade that you're going to add in the painting. I did miss out on the hand for the second person, so let's go ahead and add the hands along with it. I would even add a small basket in his hand because that is what he needs. Work. They can be even construction workers, they can be anything. For that matter. You do not need to worry about what it is or how it is. Just add people into your painting. This is going to be the first, but believe me, it's going to be very simple and easy when you add them. Okay? Adding the horizon line again, a bit more darker compared to what we did add earlier or else it's usually a bit difficult once you apply heavy wash to figure out where we have exactly added our horizon line. These small small things really helps me to keep myself reminded of the fact that exactly here I have placed my horizon line, here is my foreground and these are my trees, these are my. I am just finalizing a bit more details on these. People know one thing, when you are doing a framework, it is your basics. The better you do your framework, as I always say, the outcome would be even better. I keep this whole thing always in my mind. When I have to work with water colors, I applied a lot of water on the paper. You can see both sides where I've applied a lot of water. Going ahead and applying some maple yellow, then orange and pink. Though initially, I thought I would be going ahead with brown or darker shade of neutritant, something like that, to allow the contrast to come up exactly the way we did our split complementary color. But then all of a sudden, when I added all those colors, I was really not happy with how it did turn out. Immediately I changed my mind. I picked up the colors as you know that you can go ahead and pick up your colors whenever you want to. Then you can see that I did add pink and it really turned out the way I wanted it. Yes, there are mistakes that we all commit if we know exactly how to change it, or exactly how to edit the stuff and how the water works in water colors. I think many of our mistakes can be rectified. It's just that we are not aware of it and we just feel that we will not be in a position to change it, or we will not be happy with how the outcome is. But this particular painting really proves the fact that even if you have applied the darkest value of neutral diintIan, not exactly the darkest value, but amounts to all the three colors. The darkest value is neutral tint that I've added. You can still take away that color and go ahead and add the pink color. Because if you go with your broad brush and a lot of what happens is these colors will move away as there is already a lot of color on the paper along with it, there is a lot of water. Also, water will do its work. We do not need to think much when there is water on the paper. Water is going to be our best friend. And water colors. If you can really treat it as your friend, believe me, it's going to treat you back way more better. Go ahead and treat it as your friend. It will come back and treat as if it is rewarding you at every moment. This. I really took out some time and thought that what would be the best outcome that I can have. And I was really not happy with how the Brown was looking. We have already done this, a combination earlier though. It's not that it will not look good, but still I just thought that it's good to go ahead with the Quinacridon Coral something, maybe your compose opera and then have a final look at the sky. Sky is something that should be according to your liking, at least for these paintings, because there's a lot of space that is occupied by the sky. If you do not like what you have painted, you might not like ending up your painting. Having said that, I always keep these 23 things in mind. When I am going ahead and adding my colors while I go towards the horizon line, you will see that I will create a bit of a gap because there the fog meets your land. Usually the time where fog meets your land, you will see that there is a misty and foggy effect that we usually see. And these paintings really turn up dreamy as such. Clearing out again a bit of space here and there. And you can see how simply this painting is turning up. I'm super excited to have a final look at it. Each and every part of the painting looks so amazing to me. I'm clearing up all the edges because if I don't clear up the water, then there will be backgrounds on my painting. What happens is the water comes from outside and gets into your paper. It will cause a quality flower effect and this whole soft effect of the sun that we have. Sunset that we have will go away. Going ahead with my greenish yellow and adding it towards the bottom part. Once we have added the greenish yellow, you have to go ahead and add some of the darkest value for the foregrounds. I am clearing up some of the spaces as I did tell you earlier, to give the misty and foggy effect. Clearing up the space just above the horizon line is an iterative process, and we will continue to do it with a damp clear. You have already done it in most of the audio paintings and we will use the same technique, even in this painting, for completing our most misty and dreamy kind of landscape, adding some compose opera. And then we will go ahead with some amount of blue or purple in the background to give the darker value of the colors for our background area. That is majorly to do with our trees, et cetera, that usually exist in the background. I love to mix my colors just on the paper. Once I have added my ink, I would go ahead and apply some amount of purple or blue into it to give me 23 different colors that would automatically come up. That's one of the reasons when you mix your colors on the paper, allow the colors to move into each other. They will create their own beauty and you do not need to by with the whole of the painting getting in place. I will use the same pink that I have on my brush and allow the colors to go ahead and move into the space which is just below the horizon line post. That while we are painting our foregrounds, it would be more of the darker value of green. You can go ahead and use a forest green or else you can also use some amount of blue into your green and get a shade that looks similar to the one that we are applying right now. I have my palette always pretty handy with myself. When I paint, you might feel that you are unable to see the colors. One of the important reasons I name the colors at the binging is something that is similar to the ones that I'm using. You can use even in your painting. I continuously tell you about the sheets that I'm using or the alternate colors that you can use. It can be also used as various alternate colors even in your future paintings. And that's what I am always, always excited about. The learnings that you have can always be used anywhere that you want to go ahead or anything that you want to go ahead and paint with it. Adding the darkest value of green. Now, the darkest value of green of course is forest green, as I did tell you earlier, and the paper is still wet. Now, when the paper is wet, the colors that you apply will practically become more like bloom. I will not say that they will absolutely become bloom. They will move into the background color that already exist, because of which it would be a very soft and simple blend that we see as a final painting. And that's one of the reasons you see all of these paintings. So soft and nice, as well as pleasing to our eyes, compared to if we add a lot of hard ages. What happens is that the painting, of course, looks good, I will not deny, but that softness moves away. I have kept keeping the whole of this thing in mind that we have to create the paintings absolutely soft, so there are only few images or there are only few parts of the painting which has hard. All the parts are done in a way that they don't have any kind of bandages in it. Adding some more blue to the painting backgrounds till my paper is wet, my hands always wants to work on something or the other. But this blue is really looking beautiful. And I am just blending it bit with the pink that I have towards the background. I will go ahead and use a bit of my damp rush to just blend the colors that we have already added. This is my blue color which I have added, and it looks so amazing when I see it now into the painting, splattering some water, You already are aware of how to splatter the water. You can also use salt at the stage, but I feel that water can do defined amount of work. My paper is not very wet, and hence my colors will move from the area where I have splattered the water. Once the paper, we will go ahead with our top area where we are going to paint our trees. I will be using my small fan brush to do this exercise. My work around with this brush is very simple. Just make a few marks and once it is done, go ahead with a blend off your neutral tent as well as some of your brown to just take it a bit towards the middle part. It's a very simple and easy process. Now with the fan brush, it becomes more simple. That's one of the reasons I was telling you that you should use a fan brush for making your palm trees or even your coconut trees or any kind of trees that has a lot of leaves, but you want to paint, it becomes way more easy. I The hole of the bunch, towards the middle part, the start adding it from the middle towards the area where my line meets basically in the grounds. I will add it, but while you add to the ground, near the ground, it has to be lighter in value as that area is completely white. You can see because of the fog and mist and hence our tree will also become lighter in value compared to what you usually observe going ahead and adding a few more leaves towards, towards the bottom nu of this first tree that we have painted. I always try to reduce my work and a fan brush, if it can do my work, then I would be more than happy to use it for completing my parts of the painting that it really needs. Small things can always simplify your job. I'm not saying that you need to have this for completing the series. We will go ahead with another way of painting where I'm going ahead and just adding the lines for the palm trees with the help of my round brush too. If you are someone who doesn't have this, absolutely fine, you can follow those steps and just use it for painting this tree. While I go towards the bottom area, I have used more of my burnt sienna to make it lighter in value. Second, the thing that I want to always tell you is blend your colors on the paper. Which means that start with the neutral tint and as you go towards the bottom area, it could become the brown that we want. We will go ahead with the same process even for our second tree, and then take the lines towards the middle part. Once we have added these lines towards the middle part, I would go ahead and again, from the darkest value to the lightest value, painting the whole of the tree, of the bark of the tree. If you have to say the stem of the tree, the main trunk of the tree, is very important that you need to, while you go towards the bottom, I've already told you that you need to add the brown, but even near the sun, you have to see that the colors to appear a bit more lighter because of the strong rays of the sun. And that's one of the reasons in and around it, you have to also apply some amount of brown. I am to add my Bon Siena around the sun area where the colors become a bit more lighter as the sun is very, very strong at this area, even while we go towards the bottom, we have to make it more and more lighter. I am using the mix of two colors, which is majorly my neutritant. Another one is my burn scena. You can go ahead with even and burn scena. I would leave that decision up to you. I usually don't prefer using black, and hence, you just see that I add more of these browns and neutritentt. We are onto our last tree now, and I would go ahead with my round brush to paint this tree. I am even making the leaves with the help of my round brush, only this is a smaller one, I just thought that. Let me show you how you can do this with a round brush. Okay. Time to add some darker values. While you go towards the top or towards the top of the, basically the tree that we are adding see some loose lines that you do. And then just towards the middle part again, we will do the same, some of the loose lines and take it towards the middle part. Again, few more loose lines and take it towards the middle part. That's what we are going to do even with our rod. Use the tip of your brush for making these smaller lines. They are small broken lines and going in one particular direction. They do follow a direction. That's something you also need to follow for painting this tree. I'm pretty happy with my trees and now it's time to work a bit more into the foregrounds as well as we have to paint our people. Now the people will be done in a very easy and simple manner. Who don't worry much as I did tell you earlier that the colors will be darker in this space. A mix of your neutral tint and brown is all you need for completing this part. I guess we will just go ahead and apply some more darker greens for our foe grounds. As the colors have become way more lighter than what I thought, it sometimes does happen, it's not that always you get the desired colors and the desired blend. There are a few happy accidents. If something like this happens, you can always go ahead and apply another layer of only one thing that would go away with this is the texture that we have created for our foregrounds. It is away completely, but yes, more like a blur, kind of an effect that we will get in it. When you need to add the darkest value of green, sometimes you can also go ahead and use a bit of your blue into the painting and you will get the darkest value of green which you want. I usually do the strict in many of my paintings and I love to share that even with you all time to paint our people. I'm taking a mix of my burn, Siena as well as nutrient that I have. Going ahead and just adding the colors. This is a really zoomed out view that you are having right now. We will continue to work on our people Now as the people are really small in size shape, you don't need to worry much, melt you, paint them. But in bigger paintings where you have more detailed people, you might have to go ahead and think about painting people in a better way. We will have more complex paintings also coming up. You do not need to worry on those aspects to going ahead with some of my darker shade of brown and then adding it in the first person who is going back home or going in the morning for work, that's what going with the second one. Now I usually load my size for brush with the paints and then go ahead with my painting. This is more to do with comfort. You can see that this brush is my comfort brush, and I'm using this brush for actually adding colors in these areas. Comfort brush, in a way, it has got a nice tip. I can fall back to it at any point in time. I can add thin lines. I can add broad lines even in smaller spaces. It works great. It's by the Vinci round brush, I think it's casino. You might have to go ahead and check that one. But yeah, it's a amazing you can see how the colors are two different colors over here. One is more darker and one is lighter. They move into each other and create such beautiful blends. Even in smaller areas, they create amazing blends. I will blend the bottom area a bit with the colors or just add some damp brush marks over here, which is majorly to blend the colors even with the background. Pick up your masking fluid and I usually pick it up with the help of my masking fluid removing. Then I will add a bit of my yellow and orange into it. It's a very simple process. The right side, I will keep more white. And the left side only, I'm going to add this color. This is one of the paintings which I wanted, not only myself to experiment with, but even you guys should experiment with. As this can teach a lot as well as you can use it, even anywhere in your future paintings. You do not need to think much when you go ahead and use all these techniques. Okay, let's have a final look at how this painting has turned up. You have used a bit of orange and did blend it with the background of the sun. I can't wait to show you the final day now. That's one of my favorite date. But let your paper dry off and have a final look at this one. 16. Day 7 Grazing Techniques and Colors: Understand all the techniques that we need. 47. Let's look at all the colors which you need for this picking. I'm not going to explain everything about the techniques because we have learned all the techniques in our last six lessons. Let's go ahead with the colors. I would go with my Naples yellow, Indian yellow for some parts of it, Sineliar orange. You can also go ahead with quacrodone coral. Keeping a bit of pink. Quinacrodone coral is good. Compose op, just like pink, you can go ahead and use it for our cow. I would use some amount of my burn. Siena, you can see here. And Blkbra, those are the shapes that I'm going to use for screen for my background. You can also go ahead with a bit of your sap green Neutro tent I have kept if we need the darkest of the values and sometimes they love to add a bit of my blue into the background. I have kept on three blue for the same purpose. You can use any other blue that's available with you. All the colors are given over here. You can choose your colors from the palette that's already available with you. You do not need to use these colors that I'm using. I would love to name each one of them so that you get to understand what I have used for my painting. 17. Day 7 Grazing Cows Painting: Day 7.0 this is page number seven. You are almost going to complete the whole of the CDs. I'm super excited. As well as you know that we are going to use almost the similar colors that we have used earlier. It's only the green shade that we would be adding on. I'm going ahead and adding a few, making a few basic lines for adding two of the cows in my building. Yes, many of you might think, oh my God, it is so difficult. How can we add the cow? How can we actually sketch a cow? But believe me, if you go ahead with some basic lines and structure, as I'm doing right now, I think you would be in a position to nail your cow. Let's have a close up look at how we are going to add these lines. I'm going with very light hand graphite marks. You would observe that I am adding a few lines and strokes of pencil here and there. I'm not defining anything at this stage. It is just a few lines and then slowly, steadily, we will start with that definition. Now, since there are two cows side by side, we are going to add both of them first together. This is just like a rhombus that I've added. You can also do the same. You already know the size of the paper, and if you are planning to do it on an A four sized paper, you can also go ahead and do this on an four size paper. And accordingly, you should change the size of the subject. I would say that any size is good to go, but at least, I mean, an A five size would be great for starting out. Anyone who is starting out, five size is the best. Whatever you want to paint on it. I think five size gives you a lot of opportunity to play with it. Now I am defining the cow that is on the left side. What I'm going ahead with is from the top I'm taking towards the bottom, I am going ahead with my drafting pencil. Here again, I'm not going to go together and make all the lines. Whereas while I was going ahead and adding these initial lines, I was going pretty straight. And with broader strokes compared to now when I am finalizing it. I'm making it smaller and slowly, steadily. I'm working through it. Every painting is special. Every painting has something to learn in terms of whether it be sketching, whether it be finalizing your draft, or even doing your final, final painting. Blending colors, making the fog. I think this particular painting has it all starting from the sketching to how you paint a soft sun, going over to the beautiful crowds of green, and then finally the cow, which is also done pretty softly compared to what you might observe as more hard edges. I love to keep every subject of mind pretty soft, easy, simple. So that the whole painting, once it comes together, makes us go absolutely soft, nice. And that beautiful feeling from within, I would say, I always that way there are four legs of a cow and you have to define all the four legs. Well, I'm not saying that you have to define each and every bit and part of it, it is a bit at a distance. And that's one of the reasons, even if you are not going to go ahead and detail every bits and parts of it, it's absolutely okay. We can do the final finalization even with our painting part. This has more to do with adding curves at various places. That's all. I don't have anything much in mind while I go ahead with it. It's a simple stroke, simple lines showing all the four legs of my cow and then a tail in the back side. If you haven't done any kind of animals or you have never painted animals, I would strongly ask you to go ahead and check out my older class, meditate with watercolors for 14 days. And there are two specific paintings, one about painting a deer and another about painting a bird, where we are exploring the deer as well as the bird we are sketching and panalyzing it. These two cows are also on the similar lines. You can say that both of them are practically an extension of what we did earlier. And if you have already painted that particular series, this one should be easy for you. Okay, let's continue to work on our count Now I'd like to have a close up as well as a far off view because the far of view helps me to understand how big it is on the paper. As you are having a very close up view, you exactly don't know how much the whole subject is occupying the space on the paper. I'd love to keep the sites pretty boring. As I have told you, even Aldo, every painting that we have done till now has corners of the painting absolutely boring. In fact, the whole painting is somewhere within, within the scrers or within the middle area somewhere. Or maybe the lower half. I will tell you exactly the rule of thirds which says that you should place it at the intersection of the three lines. That's there law. So when you divide the paper into nine equal halves at the intersection, you should always try to put your subjects so that the focus lies over there and the whole tension of the painting is actually focused in that particular area itself. The whole painting comes to life through that way only. And we have been following this golden rule. Very often though, I will not say that there are no diversification from there or there is no deviation from there. Of course, there would be deviations and you can always go ahead and experiment on your own. But this is one of the golden rules that many of the artists have been following to date, and they have got immense success in the process. I do have a small request. This particular painting, you should observe on a bigger screen rather than only observing it on your mobile or any smaller devices. Now, if you observe it on an ipad or on a laptop, you would actually understand each and every single step that we are adding in this painting is very important for this particular part of the painting. Okay, I guess this is it. I am not going to actually go ahead and change a lot more from here. Just a bit of it here and there. And then we will start out with adding water on both sides of the paper, doing a small and beautiful soft sun on the top left hand side. And then slowly adding some of the bushes for the background. And the four grounds would be absolutely simple with greens and greens can be of your choice. For me it is always sad green, then yellow green as well as some amount of dark value of green. Before we start out with the painting, I would like to mask out my whole area of the cow because the cows will be in dark and light values. If I don't mask out, what will happen is I need to take care of the backgrounds in a broader way. That is, I have to really take out the time to not allow the water to get into this cow area, and that's one of the reasons it's easier for me to mask out. Then do it in case you do not have a masking fluid. I can tell you. Go ahead. Use a masking tape and mask out the smaller areas or else leave it ***. Just don't allow the water to get into your two cos. That's something that you should follow for this painting. Once your paper is completely dry, then only apply water. Do not be in a rush to apply water or else the masking fluid will not settle well. And you will figure out a lot of difficulties when you remove your masking fluid. There are a lot of rules that I have been following when I am using masking fluid. And I will give you the typsentrics that I have learned. Not only these rules, but also the centric that has really helped me to a, through this masking fluid difficulty. Because I have been using for about five to six years now. There are a lot of small, small tip centric that I have picked up on my way. There have been lots of difficulties that you guys have always told me. Like whenever you're trying to remove the masking fluid from a particular area, once it is dry, you get these dark marks on top of it. Why do you get and exactly how you can avoid it? I will tell you during this session, going ahead and adding some red. This is my permanent red that I have on the palette. But you can go ahead with any red that's available. You, frankly, do not need to add the same red that you observe right now in and around the sun. I am again, going ahead with some of my Indian yellow. Indian yellow is one of my favorites that I use, whether it be a sunrise, sunset, or any kind of watercolor painting, wear this kind of a moody effect, I would like to add. Okay, going ahead and adding some orange towards the bottom area and taking it towards the bottom part of the cow. Now the top area where I have the horizon line, I would take the colors still that much, I'm not going to take it below that. And now is the time for Quinacrodone coral. This is one of my favorite colors that I have been adding in many of my paintings. If you see this is one of the colors, that's my favorite date and it has really helped me. Whether it be a watercolor painting where we are making roses or we are painting with flowers. We're painting grounds, we're painting sunrise, sunset, everything. This has been a real key element into my watercolors. If you are ever trying to understand or trying to give expensive watercolors or try, I think this is one of the watercolors that you can always go ahead and buy for yourself in case you do not have this. Do not, Do not worry. Go ahead with a mix of your pink and red. I think that should work for you. Okay. Adding some yellow. When I am blending it towards the bottom area where exactly my horizon line is in and around it, you should know that we are going to add the mist. I would remove the cap so that my paper lies flat completely. As of now, I go very slow with my painting because the paper has a lot of water and I can really play with the water that's existing on the paper. I would say it's more like puddles. Initially it was more like puddles, but now it has settled down and has moved down. Gravity will do its work. That's one of the reasons you should always place tape or either a small elevation just below the area where you have started the painting. I mean, just below the cycrlic sheet that would really help you to ace through your painting and let gravity do its job rather than be always trying to change it. I'm using my arlene yellow. You can also go ahead with greenish yellow. You can go with yellow green any color of your choice. Now, I'm going ahead with my yellow, green, green and the darkest value of green to get the final colors on the grounds. I am not going to, of course, change a lot over here because I know that the whole painting doesn't need a lot of work for the background, even for the foregrounds of this particular area where my cows are grazing. I do not need to go ahead and add small every detail that we need here. We will leave the details. We are going to do majority of the details only on the cow. That too, I'm going to make it as simple as possible. Simplicity is the key. As I always say, more simple your paintings are, the better would be your outcome. Final outcome is something that's only dependent on. The more simplified way you actually see a painting, the better you can finally see how the painting turns up. Why I keep my painting simple. Now, that's something that many of you have asked me. Initially, when I was starting out, I tried to complicate a lot of things. But over time what I've realized is even if you are painting a complicated subject, you should simplify it into basic shapes and sizes, just the way we did initially for our car. And then you have to concentrate on only a few things that you want your spectators to see or identify in your paintings. Like here, it would be the two car who are grazing on the ground and the mist that's there in the background, that's what we are more or less thinking about and rest. All the other things will be sop, simple, Easy just to give a look and feel as if they do only exist somewhere in the background and the foregrounds, even for the ground area, will remain absolutely simple. We will just add some amount of Some amount of water on top of it, platter, some water greens, et cetera. Adding some texture for the ground that textures, or something of course, which always I have loved, I do textures in a simple and easy manner. Again, as I say, simplicity is the key. And I've been iterating this word again and again because I know that we have this tendency from within to complicate a subject, To complicate the painting that we are doing. When we progress, or only when we are into a painting for long enough, we get to realize that few things are supposed to be simple. And you can also do it by only looking at a few basic things and just ignoring all the other noise in and around it. Now, why I say these are noises in and around it, just like how we want to take the most important things from whatever we learn. There are so many things that you might have learned during the initial phase of your schooling, et cetera. But we are doing specialization only in one single thing. When you specialize, this is more to do with specialization. And here we will only pick up the best or the things that we'll like for ourselves. Okay. Going ahead with some of my quinacdone coral and you can also go ahead with compost coopera. Those are the two colors. Mixing it with a bit of my purple and then adding the background bushes. Now the bushes, I've kept it more in purple because I really love that color. You can also go ahead with brown as another option. But this whole combination looks so beautiful to me that I could not avoid painting with it. Once I have added the colors for my bushes, I could again clean up the place in and around the cow or around the horizon line that is already added into the background area. There is a graphite mark that you can observe. If you cannot observe the graphite mark, you are either working with very, very light graphite pencil just the way I do, or else know that towards the bottom area of the car, you have to go ahead and clean up that area in case the graphite masks are not visible. Okay, I'm blending the colors a bit more and I see a beautiful blend of the background that is your purple into the pinks for the bushes. A bit more of either You can use Indico over here or else you can also go ahead and use paint screen for this part. It is majorly for the purplish color that we want to add into the background area. Why I added a bit more darker value in and around it, because my car is going to be way more lighter and I guess that's one of the good ways when you have a contrast color then your depth is much, much better in your painting. So yes, that's all was the thought process while we did add a bit more darker color into the background area. I'm blending it always because till now my paper is wet. As I did tell you earlier, go ahead and work on your paper till your paper is wet enough to add the colors or to take on the pigments. If your paper is already dry, then it would be difficult for you to add the pigments and it would give a qualflower effect and a few hardadges, which we do not want in a soft painting like this. I'm going ahead and applying some of my darkest value of green as well as I did splatter some of the clean water into the painting. We can again do this splatter, that should not be a problem. It's just that going ahead and adding the darkest value is very important. I did splatter, I would say in advance, but splattering always is a good activity. I just love splattering water and it gives so much of a texture and beautiful background. Or did it in one of our fifth painting, you will see how beautifully for the foregrounds we did splatter some water into the red and brown and it gave us some beautiful texture too. Okay, that's it going with some red and just blending it. I don't know why I did take some red, but it did work out well for this painting, so I did apply it towards the middle ground for our grass part. I'm adding some browns for the foreground area of the grassland part. And then just applying it in a bit of space. Or you just apply it very randomly, not covering the whole of the area. Clearing up the space, wherever it is necessary, as the paper is. And you can see that the colors were moving into the white space, which I want to keep white. Of course, I'm not saying that it is absolutely white, but I want to keep it a bit more white, removing some of the colors from the area, and then just using my damp, clean brush to do this exercise. Every time I clean up the area, I wash it, I remove it on the tissue, and then again, get back to this part. This is one of the most important tips to actually get a clean area just below the masking fluid or just the area where you have applied the masking fluid. Always, always up the space where you have applied the masking fluid with a clean, damp tissue. That would really help you to not get a dark or bad outcome. When you remove your masking fluid, what happens is the colors sometimes move into the white area which you have already masked out with your masking fluid. If you don't clean up the space, then that would get into the white and you will get some muddy colors which you really don't want to see on the final painting. This is a great way to go about it, adding some darkest value of greens now. And then I would go ahead and even splutter my clean water. Yes, now it's the time I did once and now I will do it again. Okay, let's go ahead and this is the moment of truth. You will get a lot of textures. I'm using my round casino brush zero for doing this part and then we need to let it dry off before we go ahead and start with small part of the cows. Okay. I guess till my paper is wet enough and I'm going ahead and against splattering now this time. Any water of your choice, I guess it really doesn't matter. Let it dry again before you go ahead and remove the masking fluid. Because we do not really want our greens to get into the colors of our pool. Okay, cleaning up the space, I will always check whether the paper in and around my cow is completely dry or not. Now, as it is completely dry, I pull off the masking fluid with the help of a masking fluid eraser. And I'm trying to just pick up the masking fluid with the help of my fingers. You can see that this is a pretty easy process. Sometimes when we try to do it with the eraser, the colors may move in or something like that may happen. Hence, I just try to use my fingers to remove the masking fluid. Okay, we'll do the same process for the other cow to it's time to work on our most important subject and these are the cows that we are going to paint. I'm going ahead with my burn scena for this area now as it is sunset, so we will not be in a position to see the absolute white and black color. It would be a bit more darker than what we usually serve the whole of the cow's body is usually what I see is some black spots or is they're complete white? They're complete black. They can be in color of your choice, but let's just select some black spots on white cow wherever. Is evening time. You will see that the colors are a bit different and usually they are a bit more darker than what you can see in the sunlight or during the daytime. Hence, I'm going ahead with burn Siena for both the cows, at least while I do cover the body of the cows. And once I have applied the burn Siena, I would go ahead with Smo darko shade. And that particular Daco shade can be either your burned arber or else it can be also your Bendik Brown. Now these are the options of the colors that you always have by your side. If you are not having this color, you can mix a bit of black, or ultimately blue, into your bun Siena that's there. And get a shade that is a bit more darker than what you have already applied. You will see that the whole real time video is pretty slow at this stage. We do not want to fast forward our process. Let's go very slow with the painting of the subject. There is less of effort needed right now. It's just that we have to go ahead in the white space that we have preserved for the cow. The major work, I would say was when you did start with your sketching. The sketching was a pretty difficult task for many of you who are just starting out with watercolors or are not that great with the sketching part. But I did break it up into really small, small points, so I guess you have already made that part. And right now, it's a way more easier aspect that we have to concentrate on only the darker values and lighter values that we need to keep in our mind for creating the depth into the subject that we are going to paint. I'm going ahead and mixing my colors on the right side, which is majorly putting some amount of black into the brown or burn Siena and then getting a shade that you can observe right now. Let's have a closer look at it. How we continuously apply the colors on the cow. The legs of the cow look so nice. And I'm so happy that we did try this painting and I'm so happy for each one of you who is even giving this painting try. I know you guys will nail this painting completely. But still, there are one or two important basic points that I would say, do not fear while you do watercolors. That's the only thing. If you fear watercolors, it's not going to turn up exactly the way you want. If you go with all the confidence, I know you will be in a position to nail everything that you paint, okay? Touching my brush in a few places and then adding the darkest value on our legs. That is the legs of the car that you are painting while we paint our cows, all I can say is I have applied generous amount of water and there is not much to think about. The darkest value is towards the legs and the bottom area, and the lightest value is more towards the top. That's all I have kept in mind and that's what goes in when I'm adding the depth. At this stage, there's pretty less to practically discuss. And hence, I would just leave it. I would leave it and let you guys paint along with me. There's really less things that I need to tell you. You guys already know about it. Only one small thing, either you can use a size two or a size three plush for working through these smaller parts of the car. Let us now start working with our second cow. It is still wet. That's one of the reasons whenever I'm applying the colors on top of the area of the cow's body, it will automatically move. You do not need to worry, but in case you are not truly confident at this stage, you can finish off the first cow and then move on to the second one. I've applied some small patches of the darkest value of brown. It is pre, so you can easily see that there are black spots on the body of the C. Uh, I do retouch a lot of areas. If I need to pick up the colors, I will use a clean, damp brush to pick up the colors from there, and then go ahead with a thin brush to add the darkest value in any of the space where I think it is necessary time to do a dealing in a way that it is more softer rather than giving it hard edges. I would just blend it with my blending brush in case I'm not happy with any particular area. I would clean up that space. You can how I keep cleaning up the area with a dam clean, going ahead and adding a bit of a darker value and then again doing the same on the other leg of the car. Towards the bottom of the other cow. I am adding a bit of a darker value as usually, you can see that the bottom area, they have meals, et cetera, which is a bit more darker. And they walk, yeah, it is more dirty compared to other parts, hence we are also showing it in the same way in our painting. I was really not very happy with how the left side cow turned off. And that's one of the reasons to go ahead and just apply a bit more darker value over here compared to what I did a adding a bit more darker value. What happens is I'm just trying to define the leg. The other leg is actually on the other side compared to what you can also over here, it did not look good. It was all not so well defined and hence I just did a bit more whatever was possible from my end, we continue to add details at small intervals in very small way. Whatever is possible, you also be at ready to do all of it in your own paintings too. Detailing is good, but we should exactly know where to stop. I know that I need to stop over here. That's our final look at it. 18. Conclusion: I hope you have enjoyed painting all these '70s along with me. If you did follow along and have done the projects, do upload them in the project calories so that I can go ahead and give my valuable feedback. In case you are there on social media like inst gram do tag me as watercolor illustration letter. I would be more than happy to share back all your paintings on my stories. Lastly, if you have like anything about this class where you did create such beautiful mist, as well as soft effects of fields, then monuments, et cetera, do give me a feedback. It really helps me to motivate myself. As well as create classes that are of your liking. Have you painting guys and see you very soon in the next class.