Watercolor Mood Boards: Rethink Your Process

1. Introduction to Watercolor Mood Boards: Rethink Your Process: It's not always easy to sort out what you should be creating, keep on track with your projects, and stay inspired. Hi, I'm Chris, a former fashion retail management professional, turned full-time freelance artist and designer living in the desert. I teach courses, classes, and I have a watercolor membership that takes students deeper. I love art and design, and I've been teaching creative classes on Skillshare since 2016. My specialty is demystifying processes into more simple terms and helping students gain confidence in their own work, which I've done for thousands over the years. In this class, I'm going to show you a process that's invaluable to artists and designers around the globe. It has been a wonderful asset to me and I think it could help you get inspired, move past some creative block and keep your projects moving. That is with mood boards. This tool is an art form in and of itself. That's why I believe it's so helpful to book illustrators, surface designers, brand designers, and artists looking to build a collection plus so many more. Mood boards are used to help clients visualize the project you have in mind for them. Art directors use a version of this called briefs sent to their artists, setting the tone for upcoming client work. But it's also an amazing way for you to gain clarity by your own projects. If you've taken some of my other classes, you might remember my Procreate mood boards class, where I show you how to easily create a mood board using the Procreate app on the iPad. Today I'm going to show you the advantages of creating mood boards and show you how I would build one step-by-step with watercolors. We'll start with a theme, color palette, and some subject matter then we'll add some custom watercolor stickers and do some fun cut-and-paste collaging to polish it off. I've even created a workbook for you to help you keep on track during the entire process. This class is for beginner to intermediate students who want to get their projects better organized, looking to break creative block, or just looking for a fun watercolor project. You can win a Skillshare badge just for watching this class. Ready to get started? 2. Your Project: [MUSIC] Your project in this class will be to watch the class videos, follow along with me on my project or get creative on your own for your own Moodboard theme. Then choose a layout, cut out your elements, sketch, paint, and detail your very own project. I'll be with you every step of the way to guide you to the finish. Learning how to do this project will give you an entirely new skill set and interesting ways to look at your own work. Seeing your art with fresh eyes can be incredibly helpful in finding inspiration, breaking creative block, and spurring new ideas. I really hope you plan to share your project. I grew exponentially when I first started showing my work. It was magical to have feedback and comments and it helped me grow so much faster than I imagined. If you've never done it before here's how to upload your project on Skillshare. First you'll go to the Projects and Resources tab under the class videos, then click the green Create Project button. From there you'll want to upload your cover image for your project. Choose a file then click Submit. From here if you want to replace your image just click the button below, find an image and below you can make it larger or smaller with the slider or you can drag it side-to-side to position it. When you're happy just click Submit. Now your project needs a title. It can be funny, descriptive, or whatever you like. Below is your personal project field, click Image to add image files, then position your cursor underneath the image to add descriptions. I'm adding a series of images to show my entire process for this project. You can do it any way you like. Below you can also add a video or links. When you're done just click the green Publish button. Once it's published you can go below the videos and see your project on the right-hand side. When you click on it you can see that all your images are uploaded. On the right is where people can comment and like your project. I comment on every project, so I can't wait to see you in this space. You can also find upload instructions in your workbook or on the Projects and Resources page under the class videos. When you upload your project you can win another Skillshare badge, which is fun. I can't wait to see what you create. [MUSIC] 3. Tools and Materials: Now I'll go over the simple tools and materials you'll need to complete your project. They will actually be very similar to the tools we used in my other class called abstract watercolor planner and journal. I'd like to go over paper first. I just got this Canson, 140 pounds, 300 gram watercolor paper. This is hot press, so it has the texture which I love. Cold press is also available where you can just have a smooth surface. This will be from my background, so it's nice and large. But you can also consider a paper that is a different type of paper and just add your elements to that if you're not going to be painting it. I'm going to be painting one so it's important that I use watercolor paper. Then for my smaller paintings, I'm going to use this paper, which is also 300 pound. This is by Strathmore, this is by Canson. I mix papers a lot. I like to experiment with different ones and I love this for quick small paintings because of the size and so forth. I think that will be fun. I'm also going to be using a pencil and eraser. I have 2B and HB and either one of them will work I just have to keep my lines light. I have a polymer eraser which doesn't leave marks on my paper when I erase, which is invaluable to me because I don't want that showing through my painting. A gum eraser will work as well. For paintbrush, all you really need is one round brush technically. Round brush covers so many strokes that, that is the only basic brush you have to really have. You can have a different kind of brush too it's just a round brush is so versatile. This is a medium-size, technically is size 7, but internationally they're not standardized. I think this is about an inch long if you want to compare it that way. A ruler for when I cut these pages up, I want to keep them nice and straight. But you don't have to, you can just wing it, which is one of my favorite things to do honestly. Besides that I'm going to need scissors to cut up my pieces with. You're going to need water. I love to use the double jar system because my paint brushes get pretty dirty and it stops me from having to get up any sooner than I have to, so it keeps me painting for quite awhile. If I have a really dirty brush I can save one of these waters for the really dirty rinses and then save one for the clear rinses. Or you can just use this as a second option. I'm definitely going to need something to sop up water with, so my paper towels and you'll see how this is one I've used before, so I've really use these over and over again until I can't anymore. Just to save on resources, especially paper and I'm really trying to use my rags more and more so that I use less and less of this, so I have that. Now, as far as options to add to this, I'm going to probably be using a flat brush because I have quite a big surface here to paint, and so the bigger the brush, the better. I'm going to be using a larger flat brush and I'm probably going to be using a smaller round brush for detail. I'm not sure yet. I also have this fan brush that is great for making marks, but you can get creative with that. I also have a micron pen if I want to outline some of my paintings, this is awesome to have. Then I have these beautiful pilot pens. I love these pens. The ink is very nice and saturated colors. I have like 25 colors. I love these for adding detail, or maybe I'll make my lettering with this. I haven't decided yet, but I know that I do love to use these. I also have this brush pen set. This is watercolor brush pens by Arteza. I have 48 beautiful colors, they work so well. That's like a little brush on the end of each marker, if you will, but the marker contains watercolor paints. It's pretty genius. If you haven't used these, oh my gosh, I love them. I'm also going to be using a little small test pad. This is just sketch paper, but you can see I have marked it all over the place and it's just great for test painting. Like if I want to just show you how this works, this one's a little bit dry, but most of my colors are really good and if I get water to this, it will spread. It has that watercolor effect, but it's great for lettering, so this is another option for me. Now as far as adhering your elements to your background, I'm probably just going to be using tape because tape lets the paper pop out a little bit and I love that three-dimensional look. But you can also use a glue stick. I have this glue, you just do this and the glue sticks to it. I guess it's called a glue roll adhesive. Looks like it's by adhesives. But you can find these at the art supply stores or any other glue you have. You can use Elmer's or whatever you have there that's going to keep your elements secure to your background. As far as watercolor paints go, you can use anything you have or paint anything that you like using. I'm going to be using my Viviva color sheets. This is the original set, and I really like the basic colors in here that I can mix and make my own. But you can see all the basic colors. You can see this is all pretty basic and simple. Use what you like if you have things that you like working with that are a little different than this, please feel free to throw them in. You'll find a full list of materials in the projects and resources section under the class videos and also in your workbook. Now that we have our tools and materials together, let's work on the theme and subject matter. 4. Theme and Subject Matter: [MUSIC] Let's start by picking a moodboard theme. You can choose just about anything for your theme like florals, art supplies, books, and so on. Choose something that you like because you'll have way more fun with this project if you do. I get super inspired on Pinterest. All I have to do is search one word and I get so many visual examples and the ideas can just grow from there. If you have a favorite search engine, this is a great way to get inspired. Since I live in the desert, I'm going to use that as my theme for this project. Next, I'll make a list of what subject matters will work for my theme. There's a worksheet for you in the workbook so you can jot down all your ideas. Write down as many things as you can think of so you have plenty to choose from, then circle the ones you will be using and use the brain dump area below for any thoughts, ideas, thumbnail sketches, and so on. Keep in mind that you don't actually have to have any other thing besides the color palette itself. Before I had my brand colors, I wanted to challenge myself to create different color palettes each month for my Instagram feed just to see what it would look like. It was a really fun project that I learned a lot from. You can visually see it's quite lovely, and something that you can do for your own social networking. Essentially, moodboards are used professionally to convey ideas, but you can create them for visual play as well. I've constructed beautiful mood boards in the past just by having a color palette and all different types of art. For the purpose of this class, however, I'm going to use the desert as my theme to show you how I can create cohesive elements that bring this project together in the end. I've decided on a succulent, a hummingbird since they're plentiful out here, mountains since we're surrounded by them, a sun, and some cactus. [MUSIC] 5. Color Palette: [MUSIC] Now that you know your theme, you can choose your colors. You might even want to let your theme inspire your colors. For example, for my desert theme, I'm using sky blue, neutral browns, and a soft blue-green perfect for painting cactus. If your chosen theme doesn't have an obvious color palette, then just go to the next best thing, which is your favorite colors. This can go a long way to making a project extra meaningful. I've provided you with a link in the workbook to my color palettes Pinterest board. It's chock full of color combinations that are gorgeous. At this point, I have over 700 pins in here that you can choose from. This is a gorgeous color palette and any two of these combinations would look amazing together. But there's lots and lots more. These roses with the green and the gold, that's stunning. There's lots and lots and lots of options. You can do your own search here as well or on your favorite browser to find any color combinations that you need. I just particularly like the search engine because it's really beautiful, and it's a wonderful feast for my creative eyes. By using the color wheel, you can pick a color and look directly across it to find its complementary color, and this will never fail you. That will always be a good combination of colors. You can also choose the colors that are right beside another. Those are called analogous color combinations. That's another beautiful combination. They're really just versions of one another. If you like fashion, you can always look at an outfit that you like that these two colors are amazing together, they're a form of complementary colors. If you like paintings, you can look at paintings. Maybe you want to choose some colors from a favorite painting that you have. Maybe you have a favorite color or maybe you have some colors in mind. I hope this inspired you either way. I look forward to see what colors you choose for your project. [MUSIC] 6. Mood Board Layouts: [MUSIC] If you're not familiar with mood boards, it helps to see some examples. I have an entire Pinterest board, of course, actually two, that I have devoted entirely to mood boards. One is for mood boards themselves and the other is for mood board formats. I've shared the link to these in the projects and resources section, and of course, in the workbook. To clarify by layout, I mean, composition, there are so many different ways you can compose your mood board. To understand how to create a layout for your mood board, you're first going to need to know the anatomy of one. Generally, every mood board has a title, then come the visuals. I'm going to be including three main visuals to tell my story of the desert, plus probably some other little elements. I've almost always seen a color palette included as well. At times there can be some additional elements to embellish the mood board. Sometimes there are squiggles are lines or textures. We'll be doing this in the form of watercolor stickers and maybe even some painted stroke overlays. You can keep it simple and clean or you can lay your elements for a more visual impact. You can choose to have fewer elements or more elements on your mood board. You can choose to have just a few colors, or you can choose to have more. Just keep in mind that the more colors you have, the more difficult the project becomes. However, if you do need more colors represented, that is completely possible. In this class, I'm going to be keeping it simple. Just 3-4 colors because I want to concentrate on the concepts that I'm teaching you. None of these concepts is correct or better than the other. It will really just depend on your style and what you like. Even if you don't know your style yet, you do have one, and sticking to what lights you up will get you closer to discovering it. I highly encourage you to lean into this. I want your project to be something that ignites you and inspires more ideas and/or projects. I would love it for it to be something you want to hang on your wall or keep in your studio. Keep it handy somewhere, so you know that you can turn to this technique anytime you need it. After looking at a bunch of layouts, I used my little test pad here to cut some little test pieces and I've decided on a layout much like this. What this looks like is or what this represents is a portrait painting here, a square one here and maybe a small portrait, smaller one here, maybe much smaller than this. This will be the title up here and these are the color palette colors, probably in circles. But you can do these in squares or different, we'll talk about that as we go. Then I might add some additional elements or stickers maybe in here, maybe over here. Once I have everything in place, I'm going to have a better idea of where I can maybe use some extra elements to add some visual interests. These are the papers I'll be cutting for my smaller pieces and my color palette pieces. We'll see about the title. I don't know if I'll paint that directly onto the background or create another sheet for that. I've been thinking about doing it right on the background, we'll see. But that gives you an idea. This is something you can do to sort and move your pieces around once you've decided what your main piece is, that's the biggest, or if you want them all the same, you want them in a row. This really helps to visualize your project before you start, so there's just a little less error and having to go back and redo stuff. Hope that helped. [MUSIC] 7. Creating Your Layout: Now that I know what layout I'll be using for my moodboard, I'm going to decide on the sizes of my elements and cut out my paper. I'll set the pieces on backgrounds, so they're all ready to go. I'm really just looking at the size of my background, and visually estimating what size each of my elements need to be. Keeping my mini model close by for reference. I'm adjusting as I go to allow for pieces that are too big or not shaped well to fit and cut them down. Take your time on this step until you're happy with your sizes. Then I'll see you in the next lesson to start sketching. 8. Watercolor Stickers and Additional Elements: [MUSIC] Since watercolor stickers isn't actually a thing, I thought it would elaborate a bit on this. If you've taken my abstract watercolor planner and journal class, you might have already seen my process for creating watercolor stickers. This is simply the process of making little miniature watercolor paintings on tiny watercolor paper and then cutting and sticking them wherever you want them to go. Super simple, I know. But it is so much fun. They take a bit more time and attention to create. But in the end, they are so worth it because they add such a fun touch of whimsy to any project. I'm going to make watercolor stickers that go with my desert theme. Maybe some cactus or sand. Will you be adding watercolor stickers to your project? There are also different elements you can include on your mood board. Elements I mostly see are images, paintings, and lettering, but you can also add graphics like squiggles or shapes. You can even add a colored background depending on the design. For the purpose of this project, there is a choice of painting types that you can create as well. For example, you can do an abstract painting, a line art painting, a full painting, or a painting with no background. You can outline with black ink or leave it the way it is. Maybe there are some other options you could think of when you get creative. I've made a list of some of these for you in the workbook in the meantime. You can go through them and decide which ones you want to use for your project. Stop the video if you need to choose your elements, and then we can go on to the next step in the process. [MUSIC] 9. Sketching: [MUSIC] I'm going to get all of these elements sketched out onto various sizes of watercolor paper. This will help me to visually organize my project so that when I get my paints out, I'll know exactly what I'm doing. Now that I have all of my papers cut out and I have a little extra in case I want to do something fun with that, I am going to start sketching. I'm going to go ahead and start with this one, which I can't wait to get my hands on. This one's going to be my hummingbirds sketch. I have an image I'm working off of, but I want to reverse it. I'm going to go ahead and start with the beak and the head. I want it to be centered on this square, so I may have to do this a couple of times. I don't know. I'm not being too precious with this. I just want this to be quick and even maybe a little rough. I don't know, we'll see. I'm just following the shape and then we have the wings. Hopefully I left enough room for that. It goes down in a triangle. Then this one comes out from behind his head like this. That not bad. I think I might be able to work with that. Its little feet here. I don't want to get too detailed. This is just going to be filled in. Maybe I'm actually going to make this bigger. I want it to take up a lot of this page, a lot of the space rather. Maybe I'm going to make this way bigger so it gets much more visually interesting with that wing all the way to the end, and this wing a little further out. I'm just going to erase all the pencil lines I don't want. I'm going to lighten them because I don't particularly want them to show once I've painted. Sometimes when you paint over it, you can't get your pencil lines off anymore. So that's something to think about. I have my trusty [NOISE] and this is a little brush I got from my garage and I'm just going to sweep the eraser dust off with it. One handy tip. That's a much better use of this space. I am just going to refine the shape of his head just a little bit more. With that is pretty done good. Again, I don't want to get too detailed with this and get crazy with all of this, getting too finicky with all of this. I'm going to leave his feet off. I think that's a nice fill in of the space. It's even up and down and it's even side-to-side. I'm going to go onto the next item, which is going to be my succulent. I want it in one of these tall portrait shaped papers. Again, very quick, you can see the shapes are just so simple on this one, and this is exactly what I'm going for in this project: simple, clean, quick. Definitely you can do make this project more complicated. But because I want to focus on the concepts of building a mood board, I want to keep the rest of this very simple and that's great. So that will be another simple painting. I think I'm going to make this one a line painting, so I'm just going to do the outlines and I'm going to go ahead and just lighten this a little bit more so the pencil marks don't show through my paint too much. It might fill in the container. I don't know. When I get to that painting stage, I think I'll have more clarity. That's one thing that you could think about so you don't get bogged down in the details. It's just keep going. If you're not sure about something, just keep going. A lot of times the answer will just reveal itself as you go forward. Now this next one I want to, I didn't think about doing this horizontal. Again, as you're going along, you might get new inspiration and that's been happening to me. You can see my layout has slightly changed from the last time I talked about it. That's okay, just allow your piece to evolve with you and as you're creating it, it's really extra fun that way because it's almost like the art is in collaboration with you. It's just feel so much more of a hamburger connection. I'm going to turn this one to the side and slightly move my other pieces around a little bit. I can even overlap. I don't know yet. But I think I'd like to do a mountain and I'm just going to wing this one from memory and a sun because that's what we look at out here in the desert. This is the view we get every sunset [LAUGHTER] and even sunrise. So I wanted to include that. Maybe this is a little bit big. This one I might make a full painting because, again, it would be so simple. I'm just going to fill in the mountains, fill in the sun, and maybe do a sky. I'm not sure. I think I'm going to keep this a sunset, so I'll keep golden tones, which will be great for the colors I've chosen from my color palette. I love circles, but you don't have to do circles. You can do squares, or blocks, or just brushstrokes. But I'm going to go ahead and go with circles and I'm just going to quickly because see, I'm not even measuring. I'm just drawing some circles down. I'll just keep my colors generally inside this, but we'll see how they turn out. For my stickers, I have decided to do a couple of cactus and a lizard. There's a lot of little tiny lizards out here and they stay out of your way. I hope you're not creeped out by reptiles. I generally don't love reptiles, but the lizards are adorable. They just stay out of your way and just do their thing and they eat a lot of bugs, which is really nice. [LAUGHTER] They do a good job out here of maintaining their end of things. I wanted to show that, and I'm just going to modify this a little bit to show that tail curving around since I don't have a lot of space, it makes it more interesting anyway. Its little arms, I'm not going to get too fussy with the fingers part of it. I think I like the one on the left better, so I'm going to redo this one, make this a little chunkier. Then these back legs going the same way. Just, again, not getting too detailed. I'm not doing it just like the image because I don't want to get that detailed. I'm just going to do a quick version. That's great. Again, I'm going to lighten this up a bit, although I have an idea for this and I think I might keep this dark pencil line for now because I might just do this in ink. We'll see how we do. Then for this one I want to do a barrel cactus, so they're super tall. We don't have barrel cactus in the Mojave Desert, but we have them nearby in Arizona, and they're super cool. I just love this as a desert staple. They have these seeming lines going down where the needles are. Then on this one, I think I'm going to do in our Gabi cactus, which is very similar to this, but it's its own thing coming right out of the ground. [NOISE] I don't have to get too fussy with it, but I want one more maybe right here. Again, I'll keep this one. Keep these pencil lines dark. I'll just show the ground going like this. Oh, I like that. Maybe I'll show the ground in this one too so these match a little bit. Again, I got ideas as I went forward, and that worked very well. This could be a cute layout. Now the last thing is my lettering. It might take me a couple of times to get this right. Again, this is not even straight as cactus, but you know what? It's organic. I love the quickness of this and I'm just going to go with it. I might have to do this a couple of times as I said, because I don't know what the space I am going to have to spread these way out. [NOISE] I've chosen a block letter just to keep it really clean. It goes with the color, the simple clean vibe I'm going with. That's so much better. I could just ink that in and put it there or paint it. I haven't decided on that at all. I think I'll just leave these to the side and just see if anything comes up I want to add, but I'm really happy with this layout. I think this will work very well as an end project. Let's get onto the painting. [MUSIC] 10. Painting the Background: [MUSIC] Now that I have all my sketching done, it is time to paint. [LAUGHTER] This is the fun part. I'm going to start by actually painting my background, which is something you don't always see in a moodboard, but I've decided I really want the color to really shine on this project. I'm going to take all of my little moodboard elements and I'm going to put them aside, and I probably should tape this down, but I'm going to be moving things around a lot. I'm going to just let this dry a little curly and I can always put it under a book or something heavy so that it can flatten out. I want it to have some texture and bumpiness anyway because again, this is a very gritty project that is not supposed to be perfect. I'm going to go ahead and get my blue going. This is a Persian blue in my original Vivido paint set. I'm going to get my brush fairly wet. My colors dry pretty fast out here in the desert, so I have to move quickly. If I get a little paint on my table, that's all right. I can wash it off. Instead of actually doing a wet on wet, which would be the easiest thing, I'm going to just apply my paint as light as I can and just keep it moving that way because I think it will buckle a little bit less that way than if I wet the whole thing in advance. I wouldn't even make it down half this page and it would be dry already because it's so dry out here. I'm just going to keep this going. It's working. I was going to put some clouds in here. I don't know if I'm going to do that now because I don't think you'll see them for all the elements anyway, and it would be a shame to have them under here and not be able to see them because my elements are big compared to this size, so I'm going to let the clouds go. Again, one of those split-second decisions that you can make on the fly. [MUSIC] I could use a bigger brush, but the bigger brush that I have is not for watercolor and I have a moodbrush that's bigger, but it puts so much water on the paper that I don't think in this case that will be in my favor. I am going to leave all these crazy variations in color and texture in here because I think that'll add to the visual interest here. Maybe I'll even leave some white spaces. We'll see. I'm liking these up-and-down strokes as opposed to the side-by-side. I think it makes it feel taller and more elegant. [MUSIC] Again, there are no rules. We're just playing and we're just being intuitive. That just makes it so much more relaxing and approachable. [MUSIC] I think I will fill in the white spots. I don't think I like them that much. I think that's going to take away from the white backgrounds that I'm hoping to have in my element paintings. [MUSIC] I got a little brown in there which I wasn't planning on. I think I'll just wet that and just gently dab it with my paper towel because there won't be probably any elements as far over, so I want to make sure that's not visible. Now I'll just put a little more blue over that. That should do it. [MUSIC] Fun. Almost there. Just going to try and get some of these edges. Cool. I'll let this dry and we'll go ahead and start on the other elements. [MUSIC] 11. Painting the Main Elements: [MUSIC] I'm going to start by painting my backdrop paper. This is definitely not required. In fact, most foods boards are on white backgrounds, but this time I wanted to do something a bit different to showcase the watercolor paints a bit more. So I'm going to be painting my background blue and I plan to leave some spaces at the top for clouds. That's a pretty sophisticated move for a backdrop. But again, I wanted to do something a little more artsy for this one. I've cleaned up my surfaces. You can see all the blue is gone and I'm ready to paint some of these other paintings. Let me get my brush out of my water. I'm going to continue using this brush. The round brush is generally my favorite. When I have larger areas, I do love to use this. It's just very fast. So I am going to be using primarily browns, a light green, and a lighter version of my browns. Let's go ahead and jump into some brown. I'm going to keep this here in front of me and we've done the background with this one. So I'm going to be focusing on these other colors and maybe a darker brown in this, just to add some interest here and there. So yes, I'm going to go ahead and start with some brown and I want to keep it light like a terracotta almost, which will be perfect for a plant pot and I'm going to go ahead and fill this plant pot in. I'm going to put more paint in here, with the intention of letting it dry really rough. I don't want too much. I want a lot of character on this because my elements are going to be simple. So I want the paint to be the star. [MUSIC] I'm going to let that dry before I paint the rest of the plant. I'm going to go ahead to this mountain because I'm going to use this same brown for the mountains. So I'm going to fill my brush. This is the burnt umber, if you're wondering what color this is in the Viviva palette. So if you have this paint set and it's the burnt umber color, which has a lot of red in it. It's perfect for this color palette that I've created. [MUSIC] As you can see I didn't even really think about how these mountains were going to look. I just dove in, I just did some jaggedy lines. I didn't worry about the perfection of it or how it was supposed to look. I'm just playing and it just makes it less intimidating and I can just feel like I'm just having fun and relaxing into this. So I hope that's what you'll do with your project too, is just allow yourself to play and experiment. Of course, if you want to add more detail, you are certainly welcome to do that. But I don't want it to keep you from completing your project. That's the main thing. Great. So this is a little darker than the rest, but that's all right. I think that'll be interesting. I might want a little bit more brown right here where, I may have stuck my finger there or drop some water. So that's great. It's not perfectly up to the edge, but that's all right too [MUSIC], I think that this hummingbird should also be the same color. I didn't even think about that in the beginning. Or I guess I could make it blue. The hummingbirds are actually brown out here, but that doesn't mean I can't change its color. Or could be interesting is to add a combination of brown and green. That could be really fun. So, yeah, the hummingbirds are brown out here to blend into the desert colors. We don't get too many super colorful ones out here, which is sad, but it totally makes sense. They have to blend with their environment to stay safe. It's part of their protection. Although hummingbirds are pretty aggressive, I don't think they need much protecting. [LAUGHTER] They are the god of war for certain tribes, I think in South America, I don't know. If someone knows, please correct me. South America or Africa. I think I've definitely heard that in a lot of tribal communities that the hummingbird is actually the god of war. It's not a tame little creature, but they're super friendly. They'll come up and see what you're doing and they're just really cool. I love them so much. I'm going to try to keep my darker stroke around his head. Even though it's going to be all one color, it will look like it's got a little shadow up here and I might just blend that into the rest of the body so it's not too different. I don't want to look odd. I definitely want more character. It's a little too even for me. So I'm going to add some water and blend this and let some of these, they're called watercolor blooms, form where you see the round, hard edges. I just absolutely love that. It's the only paint medium that does it and I want to rock it for sure, make sure that it's doing its thing. I'm going to leave this one wing alone because then it'll stand out as in the background because it doesn't have any texture on it. Add a little more water here. You can see the texture starting to form. I love that. [MUSIC] [LAUGHTER] 12. Painting Additional Elements: [MUSIC] Now, I'm going to do my color palette. I'm going to go ahead and put my brown in first and I'll try to stay within these circles. But, again, I'm not going to get too precious with it, I'm just going to drop it and go. Maybe just a little bit more to show some of the dark portions of that brown. Let's do the lighter version of this with some burnt sienna. I didn't mean to put it there though. I wanted to put it over one, so it doesn't look too perfect on this palette. This is great. The pencil lines will show a little bit, but that's all right. Oops, I'm doing it again. Have you ever done that before, you didn't mean to do something and then you do it more than once? It's interesting. [LAUGHTER] I'll just put it that way. Great. I guess it wanted to go on that second one, but I visually think this will be more interesting. Then I'm going to do the blue, so we'll have warm, warm, cool, cool. [MUSIC] It's gotten a little bit out of round. Let me just dab that a little, and that's perfect. Then the very last one is going to be the green. I'm going to use my Viridian. [MUSIC] Now, we're back to green. I need to add some more blue. It's like that with mixing colors sometimes, it doesn't always work the first time, you just have to play with it. Let's see what I've got. I need my test pad. That's not bad if I keep it light. I'm going to go ahead and put what's left in my brush down here. That's pretty darn close, I like it a lot. Watercolor will always dry lighter anyway. I'm going to leave this, will be a nice rich color without being too bold. I love the mutedness of it, beautiful. We've got our color palette and stickers. This will be on a blue background. At least these two will have a white background. I think I'm going to paint this one all the way through, and then these, I think should be orange. I'm going to paint them this burnt sienna, which is the lighter brown. [MUSIC] Sweet. Now, we'll add the second layer of paint to all of this. I'm going to use my green to go ahead and start painting in these leaves. This is way darker than what I wanted, but what I'm going to do is just keep spreading it around the plant like that. I don't even have to get any more paint on my brush because there's so much paint on this painting already, I'm just going to use that as my palette and just spread it around. Great. Looking good. I eliminated this smaller leaf or maybe I will outline it. I don't know what I'm doing with this yet, but I think I want it a bit taller, so I'm going to get just a little bit more water and just spread this paint out just a little more, make this a little thicker. I think this one in the middle can be the tallest, just like that and maybe one more tall one here, and the rest are fine. [MUSIC] That's done. Now, I'm going to add the burnt sienna to the sky. [NOISE] I really didn't want the mountain to start dissolving, but it's what's happening. I'm just going to brush that downward and use this to paint over here. [MUSIC] I think what I'm going to do with the sun is just add a little pop of muted yellow. I have a yellow ocher that could be really perfect for that. But I will let this dry first. Even though it's not in my color palette, you're allowed to cheat, [LAUGHTER] it's called artistic license. You can do anything you want with your design if you want to add a pop of something. I put this yellow will blend in beautifully. [MUSIC] 13. Painting for the Finish: [MUSIC] I was going to add a little green to my hummingbird. Let's do that. Now this green is really saturated, so I have to water it down, but I think I'll do it right on his belly. You know what? What if I did it all the way through? I love that idea. Just dabs and dots here and there. Fun. Give it a whole different personality. It'll pick up the green in the color palette and in the succulent, which I hadn't even allowed for. That is cool. I'm going to leave this back wing once again, just the way it is so it really stands out. Fun. I love that. It adds a design to it that wasn't there before, maybe a little more on this wing. Stabs and dots and I'll just let that dry. I love that so much. Now, I think I'll add some of this green to my stickers, which I really wasn't planning on doing. But I think I'm going to do it anyway. I probably could use a detail brush for this, but I want a roll. I'm going to keep it going. Just keep these a little bit away from one another so I don't blend them all, they don't fade all into each other. Just using the very tip of my brush gives me so much control. [MUSIC] I have my sun to paint. Now that this is dry, I'm going to add some yellow. I'm going to do my yellow ocher so it doesn't get too bright or anything. It's still got that brownish look to it. That is perfect. [MUSIC] I don't want to add just a little bit of fill in here and here. That's looking pretty darn good. Great. I know this got a little messed up there, but that's okay. I can just finish it off at the end when that yellow is dry. I love this, I love this, these are drying. This is fantastic. We are getting there. Now the last thing, move these out of my way a little bit, is going to be my lettering. For this, I think I will definitely add that background orange, so the burnt sienna. Just keep it light. I want to keep it light because I want these to pop and I want this more quiet. It's going to be the longest, widest element, so it's going to have plenty of real estate and it'll be noticed plenty. It doesn't have to be super colorful. That's great. I'm just going to let that dry. Add some little extra strokes. Super. I don't know if you noticed, but I made this a little skinnier. Again, you can change things as you go. Maybe I need to add a little more color up here. That's better. This is going to buckle, but I'm just going to keep it down while it's drying or I can just let it dry and then I will have all my elements painted. I'll see you in the next lesson to detail them. [MUSIC] 14. Ink Details: [MUSIC] Everything is dry now. I'm loving how it looks and I'm just going to go through and I'm going to add some detail with my black Micron. I wasn't sure if I was going to do this, but I think black will give it a nice finished look and bring some of these details out. With my Micron pen I'm just going to carefully, oh, this one's not very good. I usually use a 0.8 and this is 0.5, it's too skinny for me. Let me go to this one which is an 08. This is an 005, super skinny. Not really working for this project. I need something a lot more visible. I have cut this a little skinnier and my letters have moved down, so I'm going to just adjust them as I go. As neatly as I can, I'm not a great letter. I don't consider myself a letter at all, but organic lettering in your handwriting will go so far to feel so authentic that I'm pushing myself to do more and more lettering all the time and I'm fine having more fun with it as I go. It's quite a revelation. I encourage you to dive in if you're not comfortable with lettering and just do it. That works. I want to maybe put some circles around my color palette, colors. I'm not measuring or doing anything fancy, I'm just even letting some of the colors go outside the lines. It's still going to give it a much more finished look. Just like that. Maybe that's my answer to this scraggly looking mountain because I can finish it off with an outline that could work. I won't have to repaint anything. That will come off later and the sun too, I think. I think I'll just go around this hummingbird. I wasn't sure if I was going to do any of this but I really liked that finished feel, and so I'm just going to go over every single one of these. [MUSIC] I'm just going to make some dots for the texture on this barrel cactus. [MUSIC] I was going to fill them in with black but I think it's just going to be too much black. This might be a good time for me to come back and do some adjustments. For example, I think I'd like to bring my pinks back. With this little detail brush, let me get my water. This is a great time to just go over what you've done and make sure you're happy with it. I want to definitely add a few things with some burnt umber. I think I'd like to make this lizard burnt umber. Burnt umber. Very close to the color that they actually are. They're a little more sandy but that's okay. [MUSIC] I'm going to add a little bit of burnt umber to the ground on both of these. Just a light layer. [MUSIC] Cool. I'm really happy with those. Now, I have all my elements done, adjusted where I want them and we can start assembling our moodboard. [MUSIC] 15. Mood Board Assembly: [MUSIC] Now it's time to take everything we've done so far and put it all together. Using my composition type, I'll place all my elements around the backdrop until I'm happy with the layout. You can see I have my background all dry. I love all this texture on here from the paint, and you can see it's dried a little curly. It's got up on the edges a little bit, but that's okay, I can force it back down, and when I'm all done, put it under something really heavy. But in the meantime I can work with what I have. First of all, I know this is going to go at the top. I'm going to go ahead and refer to my original little plan here, my strategy, and then see what I want to change. I love this succulent over here. Let's see how are we going to do these pieces? I want to keep them around the same distance from the edge. I know I want my colors down here, and then I've got my stickers. I am going to arrange them like this, and the lizard will be crawling over both of these. I'm just going to play with it a little bit. Maybe I'll do it this way. They're not that even, so I have these two together and this one a little separate. Do I like that? Let me play with some other arrangements. I could do this, bring this up, bring this over, and then give these more space. Wow, I like that way more. Cool. You definitely want to revisit, even though you have a plan, now that it's painted, you might want to just go over it and see what you want to change about it. I love that these two are at an angle, and then this color palette goes in a little bit of a windy circles. This is a stuff that really brings life to your composition is when you have things that are a little bit asymmetrical. Again, having them in a row, there's no problem with that at all. I just really love playing with the composition, putting these together and then these ones separate. Surprises the eye. It's expecting it to be in a row. I like to tweak it and give it a little bit of a surprise there. I like where all these pieces are sitting and I'm actually going to use my tape to adhere these because I want the freedom to be able to move them around later if I want to. I am going to just take a moment and put tape behind like an a row and put it behind all my elements. This gives me a chance to stand back and make sure I'm happy with where they all are as well. At some point I might want to glue them just because this isn't going to stay very well if it's curling and there's only a little piece of tape on there. Definitely want to tilt that out. Again in here in the desert, it's so dry that glue can drive very, very fast too, so it's tricky [MUSIC]. There we are. I've finished mood board. I really like how this came out. I love the colors. I love how everything's interacting. It's like the hummingbirds flying through the desert, flying over to the succulent. You have the lizard over here with its little plants that it lives in and our color palette. It tells the story of what it's like to live out here and the things I see every day and experience. I really hope you enjoy that and I cannot wait to see your project [MUSIC] 16. Let's Recap: [MUSIC] That was a lot. Let's do a quick recap. Gather all the supplies you need to complete this project. Feel free to be creative with your art supplies. Pick a theme for your mood board. Choose something that you like because you'll have way more fun with this project if you do. Choose a color palette that will be carried throughout your project. Your color palette can even be your theme if you want. Choose your mood board layout. Now sketch out all your paintings and watercolor stickers, AKA, elements. Paint all your elements for the mood board and let them dry. Then stand back and make sure you don't want to make any changes before moving to the next step. Because now it's time to put it all together and assemble the mood board using your chosen layer as a guide. Keep in mind that nothing is set in stone. You can still shift and rearrange your elements until you're happy with the total composition. That's it. Congrats on learning how to create a mood board of your very own. If you haven't already, it's time to create a project and upload it to Skillshare. 17. Thank You!: [MUSIC] I want to send you a huge sincere thank you for watching all the class lessons. I am so excited to share this process with you because I know it holds a potential that most artists are not even tapping into yet. Moodboards are already being used by professionals, but can be such an incredibly helpful tool to you as well. Why not dive in and see all the benefits? Now it's your turn to choose a theme, find your color palette and create your very own watercolor moodboard, or you can follow along with me on my project. Either way you'll be practicing new skills and techniques that are designed to take your work to another level. My hope is that you've learned something new about how to perceive your own work and how to approach projects with more strategy in mind in the future. Before you go I'd love to ask you if you can go to the Reviews tab under the class videos and leave me a review for this class. This helps others find the class plus it helps me to improve classes, which is really important to me as I want to keep bringing you a quality experience. Yes, you can earn your Skillshare badge for that too. [LAUGHTER] Also, don't forget to upload your projects in the Projects and Resources tab, if you don't know how, I've shared step-by-step instructions in video number 2 called Your Project and also in the workbook. I cannot wait to see what you create. See you next time [MUSIC]