Watercolor Mastery: Achieve Realism w/ Wet-on-Wet & Lifting Techniques

1. Introduction: What it colors can be really frustrating for a beginner. Before I painted like this, I used to make the same mistakes. I used to paint everything wet on dry. I know what it's like to be a beginner. Paintings that look flat like on dimension. Lots and lots of hard edges, no softness and then unexpected blooms. I didn't even know what blooms were. My name is Maria China, and I'm an experienced watercolor teacher. I have taught thousands of students over the years how to paint with watercolors. Wet and wet and lifting are the two main techniques I teach in watercolor. With wet and wet and lifting, you'll be able to create smooth and soft layers. You'll also be able to create natural looking shadows. And shadows are needed to create dimension. No shadows. No dimension. No light, No shadows. In this class, I'll teach you how to control the paint and water, add layers, read a reference image, create your color palette. Use a color wheel, natural shadows based on a color wheel. Create more vibrancy when needed. And how to create a background, how to add a background wet on wet. I want you to know that I break down all these techniques step by step by the end. You have created a full painting and will feel confident in using wet on wet and lifting techniques on your own to achieve more realistic paintings. 2. Class Projects: How This Class is Structured: In this course, I'll be teaching you how to paint green apples, including leaves, with an option of adding a background later. In the first part of the course, which is project on E, we will be focusing on b***ding colors on the paper. This will be an exercise with the main goal of b***ding colors on your paper, not in your palette. You'll be also staying away from the most highlighted areas. In the following class, which is project two. You'll be painting a full apple with a leaf against the white background. You'll be practicing adding colors to the wet surface of the paper. And you'll be b***ding colors on your paper, not your palette. All will be done wet and wet. Just like in a project one, you will paint this apple with two layers. I will teach you how to add that second layer for more vibrancy and to create more contrast in the main painting. The final project of this course, you'll be painting three apples on a tree with an option of adding a background. I chose to include three apples because the steps are repetitive And you will get to practice more and wet and b***ding the colors on the paper because the steps are repetitive and we're painting still life. This is a perfect project for a beginner. I am not only teaching the basics of watercolors, like the techniques, and about color b***ding, but also about fundamentals of painting in general. I will be covering about the color wheel in a non intimidating way and referring to the color wheel through the lessons explaining why we're using a certain color and why adding another. Now let's talk about art supplies and all the materials you might need for this class. 3. Art Materials: Now let's talk about art supplies. What color paper is always number one. Let's say you can invest in only one art supply. I always say the paper is the foundation of a watercolor painting. That's where everything can go wrong. If you're painting with layers and you want to see lots of vibrancy, but also you want to have control over when you paint wet on wet. You want to have 100% color paper. This is nine by 12. You don't have to have a block, You can just have a pad. But this is the size that we use for this class. Now let's talk water colors. I mostly paint with hole bind water colors and these are in tubes. These are my favorite because I have a lot of control but also for their vibrancy. We actually don't need that many colors in this class, I purposely created this class thinking of this limited color palette. We're actually using only four colors. If you're not adding the background, all you need is yellow, blue, red, and green. I have my deon yellow, which is primary yellow according to Holbein's color chart. But if you're painting with a different brand, maybe they're calling that yellow a little bit differently. So you need to check on their charts basically. Then I have fallow blue red sheet, which is also a primary color, primary blue according to Holbein's color chart. Then I have Quenton red. This is not the primary red, but I love this red, It's pinkish, something like that. You don't have to use the same colors. You don't have to paint with the same brand. It's just something similar basically that you want to have. And I do suggest professional grade watercolors. Now this is sub green. I do want a shade of green even though you can simply create a green, a shade of green just by mixing yellow with blue. I'll cover more about this in the class. Now if you are adding the background, I'll be teaching you how to paint the background too. This is an option because some people simply prefer no background. And this is what painting would look like with no background, which is very pretty and lots of still life like vegetables or fruit. I will paint without adding the background. It's your choice. This is no background. And again, the main painting from this class is these three apples and there's the background. If you are going for the background, then I am using burn sana, which is like a reddish brown. Then I have fund brown. You can use something like CPA. I use this color for the branches and then Roca rosa. I actually sometimes I'll add rosina to my primary yellow just to change the shade of that yellow. Now if you are painting that background, you can also use an additional shade of blue. In this case, I added cobalt blue because I like to add cobalt blue for the branches. I start with cobalt blue as the undertone, and over that I add burnt sienna. For example, mark that in the class, so everything will be covered. If you're adding the background, try to have maybe two shades of brown, for example, if you want to have an additional shade of blue. Now, what else do you need? I do suggest having a regular bath towel. You can have a paper towel, but wiping your brush on a paper towel is not the same as wiping your brush on a towel. I think towel is like one of those essentials. Paper towel just absorbs so much water and it just becomes like all too wet too fast. You need a towel, Just a regular towel. Now you do need water. This is just a glass jar after yogurt. Basically, I suggest having at two. I usually have three because I use one jar just just to dilute my colors with water. The second one is kind of in between when I clean the brush and then I have one clean jar whenever I paint. So I'll quickly dip my brush in water and then wipe it on a towel. So I just want to have always like one jar that's clean, clean water. Now for the palette, this is a plastic butcher palette. It's by whole wine. Actually, it's plastic though. So it does not thrust and it's very light. And I've had this one for three years. I feel like it's like a lifetime investment that nothing can go wrong really, with it. The thing is that you have so much room to b***d these colors on the palette. Now we're mostly b***ding colors on the paper. However, I do begin the slight b***ding on the palette already. Having this big palette helps me to actually test that quick b***d just to feel it out. Sometimes I'll just go over the palette here with that color b***d, just to feel it out what it feels like on that brush before I bring it over. To the paper. This is how I line up these colors. Basically, I have yellows here. I do have the primary yellow here, actually, because this is raw sienna. But then yellows, reds, browns, greens, blues, and then indigo, the darks. That's how I go about it. I do suggest having a larger palette. Of course, you can even use a regular plate because you just need some space and area where you can dilute those colors with water. And you want to have some room to slightly b***d the colors, especially when we start working on the shadows. This is the main brush I would use for this class. This is a long quill size two. And the reason I like it is because it's soft and I cover a lot of area. It's a size two. Quills always look larger than regular round brushes. Now you always want to have a fine point. Now I have also a larger one. This is long quill size four. That's because I was using it for the larger apple that I was doing in project two. If you don't have a Quill brush, that's totally okay. You could go with a round brush size 12 or 14. Try to have though a softer brush. Now, other brushes that I recommend is having a medium, stiff size round brush. This is my round eight brush. It's in the middle and it is stiff. It's also good for lifting. This one helps me to get into smaller areas. Then I have the smaller brushes. These are size 02.3 All you really need is like a size three. It's a stiffer brush. This is when we lift smaller areas, for example, or need to a small chunks of paint. Lastly, I do recommend having a rigger brush. This is my rigger size to brush, and I use this brush to lift the colors. It's not really just to lift the colors, because when you take a look at this painting here, this is our main project. I have like stems in the background too, and branches, so it's easier to add these lines when you have actually a longer brush. It could be a rigger brush or a liner brush. Different companies called these brushes basically different ways based on how thick or how long these are, but a rigger brush will do. If you do add that background, I do suggest having a flat brush. This Da Vincis Casaneo say is 24 and it's a softer brush. I do suggest a softer brush and this is just to wet the background. Well, also to add colors, wet on wet. But you can add a lot of those colors with round brushes or quill brushes as well. Now, in project one, we are going to draw a circle, and this is when I used this pencil. Any pencil is fine and plus all the watercolors that I already mentioned. I hope you are as excited as I am and let's jump into it. 4. Project 1: The Warm Up : Hi everyone. Welcome to lesson one. In this first part, I want you to get the feel of b***ding colors on the paper, not your palette. Even I say b***d colors on your paper, not the palette. I still want you to grab a couple of colors at the same time from your palette. The first thing we're going to do actually, is draw a circle. You want to, you can use some object where you can just draw, and this is actually Daniel Smith. What color ground? I'm not going to use it in this, of course, but this is something that you might want to consider when you just need a circle. All right? This is not a perfect circle, and it does not need to be perfect at all. Even an apple is not perfectly round. Now, next step is to dilute our colors with water. I have a butter palette, and I have yellow, red, brown, eta brown, green, blue. There's more yellow. If you think about it, you want to have blue, yellow, and red which are the primary colors. Then it's like brown is an additional shade of red in a way. And then you have an additional brown. And then we have like, I have fallow blue and then cobalt blue. All you need is just one blue. Please don't worry about having like two blues. We're going to dilute these colors with water to a consistency that feels more like a heavy cream. Think of like heavy cream. Something like with dairy basically. I'll say heavy cream like ratio. I'm going to clean that brest quickly. I'm going to go for actually yellow. I should start with that lighter color first because the water will get dirty quickly. There's my yellow. If you notice, I left this little island here of color because I want to have this thicker paint on a side. This is like a cream top. This is what I always do. I have paint that's more diluted with water and then I have this like a thicker paint which I like to call cream top like ratio. I'm going to in this price and continue the luting colors. I don't know if I'm going to use raw sienna. Sometimes I like to add an additional shade of yellow because again, I mix colors on the paper. Then there's my burnt sienna. The thing is that you don't really need a shade of brown for an apple wherever you see like brown colors. Because you can quickly create your own shade of brown by mixing red with grain. That's the good thing. Then I have the red here. I'm going to grab a little water. I'm just going to dilute a little part of it and then clean my brush. And then there's my sap green here. I do have a couple of different shades of green, but I'm going to focus mostly on this one. This is up green. Now that we have our colors slightly diluted with water, we can place the palette on the side. I usually keep my palette on the left side. And I have a couple of water jars. The main one is right here. Actually, this is the one I'm going to use to wet the circle. And on the left side is if I really need to clean my brush. 5. Wetting the Circle: I want you to grab a comfortable brush. A softer brush. Ideally a softer brush. This is my long quill says two and you want to wet the circle. When you wet the circle, think of it like you're brushing the paper in a way. You're messaging the paper. You don't want to just do it one time and call it down, Okay, I'm ready to apply the colors. You want to spend at least like 2 minutes to wet this circle. One of the things you might start noticing is that the area where you wetting starts to buckle slightly. A little bit of buckling is okay. Too much buckling means just the paper, it's probably not good quality. Ideally, you want to paint on 100% cotton water colored paper because then you know you'll be able to act seen layer too much buckling means it'll be hard to have that nice even layer. I'm going to start wetting it. You want to go in circles. Ideally, you don't want to go over the edges of your sketch lines, especially if you have like another object next to it. Because whatever you go over with that water it this way, the paint will flow in there as well. You do want to make sure you don't go over the edges. There's different times where I do allow that. It's okay if the paint flows over the edges, especially if I wet the entire background at the same time as I'm wetting the object. But this is a little different now, we're just focusing on wetting the circle slash apple. Although it's not going to look really like an apple because we don't have a stem or anything like that. However, we are going to refer to one of these apples in the reference image. And I am choosing the middle one because we need something where we can see, okay, this is where we have the most highlighted part. That means right here, you would add less color. This is where you want to start with undertones. You want to start with undertones through the entire apple. However, where you have highlights, sometimes those highlights can be really strong. Something can be really bright. You might want to consider adding blue, for example. Blue will look natural as that color of a highlight. But a very light value, you want it to drive like a very light value. It's not like saturated or anything like that. I've been wing for probably 2 minutes now and I went a little over, just push it in there I guess, and just continue wetting my paper. Started to buckle just a little bit. That tells me that I'm pretty much ready to start applying the colors. Now, I'll give you a tip here. When you wet the paper, you are not using actually enough water. During the process of wetting the object, you might actually end up removing the water. You might not notice that backing happening on the paper for longer, like a longer time, because you continue removing water instead of adding water at the beginning. You might as well just drop a lot of water and play with that. Just move it around. Then when you get closer to that moment when you want to start applying colors, that's when you can start brushing it off, removing it. Or if the whole papers basically what, you can push it over the edges. 6. Applying the First Colors: I want to start actually, where I see the highlights right here. This is the highlighted area. I want to start with those undertones and I have some of this cobalt blue. Either way you can grab fallow blue, cobalt blue shade of blue. Now I like to change the shade of my blue by adding a little bit of to it. Because the way the object looks like, that one color, it's affected by light. And shadows in a different way. When you have a red apple, it depends how that light hits it, right? And then where we have a shadow that red would change, The color of it will change. And the same thing with the highlight. Where's that highlight? Let's just circle it. It's right here. This is like an oval shape. The highlight is somewhere right here. Now we have a little bit of blue there. We can go through it slightly. Now you want to use a very small amount of paint. As you see, there is not much going on here. I used very small amount and if you have too much, then the whole thing is just going to fill in with that blue, right? So we want to control that by grabbing just a small amount. I'm going to clean my brush in the clean water. The next thing I want to grab is the undertone for the red areas, that's going to be my yellow. Now, you can grab two shades of yellow if you have right away. Right away, I'm grabbing the Rosana. I'm only grabbing it because I want to see different shade of that yellow. And I'm not trying to create a new shade of yellow. I want to have these two colors b***d on the paper and slightly separates. I can see different shades of that yellow. Now, when you mix too much of the yellow with the blue, you might start seeing the shade of green because yellow plus blue is green. You want to do this fairly quickly. And which is why also we mix colors on the paper palette. Because if we mix the blue with yellow on the palette, we'll just create a shade of green. That area I'm grabbing more like a milk between water, milk like ratio. This area especially needs yellow undertones. That's because we have green. Green is created by a mix of blue and yellow. That's why you want to start with like a green undertone. But you can also use blue because that's how green is created by a mix of blue and yellow together. I'm placing it everywhere, but where I place that blue is undertone or for the highlight. This is not done yet, because I need to start adding the reds and the actual green. I want to create like a slight transition between the colors. I don't want to jump in right away to my red, I'm going to grab this. There's a yellow, some of the other yellow, whatever yellow you want to grab. And that's when I'm going to start grabbing this quad red, which is my red, right? My main red here. Now, how do you apply it? When you look at the referenced, the most red you see is here and here. And that's where you want to go. Whatever you can see that shade of red, that's where you want to apply it. Now go gently, Try to use the tip of your brush as if you are drawing with a pencil. Try to grab small amounts of paint. Yes, the paint will spread because we're painting wet on wet. If you want to have a little more control, try grabbing thicker paint. However, try grabbing small amounts each time you're grabbing small amounts of paint. Now you want to move around. You don't want to just get stuck on one area here, because that means other parts of this apple circle will dry out faster. You want to keep it all wet at the same time, Longer. It stays wet longer. Somewhere here I would have that stem. I'm not going to worry about it right now. In this lesson, I want to take it slow. I'm going to show you how to first b***d these colors on the paper. Once you place the colors, you can go through them, like through the areas and you can polish it and move the paint around. Now, I do want to make this part a little more intense with the red. I didn't clean my brush, I'm just grabbing some of this quin red. It does feel like I have a little too much water. I'm going to wipe my brush first, slightly on a towel and then come back here. Now, if it feels like I don't have enough water, I'm going to have to come back to my water jar and grab a little water. But this feels right. What it feels like is more like a 2.5 like ratio on the tip of my brush, but not having just much paint on my brush in general. And now you're going for these mid tones. In the way the darkest parts, or not the darkest yet, the mid dark, maybe somewhere here, somewhere here. We're also shading the apple at the same time, specifically staying away from this highlighted part. However, it can't be just like this light, it's a little too light. But I'll get to that moment in a second where I'll show you what you can do to make it softer and b***ded a little better in a way so it's not so bright white. But in the meantime, we can also pull the paint a little bit, but again, you don't want to lose this highlighted area. I'm going to keep going here. Now, why am I going here? On this side, this is all greenish. That's because this part of the apple is shadowed. Now, I will talk more in another segment of this course about the color wheel and why we need it and why it shouldn't be as difficult really to use it. But when you want to create a natural shadow for an object, you want to first determine what is that local color of the object. This side right here is green. When you look at the color wheel, you'll see what is on the opposite side of green. It's red. That means you want to use some red to mix in with that green to create a shadow, natural shadow. But I'll continue adding some more color. Because this is drawing, I won't have that much time if I continue talking and explaining the color wheel. That's why it's going to be covered in a different section part of this course. A little more of the quin red. But you know what, I want to change the shade of my quint. I grabbed more like a heavy cream like ratio between water and paint of that with some brown burnt sienna. And this is a heavier ratio between water and paint. I'm very gently like brushing through basically the painting and I'm going for like the darkest part. Now, Because my paper is drying, I have to quickly think about like, do I want to start adding the shade of green and I do. 7. Adding Yellow & Blue: I'm going to quickly clean my brush. I'm cleaning my brush. I slightly wiped it. I don't want it to be too dry, but this is where I want to start grabbing green. But I want to have a soft transition just like before. This is my yellow and plus green. Try not to overly mix those colors on the palette. Leave that mixing to happen on the paper. Now I'm going to grab some more of the green and add it right in here. And another way to change the shade that green is by adding some of the blue. You would add a little bit of blue again. Why? Because to create a shade of green, you need yellow plus blue. You can play with those additional colors. There is my blue. To change the shade of that grain, I just grabbed some of the blue. I'm not done with adding red either to my apple, to this area right here that's shadowed. This is just the beginning because we can continue playing with this apple as long as the paper stays wet, right? How do we keep it wet longer, basically, by cruising around, going from one area to another area. We're not focusing only on one part. Now, it would be nice to add a little bit of green on top here because that will give it more of a dimension. When we have a little shadow there and a shadow over here, the main highlight is right here. 8. Creating a Shadow Blend: This is also highlighted, or maybe it's just the way the skin looks on the apple. But what I want to do is quickly grab a little bit of tiny bit of blue with the tip of my brush. I'm grabbing it more like a heavy cream, but my brush is pretty wet. It's like, I feel like it's more like a 2.5 R. I wanted to grab the red and blue to continue working on that shadowed part right there. This somewhere here. I have this stem so I can circle it so I know it's right there. Right? You still have paint on your breast with the tip of your breast. You slightly brush it? I just want to brush it slightly. Touch it. I want this part to be a little darker. I'm going to grab again, some of this quina blue, but you can also grab a little bit of green. And then I want a little more of red. It feels more like this, but maybe more green and more blue. There you go. Some point like that, this is a different shade of green. Why is it different? Because the ratios that I'm using here between the colors constantly change. Sometimes I have more of the red, sometimes I'll have more of the green, or maybe blue if I'm adding also blue. I'm going for the shadowed areas, I'm going to leave that top alone. The paper is drying now, I want to show you a way how you can make everything softer. And I have to do this before this is too dry. 9. Damp Brush Technique: I'm going to quickly clean my brush. Please clean your soft brush. Next thing I want you to squish it, like you're making it feel like it's a damp brush but you're squishing it. It looks like this. Even make it in this position, It feels that way. That alone will help you to create a soft b***ding here too. What we're going to do is you're going to brush through your painting just like this, starting in this most highlighted part. And the paint to the highlighted part is not so highlighted. It's not like you're covering it because you want it to be light. But you're pulling the paint so it's all nice and soft. Now, you might want to clean your brush because you're picking up some paint and you're squishing the brush again, removing the water. So it feels damp, but it's squished like this. I'm going to go for these parts right here. Now here's the thing. It's important you want to do this as long as the paper is still shiny. If this is all shiny, it's okay. You're ready to go. If the paper has lost that shine, you know the paper is damp basically, then leave it. You need to leave it because that's how you start lifting colors. You're going to start picking up everything that she already placed in there. That can be frustrating, right? That's why when you see no more shine on that paper, that's when you leave it alone. Now I want to add a little more color with that damp squashed brush. How am I going to do it? I'm going to go for this thick paint basically like a cream top like ratio of that quinoa red, let's say some of the burn scan, you can do this as long as this is still slightly shiny, I am losing that shine. But I can still add color as long as the paper is still slightly shiny and it's not like dry, damp, does not feel damp. And it's the same thing like brush strokes. Here's something to remember and consider. The apple has that pattern. And the way like the lines go, it goes towards the stem. That's how you want to lead those lines. The strokes, you want to pull it that direction. Just like if you were painting the whiskers of a cat. You would be going in a certain direction, not straight. You would follow that pattern. How that fur folds and how it's aligned. You want to do the same thing with the apple. I'm grabbing a little more of that red with the burnt sienna and I'm going to brush through a little bit here. Now this is too dry for me, I'm going to stay away from that part. Now, you can also use like sides of a brush, but however I'm starting to pick up the paint, I need to walk away from it before it's too late. I'm going to try to add tiny bit of green too. I'm grabbing this cream top like ratio between water and paint of just the sap green. I'm going to find a couple areas where I can add a little more. It would be nice to have some blue too. This is when you really need to feel your paper, how wet it is, because if it feels damp, there's no more shine. Walk away from it. Let it dry because we can play more with it later. For me, this is now I'm going to clean my brush. I'm cleaning my brush. That's it. That's pretty much it. You're going to leave it. In the following lesson, we will practice with apples. The next lesson will be about painting an apple with two layers and we're going to also paint a leaf. This is just to b***d the colors on a paper, but we are thinking about the highlight and shadows at the same time. I hope this was helpful. Please let me know if you have any questions. 10. Project 2: Painting an Apple w/ Leaf: In this lesson, I will be teaching you how to paint the actual apple with the stem and with a leaf. Here we're going to do similar things we did in the lesson one where I was teaching you how to blunt the colors on the paper. Here, we're going to begin by wetting the apple, just like before, and we're going to apply colors on wet. Where is that biggest highlight? It's somewhere right here. And I encourage you to grab a pencil so you can draw it for yourself too, but gently because sometimes lines don't come off. Once we are done painting and everything dries and then we use the eraser 90% of the time, it just doesn't come off. It depends, of course, on what color paper you're using. But just for safety, try to have a very light, gentle sketch. Then for the most, like the darkest parts, it's pretty much all this right here. The first thing you want to do is to have your colors predluted with water to a consistency that I like to call heavy cream like ratio between water and paint. This is what it looks like. I do need to have a little more water, tiny bit of water on the side of each of these little islands. Just so you have different ratios on a palette. Two, it's easy for you to grab like this cream top or heavy cream like ratio between water and paint when you need it. Let's begin wetting the paper. Grab a brush, a softer brush that you can use to wet the apple. I'm using a larger brush. This is 24 size only because I want to cover this much faster. You need to spend about two, 3 minutes to wet the circle the apple. Because the longer you wet the object, the more time you're going to have apply the colors, wet on, wet before everything dries out too fast, Before the paper becomes too damp to work on or to continue working on. There's still things you can do when the paper feels damp, like lifting can be done until the very end, but you won't be able to apply colors. For example, if you want to have a nice move layer, I'm just going to wet it for two more minutes. If you are using a flat brush, it's actually a little easier because you can use the side of a brush like that angle to go along the line. Try not to go over the sketch lines because again, it goes there. That means the paint will travel there too. I'm wetting it. You'll notice the paper wants to start buckling a little bit. A little bit of buckling is always okay. Too much buckling is not okay because if my paper puffs up, that means the paint will just go towards the sides and I'm not going to have that smooth layer that I'm going for. Okay. Now, when you first start wetting, you can actually just grab so much water, like it doesn't matter at the beginning, but towards the end, you want that paper to look shiny like this. You don't want any puddles of water. Puddles of water are not good for this type of a painting. You want to try not move it around. There's still too much. You wipe your brush on a towel. Remember not to grab too much. I just did because I was actually trying to demonstrate it. But try not to grab too much because then again, you remove that water from the paper and then it might actually dry out too fast because of that. It's the same thing when you apply colors wet on wet. You want to have enough water with that pain on your brush actually, because it's very easy to start removing colors instead of adding colors. 11. Apply the First Colors: Blue Undertones: I'm going to grab a different brush for this part. This is my long cool size four. I'm going to wet it just like before. We're going to start with the highlights. Here is my cobalt blue and I want tiny bit of quin bread. But try not to mix it too much. Just grab the two colors. This is more like a between water to milk like ratio. I'm going to circle it again. This is where my highlights are. Like somewhere here I do have quite a bit of paint now. I have two choices. I can wipe the brush or I can continue spreading it towards like the greenish parts too. Because I do see I'm that blue undertone in here too. Might as well go around the stem part. Now, I'm going to wipe my brush. And then I have to be careful because if I don't have enough water, then I'm going to start grabbing it from the paper. I need to grab a little more water. I'm actually going to go back to grab a little more of this, but this time I want to have a little more of the quin red. I'm, I have something here, I don't know what it is, something on my paper. And then I'm going to apply this like a blue violet. Because whenever you mix blue and red together, you create a shade of blue violet, just like before. We're just going to slightly spread it not too much. We do want to see that bluish undertone though. Now the next one will be our yellows. I'm going to clean my brush. Quickly clean it. Clean it again. I slightly touch it on the paper. I'm on the towel. I don't want to have a damp brush. I need to have enough of that water there. There's a little bit of red, but my main color here is the yellow, the yellow tones and plus a little bit of rosa. This is my imo rosa. A little bit of red. Now, I'm not going to go directly over the blue highlights around it. Whatever I can see that the most of that red basically in the apple for sure, on the top there. Please remember that anytime you go back to that palette to grab more color that b***d, right, of the blue or not even blue. Now, yellow and red, you change the ratio between red and yellow or yellows. You never have the same b***d on your brush right now. I want to have slightly more of the red. I just grab some of that, more of the quin red. I'm going back to the same areas, towards the same areas, whatever. I feel like that yellow is an undertone for the red, like over here for sure. Not only that, also for the green parts, I want some of that yellow as well. Why is that again? Because to create a sheet of green, you need blue and yellow. That's how you want to change the shade of that green. I'm going to travel a little bit here. I'm going to push through a little bit here. Just gently because I don't want to lose my highlighted part. Now, I want to have a soft transition between the red or the yellows and reds. I still need a little bit of yellow. This is more like a milk like ratio. Now, why milk like ratio? Why not grabbing like thicker paint? Because right now, I still want the paint to spread. As long as I don't grab much on my brush, I will have control. I do want that paint to spread and this is why I am painting this wet on. Wet, right? You're painting this wet on let, because you want that flow to happen. It's about like how much paint that water you have on your breast. You want to feel it out. Give it some time because everything takes practice things out on your brush. Then I'm going to go along this sketch line just so I have a nice shape of this apple. Now I want to start adding more of the red. Now fill it out, so you have enough of that water in your brush. Because again, it's super easy to start removing that paint from the apple. At this stage, I need a little more of the red. I want a little more to make it a little brighter in some of the areas not looking for like the mid tones. Maybe over here for sure, like I see through the green parts here. And then over here, we still didn't start adding the greens. I'm saying greens because even if you have one shade of green, you can change that shade of green by adding a little bit of blue to it, or you start with the yellow plus green. Why? Again, it's because to create a shade of green, you need blue and yellow. I want to press a little harder whenever you see me pressing like this. A little harder on the paper. That's because I'm trying to release more paint from my brush. But for the most part, I think you notice that I am actually using just the tip of my brush very gently here. This is my little stem, right? Well, I don't want to forget about it. I do want to work on it is just, it's not the time for it yet because this part can be easily lifted too, to create like these nice highlights in there. Here, maybe a little more here. Don't be afraid to go back to these parts to add more color. Since you still have color on your brush here. Why am I adding even the red here? Because as I mentioned in the lesson one, to create a natural shadow for the object first, you want to determine what is that local color. The local color for this part of the apple is green. Green. You look at the green on the color wheel. What's on the opposite side of the green? It's red. We can add some red to this area here because it's shadowed, that will look natural. Now what I need to do is clean my brush. And let's remember, we don't need to go too dark here because we're going to add second layer. 12. Adding Colors & Damp Brush Technique: I'm going to start with that soft transition. This is my yellow, just because I used before, yellow. And then there's some of that subgrainI have two colors. Try not to overly mix them on the palettes. Again, I'm going to grab some yellow and then there's my sub grain. Then I'm going to go for these parts that felt against greenish, which is here. Let's see where else would be nice to add it again on the top here. This is very much like we did in the exercise video, painting that circle apple. Then I'm going to press a little harder or for the full brush just to release more paint from my brush. Then very gently, just spreading or applying this sheet of green. We created that sheet of green by adding some yellow to it. And I'm going to go through a little bit here, but it's time for me to just grab more of that green. Now, I want this to be also thicker between heavy cream or actually I should say 2.5 and heavy cream like ratio between one and paint. This is just sub green now, this is just sub grain. In a moment I'm going to grab, start grabbing or adding blue as well. That's to change the shade of the grain here. Whatever I feel like I see like the most of that grain, that's where I want to add it. But you can also go through these parts where we have the reds, right? That would make it pretty. This is fallow blue. And then there's my sap grain. I need to add a little more of that sap grain because that was a little too bluish. What would help is adding now some of this red. I didn't clean my brush. I did not clean my brush. I just grabbed some of this red. And now that looks way more like what we see in the reference image. Now, I don't want to go too far ahead with this because we can definitely paint the apple with just one layer. It can be done like 100% However, I want to show you this part in this lesson, how you can add even more vibrancy with the second layer. That's something that we sold plan ahead because that's the case. We don't need to add that much color with this first layer. We don't need to make it like super vibrant. Now I do want a little more of the red. What I'm going to do is grab with that slightly damp brush, a little bit more of that quin red as long as this is still shiny. Although I want to wipe my brush first because it's a little too wet, it feels more damp now, I want this to be more 2-2 and heavy cream like ratio, but more like on a damp brush. Have more control. The paint is not as spreading much and as fast as it was before. Now I'm going to grab again, this like a heavier ratio of the quint red and some burnt sienna. I'm going to go for the more vibrant part, which is like right in here. But again, I got to remind myself this is not the final layer. What I want to do next in just a second is basically clean my brush, wipe it. That trick is to work it with a damp brush, going to pull it a little bit. I'm going to clean it clean, clean it well, clean it well. Make sure you remove that water from the brush so it looks like this. It's like a damp brush. Now, with that damp brush, as long as this is still shiny, you can brush through. Now, this is a little too dry of a brush. I had to redo this because it was a little too dry and also the area is too dry. I'm going to walk away from that part, but I'm going to wipe my brush. Go, actually, for this area to confuse you, what you want to do is only go through the areas that feel still like they're shiny. Then you pull the paint, brush it with that damp brush. Again, I don't want to confuse you with that part. What I did, what happened here? This was a little too dry. I'm walking away from it. I'm going to just let it settle the way it is with that second layer. I'll work on it to add more vibrancy. For example, this is our first layer. It will be really nice once we add it, the second layer, because we'll have a little more color to add over there, the reds, everything will settle even prettier here. What we do about the stem, I want to clean my brush before this is too dry. What I need to do is basically grab like a brush for more control. And I have my round golden one. What I'm going to do is grab thicker paint. This is going to be cream top of soft green, and some of the quint red, I'm going to find that stem which is like right here. Why am I grabbing the two colors other than you use the two colors for the natural shadows? Another reason is also because that part feels more brownish. And to create a natural shadow of brown, you can also just use the colors you're already using, green plus red, a shade of brown, we might as well just use that what I have on my brush. It's really thick paint in a way. But just on the tip of my brush, this is like a cream top like ratio between water and paint. You only want to have it on the tip of your brush and you want that creamy paint like this to grab it from your palette. And then you're going to apply it towards a couple of the areas, just so we have the beginning of that stem somewhere here. We're going to add it some. I'm not adding paint everywhere, and I want you to think about it, not to add it everywhere, just some areas. And then we can work it more later. We can also lift the colors. For example, I'll grab a little more of the red. I'll go through this part, go through this part. And we can go on the outside too. This is not going to have background like this painting. And then you can pull it a little bit more, you can keep going. But this is drying too fast or this is almost like damp. I should not even touch that area because I'm picking up water from here. That means this is not any more like a cream top. This has become more like a half and a half. So I have to be careful because if a drier area meets a wet brush, that's right there, bloom. We have to be very careful. Now, the last thing we could do for that stem, clean out the brushes. Probably a minute. Say, let's wait a minute until that shine is completely gone from the paper. Right now, this is still shiny. Now, once that shine goes away, I can go in between here, that paint that I just placed there. And I can, I can lift the colors and those hit parts of stem part that will look even more natural. So let's just wait a minute. 13. Lifting the Colors: I'm back and I wait at about a minute, I'm going to use a smaller brush. This is a round size three brush. And I'm going to clean the brush, wipe it on a towel first. Very well, it's just at the end brush. And you're going to go through the parts that you want to add, those highlights and separate parts of that stem. Now, what is the perfect timing to lift the colors once that shine is almost gone, that's when you want to start lifting. I'll show you something. This is actually a good spot to lift because if I go in a little circle right here, I have a little spot right there, right? I just uncovered a spot right there. And the same thing here. This is a perfect timing now to lift colors here through the apple, you can see like those little white dots, right? Why not to do that? Just for practice, go in a circle, Wipe your push on a towel first, and go in a tiny circle just to create these white spots. At the same time. Don't forget about the stem, because maybe you need to lift a little more. In a separate segment, I am showing how to lift the colors. This is no different. This is the same thing. You wait for that moment till all that shine is gone from the paper, and that's when you start lifting the colors. I'm lifting it to resemble what I see like in the reference. Doesn't have to be perfect. Nothing has to be exactly the same. Has to be perfect, just like we see in the reference. This is a painting, then I'm back here to create like some little circles. Now, make sure to clean your brush quite often because when we lift like this, we're picking up the color from the paper. When you pick up the color, that means you might move it over to another area. Maybe like a couple times we can do it. But then I suggest to wipe the brush or clean the brush first, then wipe it on a towel again. You can also just touch the paper like this with the tip of your brush. That creates some texture as well. It's just with the tip of your brush, What's happening is all this lifting. It's almost like creating blooms. Actually, tiny, tiny blooms. But you're controlling these tiny, tiny blooms because your brush is not overly wet or anything. It's just a brush. Now you can go back to the same areas where you already lift it. If you want to re lift, if you want to re lift, maybe add more light, then you go back and you lift again and again and again. We do need to wait for the apple to dry before we can start working on the leaf. Why is that? It's because if we don't wait for the apple to dry, then we start wetting the leaf. Then whenever we start applying colors towards the leaf, those colors in the water will start going over towards the apple. At that point, the apple will be almost dry. When a wet area meets almost dry area, that's when you create balloons. We don't want that. Once. This is 100% dry, that's when we can start working on the leaf. 14. Creating Different Shades of Green: Now, before we begin working on the leave, I want to share something with you that will open up your eyes and will make a lot of sense when it comes down to choosing colors for your next painting. When you are painting leaves or even an apple. This is something that helped me when I first started learning how to paint with watercolors. Before I would use three or four even different shades of green based on what I see in the reference image. Leaf is green. But then, okay, maybe I will use this shade of green. Maybe that one maybe Hookers green, maybe leaf green. But the truth is, all you really need is one shade of green and then blue and yellow to change the shade of that green. First of all, here's the color wheel. My intentions are not to confuse you here or intimidate you by the color wheel. I want to make it the easiest possible way for you to understand something about that green color here. Our green when you take a look at it, right, it's right here. Now, how is that green created by a mix of blue and yellow? As soon as you mix blue and yellow together, this is what you can achieve right here. Now, this is all nature. It's not something I just made up. Once you start seeing this in your work, when you look at the reference and you start breaking it down like, hey, wait a second. I can create that shade of green just by adding a little bit of blue to my grain. Or even starting with a yellow undertone. Everything changes. And that's when your paintings start to look more natural and realistic too. But the realistic part, of course, it comes with adding that depth. We always work with light and shadows, but let's focus on these undertones and how to change that shade of green when we paint a leaf. Now there's green leaves and then we have of course, red leaves and some other yellow gold leaves and so on. But for now we're just going to focus on a green leaf. When we see that green leaf in the reference, what happens if we add a little more of the blue? It becomes more bluish like a sea green green blue. This is what happens when we add some yellow to our green. We go here, it becomes more like a leaf green, like a yellow green, right? That's what we're going to be doing in this class. In this class and then the following course, when we paint the full painting with all these apples with an optional background. Now before we paint a leaf, I want you to grab a spare sheet of the watercolor paper just for practice. You're going to do this with me, so you get the idea of mixing those colors. Now when I say mixing colors, you want to mix colors on the paper, actually, not in your palette. When you mix colors on your palette, it's like the intentions would be to create a brand new color. But if you think about mixing colors on the paper, you start seeing the separation of colors and you start seeing different shades of that green. For example, I'll show you the difference too. First of all, if you have any green, I guess I have sap green here. I'm just going to grab this milk like ratio of the sep green. And this is my round brush, here is my main green, this is the main green I use. And then I'm going to clean my brush. Now what happens when I just grab blue? I'm going to show this to you. There's my blue. Then I'm going to, with a clean brush, grab some of this yellow. I'm creating my own shade of green. I'm going to place it right next to it. Of course, it is a different shade from sap green because that sap green was probably created with a different blue. But the idea is here, right there, this is a green. Now I'm going to grab some of that yellow again and place it right here. And then I'm going to clean my brush and grab the same blue which is fellow blue, there it is. This is the yellow I use, this is the blue I used. I combined those two together to create a brand new shade of green. Now this was different because I purposely mix the colors on my palette to achieve that shade of green. However, if I want to change the shade of that green, I just need to use a little more blue to it with it. Or I need to add some more yellow to that grain, and then I'll create different shades, variations of this green. Now whenever I paint, I do like to have my main green that already is in the tube, such as sap green. There's my sap grain, right? To change the shade of my sep grain, I will start very often with a yellow, There's Miami yellow. Then without overly mixing colors on my palette, I'll quickly grab the step grain here is that shade of green. This is like a yellow green. I changed the shade of my sap green. Because I use yellow, I'm going to do the same thing with the fallow blue. The brush is clean. I'm grabbing some of this fall blue. There's my fallow blue. Now I'm going to quickly grab some of this green. Again, I don't want to overly mix these colors. I want these colors to separate on the paper. Here is a combination of my sap green with the fall blue. I hope this makes sense, but this is how I was able to create different shades of this sap green, the main color from my tube right here, just by adding some of the primary yellow and then adding some of the fallow blue. Now we're also going to be doing something like this. We're going to grab some of this yellow, some of the green. Then why not to grab some of the blue? Now we have three colors. Now I am mixing colors on the paper. Again, not my palette. I can see this area is more bluish, this area is more yellowish. But it's the same colors. When you think about it, you have so many different sheets of green. That's how you want to think about when you paint a simple leaf. You really don't need like five or ten different greens, like shades of green coming from a tube, a watercolor tube. Because you can just create your own shades. And you want to mix these colors on the paper so you can see the separation of colors. Just like here, you can see some more of the sep green and then some more of the yellow. 15. Creating a Natural Shadow: Knowing now how we're going to create those different seeds of green over the leaf, we can start moving closer towards painting the leaf, but not quite yet. There's one more thing that's important to explain. When you take a look at the leaf, especially this area right here, when you see in the reference image, this part of the leaf right here is behind the apple. This part of the leaf is shadowed. How do we go about a shadow? I paint shadows like this. This is a soft shadow. I will paint wet on wet. But what colors am going to use? First thing you want to do is determine what is the local color of your object. In this case, we're looking at the leaf. The leaf is green. Where's that green? Right in our color wheel is right here. What is the complementary color of green? It's red. A complimentary color is on the opposite side of that color on the color wheel. Complimentary color to red is green. Complimentary color to green is red. That means that you want to add some red to your green to create that natural looking shadow. Now, you can also add blue. Why is that? Because to create a green, you need blue and yellow. That's why you can also play with colors. You don't have to limit yourself to only like using green and red. You can also break this one down into two. Okay, we have a yellow and blue. How about adding a little bit of blue to our mix with that green and red to make that shadow a little darker? I'm going to demonstrate this to you first on the spear sheet of watercolor paper. Here's a spear sheet, right? Again, we're thinking about our green leaf. I'm going to grab a little bit of sap green here. I'm going to place it right in here. Then I'm going to clean my brush because I want to grab a clean red, which is my corner red. I'm going to move this right here. What you will notice is that actually by mixing green with red, you're creating a shade of brown. This is how you can actually create a natural shade of brown too. But this is what you want to start using for that shadow. Now, what other color I mentioned you can use some blue too, because to create a shade of green, you need blue anyway. Then when you add that here, it doesn't feel right. It's a little too bluish. That's when you want to grab again, maybe a little bit of red. You go back here, you're changing the shade of brown, right? This is more like a green brown, say, but that's the idea right there. You want to use a complementary color of that local color, which is green for our leaf to create a natural shade of that shadow. And I'm going to grab a little bit of green here, just because we're talking about green. And then I'm going to place a little bit of red right next to it. And then as a third option blue, which is my fallow blue, this is a combination of the green and red. And this is a combination of all these three colors right in here. That's how you want to create that natural shade of the shadow. We'll work on that in just a moment. I'm going to place these on the side. 16. Applying Colors: Wet on Wet : The first thing you want to do is wet the leaf because we're going to paint it wet on wet. This is my long coil size to brush. You also want to have your colors slightly pre diluted with water. I suggest like a heavy cream, something that feels like heavy cream, heavy cream like ratio between water and paint. I'm going to start right here. You do want to take your time wetting. And here's another thing. The bottom right here, this is a fold, right, folded leaf. The inside part of the leaf, we can see that it's shadowed, it's inside there, right? Do we paint it now or later? We can paint it now and then with the second layer, we can make this part darker. And it's much easier this way. Let's do it this way. We're just going to wet the entire leaf all at once. Take your time. Just like when we were wetting the apple. Being careful so I don't go over the edges. Because if I do and I start applying colors, that means those colors will travel over the edges. At first, I do use quite a bit of water, but then as I get closer towards that moment, I'm ready to start applying colors. That's when I start pushing the water towards the other areas. But then I also remove it with a brush. And if I have to, I will wipe my brush on a towel to now I'm almost there. What I'm going to do is start with yellow and some blue undertones. Because to create that shade of green, all I need to do is play with the blue and yellow basically. But I also want to have like a main grain, which is my sap green. I'm going to start with this im on yellow the paint dried out of it. But what I want on my brush is something between water milk like ratio. Then I'm going to grab a little bit of sap green right away because it's not like I need just the yellow. It's not like I have parts of a leaf that look very yellow. That's why you can also grab a of yellow to like Rawia, for example, because that part there feels like a rawia you're going to pull through and watch how the paint flows. I do want some of that bluish undertone in there too. I don't want it just to be like yellowish for now. I'm just going to let that in there just getting rid of the paint. But I'm going to clean my brush, clean, clean it now. I'm going to grab this fallow blue. I have a little too much water. I'm just going to grab this fallow blue right here. Then I want slight, just tiny amount of grain right there. Then I'm going to go for other areas that feel bluish. There are some areas that do feel bluish. Now, part of the leaf like for example, the bottom here, not the folded part of the inside but the top do feel lighter. I stay away from that area over. Just keep an eye on how the paint is flowing there. I don't have too much. But you can go back to the same areas and go through it multiple times, releasing the paint. Try to use just the tip of your brush as if you're just drawing with a pencil in a way then you're pushing through. What you're trying to do is just place more of that color, that blue with the green next. And on top of that green with yellow right there, I'm pushing it over here. These sites as well. Now, how do I make it dark, right? This is not rich yet. I'm not even there yet. Like to start working on the shadows first. I want to grab some thicker amount of paint. This is my sub green, but I don't want this to be just sub green, doesn't feel right. I'm going to grab some of the file blue. I'm trying to grab more like at least 2.5 ratio between water and paint. Before this dries too fast, too much, I need to start adding it. And the closest I can get towards the apple right there and here. And pull it, pull it down a bit. But keep this part much lighter if you can. 17. Adding a Shadow to the Leaf: Now it's time for me to start adding a little bit of red to my grain. So I can get closer to what I see in the reference I'm going to grab with that dirty brush. Some of this drier quin red here is actually from the previous mix when I was demonstrating the color b***d that was sap green with already some of the red at first, this is more like a 2.5 ratio between water and paint. I'm going to go for like the mid dark areas because there's a little area right here, for example. Again, you're trying to paint with the tip of your brush. Even though like you grab paint with probably half of a brush. But try to get used to that idea because a lot of it, like you don't need to switch to a smaller brush. For example, here we're getting close towards the apple. And technically to have a lot of control, you would want to have a small brush, like a round two. But if you teach yourself and train yourself to work with the tip of your brush, then you won't have to switch. And then when you need more paint, you just press harder on the paper with that brush to release more paint. We'll get to the veins later. Like right now, we don't need to think about it. This is still wet. What I really need to do is make sure I have a nice shadow in there. I need to grab now a much thicker paint, something that feels like a cream top. Here's my red and here's my green. Now I do want a little bit of blue too. I want to make it really dark. There's the b***d, this feels like a cream top like ratio between water and paint. With quote brushes, they hold a lot of water and paint. You might want to grab like a stiffer brush, like a round eat, for example. If you feel like you have paint there but it's just too diluted with water, it's a matter of feeling it out really, I'm going to keep going next to my apple to release that thicker paint. However, what's happening is because my paper is still wet, as soon as I touch the paper, I dilute this paint with water more and more. It's not as thick anymore. Now, I do want to grab even more. I'm going to grab again, thick paint here. This is like a cream tub like ratio between water and paint of quin red. There's my sub green right here. And then I do want it to be darker. I'm grabbing some of the fallow blue. This is a good example actually because this is thick and it's dark. Now where do I go with it? I go towards the darkest parts that I can see of that leaf is like right here. Basically it's right of the apple right here in this part where I'm adding it, this you can see like the difference. I'm creating a contrast. At the same time I'm creating a contrast then before it's too late, before it dries on me too much, too fast. I want to show you that little trick, how we smooth things out. What I need to do, what I really need to do is clean this brush very quickly. Clean it all the way. Now, wipe your brush well on a towel so it feels like this. You're squishing your brush to the point that it looks like this. Now, it won't look like this if you're using a stiffer round brush. But this is a soft brush, it's a quit brush, I'm squishing it to this. Then I'm going to pull this just like that to make it soft. Now please keep in mind that this has to be still wet to do this. Otherwise you're just going to lift the colors. You need to see that shine still being on the paper. The paper needs to be still shiny. If you want to pull with that damp brush, this is a damp brush. Another thing we can do, which we definitely can do in our main part of the course, is grabbing a small brush. This is my round two. I'm going to grab that. Sap green actually. But this is burn burn on the tip of my brush. I want this to be more like heavy cream but this is like a cream top. Well, let's see how that works out then. Add a little bit of that towards like a couple areas that feel like there's some of that burn sina just to add something to our leaf just more to it. Another thing, what you will notice is that after using that squishy damp brush and going through, right, you are actually drawing your paper, that technique of softening it. It means that you're removing more of that water from the paper and this will drive faster. If you want to lift the colors, you need to k, really pay attention to that shine on the paper, because as soon as that shine is gone, that's when you want to lift the colors. This is my rigor size two. I'm going to right here, this is almost perfect. Timing. I can lift the colors. Maybe not perfect yet, but I'm going to go right in here. I can lift the colors for these veins. Now the veins are traveling different directions. It's not perfect, straight line. And we got to remember that there's nothing straight. Don't have straight lines really, like in nature, everything is off. So are these veins. I'm just lifting the colors. There you go. In just a moment, I'm going to show you demonstrate the lifting using indigo color. Indigo color is a very good color to practice with, lifting, because it lifts beautifully. I'm just going to go back here to lift a little more every time before I touch the paper. I wipe this brush on a towel. You have to wipe your brush on a towel, you don't, and your brush is soaking wet. You're basically going to create a bloom right there. Still the time allows, you just continue lifting. It really depends like how many veins you want and it's just a matter of preference. Another thing is if we had an apple on this side, then we would have a nicer contrast. Because we do have like the lighter lines over the edges so we can lift those as well. We're not done with the leap because we still have to add the layer here. 18. How to Lift Colors: But in the meantime, as we're waiting for it to dry, I'm going to show you now how to lift the colors on a spare sheet of a water color paper using an indigo color. Indigo color. I'm going to use a quote, I'm going to grab color indigo right here. Now, if you do a wet on dry, then it'll be much faster to get to that moment of lifting and need a little more water. I'm going to try to use between water and milk like ratio. This is wet on dry use Indigo because it's super easy to see that lifting or to get to that lifting. Here's my indigo. Different parts of the paper were dry at different speed because it just depends how much water we used in one area. This is all shining. This is not when you want to lift the colors, you could especially like you're painting animals and you have this big animal on the paper. Let's say you're painting not nine by 12, but maybe like 13 by 19. That's a large sheet of what I call it, paper. You added, maybe too much paint in one area or you just want to make it like lighter. Just because then you can lift at this stage. Sure. But to create these fine vein lines or like that, perfect lifting that looks sharp. That's not the timing it. You want to wait for this shine to be like almost gone? I want to say almost gone, but it's pretty much when it's gone. I start when the shine is almost gone. Because if I have a large area to lift, then I need to start earlier. Otherwise I won't be able to lift like 90% of whatever I want to lift. Because it's never 100% but at least 90% Let's say this area right here is drying faster than this. This is, there's no shine right here. Actually, there's no shining right here. I'm going to start lifting the colors. I like to lift. Record brush, this is my record brush. But you can lift with a round brush, two or eight, whatever brush you want here. This is the area that's perfect because that shine is completely gone. Then I'm going to keep moving this way. This actually is going to be a little easier right here because the shine is almost gone. You just practice lifting colors. Now this area right here is still shiny. You can lift but it's not as clean as here. Now, you can always go back and re lift. You don't wipe your brush on a towel, you have that water. This is what happens, you create a bloom. That's why it's extremely important that you wipe your brush first on the towel before you lift again, you can go back to the same areas and lift. Lifting is essential in water colors. It creates softness. It adds softness and also helps you to bring back the highlights. And you don't have to use like white gush or just any white color. You don't have to cover up any mistakes. It's a good technique to master, really then Once you know how to lift colors, it's opens up like the door to like so many possibilities. And it changes your style of painting too. Because you start thinking in a different way instead of like, okay, I need to use white. You think about lifting. Wait a second, my painting will look cleaner if I lift colors. This right here is actually a good area because there's no more shine. I just keep going through, this is still a little wet, but basically I start lifting when it's like this. When you press harder, like with the full body of the breast, you lift more. Really just depends what lifting you want. Lines or fine lines, let's say like this or maybe small dots and so on. That's pretty much it, about lifting the colors. Let's focus again on our apple. Since this is still actually, it's dry, but this feels a little damp. I'm going to have to wait for a minute or two, and so I can start adding second layer towards the apple and also this little area here. 19. Applying Colors: Wet on Wet : All right, how do we add that second layer for the apple? It's actually pretty simple. All we need to do is rewet it and add colors towards the same areas as we've added those colors before. But a lot of times when I add the second layer, I actually do this to create more contrast. For example, I'm okay with colors, but one area of the apple or some other object is not dark enough. I will still rewet the entire apple, but only add, let's say, colors the bottom, to create that contrast more contrast. Let's begin by wetting the apple, because that's the easiest way to explain. Here's another thing. When you have a significant highlight, let's not like here. Maybe my highlight is way bigger than what we see in the reference. But if we did have that highlight, I want to say maybe something else. Like when we see that branch and the reference image on the bottom, there's like a branch and there's a big highlight. You could stay away from that area when it comes to wetting the paper. But in this case, here, we want to wet the whole thing Again, you want to mix colors on the paper. Now, I talk a lot about mixing colors on the paper. One thing is about seeing the separation of colors to see that natural shade of green or red. But another reason why you want to mix colors on the paper and not your palette is actually to avoid muddiness of colors. Muddiness of colors can easily happen with watercolors when we use too many colors, or even if you're painting with professional watercolors, you can still get into muddiness of colors. That can easily happen, That's Y. I mix colors on the paper, not palette. Now here's another thing to consider when you rewet something you already painted. First of all, use a clean, clean water. Number two, use a soft brush. What's happening is some colors, regardless of how good the paper is for layering, some colors can still slightly get reactivated, especially if we use this cream top like ratio or heavy cream like ratio between water and paint. Let's say if I used here that cream top and the color was lifting, it would be easy for me to activate or reactivate it. You don't want to spend too much time rewetting, you just want to actually make it wet enough so you can add that second layer. But you want to keep an eye on all these areas so you don't lift really the colors. If you do, then do it very, very gently and quickly again. Soft brush uses soft brush, just like before. I use some of the yellow. Here's my Imed yellow. I use some of the Quinn which is my main red. I want to make this part right here a little more vibrant. I'm going to place these colors right here. Go for the highlights. Maybe if the highlights are a little too much. This is like a water to milk like ratio on my brush. What I have right now, I don't like the orange shade of orange as much. So I'm going to mostly grab now some of the quin red. I don't want the apple to feel like orange now. I'm just grab or like the shade of orange that I'm applying. I want this to feel more reddish. I grab more like a clean version of qu red. Here's my red, right? I'm going to place a little more red. Let's see over here. Now this is again like a water milk like ratio. The paint is diluted with water, so the paint is spreading. Don't need that much control right now. Then I do see some pattern here. I'm just going to pull through here and a little more of that red right in here. What would change the shape of that red here is if I added a little bit of blue. Actually this is cobalt blue. So I'm going to grab some of the fallow blue. Fallow blue, and then there's my con red. Okay. This is more like what I see in my reference. I had to wipe my brush a little bit on the towel just because I had a little too much of that. But now I changed the shape of my red just because I added some blue. There's red and there's blue. When you mix red with the blue, you create a shade of purple. But also like it just depends how much blue because you can still make it. It just will become like a cooler and that's what I want for. I went for that cooler shade of red. I still have the paint on my brush and you know, why not to go through those areas just a little more. That's just another idea of how you can change the shade of your red. You could do it by adding yellow, but you can also do it by adding blue. 20. Applying Additional Colors: First I'm going to grab my mis, along yellow and then I'm going to grab some of this green. Now I'm going to add this green with the yellow towards, like the most green yellow areas. Like a yellow green which is like right here and right here. Maybe on top a little bit there. Then why not go in here too, where we added some of the red. Then maybe on the bottom as well. Now with that same brush, because I don't need to clean it. Just a little more water, I'm going to grab this. So green, here's my fellow blue. Trying not to overly mix these colors, then go for the darkest part you see. Now this, what I have on my brush feels like it's too diluted with water. I'm going back, I wipe my brush slightly on a towel. I'm trying to grab more like a 2.5 like ratio. Again, if it feels too diluted again, I'm wiping my brush on a towel and going back here, adding this towards the darkest parts of the apple that I can see. Now we do see that lines here, something like this can be achieved by lifting colors. I don't necessary to make the apple look pretty because it's already prettier. I'm just going to go just without lifting that part. I grab a little more of the blue just to go around here, for example. Now here's a question for you. How can we shape this more, change the shade of this side of the apple? I'll give you a minute to think about it. What color we need to add to our grain to make this darker? To change the shade. To change the shade of this green, I have on my brush. All right, you're ready for this. All we need is a little bit of red. There's my red, que red. Then there is some of this set green. Try to grab like a thicker paint. I'm actually going for much thicker. More I'd say heavy cream like ratio. Go for the darkest parts if it feels too brownish. Because again, when we mix red with green together, we create a shape of brown. Then go back and add or grab a little more of the green and you can also grab some of the blue. I also grab a little bit of the blue. The other thing, what we can do and we will do is we're going to soften this with our DM brushes and then you can go back or go towards the stem area too. And that's the area where we lift it earlier with our previous layer. And we can do the same thing, you're just looking for the darkest parts, whatever you can add this shade. Right Again, we're mixing colors on the paper, but this is like red and plus green and plus blue. I'm going to grab a little more of the red just because I want to be a little more shaded right in here. That shadow right there gives us dimension and that's what we want. I'm going to clean my brush, clean it, clean it in the clean water squish my brush as I am wiping it. It looks like a damp brush but it's squished. And I'm going to do the same thing as I showed you before. We're going to go through it and brush it. We're going to brush our apple. We're going to smooth it. Make it really nice and smooth. But gently, gently, I feel like I could add a little bit of blue there. I'm just going to grab a little bit of fallow blue with that stem brush, just to have a little bit of blue that changes actually a lot. When we add that, I'm going to clean my brush again. Leave it. 21. Using a Smaller Brush : And another thing what we can do is grab like a smaller brush. I'm grabbing my round two smaller detail brush and I'm going to grab, let's see, cream, top of this Akron red. And there's my se green. And then I'm going to go for the stems. And now I'm going to add it towards the darkest ears, just like before. If we want to make it and we can grab some flow blue for example, or any blue you have, you could use ultra rain if you want to. You can use some other basically set of blue. If you don't have fallow blue, you're going for the darkest spots, little tiny spots that you can see there, tiniest spots wherever we can spot something darker, you can even go back here because this is still wet. Just to add some dark, if you want to, you can add some spots to your apple. It's totally up to you. The last step for this class will be to color the bottom part of this leaf. Again, the leaf is folded. We didn't need to divide this into two parts. All we have to do now is wet it. This is my round to brush and I'm wetting it. I'm just going to wet it. Then we're going to apply the same colors, basically with an intention of making this darker, the closest to this line right here on top, just like with the other leaves. I'm going to start with some of this yellow plus my green. And I'm still going towards the top. Even though this is not the darkest sheet that I have, I'm going to grab more of that yellow green. Then I want some of this green plus fallow blue. I'm trying to grab more like a heavy cream like ratio that became a little too blue. I'm really going towards the top parts, right underneath the, this main part here that we just painted. Just like before we need to think about the shadows, we need red with our green. We can also have some of the blue in there. I basically just grab the b***d that I already had on my palette since we've been painting using this b***d already. Do we need to lift that part? Not so much, it's just the folded part. If you need to make it darker, grab b***d of sap, green or green with some of the blue and make it like a cream top like ratio between water and paint. That's it for this part of the class. We just painted a realistic apple. We were working with light and shadows. We thought about the contrast. The most important is the mix part. Mixing colors on the paper, You were the green with yellow, green with the blue. And then to create shadows, you were adding red to the green with an addition of blue. I hope this was helpful. One more thing we've learned here is lifting the colors. We're also lifting colors to create veins, but also here. One more thing I guess we could do. We can also go back and re, lift the stem if we want to. Let's move on now to the main part of this course, and let's start painting all these beautiful apples. 22. Overview of the Main Project : Welcome to lesson number three. In this part, we're going to be painting three apples with those branches and with an addition of the leaves. Again, this is our painting, the apple from the previous lesson. This was painted with two layers. Now, do we need two layers for these apples? It really depends what do you see after that first layer? Is there enough vibrancy? Are you happy with that vibrancy? Most importantly, is there an F contrast between light and shadows? Here in this example there actually, I was happy with it like there was an F contrast between the light and shadows. And it was, vibrancy was okay for me. But I really wanted to show you how to add that second layer. Now let's remember, adding a second layer doesn't always work because it depends from the watercolor paper you're using. For example, if you're using a cellulose watercolor paper, when you start rewetting apple or any object, you might notice that you are actually lifting colors. That's because it's not like 100% cotton. What a color paper. But it also depends from surface sizing. Not all cotton papers will behave the same way too. You got to keep that in mind. There's papers I recommend and I like to paint on. I know I will be always successful with that second layer, but if I was painting on, let's say honeymules, Britannia or Honeymulese Harmony with a color paper, I would not go for that second layer. Because with that second layer I would most likely lift the colors because it's a cellulose paper. I'm going to place this one on the side. Now, if you already painted it, then I suggest you have this somewhere in front of you. You can use that as the inspiration and just something like the reference, so you can see like how you added the colors and everything. We're going to focus on this painting right here. The sketch is available for download. We're going to start from the left side only because I'm right handed. Otherwise, I would start from the right side. But if you are, let's say left handed, then you want to start here probably you would want to fast forward basically and find this apple. But I'm going to start on the left side here. We're going to do everything is the same, like exactly the same way. We're going to layer this apple, this apple, and this apple. We're going to wet it and then apply colors wet on wet. I'm not going to paint those water droplets. That's something that I will do in a different class. I'm going to omit the water droplets. Now, this apple, when you take a look at the reference it has like these white spots. This is where you can lift the colors with a small price, for example. We'll get to that point and I'll explain more. Now when you also look at this apple in the reference image, what you will notice is that the bottom of this apple is shadowed more shadow than this main apple here. This apple seems like it's mostly more in the foreground, But it does seem a little bit out of focus. It just depends how the person was, I guess, taking the image. But whatever the focus was on this one is also in focus. For this one though, we need to add, or make sure we add enough of the shadows right in here. 23. Applying Colors: Wet on Wet : The first thing, I want you to take a look at your palette and make sure that your colors are slightly pre diluted with water to a consistency that I like to call like the heavy cream like ratio. You don't want to have colors diluted, so it feels like water, like everything is just watered down. You always want to have a thicker paint there, something that feels like in the middle and then maybe a little bit of that water to milk like ratio. That's because we're painting wet on wet and we want to have just different variation in a way, on a palette of that paint. Mostly that heavy cream, because that's when you have the most control when you apply colors towards the wet surface of the paper. Now what I have in my hand is my long quill size two and I'm going to wet the apple. Now, there's nothing different compared to the previous lesson. We're just going to wet the apple. Take your time wetting, because the longer you wet, the more time you're going to have to apply colors, wet on wet. Also, try not to go over the edges because again, if you do go over and there's water, that means whenever you start applying colors, that color will also travel towards the background there. Now, this would not be the end of the world if we're adding the background, because the background is actually darker in a lot of these areas that would be easy to cover up. But it really is up to you if you want to add that background. And I will be teaching in this course as well, how to add that background. Now let's just focus on applying the water. Use the tip of your brush to go along these lines because that's how you have the most control when you use the tip of your brush, whichever brush you're using, and spread that water. Once I get closer towards that time, that moment when I'm almost ready to start applying colors, I start moving that water more and more around. And if it's too much, then I'm just going to grab it with that brush and slightly wipe it on a towel. Now, I want to start with those yellowish undertones. And I mentioned earlier, you don't have to just stick to one yellow. You could grab like another shade, which I would like to grab some Rosanna. Now you're quickly grabbing the colors from the palette without actually mixing them on that palette, overly mixing. At least you want to have all this mixing to happen on the paper. Now the highlight is right here. I'm going to circle this part. This is where my highlight is. That's where I want to stay away from and I'm going to grab more. This is like a water to milk like ratio. Right now, I don't really have that much control. Well, I do in a way. And why is that? It is because I'm using the tip of my brush and I'm not so much paint. But the thing is that I do want the paint to spread. I do want the paint to spread. This is not the moment when I'm using this heavy cream to cream top like ratio. This is just so I have this yellowish undertone. Now I want the same colors, my imine, tiny bit of this rota but more of the quin red. Again, you're quickly grabbing the colors without trying to mix them on the palette. Maybe here I feel like there's a little bit of like that orange shade of orange. We're changing the shade of yellow basically by adding some red to it. There's definitely yellow here. There's, it would be like a yellow undertone because of the grain. Right. Might as well go there too. Now, I'm going to slightly wipe the press on the towel and grab this time more of that red. This is more like a milk ratio between water and paint. The paint is still spreading. This is just milk ratio. I'm going for this area right here. This area feels like it does have a little bit of green in there because that red is not like a clean red. We'll get to that moment when we can grab a tiny bit of green as well. I'm just doing this with the tip of my brush. I'm going to go here a little bit. Why not to have a little bit of red here as well? We are going to get that moment when we start applying the green in just a moment. For now, we're just adding this like a shade of orange. I'm going to say, here you go. Now I'm going to clean my brush and I'm going to go for my yellow. This is my yellow. I have a little too much water. Slightly wipe my brush on a towel, then I go back to this yellow. And then I'm going to grab this green. This is my yellow green. And I'm going to go for the areas where I feel like there's that transition yellow and some green, right? I'm going to add it here. Now, if you take a look at this green sheet of green right here, it does feel cooler, doesn't it? That's when we will need to add some blue to it. Till then, let's release some more of that paint that we already have on our. A little more on the bottom. I'm following basically with my eyes. Like what I see in the reference. All the darker spots, the areas, that's shadows, right? That's when we will be b***ding the red with the green. 24. Adding More Colors: Working w/ Green & Red: With an addition of blue for example. I'm going to grab heavier ratio between water and pat of that grain. There's my sub grain. I'm going to grab some of this red actually here I had like a b***d from earlier. This is where I'm going to mark for myself. This is going to be the shadowed part right in here. And then all this on the bottom, this is cream like ratio, might not seem like it because the paint is spreading just because they have a quill brush, Brushes like hold a lot of paint and water, it always feels like it's actually too much, but it does feel right when you don't have that much over on your brush. Now what I need to do is grab some of this green and blue. This is my sep, green and blue. Now, I did not clean my brush. I still have that sep green with some of that red on my brush. I'm just going to go towards these darker spots. I'm going to go very slow. I'm going to clean my brush. We then I'm going to grab cleaner version of sap green but also yellow. And then some of this blue and go right in here. This is more like, I'm going to say half and half like ratio. I'm going to grab more of it because this is the greenish part. Now keep in mind that everything is drying fast. We don't have that much time to play with this. However, the more you go around your object and you don't focus on like one spot at a time, then you keep your paper wet longer because you're traveling around. This is actually all good. However, the red is not popping. I need to take care of that. Are in one moment. First I'm trying to grab a little more of that 2.5 like ratio of that green and blue basically, and add it like grad in there. Now we do have the stem. I'm not worried about the stem yet. Get to that later. I just clean my brush. I'm going to grab, again, this doesn't yell, I'm going for like a heavy cream like ratio between water and paint. There's my red too. I'm going to go right here. It's not clean because I'm touching the green areas. But that's fine because that's the way the red looks like, It's slightly b***ded with the red. But take advantage of it because when you have that red, I'm grabbing more. That's what makes a shadow. When you go over that green, right? It becomes darker and darker here. I want to go back here, but actually I need more red, More red on my brush. Without cleaning the brush, I still had some of the green, but I grab like a heavier ratio, more like a heavy cream like ratio between water and paint that quin red on my brush. The red I'm using is just the quin red. I have not grabbed any other red however, you could definitely not shoot. But you could grab a different shade of red if you want to. There's no limit, like you could grab Pero red for example. Pero red is like a primary red according to Holbein's color chart. But every will probably have, they will have different shade of that red as the primary red. Primary red as P red. But maybe like Schenkein, it's ruby red, maybe. I don't remember actually. I do paint sometimes with Schmincke but not as much as with Holbein. Here I go, I'm adding this red, right? But I want to grab, now with that, actually a little more red. This is heavy cream. Now I'm going for this green, but I'm looking for a drier area of paint on my palette. I can have this drier. I need way more of the green. This is becoming like a brownish shade of brown. This is more like brownish. That's because I'm mixing green with the red together. This is the moment when things are drying. I'm going to grab a little more of that red with that dirty brush. But things are drying. You're starting to grab heavier and heavier ratio between water and paint. It's no longer this water to milk like ratio. You want to have more and more control now since you already have paint too and you're going for like the heavy cream to cream top like ratio between water and paint. I grab even heavier ratio. I might have to squeeze, actually paint on my palette because everything I'm grabbing is just a little too diluted with what I have a little hair. I'm just going to grab that. I want some blue because all this feels bluish. I just grab this heavy cream, even more paint on my brush. Heavy cream like ratio of the fallow blue. Let's remember that. I didn't clean my brush. I still had like the sap green and some red. Just going around and watching how it's all drawing. I'm trying to keep this part lighter right here because that's the light and at the same time shaping my apple. Here I need a shadow right next behind this apple. I'm trying to do this with the tip of my brush. Now, I really quickly grab some more of that green and blue. And I'm going to have to do this with like a heavy cream like ratio or even cream P. This is my sap green. And I grabbed a different brush actually because I still have like the paint I was just adding with the reds. But I just quickly want to add some more of that green with the blue here. This was like a cream top ratio. Why am I having so much control here? Right? Paint is not really spreading and I'm not creating any blooms. It's because of the ratio between water and paint. She has grabbing very small amounts. I don't have much water on my brush. This is just like the red, blue, green and like a cream top. Grab more of the green now and blue on my brush. I can work this part right here. This is supposed to be a much darker. Now, I am going for one layer, but sometimes even I plan just to have that one layer Doesn't always work out that way because everything dries more pale than when we first see. There's one thing I should be doing is smoothing things. I'm cleaning my brush, wiping it on a towel, and I'm creating this squishy effect. Just like in lesson two, I can pull the paint. It does feel like I don't have enough red. What do I do about it? How do you add more red? You're basically going to grab, with that same brush, more of the red. And it has to be dry paint that you're grabbing. That's how you can still control it. You won't create blooms, but it has to be damp, like the paper still has to feel damp. And then I grab more of the red, because I want more of the red here. Then we have all this part right there, right? You're brushing with that damp brush, you can see how the shape of it is changed. Something like that. I'm going to clean the brush again. I'm creating this nice, it's not nice, but it's a squished brush. I can pull this through here just so it's all nice and round. Now we have one more, actually, a couple more things to do. We're not even close to be done yet. 25. Lifting with a Smaller Brush: With this little apple, we have to lift the colors. And also we have that stem we need to lift here. But to add colors for the stem, we need like a cream top of the quinoa red. This is my round tube brush. And then some of this sap green here. And I'm going to grab a little bit of indigo. It's like a brown, right? We need to find the stem somewhere here. I have the stem. I'm going to designate this area right here. This one needs to be darker. And then once I start lifting, then everything will make sense. This is supposed to be darker too. This is supposed to be darker now. As long as this is still feels wet, like at least more than just damp, you need to still see that shine. You can add more and more color. I'm just going to add some more darks right here. This brush is a damp brush and I'm grabbing like this scream top like ratio between one and paint. What I'm going to do now is use the same brush. I cleaned it, it's just a damp brush and I'm going to start lifting for those stems. There's one part there, something there, and then another piece there. We also have these tiny spots. That's when you want to clean your brush again, wipe a towel and you're going to go on this circular motion. It's motion to create these tiny, tiny dots. You want to have a pointed brush and a damp brush, basically to lift the colors. Sometimes I'll just touch it, but most of the time I'll go like in a tiny little circle just so I can create these tiny, tiny dots on the apple, on the skin of the apple. Then the second we're going to paint the apple, actually, not this one yet, because this one is wet. But we will paint the other one on the other side because we don't want to disturb colors here, that would be too easy to ruin it. I'm just you can re lift, you go back again and you re, lift, right. You re, lift the colors so you start seeing that stem. The thing is that we can add more color to it, too wet on dry. It looks more like the stem you don't want to lift too much, but just enough resembles that stem. Everything is about creating an impression of something. Like you don't need to paint something exactly as it is with details about shape shapes and lightened shadows. You wipe your brush on a towel before you go for this motion to create these little dots you lift in colors. But make sure you wipe your bush on a towel. First, I'm going to clean this brush because I don't need this anymore. What we're going to do is move on towards the next apple. We lifted this technically, I could have more shadows here, but I will play it by just how it all looks together once I'm done with the next apple. 26. Adding More Colors: All right, we're going to focus now on this apple. We're not painting the metal apple because the left apple, the one on the left side, is still wet. Instead, we're going to wet this one. We're going to do the same thing again. Here we have a leaf on this side. We're just going to avoid it, not go over it. We're going to wet everything else. This is the apple we're painting now. I already painted it. And here's the example. You'll be able to see all these examples too in this course. You can see those. How I painted this right apple on the right side. For now, let's just focus on wetting this apple. We can also wet the stems so the color bleeds over. I think I'm pretty good here. What I'm going to do, start with the same colors, but I need to squeeze more color. Because what's happening on my palette is that everything became more like a milk to water ratio. I need to have like these islands of colors basically something like this, where it's easier for me to achieve that desired ratio between water and paint. I'm going for something like this and I'm going to grab, at the same time, slight amount, just tiny bit of Rosina And then corner red, I have red blue. I'm red yellow. That other yellow too. It's not that important to have like this other shade of yellow. But why not? Like with water colors, we have over 100 different colors, so many different shades of yellow. Sometimes, especially that we're mixing colors on the paper, it's nice to see that additional shade it. I can create an additional shade of yellow by adding, let's say, a little bit of red to it, but I can't create like a paler yellow, for example. A lot of times you just want to grab a different shade of that yellow from a tube, for example, if you like it too, because I love N. But anyway, I'm adding yellows towards like the most yellowish areas that I can see. Also, whatever I see the most of that green like here for example. Then we do have red. This red feels cooler in a way, that's when we want to definitely have some of the blue in there. But I'm going to press a little harder with my brush, I can release that paint. What I'm going to do is slightly wipe the brush on a towel and grab a tiny bit of water just so I have a milk like ratio in a way that quad red. And I'm going to start from this side right here, releasing some more paint here. This is the quin red that's slightly b***ding with the yellow. And I want these colors to b***d on the paper. Go along the edge of the apple trina to go over, go slow and use the tip of your brush. That's how you can have the most control when you use the tip of your brush. It doesn't matter how big the brush is, then there's like some pattern through the apple lines. This red again, feels cooler. I'm going to clean my brush slightly, touch it on a towel so I don't have as much paint. And this is just the red quin red does feel cooler. It's more like what I see here in the painting or I'm sorry, reference image. I'm going to pull it through here a little more here. This is the area that's going to be shadowed. I could already have a little bit of red in there. I'm going to clean this brush. I'm going to clean it, I'm going to start actually grab first a little bit of blue. This is my co blue, fallow blue. This is my fallow blue. And some of the quad tiny bit, tiny bit. Because I want to have a little bit of that bluish tone in here where we have the highlight right there. Now that's all I want to do for now. I'm going to clean this brush again, slightly touches on a towel. I'm going to grab my emison yellow, yellow. Then some of this green right here. A little more of that, I'm grabbing a heavier paint but it becomes more like a milk only because my brush is pretty wet. I do want Paint to spread. Like right now, I'm not looking yet to have a lot of control, Not as much. That's why it's okay for me. Like the paint, the paint spreads because I want the colors to slightly b***d there with other parts. The color bleeds in there, the green shade of green. And I'm going to grab a little bit of more of the yellow, actually, just so I can show more of that yellow here. Now with that same brush, I'm going to go for this drier part on my palette and grab some of this blue, this is my fallow blue. Now to feel out the color, what do you have on your brush? You can test it on your palette. You can travel through your palette. That's why actually it's a good idea to have like a bigger palette. Mine is a butcher palette. I don't like three years ago, I didn't want to use it and I had it for a long time. Then one time I was doing this big painting and I was thinking like, how did I go without it for so long? You need that space. You really need that space. This is where I'm adding this blue, blue with grain, very gently touching. You. Always want to really go slow and think about it, how things are spreading, go slow. Then we can add some couple of lines because we're going to use a damp brush to soften everything. But what's happening here is I don't have enough red here. And this is where I need to start adding some of the red for the shadows. But before that, I want to grab a little more of this follow blue here. I'm trying to grab more like a half and half like ratio. I can add more here before I go back to this site. Now this is still shiny, so I can go back, but you got to be careful because maybe for you it's not shining anymore. If that's the case actually, then you just leave it alone. But if you can still add red in there, I do suggest to do that if that's what we have that second layer for, to add more vibrancy and work more on the contrast. What I'm going to do is clean this brush and I'm going to grab this quin red. And it's like I also have a little bit of yellow in there. I do want to be more reddish. I don't feel like I have enough of that red. Also, please keep in mind that paint, on a larger scale, you have more room to b***d the colors. And doing the exercise earlier in the lesson two, and even one, we had this big apple. And it was so much easier, actually, for me to b***d the colors to achieve that certain effect, just to see how colors spread and everything. You have that room for all this. When you paint something smaller and this is much smaller, it is harder overall to do all that you want to do basically in this little object, right? I do suggest to make this actually as big as you can, this painting, plus it's nice to have something larger hanging on our walls. Right? That's why I do suggest to paint is much larger if you can. Now with that same brush, I'm going to grab this quad. I actually need more sup grain right here. And I'm going to grab some of this fallow blue to I am going through these shadows right here. The ratio is important here. You need to grab more like a heavy cream, even cream top like ratio between water and paint also go on the inside leaf because the way the leaf is shaped, it's not straight. It does have the not spiky but it has these parts. We want to show that the best way is actually when you're painting the apple, that's how you're going inside and that's how you're shaping it here. I didn't forget about the stem. It's just that I don't need that much in here. I actually need more of a red and yellow in there. But one of my focusing on more is adding some shadows. And I do want to come back here onto this side too, to have a little bit of a shadow. 27. Damp Brush Technique : This is like a damp brush, and if you want it to be more damp, just slightly touch it on a towel so the towel can absorb some of that water. So the brush becomes like this. And then you can pull it and start pulling with that paint. The brush is not clean. I didn't clean it. And it's just a damp brush with some color in it and you're leaving color. But you have a lot of control because again, this is a damp brush and the paper is dry. It feels damp too, like it's still shiny. So I still have that freedom of doing a little more, but not much time left. I'm grabbing some more of the actually in Fallow blue. This is Fallow blue, I don't think I grabbed in this course yet. Indigo. That's just another option if you want to make things darker actually. But if you do use indigo, then you want to be really careful. Things can get very quickly, Like too dark here. I'm just pulling through. This is fine. Now what I want to do is grab a smaller brush, like a round two, quickly grab a small amount of yellow and red. This is my quin, red and yellow everywhere. Don't add it everywhere. Grab now a little bit of yellow with the grain, feels more like a 2.5 ratio. And add it in a couple other areas. Now this is important when we are shaping. Now this stem you want to grab, I'm going to show this to you. This is like a creamy quad, right? Like a dry paint, almost. There you go. I need some of this sap, green, creamy cream top. Then just to change the sheet of it, I do want a little bit of that blue. I can scoop it. There you go. This is cream top. This is cream top on the tip of my brush. This is the moment when you can add it, but I don't have enough of the fallow blue. Now I have enough. Then I'm going to place this towards the darkest areas that I can see. Only the darkest right in between basically the shadows, the shadowed areas. That's all you want to do, like just place those colors in most shadowed areas. We can also lift the colors. That's not a problem either. Feel like I didn't go all the way here. I didn't paint this all the way. Now I have this darker paint, but it's okay. I didn't shape this all the way. I should actually have a light here. Just keep that in mind. You need to keep that more highlighted. But it's like last minute to shape my apple basically before it's too dry. Here, I'm going back to the same little areas we're revisiting to add more paint. This is still like a cream top ratio between water and paint. Now, with that same brush, if you see, let's say like some spots like apples usually have spots, maybe not. This one looks pretty, pretty perfect. But you can use that same color to travel through and maybe add some spots right over the apple. What I'm going to do is clean this brush. Clean my long quill, the main brush I'm using for painting. It's time to add some spots, those lifted areas. You're going to clean your brush. You're going to wipe it on a towel very well. It feels like it's just a damp brush. And then when you don't see that shine anymore more on the paper, that's when you want to go in that little circular motion. You're creating these small dots. You're lifting colors. This is just lifting. It is just a different way of lift. You can also use actually a rigger brush. You can lift with the rigger brush just as good if you want to create that effect of these little white dots. Now you really need to wipe your brush on a towel. If you don't, you're going to create a bloom in your apple. Please keep that in mind. Now this is another fun thing to do. You can also grab dry paint which is like this. Quinn, add some lines like pattern if you want to. A lot of apples do have that. Maybe not this one as much, But you can do that too. Add some more redness. Want to but let's focus on that. Lifting, for example. Like this part should be a little lifted. I'm doing it with a small brush. This is a round two. This is the area I was talking about earlier. But you know what, I can still lift it. It's no big deal that I lost some light earlier. Then back to lift for those little tiny white spots on the skin of the apple. After it is, we have one more apple, then we're just onto painting the leaves. This is the same thing over and over and over again. Going to lift here, and then let's not forget to lift our stem. When the shine is gone from the paper, that's when you lift. That's perfect timing to lift. You can reshape things. If I want to make this lighter, here I go. I'm just going to make it lighter. Lifting is very easy now because I hit that perfect timing to lift the colors. I want you to practice a lot of lifting before you begin this main painting, either with indigo or our exercise apples. You can do that just so you can get the hang of it, so it's easy for you to lift the colors. We're going to move on to our next apple, and that's going to be the one in the middle which we already painted. This is how far we have come. Now the middle apple is the same apple we're going to paint like we painted here. This is the same one. We're going to paint this one next. 28. Painting Leaves: First Layer: All right, we are ready to paint a leaf. Now I'm actually going to, I'm going to grab my long, well, say two part again, but then I'll probably switch to my round eight. Now we do have folded parts of the leaf which is right here, so we can avoid that because that folded can be much lighter. Actually, this is not exactly what we see in the reference. This leaf change the shape of it and everything. You can paint it just like you see in the reference. Or you can follow like how I I have this folded part as well. I'm not going to wet it, I guess too long. This is a small area and I don't need to do dam much, but I'm also wetting this little stem. I don't want too much water either, but go through it a couple of times at least so that water gets absorbed inside of the paper. Have the time to ply colors on wet. Now, we're going to start with yellowish and some blue undertones for this sleeve. I'm going to quickly grab some of this is a long yellow here, I need a little more water. Here's my sub grain, sub green and my doesn't on yellow. We do have like blue in there, like highlighted parts. When you're placing colors follow like the pattern like, let's say you're staying away from the veins. Stay away from the veins. And then you quickly add colors just like that. You know what? Let's grab some of this. Follow blue. I didn't clean my brush. I tried to show this to you. Although it's a close, it's a little harder. Now, I have this fallow blue. But again, I didn't clean my brush, right? I still have some of that subgrade and yellow in there. However, I am not mixing colors on the palette. I'm mixing colors on the paper. I quickly grab the blue as well without like mixing it or b***ding it on my palette. Now we can see like different shades in there. Just like before, we can control this and we can make it even smoother. Let's grab some thicker sub grain. I still didn't clean my brush. I'm just grabbing like a heavy cream like ratio between water and paint of the sap green. Okay, now think of it this way again. Let's say you're avoiding the veins and you're placing colors everywhere. But wherever you have the veins go everywhere, but whatever you have the veins, something like that. And then this part is shadowed. What do we need a little bit of red with that same dirty brush? Try to grab like a heavy cream like ratio between water and paint of that red. Scoop it more and then add it on the right side. Or chop side of the leaf again. Stay away from the veins. You can't see the veins, your sketch lines. That's okay. Just divide it into sections of the leaf and we're going to be lifting colors anyway. We will get to those veins like even if you can't see them yet or it's not coming along quite yet. A little bit of a paint over there. Now, I'm going to clean my brush quickly, just like we did with the apple. We're squishing our brushes. This is a damp brush and we're going to use that damp brush to pull it, to pull the paint. But this is really simple if you just keep it that way and then we can lift the colors. 29. Lifting Colors: One more thing you could do is grab like a smaller brush. This is my round two And I'm going to grab, basically, it's like sap green with this indigo, right? This is cream up like ratio. And then you can come back to this darker side and add more color against the dark. You can control this a little better also creating like the variation of the shade of different shades of green. And then that line right next to that vein. It's not a bad idea to add that there. We just have more darks this way and then come back here. This is still creamed up like ratio between water and paint on my brush. I do need to pay attention to how this is drying. It's very easy to miss that timing because you start painting something else. I'm just going to stare at it until the shine goes away. I have another minute. I'm just going to wait for like a minute until this settles and that shine goes away. So I can lift the colors. All right, the shine is almost gone. And you can lift with a small brush, like a round two, or you can use a rigger brush. My favorite way to lift is using a record brush. This is my record size two. So the first thing I want to do is find that in, this is a damp brush, damp paper, feel damp. And then a damp brush. So I wipe it first on the towel and then I create that vein. Now I do have more veins, right? For example here, where is another vein? I was avoiding these areas for the veins and now it's going to be all enhanced just because I'm lifting the colors another in other vein here, another one here. And you can go back re, lift it a couple of times. Let's say one of vein here too. Then from these main veins you also have smaller veins. You can keep lifting. I say like not to lift too much because then it looks overworked. Let's do another leaf now, since this is a class, of course, I was thinking that maybe some of the leaves you can do by yourself, and that would be a great chal***ge. You already know how to paint that leaf, and you already know how to paint this leaf if you can see it right there. Because we did this in a lesson two. I'm going to quickly we now this one, I'm using my round brush, This is golden one, this is my stiffer brush. I'm avoiding the folded parts of the bush leaf. The leaf has these folds. I'm not wetting those, I'm just going to paint the inside. Leave the folds for later. What with the background? If you have these folded parts. Sometimes even have to color them because that whiteness sometimes it's striking, it doesn't work. But that whiteness a lot of times, which is adds some contrast in our paintings, that's an option just to keep it white. Now we're going to start same color combo, which is the yellow, with some green right here. Again, you're staying away from these veins. I didn't do a good job yet, but I will get to that for now. I just want some color floating in there. Now I'm going to grab this sap green with some fallow blue. I have some blue. This is like more blue is right there. Maybe this is too much of the blue. I'm grabbing some more of the sap green and I'm going to stay away from the vein parts to the veins. Let's see, go back here. Now I want to clean my brush actually. Because I just want most of it to be like a fallow blue. And I'm going to add it right there so this feels more bluish. Now, if I want to control this better, well, first of I can right away just a damp brush but I want to be a little darker. What I'm using on the tip of my brush, cream top like ratio between water and paint of polo blue and sub green avoiding these veins. It's like painting in between the veins, adding the colors in between the veins. But don't worry too much about it because again, we're going to lift the colors even if you didn't preserve, like these areas to be more yellowish. Let's say you still have a chance to lift the colors and you will have these veins here. We have this folded part very gently. You're adding colors using the tip of your brush. And then clean your brush. I want you to clean it and wipe it well on a towel. And this is like a damp brush. I squished it. And I'm going to pull through just to soften this. Now, this is not over yet because again, we have to lift the colors. I'm going to clean this brush. Again, I need to wait for a minute or two. Shouldn't be too long I can lift these colors. Now I'm going to do one more leaf, but then I want you to actually do a couple of leaves by yourself, so this will be a chal***ge for you. You know the pattern, we're starting with, yellowish undertones and I'm saying yellowish because it's yellow plus a little bit of green. Then you can add a little bit of blue, blue plus green for example. Then you're starting to work on the darks. And when you start working on the mid tones, right, so you're trying to make it darker, that's when you can start using this heavy cream to cream top like creation between water and paint. And just remember to paint with the tip of your brush. In the meantime, I'll do one more leaf and then we'll come back to this one. I'm just going to wet it. I'm actually looking for the sleep in my reference, it's a little different. Do I want to paint all this? Yeah, I do want to add this stem. And I went a little too far with the water here. Way bit, slightly. Keep in mind if you're doing the same thing, keep an eye on the leaf you just painted. Because you want to lift. The veins go before I add color, I do want to lift. I got to remind myself, it's super easy to get side trapped. Then by the time I'm done lifting, I'll probably have to add a little more water here because that will dry. But at least it will be already, like pre wetted. I'm going to go back to my under leaf so I can lift it here. This is my rigor size two. You can use a small brush size two, round two for example. Then the first thing is this is a little early to be honest, but I'm going to lift a little bit center vein here, wipe your pressure on a towel, and then go through these areas. It's a little early because this is still slightly shiny. Perfect timing to lift the colors is when that shine is gone or almost gone. Just enough of that lifting. 30. Painting Leaves: Second Layer & Lifting: We can start applying colors here. I'm going to wet it one more time. A little more water. I am making sure I can see that leaf or part of it, at least in the reference. Then there's a lot of like bluish tones in there, so it's like a cooler tone of it. I'm still going to start with my yellow and green. There's my yellow green in sep green and emision yellow. Same thing here. This needs to be more bluish. This time. I'm going to clean my brush and then grab this Fallow blue with the grain. Actually, I want scratch that, I'm going to clean this. I want this to be way more bluish. Here you go. This is mostly fallow blue. Instead of having more of that sprain, I want this to feel more bluish just because it's so highlighted. Here you go. And now with that same brush, grabbing some of this soup grain with yellow earlier, did not even grab any sp. Green feels so yellowish. That's okay. The idea is actually to grab a little bit of green right away too with that yellow when you start applying those yellowish undertones. But it's okay now I'm adding it, then I'm going to go closer towards the edge here, for example. This feels cooler. Now, what I have on my brush is also follow blue, green, yellow and blue, green, yellow, blue. This is something I didn't know when, when I first started painting with watercolors years ago. It's something that I would often make a mistake, like thinking like, wait, I need like ten different shades of grain to paint a leaf. But then I learned that you basically just can create your own shades of green by adding yellow or blue to it. It's really more rewarding and it looks more natural and more realistic. I'm going to go actually grab a little bit of yellow with this with the tip of my brush and want to grab a right on the bottom there. It does not feel as bluish as the leaf in the reference. I'm going to grab some more of this fellow blue. I lost a little bit of light right there. Just FYI, what you can do is lift, I'm just going to lift a little bit. Pull it, pull the paint over here, towards that side. Now, one more color I see is actually red. I'm going to grab a tiny bit of red with the tip of my brush and add it from the top g, the top side, the top part of this stem or little branch. And then with that red, grab some of the green too. We can shade it right away. Right in here, it feels more greenish with that red. I still have red and green, but now I grab the way more green from the bottom here. I'm just adding it. Then I'm going to come back here because I want to shade it more. And I'm going to grab even more of the green and more that blue then make it darker. Now this time this is cream up like creia, between wood and paint this way. I have more control, the paints not spreading, and I have a little more darks. Now, this leaf is not done yet. Because there's one more thing I want to do which is lifting color. I have to wait on this. You can use the Mps. You can also pull the paint if you want to, but I suggest to basically stare at it and wait until that shine goes away from the paper. And that'll be cute right there. Okay, This is the time to lift the colors. I'm just going to wait. All right. It's time to lift the colors. This is my rigor size to I'm going to find these veins now. There's one here. I'll go the way up to here. Again, wipe your person on a towel first, make sure you don't have much water. Just a damp brush. And then you're going to create some veins. Again, wiping my pert on the towel first, and I'm going for those veins. Here you go. Then we can go back through the same areas to lift again, and you can create smaller veins coming off of these main veins Again, I suggest not to do too much because if it's too much, it just doesn't look as natural. 31. Warm up. Painting a branch: So our painting is coming along. We're almost done really because we have a couple more leaves to paint. But then there's also a branch, we have a branch here. And then actually this is like the stems, but the main branch is right here. I'm going to show you, share with you like a simple formula that I came up with how to paint basically every single branch that you see out there, you can paint using that same formula. I've been doing this for years. I'm going to grab first the spare sheet of a watercolor paper and I want you to do the same thing. Please grab a spare sheet and I'm going to create like a quick branch here. I want you to do the same thing. Don't worry about the perfect shape of it. This is just the branch and I'm going to place it like right here so you can see it. Well now the first thing I like to do when I paint a branch is to wet the branch. You also want to determine like, okay, how much light is in there. Like this branch in the reference is pretty highlighted on top right. We want to focus on adding colors mostly on the bottom. The first thing is I, I don't really wet it perfectly. A lot of times I'll skip a couple areas. Touch the branch like this, I skip it the first thing. The first color I always, always place is blue. My favorite is cobalt blow. Now for this class, I say, let's just use follow blue. Because I want to really limit the palette. It's simple. But if you happen to have cobalt blue like I do on my palette, then grab cobalt blue and start hogging like the bottom part of the branch. When you're applying this cobalt blow, you're pressing a little harder or whatever You want to release more paint. Now, clean your brush, and as a matter of fact, I don't have burnt sienna squeezed enough of that. I just squeeze some burnt sienna on my palette. Because the next color is burnt sienna. I want the first part was cobalt blue. That was milk like ratio. Now this is between milk and 2.5 like ratio, burnt sienna. This is my formula where now I add burnt sienna. You add it over the blue but also next to it. And watch how the colors b***d. It starts to look really natural. Now, you can also like over to add some accents and pieces. Because we're not done yet. We have one more color to add here, or even a couple of colors. Try to remember, it is blue first, brown, second. Now, if you happen to see some green in your branch, you can now add some green. Let's say we want to add a little bit of green. I'm going to add some sub green here, but this time it's like a heavy cream like ratio because this is pretty wet and I don't want the paint to spread too much. I just added some sub green. The next color that I like to grab is actually indigo. But before that, a lot of times I'll go for a darker brown again, blue brown. You can add two browns. First one, I always suggest the burnt sienna because burnt sienna goes very well with coal blue or fallow blue. Then at this point, you're not touching the top. You're just touching the bottom part of the branch. Especially that the branch in the reference is shadowed on the bottom. You're just adding this on the bottom. Now because we have these pieces elements, we can also go next to those parts right there. Something like that. And then clean your brush. And the third or fourth color is indigo. We're grabbing some indigo. A lot of times are actually slightly mix the indigo with that and brown. So I don't really separate and brown with indigo. I grab them together, then you only add that indigo towards the bottom. Now watch what happens and how beautifully the colors b***d. And you have that contrast and it looks very natural. I'm going to clean my brush now, because in our reference, the top part of the branch, the top part of the branch is much lighter. When we add the background, we'll have a beautiful contrast because that will be lighter. Another thing what you can do is basically, once this feels damp, you would create blooms. You can add some blooms with a tiny bit of water and go over the branch. Now, one more thing you could do is grab, let's say some of the, and some of the vande brown and sub green. Brown and green. You can add some branches, but this needs to be more like a milk crea, otherwise it's too thick. And I do have paint that's too thick. You can add some pieces you using a righ. I prefer a rig brush and then you just going off of that part. Are you ready for this? We're going to paint a branch now in our main painting here. So what I'm going to do is zoom in so you can see everything better. 32. Painting the main branches : All right, we are going to do the same thing. Let's wet it. This is my round heat brush. I'm actually using a different brush, but either brush is fine and then you're just wetting it in a lazy way. I want to say mostly like the bottom, but some top part two, the first color. Again, I want to think about it, it's blue. So you're going to the bottom. Now, this is a little too wet, so I need to remove a little bit of water. Now I'm going to go back and grab more like between milk and 2.2 like ratio of that cobalt blue. This is my cobalt blue right now. There's parts of this branch that feel like maybe like this a little bit, that clean the brush. The next color is burnt sienna ground between milk and 2.2 milk and 2.5 ratio. The ratio between water and paint, there's my burnt sienna. And I'm going to leave it, I'm going to grab this. It's like a heavy cream of panic brown. But at the same time, just like I said before, I'm going to right away add some of the indigo. And then with the tip of my brush, I need to go close to this tree tree. But the apple make it darker. Here you go. It does feel like I need more of the Van Brown. I'm grabbing more Van Brown here. You don't have to place it everywhere. Go perfectly along and choose the areas where you want to add it. You know what? I don't feel like I have enough of the blue, those blue undertones. I'm going to clean my brush and grab or add more of that blue in here. And just add it towards, like the top. There you go. That's it for the branch basically because I don't see any other branches in there in this reference image. Again, you can add more color on the bottom. You can make it even darker if you want to. I'm going to show you now how to paint these stems next to the apples. And then I'm going to chal***ge you to finish painting the leaves, ones that are in focus by yourself. What we're going to do is wet it first. We're going to paint it all at once. You want to wet it this time I'm wetting it carefully through these stems. I'm not avoiding any areas, actually. I do want this to be all wet. There's a lot of going on here, as a matter of fact, I have a little bit of blue here from something. I'm going to pull this all the way. Then let's see what's going on in here. There's two of these. I'm pull it as well. Then I have a Ted piece. We could add more leaves, but that would take a little longer. I'm just going to focus on what I have now. What are the colors of these? I do feel there's a lot of that yellow. I'm going to start with yellow. And more like, let's say like a milk like ratio right here. This does not feel clean. I'm cleaning my brush a little more and then I'm grabbing again this. Plus I want a little bit of red right away. It's a tiny bit of qual red. We're doing the same thing we did before because we're just mixing colors on the paper. Then let's find the stems like this one. For example, we have the red but yellow undertones. Now let's grab like a heavy cremlin creation between water and paint of just the Quinn red. It's a thicker paint, does not feel right, Right. Let's grab a little bit of yellow with it too. If it feels too rich, a little too high, there you go. And then again, red on top here, and then finding other parts. But I do need this richer qu, red again here, que que red here. This feels more brownish. Or brownish? Yeah, like green, brown. But I want to divide this part now with that brush. I'm going to grab sap green. I didn't clean the brush. There's my sap green. I'm going to make this darker green, Whatever you feel like. You see that sap green. I want you to add it, stay away from the lightest parts. We have enough of that light. Something like that. And then the bottom part. But you know what, if I used that brush that I already had. Like with all that paint, it would spread too fast, too much. That's why I just grab free green and more like a cream top like ratio between winter and paint. I do need to add more red. But for now this, and then I'm going to grab se green with fallow blue. Okay. Cream top like ratio, the darkest parts. Now, I just touched my branch, I got to be very careful here. Back to this little spot here at this cream top, towards the darkest parts that you can see in this little branch part. To try to focus whatever you see. Like the darkest parts doesn't have to be exactly the same. My paintings, like I always tell my students, like the paintings look similar like the references. But it's nothing ever like perfect. I'm going to clean my brush now white. I want some of this fallow blue with tiny bit of quid white. That because this red right here is much cooler, cooling it by adding some of the blue. But now I want just a quid red with a dirty brush and then adding it towards a couple other areas. It doesn't really need that much more. This branch here for the stem, just to make sure I don't go over there. The next step will be to lift the colors. And lift the colors. This is like a game of colors. Basically, you're just playing white colors. I'm going to grab a little bit more of the green here. There you go. Another thing which you could do this option two is grab a smaller branch. This is my round two and I'm going to grab red quad for me, quad and some of the green. You can also add some to it to make it really dark. Then you have this cream top like ratio right between water and pink. And you're making this bottom part even darker. Just towards the darkest couple parts, like the areas here that we see, there's another area here. So we're creating this contrast very fast, but we need to also lift the colors. I got to pay attention to how the paper is drying. I'm going to clean this, brush, wipe it, wipe it, and wait for that moment to lift it. This is almost ready to be lifted. 33. Lifting Colors: For example, this needs to have more light. This is still the round, I'm sorry, the round two that I'm using. Small brush. And then another part should be lifted a little bit here. This is how you start separating the pieces two just by lifting. Now, this is early to lift, but I do want to make sure I don't forget to lift, I'm just going to lift are a little bit, then some parts are just too early to lift. But maybe here I do need to wait a little bit to lift, but might as well lift these couple areas, some spots. You can also slightly touch the paper to lift here. It doesn't have to be perfect, doesn't have to be exactly the same here. I should lift a little bit, basically that. Now we painted this, we are so close to start painting the background. I would love if you could paint a couple of these leaves by yourself. Now, this one. And guess what, this is the same leaf that we painted in lesson two. If you need help, please go back to lesson two. This is the same leaf, so we're going to paint this one. Or you're going to paint this one, then this one here. Now please keep in mind this one is way shadowed because it's behind this apple. That means you have to add way more b***d for the shadow, which is red plus green. And you can add some blue to make it darker. Now this part of the leaf is lighter, you can paint it just like the other leaves. I added another leaf right here if you want to paint it or not. It's totally app to you, actually. When you're done with those leaves, guess what? We're going to paint that background wet on wet. And I'm going to explain more how to do it. We have that nice balance in our painting. 34. Adding a Background: Welcome back. This is pretty much a finished painting. I chal***ge you to paint this leaf and this leaf on your own, and I guess this 12 in the back. This one you had already in the lesson two. This one actually was the main chal***ge, because I wanted you to add a shadow more color here, red green, to create that darker shade here, a shadow over this sleeve, because it's hidden behind this apple. Now, if you don't want to add background, then you're done. Congratulations, You've finished this beautiful painting with apples. Three apples. And you also have an apple from lesson two. If you want to continue practicing, I have a chal***ge for you right after this. But for those of you that want to paint a background, you want to add a background. I'm going to show you how I do it and the best way to achieve that, smooth layer layering in the background. And also like when you want to create objects that are out of focus, the best way to create an object that's out of focus is by painting the background wet on wet. What would be out of focus? For example, there's like some apples in the background there and they're pretty green. That's an option for us. We can also add branches that are out of focus. You would be adding all that wet on wet. The first thing is to actually have your palette ready. These are my colors pre diluted with water. Now, there's no different colors than I have been using. There's indigo, fallow blue. I have sap green. I have Dak brown, mid yellow, burnt sienna in red. And then some real sienna colors are exactly the same. Again, there's a lot of going on actually in this background when we take a look at the reference. Now, do we have to paint all that? No, of course not. It's totally up to you how rich you want to make it and how much do you actually want to include. Because you don't need to add out of focus apples if you don't want to. Now here is something that I always teach. Whatever background you add to your painting, always designate an area in the background that's going to be much lighter. Because if you paint a full on background, like rich everywhere, the painting will more likely become too busy. Often works in the reference image doesn't always work in the painting. That's why I created that rule in a way that I'll always find an area in my background that I will keep, er, what will I keep lighter here, I will make all this busier. But the bottom part. In the bottom part, I want to show some light. I'm going to make the bottom maybe more bluish, for example, but I don't need to add the color everywhere. The first thing we're going to do though is wetting the background. You can divide the background two into two parts. Basically, thanks to having the branch here, we can wet all this. Then we can basically just stop right here. Now if you have a washi tape, then even better, right? Because then you right away you have a washi tape going over the leaf, for example. I'm not using wash here because this is a block, so I'm not going to damage the sheet underneath in this block. But a lot of times I just use Washi tape because I want to create a beautiful white frame. If you want to do that, go ahead and use the tape. However you're going to have this leave sticking out. Unless you sketch it the way you sketch it, the leaf ended like somewhere here. And now you can just easily put the washing tape. But the wash tape, if you really do the washing tape, I do suggest to do this ahead of time before you even start painting anything. Now, I'm going to grab a flat brush. This is my 24. Again, I do suggest to have your colors pre diluted with water to a consistency that I like to call heavy cream ration. Today is a hot day. Again, I'm in Southern California and it's super hot. And because of that, I close the windows. Now, it's a little warmer, but I'm not going to have that air flow. I'm just sharing this because you don't really want to have a window open or some AC blowing right on your paper when you're about to paint the background. The longer you wet the paper, the more time you're going to have to apply the colors wet on wet. There's tips and ways to actually give yourself more time. For example, if let's say we were just painting the background, there was no apples, then I'd say we the backside of the paper too. But this is not the case scenario because we have already painted apples. Another way, which was a tip given to me, is to put your jar with water in the refrigerator overnight, basically. And you use a cold water, but I'm going to start wetting right here. Now, you really don't want to go over the apples because that means the colors will go over the apple too. When you start adding colors. Try your best to stay away. Now, I didn't paint this folded part of the leaf. I'm going to see how it turns out. Once I add the background, like maybe the contrast will be too much, maybe not. We'll find out. 35. Background: Bottom Half: How am I going to do it? I'm going to start from the top, actually, different ways I can do it because I see yellow undertones and I see blue. I'm going to start with a lighter color and I need water with my mis yellow just like before. And then some of this cin, maybe a tiny bit of that green. Okay, that's the first part. And then I'm just going to start watching how everything spreads again. I was talking about leaving part of this much lighter and I'll do that. I still want some green here and there. Now, this is when I want to start adding some of this fallow blue, maybe some more of the green. This is going to be all the Richard area. Watch how everything spreads more of the fallow blue. But I do want to clean my brush just so I have a cleaner version of that fallow blue. You're adding colors, wet on wet. This feels more like a milk like ratio. And the reason is because I don't need so much control right now, I do want the pig to spread. I'm going to grab a little more of that. Actually. I'm going to start grabbing, I just grab some of the indigo to. When you go around these, be very careful. Try to either use the edge of a brush or use a round brush so you have more control. I'm getting closer and closer now. If I want to create some apples in the background out of focus, I'm going to use, I think, stiffer brush for this. I'm going to use different ratio between water and paint. It's going to be more like a heavy cream cream top. That's because I don't want the paint to spread as much if I'm painting apples. If I want to give those apples a shape here, I'm still going close to those objects. I am going to actually grab my round eight Golden on E, and I'm going to grab the same colors. I just want to go right next to here. Whatever the area of the apple is, actually much lighter. Then I will want to have more concentrated paint and more darks just because I want to create a better contrast. For example, like here, this part of the stem is much lighter. Because of that, I choose to add more color like vibrant. This is sap green and some fellow blue. Because this way the stem will be more visible, will be a contrast. And I want the, that looks better. And I'm going to do the same thing on this side. Actually, this side of the leaf is not finished. I actually forgot to add that second layer. If I had this already, I probably wouldn't add the darks on this side, but I will add some dark on this side here. Then I get closer towards this apple. I'm using the tip of my brush and trying to get really close. There's no white in between the background and my main objects. The same thing here. Once I go around, oops, and win a little over, I go around like the apples and all that. Then I'm going to focus on creating apples out of focus and adding some more here to the background. I got to hurry up. Everything is just drying really fast. I do want to add these branches out of focus too. So there you go. There's my apple. I'm sorry to leave here some dark. So I'm getting closer here. I'm doing it really much faster now because the paper is drying and I'm not even done, close to be done with this background. I want some darks here. I'm just going to grab some of this line ground to make this a little darker. There you go. Then what I want to do is actually clean the brush. Second, add some blue cleaning my brush, cleaning, cleaning it. And I'm going to grab my fallow blue here, some of the qudus to choose the shade of that fallow blue. This is my lighter background. It's different than what I see in the reference. Right? I want this to be different. I don't want to have like this busy background everywhere. Now, I'm going to grab a little more, I guess a little more of that fallow blue and I'm leaving some areas much lighter. How do I go about that contrast? So what I'm going to do is clean this brush. And I'm going to, first I'm just going to grab my long quill. I'm going to grab my long quill. I'm going to start grabbing heavier ratios between water and paint. This is sub grain and this is my fallow blue. But I also want some of the indigo and this is my Andy ground. I want to show there's some branches here and just maybe some leaves. I want to create that contrast. I do want some apples there in the background too. So what I'm going to do is grab a different brush, or the same brush, but clean brush, to create that apple. I want to grab some of this heavy cream Raimi doesn't want yellow here and some of this sap green. And somewhere here is where I want that apple, but I need some blue at it. And I'm just going to created like wet on wet in a way. It's all the same thing here. But I need to create more contrast because this is not dark enough. So I just grab some more of the fallow blue. I basically need way more color on my brush then the round shapes for the apples, something like this. A little more of the blues and some brown, and go back towards the same areas to add more and more color if you want to The leaves. The same thing with leaves. If we need to create leaves, this is the time when you want to towards the background. Actually, I have two brushes that are loaded with the same colors. In a way, there's one leaf here, let's say this one is behind. This is between heavy cream and cream top like ratio between water and paint. There's my apple there. I want some more contrast. Indigo, brown, green, all those colors. Actually, I want some of the burn too. I just grab burns as well. I'm going to go closer here. This is behind that apple there. It's a little different then the reference. But I want this to be different because if I keep everything dark, then it's just there's no balance in my painting. Now, this is the part where I should have some branches, right? This is the area I designated for the apple, for example. Right there. You can keep playing with this background as long as this is all wet. Like you don't have to stop painting. I want some of the fallow, blue, indigo and brown. Just be, it'd be nice to have something darker in there too. Now, I'm going to grab a third brush. I want to create branches here. What I'm going to do is grab some of the blue with the burnt sienna bund brown somewhere here. This is cream top like ratio between water and paint. Why is it cream top? The paint does not spread much or like all it will spread. It's just that I want to have a minimal spreading of the paint branch. Here may be something here. Burn one of your blues in the bund brown for example. And you're pulling it with that cream top like ratio between water and paint. Show that there's something more to it, to those branches. But I need more blue. Maybe some b***d egg brown too. Since this is my apple here, like in the background, just going to add some more there. Don't be afraid to go back and just add more color, for example, if you want to. Right. I feel like this part of the background is finished. All I have to do is work on this part of the background. Of course, we can do things like lifting too. I'm going to grab a little more of the indigo with bland brown just because I see something that nice if I had this part, a little something like this. And then more contrast here. Now, try your best not to go over like I did over the apple because then you change the shape of your apple. It's probably not a good idea to do that. And I did that. I just learned from my mistake here because I went too close and changed the shape of it. I'm like cleaned and fresh. 36. Background: Top Half: Now, wetting this part of the background may be a little trickier because we have more to go around. But it's the same process. We're just going to wet it and be more careful now because that water that splutters could end up like somewhere here where we have already painted the background. You don't want that because that could easily create the bloom here. I'm getting closer towards the branch and I'm going to stay away from the top part because it's supposed to be highlighted. That'll be my nice highlight there. You can also divide this part of the background. Don't have to paint all of it at once. You're almost there with this painting. Like to be done, I'm going to I should actually use a paper towel. This is bad to show this how I am picking up the water with my finger. Please don't pick up on that. That's a bad habit, getting closer here. These are the tricky parts because you want to go around one more time here carefully so the what it doesn't splutter, pushing it over the edges. I'm getting closer. Here you go. Since we painted like this part of the background already here, we need to match it. Right? It would not make sense if it was like yellow or we just have to expand this part of the background. The first colors we started anyway were like yellows. This is my yellow. I'm going to grab some of this. Grab actually, no, I didn't. But you know what, It's okay. I'll just make like apples in the background. Then I'm going to grab now this sep green in here. But this is the part I was talking about matching. You're adding colors like in different spots. You go right above this branch. Again, this is going to be busier, doesn't have to be like all super vibrant and busy though We can still choose where we want, like what part we want to make darker. For example, I just grab some more of the sub green plus I have some follow blue. I'm grabbing more of the blue, I'm going to grab some and brown to make it darker and just matches this part. My brush is full of colors because I'm trying to mix colors on the paper that my palette here, this side of the apple is lights. It'd be nice to have a contrast. You're wet in the background to give yourself basically more time to apply the colors we wet. Because if you're doing the, if I go in circles, that means I'm going to designate the areas here for maybe some apples there. But you're wetting the background first, just so you have more time to apply the colors wet on wet. If you paint the background like this wet on dry, you're just going to have hard edges because you're going to get stuck painting one part of the background too long. And if you want to come back to it or you want to add more color, you're just going to run out of time. Now, I just shorten this little leaf, so you got to be careful. But this looks pretty. I'm going to grab my round eight golden one, which is a stiffer brush. I'm use that pointy part to get in there. I don't want to lose these stems here, but I do get it, get close towards these leaves. Overall, I'm grabbing some yellow, it's not too dark. There you go. I want this to have some blue and I ran out of blue, so I'm going to squeeze some fallow blue. I'm clean. The round eight, I can grab this fellow blue. I want to show some blue shade of blue in there too. Okay. And then let's see, be like here two. Although this side has to match to what we have on the other side right here. Using a round brush that stiffer from more control. I'm grabbing more green because it doesn't match the shape to that one. Then right above the leave here, if you go like in circles, then you give an illusion there's something in the background. However, you need more of like a transitional color, maybe like the fallow blue green here. Let's get closer to this in between. I didn't really put this part too much. I want some sap green, the fallow blue. But I want some yellow stew yellows. This literally is mixing colors on the paper. I got to be careful so I don't go over the stems. I guess this part should be part of the background because it wouldn't end like this. When I do is use my damp brush and just sweat it from here. It b***ds together. I'll have to keep an eye on it. I want to grab some more. This is wet on dry. Now, why is it wet on dry? Why am I okay with it? Is because that area is small. I need some blue here. Then water water to make this wet so it doesn't dry on me too fast. Some yellow tones. Whenever you see it's drying, then you add some water. We still want to come back here technically to add some branches. I just have to keep reminding myself, I want to do that. I'm just going to grab water because since I have enough of the paint, the same thing, actually just the damp brush go through. It b***ds together, but I got to get closer to this leaf. I'll leave the small parts, okay? There's my indigo or fallow blue. And try to connect this part. I'll have to rewet it later. This was actually good example to show like why I don't do things like that. Wet, dry, because these parts are already dried. How am I going to add like a branch there and be a little harder for now? I'm going to grab some of the blue burn, brown indigo. Then this is if I want to add some branches. Right? This is wet on dry. I'm still wet and wet, but we're using this thicker paint, cream top like creo between water and paint. Why not to add some red with it, since we have all these stems here? Anyways, it could be like some leaves in there actually. But I don't want to make it back too crazy busy. I'm going to go right next to it. Something like that. I forgot because I was going to show you how to lift the colors here. I can still lift you would use a brush. You go like next to a branch, for example. It's a little late, but you can still do it. I prefer to do it. My rigger brush, This is my rigger to. 37. Background: Adding More Colors: Let's say you want to lift like the leaves. Well, this is too late. Let's see if I can lift here. Actually can still lift a little bit. Lifting is nice because again, it's like a clean way to add highlights. It's too late just going to have to maybe do it here. I was able to lift tiny bit, not ideally, but if you're still there, try to lift the colors just a little bit. Now, this is all drying, so I can go closer to these branches, lift next to them. Then let's say I want to add more yellow. I can still do that for a leaf, for example. As long as this is all wet, this is the yellow for the leaf and I added it with that like a milk like ratio. But that's only because it's super wet still. I get a keep eye on these parts. If I want to lift, you can lift, create like leaves and stuff like that if you want to. Now, I do have these tiny, tiny, tiny spots. I want to use the same colors. It's easier to actually start more like a milk like ratio, then you just cover it. This is my round three brush. Carefully going again next to the apple because we're shaping the apple, right? I grabbed a little bit of the indigo and band brown just to make it darker here. Steady hand. I want to have a steady hand here, something like that. To clean the brush. And just use a damp brush to push the paint a little right there. It's harder to do it when everything is wet. May be easier for you if you wait for this to dry for the background and then you can rest your hand over it. There's my background now. I need to lift, right? If I want to lift, this is my rigger to wipe your brush on a towel first. Then you can go next to these branches. For example, you add like a high light next to it this way. But you can also pretend like there's a leaf and create some veins or something like that if you want to. Next to these parts we can lift. To just lifting. I do have one more spot right here to add some color. I have to be very careful, sit on, touch the painting, the background, but till then I can still lift a little bit. Just a little bit of lifting will change a lot, actually. If you need to soften anything, all you need is a damp, soft brush. Like a brush, and then you're just going to pull, pull the paint just like that. Let's say you're really working hard on creating like a shape of apple in the background. That's when you would use the brush for that. I'm going to clean this brush. Actually first, this is my flat brush, which I don't use anymore or don't need anymore. We're almost down and then I'll talk about this painting again and then I'll chal***ge you to paint something on your own. I'm going to grab first's along yellow with some of the set green here. More of that water with it. Then I really have to focus on having my hand steady so I don't go over the apple ops, but I went over the leaf. It is 100% much easier if you can rest your hand over the painting, but I can't do it right now because it's still wet. If I want to finish it faster, then I just have to be very focused here. This is my round three brush is the smaller brush you go in. And if I want to change the colors there, then I got to grab, let's say I grabbed earlier, just fallow blue and indigo. But here some of that day ground. And then again, going towards the up Walt. All right. I think that's pretty good. I'm going to clean my brush. One more thing I can do. Well, first of all here I'm going to quickly add a layer here. I'm wetting it. And I'm going to grab this yellow and green and then some blue and keep it darker on top here. Maybe some too just to get closer right there. Just make sure your back ground is dry. You haven't done this part yet. Then actually I could add a little bit of b***d brown to then just a clean brush. One more thing, I was thinking of this part, if it's too light and I feel like it is, I can add a little bit of a color here that would be like a lighter color yellow and some green. Try to add it more towards like the left side, but this way I have something. Is there anything else that I wanted to do? I can't think of anything other than if I want to lift more. Lifting can take like extra 15 minutes. If you really want to just keep playing with your painting, this is good timing to lift because there's no more shine on the paper. Everything feels down. You just use that clean brush to lift the colors, but try not to overdo it. Because again, it's easy to get lost in this lifting and then it just doesn't look as natural. Can maybe lift through here either. Like the fresher areas, they just paint it, but that's pretty much it. I think we're finished. Yeah, that's it. Please let me know if you have any questions. Thank you so much for your time. Please check out the next part of this course, which is where I chal***ge you to paint something on your own. Thank you so much. 38. Conclusion: Congratulations, you have just completed this course. You not only learn how to properly wet the paper, but also how to paint with undertones and why undertones are important. You have learned what is the best timing to lift the colors, but also how to create an even smoother layer using a damp brush to already painted area on the paper. Big, congratulations. Please don't forget to share your beautiful paintings in our community and please keep an eye on my upcoming classes on skillshare. I also have two other online schools. One is on Pat, it's W that Patron.com slash Maria Jane. So you can find me there and that's where I share weekly classes. And then I have another online school which is Maria in Scott.com But you can find all this information on my main website, which is www Maria Morgan.com Lastly, please follow me on Instagram and you can find me on Youtube. I have my own Youtube channel since 2016, and that's why I share weekly demos or watercolor tips. Thank you so much for your time and please let me know if you have any questions. And again, don't forget to share your beautiful work either on social media or here on Skill share.