Watercolor Painting : Misty Mountains Landscape

1. What's The Class About?: Hey guys. To celebrate my first culture anniversary, I'm back with the class on a subject that has been so widely requested. How to paint one of my signature misty landscapes. Today, I've got something really special planned for you. But before I tell you what that is, I just want to take a moment and thank you. Thank you so much for putting your trust in me as your teacher and for taking my classes. I cannot tell you how much this means to me. Today we're going to learn how to paint this beautiful, peaceful, majestic looking cascading misty mountains and I'm going to be sharing all of my secrets with you on how to paint successful landscapes. I've broken down every single technique that we'll be using like blending, how to use color tones, different brush marks, etc and you can apply all of these techniques in any subject you've been in watercolors. One of them was beautiful aspects of this medium is watching colors blend on paper and make their own magic without your intervention and we're going to witness that today by using two colors to get dynamic blend. A couple of things to remember before you take this class, first, this is a beginners to intermediate class so if you're completely new to watercolors, it will help you if you first take my monochrome misty pines and my dreamy lake reflections classes. Both of them will help you get warmed up. Second, I don't want you to walk into this class all nervous and worried about how your landscape is going to turn out. I'm going to walk you through every single step of the way so let go of all need for control and perfection in your painting and I promise you that by the end of this class, you are going to walk out with your own beautiful misty landscape. I'm really excited to share all of my secrets with you without further ado, let's get right into it. 2. Supplies: Let's take a quick look at the supplies we'll be needing today, before we begin painting. I'm going to start off with this plywood board. This is just a piece of plywood that my husband sanded and he varnished it a little bit. I've used this as a backing board to tape my paintings. If I have a piece of paper, I'll tape it to this board, like so, and then I can pop something underneath it to give it some height while I'm painting because I tend to paint with my paper and my board inclined towards me so that I can use the power of gravity to help with easy blending, seamless blending of colors, especially when I'm painting fog and mist and these misty landscapes. Next up, let's take a look at the brushes that we'll be using. I'm using four brushes, all from Princeton Brushes today. These Neptune brushes, these two brushes are all from Neptune range and they are made with synthetic hair which mimic natural squirrel hair. They are just some of the most high performing, high-quality brushes that I've ever used. I love using these brushes. The next brush that I've used for painting my pine trees and for the mountains is the Princeton size eight, round Neptune brush. This is a collapsible travel brush. You can just pop it into its lid and its really handy and you can travel with it without damaging the brush, but you can use any size eight brush for this project. Having a particular brand or a particular type of hair is not compulsory, just go with the supplies that you have. The next most important brush is this size six, Princeton Neptune mop. Now this is different from a size six round brush. This is a size eight round brush, and you can see that it's far smaller than a size six mop. This again, mimics squirrel hair so it's really, really soft and it holds a lot of water and in my experience, I've found soft hair brushes to be really useful when you're blending colors to get the effect of mist and fog so this is one brush that I will highly recommend for this class, but again if you can make do with any other brush that you have, please go ahead with it. The last brush is the Princeton heritage round number two. It's a small brush that comes to really fine point. I'm going to use that to paint the tiny flying birds in the sky, and again a very useful brush that I've been using for a couple of years. These are all the brushes that you will need. Not heavy duty, nothing really daunting, just go with the brushes that you have. Next up, other colors that I'm using today. Both colors are from my own range of handmade paints, my own brand Blue Pine Arts. The first one is Prussian blue, which is just a very beautiful inky, kind of like a mid night sky sort of blue which has a very high tinting strength. So you get a lot of range of different values from its maximum strength to when it's really diluted. The next color is false green. As the name suggests, this color reminds me of the cool, deep shadows of lush forest. This color also has a very high tinting strength. So you can see that you can get a lot of variation from its strongest, highest strength to when it's diluted down. You get this really beautiful transparent greens. Both of these colors are transparent, they are non-granulating, and they have very high tinting strength. So they're perfect for this class and the kind of mood that I am going for but pick and choose any colors from your palette that you would think would work really well together. For the paper, I'm using a six by eight inch piece of Fabriano Artistico 100% cotton cold press paper. Like I reiterate this in all of my sculpture classes, I use a 100 percent cotton paper because it works really well with watercolors. It makes blending really effortless if you use this paper as opposed to a student grade 25% cotton paper. Especially with the misty landscapes, it can be very frustrating to work on paper that's not a 100% cotton. So go ahead and invest in maybe a sample pack of cotton papers and try that for this class and you'll see a big difference in the way you approach a painting and how effortless it feels. This is 300 gsm or 140 pounds in thickness. Since we are going to use a lot of water, this thickness is going to be able to handle that. Any less than 200 gsm, your paper is going to warp and buckle a lot, even if you tape it to the board. Along with this mean paper, it's also useful to have a couple of these strips of paper. I usually have a stash of these old bits and pieces of paper, maybe from failed paintings or just leftover cutouts from other paintings. It's great to have these papers on hand to just mix swatches or to test your colors when you're painting, or to just practice your techniques before you begin painting on the main piece. Great to have couple scraps of paper. These don't need to be a 100 percent cotton professional paper, per say just use any paper you want for a little practice, and like for a little color swatches. For the palette today in this class, I've used two. One is this simple ceramic dish. It's a white simple ceramic dish. The other one is a ceramic salad. I don't know what this is. It's just a palette that has these wells and it's great to kind of mix colors and have a little pool of the colors so you can use it without having the fear of running out of the colors. I mainly use this one in today's class, but this one also, I just keep it on hand because I use this palette the most in all of my paintings. Have something which has wells, like this, so you can make pools of color. So it's easy for you to paint today's landscape. When I'm painting my misty landscapes and when I know that I need to do a lot of blending to get the effect of fog, I typically use two jars of water. One in which I clean my brush and get rid of the color, and with the other jar, it's only going to have clear water and I going to use this water to load up my blending brush so I can get clear blends without contaminating the paint or the fog effect with this dirty water. I use a standard issue masking tape to tape my paper to the board. I also always have a couple paper towels on my hand next to me, always when I'm painting. Always, always, always have a paper towel or a cloth rag when you're painting these misty landscapes because you need to dab your brush a lot to get excess color or excess water out of it. Always handy. These are all the simple supplies that will be needing for today's landscape. But the important thing to remember is that you use what you have and don't get stressed about having the exact same supplies that I have. You use what you have on you, and I'm sure that you'll be able to make a great painting by the end of this class. 3. Colors and Tones: For today's landscape, I am going to be using two colors from my range of blue pin outs, handmade watercolors. The first one is Prussian blue. Now this is a lovely, inky blue color that you can see over here and it is moody and it is rich, and that is what I love about this. The second color is forest green, and as the name suggests, it is a deep, dark, moody forestry green color. I think both of these colors go really well together. So pick and choose colors from your palette that you think are going to go well together. Typically for my misty moody landscapes, I tend to go for cooler colors like blues and greens and dark purples or troop these green, colors like that. So as today's landscape is made entirely by these two colors, the success of making a beautiful cascading misty mountains rests entirely on how well we used these two colors together. So in order to do that, we need to understand them really well. The best way to do that is to first swatch them out and also to make tonal gradients, swatches of them. I'll explain as we go about it. So first, I'm going to swatch out my Prussian blue. Now this is a beautiful, dark, inky blue color. Very rich in its tone. Next I'm going to get some forest green and blend it into the blue to see what kind of mixing happens when they both touch each other. Then on this side I'm going to swatch just the forest green itself. So you can see how they both pair together really well. The Prussian blue blends with the forest green to form this moody turquoise color, and then the forest green itself is just so rich and dark and moody. The next step to get to know both of these colors is to make the tonal gradients swatches. So when I say the tone of a color or the value of a color, I mean, the different shades that you get by varying the strength of the color and understanding that is paramount and absolutely important, in any painting you make, not just Misty landscapes or just landscapes. In any painting in any medium, getting the tones right of a color is really important. So I'm going to go ahead and start making the tone ingredients swatch for the Prussian blue. So first I'm going to get a lot of paint and very little water, and I'm going to swatch this out. This color is called the mass tone of the color, where the color is at its maximum strength. So a lot of color and very little water. I'm going to continue adding water to it, to dilute it down so that we get the other tones of this color. Continue diluting the paint and making swatches. Soon I'm making tonal gradient swatches of different colors. I'm not much of a perfectionist and making all these swatches neat and rectangular, I'm just trying to understand the colors. So I'm free with my brush strokes when I make these swatches. The last swatch is going to have more of the water and very less pigment in it, like you see towards the end. These are the various tones of Prussian blue. So this is how you make a tonal gradients swatch, and this is a great way of understanding, which tones to use of this color in which part of the landscape, which I will teach you later in the next segments. So let us go ahead and do the same thing for the forest green. This deep moody green almost looks black and it is milestone, and I love how it looks in landscapes. So the stronger the color, the more tones you are going to get from it. So once these colors are dry, you get a good idea of how the colors dry on the paper and what are the different shades you can get from one color. These discharge can be really useful in making successful landscapes. The general rule of thumb to follow is that, if the viewer is on this end, and if this is the horizon, or let us say the furthest point away from the viewer, the value increases as you come closer to the viewer. So you start from the lightest values closer to the horizon, and as you come closer and closer and closer to the viewer, you start increasing the values in different layers. Another thing to focus on is the closer you come to the viewer, you also increase the contrast between the two layers, and you start adding more and more details. So the further you are away from the viewer, less contrast, lighter values and fewer details, and the more closer and closer you come to the viewer, with every layer you increase the value. You increase the contrast between the two values, and you start adding more details. So this simple rule, if you remember it, you can make any landscape look immediately successful. Let us move onto the next segment where I'll show you the different techniques we will be needing for today's misty mountains landscape. 4. Getting Your Space Ready: Before I begin showing you any of the techniques that we're going to use today and before we move on to the actual painting, please note that the surface that I'm painting on this plywood board is inclined.I have popped roll of masking tape underneath it so that it inclines towards me and gravity is going to assist me in the painting. I'm going to demonstrate that to you in a few minutes. You should always have your painting brush with you at all times loaded with clear water and not with discolored water. This is the jar where you wash your brushes loaded with color and this is where you will clean water on your painting brush. Okay, have that system ready to go next to you. The next important thing you want to have at your side at all times is a reusable toggle papered over like this, or a cloth rag that you can use to dab your brush while blending. This is really important. Always have a cloth rag or a paper towel to dab your brushes. They should be next to you anytime that you're painting these misty landscapes. 5. Technique 1 - Blending & Confident Brushstrokes: The first technique I am going to demonstrate to you is how to blend mountains seamlessly and with confident brush strokes so that you get this beautiful effect of mist rising from the valley up to the mountain. Two things to remember is that your brush is loaded with a good amount of paint, that you brush is not thirsty, but you're blending brush should be thirsty. What is a thirsty brush? It's when you load the brush with water, but you can see how the water is just dripping and there is so much water in it. You get out the excess water and you dab it on your paper towel to get some more water out of it. The formula to remember is that your painting brush should contain more water than your blending brush. I'm going to paint a mountain shape here. Notice how the paint is still wet. Very wet. I'm going to take my blending brush, incline my paper a little bit and run it along the bottom of the mountain while touching it. Since my blending brush is creating a layer of transparent water here at the bottom, the paint is going wash down into it and give us the seamless blending effect. Notice how I did it calmly and coolie, but confident, steady hands. That is really important. Now I am going to demonstrate to you what's going to happen if I have less water on the painting brush and more water on the blending brush. My blending brush is dripping and it's all soppy with water, a lot of water. I'm just going to paint a mountain here and my brushes is still very dry. There's very little paint in it. Do you see how soppy wet my brush was when I did that. We're going to see the difference in both of these once I dry this layer of. Now that both of these have dried, you can see the difference when it comes to blending them. You can see how a seamless and effortless the blending is here at the bottom of this mountain shape and because I had more water and in blending brush and I didn't have confident strokes in my brush. You can see how all that excess water has pulled down the pigment and it's created this very hard edge at the bottom and at the same time, I've got this very unsightly looking blooms here at the top because the excess water here from the bottom surged upwards into the drier layer and it created this not so good-looking effect here in the mountains. That is one of the important things you need to remember is to have confident brush strokes. Learn the water control when it comes to brushes by using the formula I gave you and just being with a cool and calm mind, It's not complicated at all. It's really easy. If you're not understanding this or if we're not getting the angle of this, give it a couple more tries and you'll see how easy it is to get this effect. 6. Technique 2 - Layering Using Values: Now that we've perfected this blending technique, the next technique I'm going to show you is how to create these overlapping cascading mountains. At the same time, blending them to give the effect of mist rising out of the valleys. We start off with painting the furthest mountains. As I explained to you, since the furthest mountain is further from the viewer, you're going to come down here and paint it with the lightest value. I'm adding a lot more water to my Prussian blue. I'm going to paint the mountain here first. It's going to be a miniature version of what we're going to paint later. Okay. Then I'm going to take my blending brush. This is a thirsty brush and I'm just going to, one clean motion and we're going to blend it off. Once this layer is dry, I'm going to paint over this layer with the next highest value, either this one or this one. Once that layer is dry, we're going to move ahead and paint it with the next highest value. That's how we're going to get the cascading mountain effect. Okay. Now that the first layer is completely dry, I'm going to make some more Prussian blue and to this mixture. I'm going to paint the next layer of the Mountains. In the next layer, I'm going to bring in some of the green with the blue. At the same time, keeping in mind that the value should be more than this shade over here. This is the shade that we have painted with. It should be darker than this one, I'm going to keep that in mind. Again, we're going to blend this off. Right. You can see how we've successfully used different values to create the effect of these rolling overlapping Mountains. This is where this tonal gradients watch really comes in handy to understand what tones to use in which layer. This is just a miniature version of it. Obviously, we are going to be making a far more detailed and more beautiful version of it in the final piece. 7. Technique 3 - Pine Forest Brush Marks: As I explained in the colors and values segment, as you come closer and closer to the viewer from the horizon, you start adding more details. I'm going to show you how to do that in a mountain. The furthest mountains, you won't be able to see any details in them. But the closer and closer you come, you should be able to see more details of the pine forest. The top of the pine forests, at the top edge of the mountain. I am going to show you the brush strokes that I used to get that effect. Let's get some more of this Prussian blue. To show the jagged top edges of the pine forest on mountains, I'm going to use the simple brush stroke, where you hold it vertically like this, and start making little dabs like so, next to each other. You can see how it creates this effect for misty forests of a pine forest on a mountain. Again, to blend this, a thirsty brush loaded with clean water and one sweeping motion at the bottom. You can see just how beautiful this effect is. Just a simple brush stroke, is going to add the top of the pine forest, on the mountain for you. 8. Technique 4 - Pine Forest Foreground Details: As we go closer and closer to the viewer, the pine forest on top of a mountain is going to become more distinguished, and we're going to start seeing pine trees more defined and they're going to be more spaced as well. But they're still going to be a part of the pine forests that's going to emerge from the mountain tops, and I'm going to teach you how to paint that part. So I usually start out by having the strongest value of the color on my palette, and I want quite a bit of this mixture so I don't run out of this. Since I'm also going to be painting it with the other color, I'm going to have that mixture in here as well. Here is the part where you need to be quick, and swift with your brushstrokes. Your paint is ready with hue and let's start. So I want the pine trees to be more distinguished but still appear as though they're part of a forest mass and just the top part of the pine trees where the height difference is more visible, that is the part that is going to be defined. So, I'm going to paint the bottom part of the pine forest fair. Everything is still dark and we can't distinguish one tree from the other, they all merge at the bottom. But here at the top, we're going to start by quickly adding these quick motions and blending it into this red part. You need to have this bottom part wet while you do this. You can see how the pine trees are more distinguished towards the top and it looks as though they're emerging from deep forest mass on a hill. In case that was a little too fast for you, let me demonstrate the pine tree technique that I use, it's really simple to make these beautiful pine trees. Using your brush, the one I'm using here is the Neptune size eight, bring it to a nice, sharp point and using the tip of the brush, just draw the tree trunk, and from the top, start making these little dots and dashes. As you come down, start making them wider and wider. Here, my brush tip is part of the brush that's actually touching the paper, and you can see that this entire pine tree, we're just using the top part of my brush. As you come down more and more, you start adding more details and start making the base wider and wider. So that's the thing with pine trees, you start at the bottom where it's very narrow, and then you come down all the while increasing the width of the branches. This is a very simple way of making pine trees. Another way of making this mass of pine tree forest is, start with the first tree, and then start adding these vertical dashes of color. I'm also bringing some of the forest green hues, then add more details just to the top part of this. So these are the techniques that you can use to paint the foreground details of the mountain layer that we're going to paint in the next stages. 9. Technique 5 - Distant Flying Birds: The last technique I want to demonstrate to you, is how I paint my tiny birds flying out of the forests. It's very simple, using very easy brushstrokes. It's not complicated at all. I'm using my Princeton heritage size to brush for this, and I love using this for the detailing in my paintings. So it's very simple where I am pressing the top part of my brush lightly onto the paper and I'll just flick it, and then using some more paint, I'm going to paint the bottom part of it and you immediately get the effect of a bird flapping its wings, upwards. Another technique is to just paint very wide inverted V and then add a little dot in the center. You instantly get the effect of a bird flying away in the distance. Same thing a curved V and then a small dot. So this is the tail of the bird, the wings and a quintessential bird shape. So when you paint flying birds rising out of the treetops, flying into the distance, you want to group them together. When birds fly out of the forest, they are usually in groups of three or four. Keep that in mind so that you lend a more natural feel to your landscapes. We are done with all the techniques. We have our tonal gradients, swatches next to us. We have perfected the techniques. Now let's move on to the actual painting. 10. Painting Process - Layers 1 and 2: I'm going to begin by taping my paper to the board. So this way, my paper doesn't warp when I put a lot of water on it. It'll also give me a nice clean border to my artwork. I also switch to another ceramic palette which has these wells in it so that I can mix in a pool of the color that I'm going to use an each layer. I can make sure that I don't run out of it. It's a little difficult to do that on a flat palette. I'm going to take my one-inch Princeton Neptune brush and using my jar of clean water, I'm going to lay in a layer of clean water all across the paper. I'm going to drop in some very light values of the blue and green, on the sky so that the entire painting looks cohesive. I don't want to start off by making the mountains so that it's framed against a stock white sky. It's all going to end up looking natural, and just a layer of some light color to bring the painting together. So you can see how diluted the colors really are, and this is going to really just dye the whole painting together. This very very light background color. I'm going to add a little bit more color towards the corner here just to bring in that moody atmospheric feeling. Okay, so once we're done with the light layer of this sky, I'm going to dry off this layer and start with my first layer of mountains. Okay, so let the first layer dry. Let's go in and start painting our mountains. I'm going to make a pool of one of the lightest values of the Prussian blue. So I'm going start off with this shade right over here. So let's add a lot of water to this paint mixture and dilute it down. Then use this swatch card like the backside of it to kind of just test it and see where your at. I think I want to go a little lighter than this. So I'm going to add in a little bit more water. So it's always great to have scraps of paper next to you. I usually use used paintings. Yes, I think I'm really happy with this shade, and I'm going to start off with this one. I have a nice pool of it over here so I don't run out of it. Following the drill, I have my blending brush here. It's loaded up with clean water, but not with a lot of clean water, It's a thirsty brush. I am also going to pop in my roll of masking tape under my painting surface so it's tilted towards me. So I have gravity assisting me now, and I have my paper towel next to me, so I'm ready to go. Let's begin. I'm going to start with my first layer of mountain here. You can see that my brush is loaded with the paint, and the paint layer on the paper is quite wet. Then using my blending brush, tilting my board slightly more, with one sweeping motion of my blending brush I have blended this layer of the mountain. You can see just how easy and effortless it was. Since I'm really happy with how this has turned out, I'm going to go ahead and dry off this layer. Okay, now from the next layers I'm going to start adding some of the green with the blue, so that we get some nice dual tone variations. I'm going to add a little bit more Prussian blue to this paint mixture. I'm going to test it next to this swatch. Perhaps it's a little too intense, when compared to this. I don't want this much contrast between these two layers, so let's add a little bit more water. Test it again. Yeah, I think this mixture is quite perfect and I'm going to make the same value mixture with the forest green. Let's begin the next layer again with cool, calm, confident brush strokes. Notice how I'm making the mountain edges a little bit more jagged here. I made this bottom layer uneven on purpose, just so I can show you this effect. Now you can see how the mist is looking even more organic with the uneven edges at the bottom of this mountain here. Just by wiggling my brush a little bit while I was going from here till here, I could get these scraggy looking edges and it gives the hint of a little forest growing over here in this part. 11. Painting Process - Layer 3: You can see the beauty of using two colors and then dropping them in each other when they're wet. So you can get this beautiful gradient between the blue transforming into the green and then bits of blue here and then bits of green here and the two colors blend together really beautifully. So this is the advantage of using art discrete paints. You can see how they've blended with each other to give these rather clean blends. Instead of mixing and making mad with each other or instead of looking cloudy and I loved that the paints that I'm using are able to give me this really amazing result. Let's move on to the next layer where we will add a little bit more detail using this jagged brush technique that I showed you. For this next layer, I want my mountain to again slope in this direction because I don't want the overlapping of mountains to look too regular, you know what I mean, where one mountain top is here and the next one is here, and the next one is here, and the next one is here. It looks a little too organized and nature is as chaotic and there's no apparent repeated pattern in there. So I don't want any repeat patterns in my paintings. So since this peak is over here and it slopes down towards this end, I am going to carry on with that same pattern with the next layers. These are the little things you keep in mind in making your artworks look a little closer to the real nature and that's what I chase in my artwork in bringing a little bit of the outside nature on my papers so that somebody who doesn't have regular access to this kind of beauty will be able to feel they wants to look at my artworks. So I'm making my next layer of prussian blue a little stronger and as usual I'm going to test it again with my handy testing card. So constantly test your colors and adjust your values based on that. So I definitely want my last two layers to be of this intensity. So for the interim layers, I don't want my colors to be as intense as the colors that I want for my foreground layers. So I'm going to think about that and keep that in mind when I'm mixing my colors. As I'm coming closer to the viewer, I'm going to start adding a little bit more detail to my mountains. So I'm going to add more jagged edges to my next layer of mountain than over here. So again, I'm going to start off with green this time. Always make sure that you're keeping your paint layer wet because it's easy to get caught up in this process and forget that we are supposed to keep the bottom layer wet so we can blend it effortlessly. Observe the motion of my brush. See, so easy and absolutely effortless to do this. This moment I'm painting then I can watch these colors swoosh into the water when I'm blending them like this. This is what makes me fall in love with water colors over and over and over again. I'm not going to disturb this layer at all because it turned out to be quite effortlessly blended and I don't want to spoil the effect. So I'm going to dry off this layer and move on to the next part. 12. Painting Process - Layer 4: Okay, now for the next layer which is going to be my penultimate layer, I'm going to be using the second darkest value of the colors which are these two here. The same procedure, you add a little more detail than this layer and you make the colors a bit more darker. For this penultimate layer, I'm going to be blending it a little more differently because I don't want the fog to look as uniform as its looking over here. I want to give it a little bit more characteristic. So again, it's really important for me to have my blending brush all ready to go and to keep in mind that I need to keep the paint layer wet, wetter than my brushes, okay? So I'm going to start off by this edge here and since this layer is darker than the previous layer, I can go ahead and paint over it. That's not a problem. I'm going to drop in some blue now. I have to tell you guys, I'm really enjoying blending these two colors together like this life while painting these layers. It is giving me a lot of joy to see these colors blend so beautifully. I've got Satsuki's hair all over my paper today. She's my cat if you don't know, don't know this and she's quite feisty and she gets in my studio all the time. Right, so I'm going to blend this part over here before it dries and before it gives me like a dry spot and while that's happening, I'm going to drop in a very diluted layer of blue and green into the sweat foggy layer here. I'm going to bring that down, Right. So I got carried away and started painting with my blending brush but that's okay. I can just wash it off and I'm going to carry on painting this layer. And while I'm painting it, I'm going to keep blending it and then dropping some blues and greens at the bottom. If I feel that I'm starting to get a few bleeds, I can go back in and rework some of this part here, the forest. I can blend this part with my brush, right. Let's finish this layer off. Once a previous layer has dried, you can see that the fog, it has more character in it and since the layer is darker than the previous layer we're getting the sense of these cascading mountains on a misty day. And we're going to finish off with painting a last layer with the darkest value of the blue and green. 13. Painting Process - Final layer: I'm going to begin this layer by starting off with the blue. This is where I'm going to add more detail. Since we are closer to the viewer, they're going to be able to see the tops of the trees. While the rest of the trees merge with each other and disappear into this dark mass at the bottom. So keep reading the height of the trees to make them look more natural. Next I'm going to bring in some more blue. This is a technique that I also taught in my Dreamy Lake Reflections class, where I taught how to use two different colors, to blend them into each other like this. To make a Duke from landscape. You can always go back in and add a few more tree trunks. Adjust the composition according to how you see fit. So over here in this layer, sometimes, I might just make a part of this lighter lift some of the color off to just give the feeling of some mist on this layer. This haphazard chaos, I think is what makes landscapes like this, just evoke more color of links. I might just take my paper towel and lift some of the color off some of these pine trees and keep changing the order to make everything look natural and less predictable. So at this stage you have to be a little quick with your action so that the layer next to the part you're going to paint it doesn't dry off, so that it stays all blended with each other. You can always add a little bit more water. Notice how some pine trees have imperfections, they are not full and compete looking and perfect looking at all times. Let's imagine as a sheer drop in the cliff edge Sometimes adding a layer of clear water beneath this part where you're going to paint, like here, it can really help in blending the colors. 14. Birds in Flight + Pep Talk: So I'm really pleased with how we have tackled the subject. I am particularly happy about using the two colors and how they have blended together to give us this very dynamic looking really beautiful piece. I'm also really happy about how the sky is not just a stark white background for these mountains, but because of the slight shadows that we added in the corner, it's bringing the whole piece together. Now, there's only one thing left to do, which is to add a few flying birds to complete the look of the painting. For this part, I'm using my Princeton Heritage size 2 round. I really love how this comes to a fine point and it's perfect for painting the birds. For the birds, I want them to be of the darkest value, so I am taking a very concentrated mix of the Prussian blue and the forest green. I'm just going to mix both of them to give me a really dark color. Instead of using black, I prefer using the darkest tone of the colors that I'm using in the painting, that way everything looks more cohesive and the stark black doesn't stand out in the landscape. So I'm going to paint a combination of these birds in groups of four to five, and then make them look as though they're flying out of these treetops over here, the forest up and fly into this direction, may be a few over here as well. Observe how I group them together to make them look more natural. Using a thick concentration of paint on my brush, I'm going to flick it forward, flick it upward, and just draw this small line at the bottom. I'm going to mirror it. Just like that, using these two very simple brush strokes, you have two cute little birds flying out of the forest. So the key to painting these landscapes is primarily, you need to relax. Hurried motions and a tensed body usually never works. Your own serenity and your own mental peace and calm tends to get reflected in your artworks. Making these landscapes has a very therapeutic effect on me. I guess that's the reason why I have stuck with this subject for so long, for more than two years. Of course, as the birds go farther and farther away, they become tinier so keep that in mind as well. Also, try to be random with different bird positions. Don't try to make them all look similar in their wing movements, because it's all going to be random in nature. Try not to create any repeat patterns. Take a pause before you overwork a piece. It's always good to just take a pause and step back and review how everything is looking. If you think your painting is there, and if you don't want to go any further, listen to that inner voice and stop when you feel like you need to stop. Because it's really easy to get carried away sometimes and just overdo little things in a painting. Just helps to step back sometimes. For these little details, it's also important to have a good brush on you sometimes. A good small brush for little details, with a good point, is all you need and a brush kit. You don't need a ton of brushes, you just need a few good brushes with good points and good tips, and you need to maintain them to make a successful painting. It's really important to take care of your tools. This Princeton Heritage round number two brush, I've been using it for more than a year, and you can still see that it holds its point in an excellent way. It's really one of my favorite brushes in my kit. I really don't want to overdo these birds anymore, because I don't want them to take away from the other elements of my landscape. I think just having a peppering of these little birds just ties everything together. [NOISE] I don't want to overdo with the birds anymore, because anymore of this, they're going to look too scattered, and they're going to steal away from the rest of the elements that we've painted. These are just enough to form one of the focal points of the painting and I think they also blend really well with the mood that we're trying to depict here so I'm not going to paint anymore birds, I think this much is enough. Another last step that's remaining, is for us to take off the masking tape and sign our paintings with a proud flourish.