Watercolor Poppy Field Landscape

1. Introduction + Welcome: You're just getting started with watercolor landscapes or you're a little bit farther ahead, but you're looking to master essential landscape painting techniques so that you can arrive at better results more often, this course is for you. My name is Erica, and I'm a traditional media artist working with a variety of drawing and painting mediums. I enjoy challenging myself with different kinds of subject matter from still life to landscapes to animals and more. My day to day life revolves around creating arts and producing helpful content for beginner and intermediate artists looking to level up their skills. Since 2017, I've been sharing helpful content via my website, my YouTube channel, and my membership site. In this course, I take you through my entire process for this vibrant watercolor poppy field from preliminary pencil sketch to initial loose wet on wet washes to how I layer watercolor and develop detail. This course has a strong emphasis on wet on wet techniques, water control, and timing, all of which are common sticking points for beginners but are essential to understand and practice. With all my other courses, I make sure to sprinkle in important information and tips that you can take with you to succeed with future pieces that you decide to work on. Not to mention, all of the videos included in this course are real time and no parts of the process have been cut out. If you're just getting started with watercolor, I would highly recommend checking out my watercolor one oh one course here on Skillshare. Before jumping into this one, I cover all of the essentials that you should know about watercolor and also provide great exercises that will help you build a solid foundation to jump off from and you'll be able to paint folder pieces like this one with greater ease and success. With all that said, let's go ahead and jump into class number one. 2. Course Project: By the end of this course, you'll have completed a vibrant watercolor poppy field landscape painting from free hand pencil sketch to layering watercolor for depth and dimension. As we're working on our pencil sketch, I provide tons of composition tips that you can take with you to future watercolor landscapes and scenes for more balanced and interesting results. Throughout this process, we'll be practicing foundational watercolor techniques with a big emphasis on wet on wet and water control. We'll practice developing believable depth by combining blurred soft effects with sharper, more defined details. I'll explain all of my favorite tips that help me cre colorful skies that include both warm and cool colors while avoiding muddy and undesired colors. I've included a class where I swatch out all of my paint colors for you so that you can see what they look like on paper, and you can choose colors that are similar to mine. There is no need to use my exact same colors in order to arrive at great results. In this class video, I provide alternatives to the colors that I'm using. You're done with your painting, it would make me so happy to see your work over on the Projects and Resources tab. This is a special gallery for students where you can easily post your work and like and comment on other students' work. I'm always super happy to see your creations and to answer any questions or provide any feedback that you might need. To post your work, all you have to do is click on the Projects and Resources tab. On the right, you'll see a section titled My Project. Right under this title, you'll find a blue button that says submit Project. You click on this button, you'll be taken to a page where you can easily upload a photo of your work, as well as add in any information that you'd like to share. Simply click on Upload Image, find whatever file you desire on your computer or device. And this will be the cover image for your project. You can then give your project a title name, explain a bit about how the process went for you, any aha moments that you might have had, any wins, any struggles, any questions. You can add whatever you want in that project description area. Can then add in a second or even a third image inside of this project description area by clicking on the image icon right beneath add more content. This is important because if you only upload that one image as your cover image, I might only be able to see a part of that photo. It will appear cropped. So if you want me to see that image fully or you want to add more images, you can go ahead and add more here. Once you're done, scroll back up. You'll see the green published button, click that button and you'll be all set. If you're on Instagram and you'd like to share your work over Please do, just make sure to tag me. You can find me at Erica Underscore Lancaster Underscore Art. I love giving students shoutouts and sharing your work on my Instagram stories and also make sure to tag the Skillshare account. All of the other amazing Skillshare teachers and myself are always super happy to see your work and help out wherever we can. 3. Supplies: I'm going to be working on a sheet of cold pressed watercolor paper from Bao Hong. This paper is 100% cotton, and it is 140 pounds or 300 GSM in thickness or in weight. The sheet that I'm going to be working in is 9 " in width times 7 " in height. For this one, I'm going to be using my Vango watercolor paint set. I'm going to be bringing in a total of nine different colors, and these colors are Matter Lake Deep, permanent red light, burnt sienna, burnt umber, yellow ochre, Indian yellow, cobalt blue ultramarine, olive green, and pains gray. Before jumping into the painting process, I'm going to be swatching out all of these colors for you on a scrap piece of watercolor paper so that you can see what they look like swatched out on paper, and you can replace any of the colors that you don't have with something similar that you do have. As I am swatching out these colors, I'll also be providing some substitutes that you could switch these colors. Going to be using a total of six different brushes throughout this painting process. Two of them are larger brushes that I'm going to be using when I'm painting the larger areas in the beginning of the painting process. One of those is a 1 " flat brush, and the other one is a size six mop brush. I'm also using four different round brushes in sizes 14, eight, three, and zero. The size eight round brush is going to be used at the end of the painting process for that splattering that I'm going to be doing for visual texture. Aside from these basic watercolor supplies, I have my Blu Scot absorbent towels on hand, which is what I like using to stay on top of water control when I'm painting with this medium. They are awesome because they are thin enough that you can very easily go into small spaces to do lifting whenever you need to. And they are also untextured. So when you go in and do lifting, you're not going to be left with splotchiness and texture wherever you go in to absorb that paint. I also constantly dab the tip of my paintbrush onto my absorbent towel as I am painting whenever I feel that the paintbrush is holding way too much water for the smaller area that I'm going to be painting it. I also have a couple of pieces of scrap watercolor paper on hand to test out colors and also consistencies along the way. I have my roll of regular 1 " masking tape, which is what I use to tape my watercolor paper down onto my black cutting mat. I do make sure to run my pieces of masking tape over my clothes a couple of times to soften that adhesive and make it less likely that I'll damage my watercolor paper at the end when I remove it. But it is important that you're using quality, 100% cotton and at least 140 pound paper so that it's not easily damaged. I also want to say that I wouldn't necessarily recommend taping your watercolor paper down onto a flexible cutting mat or using a flexible cutting mat in general as a backing board when you're painting with watercolor. It's better to use a stiff, sturdy board so that you can shift and angle it as needed, especially when you're painting those larger washes because one of the awesome things about painting with watercolor, that we're using plenty of water and we can use gravity to our advantage to create smooth transitions, nice looking gradients, and even flatter washes when we're looking for a flat wash. Finally, I have a few drawing supplies on hand. I have my HB pencil, which is what I'm going to be using to create my light preliminary sketch before getting started with the painting. I have a couple of different erasers on hand. I have a soft graphite eraser and also a kneadable eraser. I use as I'm creating my preliminary sketch and preparing to get started. I also have a prisma color wax based colored pencil in lemon yellow, which I'm going to be using at the end of this process. The colored pencil details that I do at the end are completely optional, and you could use something like a pastel pencil if you don't have prismacolor pencils. And finally, I do want to remind you that along this course, I've prepared a set of downloadable files, which you're going to be able to find in the Projects and Resources tab right here on Skillshare. You'll find the project's resources tab right below any of the class videos. Click on this tab and then scroll down to the Download resources section, and you'll find all of these files that I've created for you. These files include my outline sketch in two different sizes, the size that I'm going to be working today, which is exactly nine by 7 " and also a slightly larger letter sized format outline sketch. Though I will be walking you through my free hand sketching process, I did want to include my outline sketches just in case any of you would like to simply transfer and move on to the painting process. I'll also be including a photo of my finished painting in case you'd like to use it as reference as you're working and my supply list with a list of specific colors that you're going to see me use today. Once you've downloaded these files onto your computer or device, go ahead and join me in the next class. See you there. 4. Color Swatching: All right, everyone. So for this piece, we're going to use a total of nine different colors. Here's one of the reds that I'm going to be using. This is Matter Lake Deep and it is considered a cool red. Alternatives or substitutes of this paint color include a zarin crimson, Pyl crimson, carmine or any cool red. I'm also going to be bringing in a warm red, which for me is going to be permanent red light, and this one looks like this. You can see how this second red goes more toward the orange side of the spectrum, whereas this one has a tiny bit of blue in it. It's going more toward the purple. Alternatives for permanent red light include cadmium red, Mayan orange from Daniel Smith and cadmium red scarlet. Another color that I'm going to be bringing in is burnt sienna, which is a reddish brown that looks like this. If you don't have burnt sienna, you could use something like transparent Mars brown, quinacridone burnt orange, English red ochre, red iron oxide, and transparent red oxide. I'm also going to be bringing in burnt umber, which is a slightly darker brown. Burnt umber looks like this. If you don't have burnt umber, you could use something like sepia, Vandyke brown or Mars brown. I'm also going to be bringing in yellow ochre, which is a golden Biji neutral that looks like this. If you don't have yellow ochre, a sienna is very close to this color. I'm also going to be using a warm yellow, which for me is going to be Indian yellow. Indian yellow looks like this. If you don't have Indian yellow, you could use something like cadmium yellow deep, gamboge, or new gamboge, or Hansa Yellow Deep. For my sky and to deepen and darken my greens, I'm going to be using cobalt blue ultramarine. Cobalt blue ultramarine from Vango looks like this. Now, there is nothing special about cobalt blue ultramarine. It's just the way that the brand names this particular cobalt blue. If they had cobalt blue, when I bought this one, I would have just gone with the cobalt blue, and I oftentimes use plain regular cobalt blue when I'm painting skies. Regular cobalt blue is a perfect substitute for this one. For my green, I'm going to be using olive green, which is a warm green. Olive green from Vango looks like this. If you don't have olive green, you could use something like hookers green or sap green. And finally, I'm going to be bringing in a tiny bit of Panes gray at the very end of this painting process. Pains gray is a cool biased gray. It's essentially black with a tiny bit of blue in it, and so it's referred to as a cool gray. If you don't have Panes gray, you could use neutral tint or even Jan's gray. You could consider using any black, and if you want to make it cool biased, simply add a tiny bit of ultramarine blue or any blue into your gray so that you can turn it into more of a cool biased, blue, biased gray. Those are all the colors that we're going to be using for this one. 5. Pencil Sketch: Let's get started with our preliminary pencil sketch for this one. We're going to keep things nice and simple here. I do want to share what I did to prepare for this little composition here. I am not stemming off any single reference photo. I actually made time to do some brainstorming and look up different photos of Poppy fields on Google. Then all I did was create a quick thumbnail sketch until I arrived at a composition that I thought would lead to a good looking painting. I prepared my composition sketch right here. I even started thinking of specific colors that I would be bringing in for each area. I also wanted to share that I did quick color studies for my sky and I did a quick piece before starting with the last one. I want to be very transparent about the process that I go through before actually working on the final piece. Oftentimes, when we just go straight in and expect ourselves to come up with perfect results right off the bat, it doesn't happen. I want you to know that even for me, I've been painting with watercolor for many years now and I consider myself a little bit more advanced. Oftentimes, it takes me two, three tries get a result that I enjoy and that is even after having done little studies of areas that might be a challenge for me and even after having done some planning and preparing. I'm going to have my quick thumbnail sketch right off to the side here, and this is what I'm going to be trying to recreate right here on my watercolor sheet. I have my HB pencil on hand. This is what I'm going to be using to create my sketch and I'm going to make sure to keep everything nice and light so that I'm not able to see my pencil work through my paint at the end. All right. Starting out with what would be the horizon line for this one, and I'm going to make my horizon line a little bit curved so that I can make things more interesting and less flat looking since the beginning. I'm also going to be adding a little extra section over here, coming down like that, just to make things a little bit more layered and asymmetrical and more interesting for the viewer. Make this area a little bit wider. Then what I'm going to do is I'm going to bring down a little path coming down from this middle ground area over here. I want this path to come all the way down to the bottom left. I'm going to make this a little bit whiter down here. I want to make sure that my little path gets whiter and whiter as it makes its way down closer to us. And make sure that right here, your shapes for your path are not connected because that's not going to look very realistic. It's actually going down a bit and then coming up and that's where we see it. These two shapes cannot be connecting in your drawing. From here, we're going to be adding a few just very loose triangular tree shapes in this foreground area here. I'm just going to add five Make sure that the base of your trees comes all the way down below your initial horizon line and make sure that your trees are irregular, that there is a variety in heights and widths and keep your shapes for your trees rough. We're not going to be exactly filling them in like a coloring book page when we're doing the painting of those trees. This is just a rough guideline of where we want our trees to be when we're painting these trees, we're not going to be filling in those shapes super perfectly. This is just a general idea of the size of our trees and where we want our trees to be. But we're going to be painting those trees very loosely. I'm going to make this one a little bit taller. I don't like them to be perfectly going from large to small or anything like that. I don't want them to seem too organized, too thought out. I'm going to erase these lines in the back. Don't need them anymore. All right, great. Triangular tree shape. This one is a little bit shorter. I'm just going to use my needed eraser to tap over certain sections that I want to lighten or clean up. Leaving this at five trees, it's always best to use an odd number of elements as opposed to an even number, especially when you're adding in elements that are similar. So consider using one, three, five, seven, nine, that kind of number when you're thinking of how many elements to add into your composition as opposed to an even number of elements. So try to stay away from pairs, two, four, six, eight, et cetera. Be keeping things odd in number and asymmetrical is going to make things more interesting for the viewer. Has to do with something that is called the rule of odds, which I would recommend looking into. It's going to help you think of better compositions when you're planning for original pieces. It doesn't really matter what kind of art it is that you like working on, whether it's animals, landscape, scene, still life, whatever it is, composition rules or principles or guides, they go for any kind of art. The last thing that I'm going to be doing is I'm going to be roughly creating some shapes for some of the largest poppies that I'm going to be painting. Which are going to be the closest ones. Even though I am sketching this from imagination, my entire composition I created from imagination, I did look up photos of poppies so that I can have just the image of this particular type of flower in mind as I am sketching this and painting this. I'm just going to be adding some of the largest poppies and of course, organic elements like flowers and trees. They come in all shapes and sizes. But if you want to communicate believable depth, it is important to take into account that generally speaking, things nearest to us as the viewer of the scene are going to be larger and things farther away are going to be smaller. As we're painting in these poppies, we want to make sure that we add slightly larger poppies closer to the bottom of the picture plane and smaller and smaller poppies as we get closer to the horizon line. All of the poppies that we add over here are going to be teeny, tiny red blooms that we drop into wet paper. Whereas over here, they're going to be a little bit more visible. Maybe a few little bulbs here as well. And that is it for our sketch, that's really all we need. If you'd like to go in with your needed eraser and do some gentle tapping over your pencil work to soften the look of that graphite or to remove any excess graphite that might have collected on the surface of your paper, you can go ahead and do that before moving on. 6. Sky: So the first thing that we're going to be painting is the sky. This means that we need to first prepare the colors that we're going to be using in this area so that we can make sure that we're painting nice and quick. You don't want to be guessing at the colors that you are going to be using or have to create more of your different colors as you're moving along unless it's absolutely necessary, especially if you're just getting started and you're just starting to paint fast enough for those soft effects to happen. For my sky, I'm going to be using three colors. I'm going to be using a warm yellow, which in my case, is going to be Indian yellow. So that's what I'm preparing right here on my palette. By the way, I like using the size 14 round brush, which is considered a medium sized brush to create my color mixtures because it's just a good size for me where I can easily swivel it in my wells and bring out a good amount of color as well as water whenever I need to dilute that color and change the consistency. The second color that I'm going to bring into the sky is Matter Lake deep and I just need a tiny bit of this one. This is a cool red and we're just going to be adding a little bit of this cool red here and there for a bit of color variation in that warm color section. And finally, I'm going to be bringing in some cobalt blue ultramarine. By the way, cobalt blue is going to do just fine for the sky. It's just vangoPaint has cobalt blue ultramarine and I also have ultramarine deep. But cobalt blue in and of itself is a great color that you can use for your skies and I oftentimes use just cobalt blue when I'm using other sets. That is it for my colors in my sky. I do want to mention before jumping in that skies, which include both warm and cool colors are more challenging to paint. Because if you start overblending warm and cool colors, you can very easily create muddiness or browns or grays depending on the specific colors that you're using. And these are definitely not colors that we're looking for in the sky. Not to mention, blue plus yellow equals green. So if you start doing over blending in your sky after you've placed these two colors there, you can start very easily creating green. I highly, highly recommend placing your colors confidently and allowing those paint colors to mix and blend together without you going in and doing blending. Because the more you go in and blend, the more likely these colors that you don't want are going to happen. Going to be painting the warmer colors in the lower half of the sky and the blue, which is the cool color in the upper half of the sky. Just think of it in halves. We're going to start with the lightest color, which is the yellow and we're going to start by painting in the yellow nearest the horizon line, bring that yellow up a little bit and as you make your way up, that yellow is going to start running out from your paintbrush bristles. But make sure that you don't to high up with your yellow. If as you're making your way up with your yellow, you see that there's still a lot of yellow in your paintbrush bristles by the time you're halfway up the sky, remove that color from your paintbrush bristles and then soften that color in that middle section before placing your blue. Then once you're done with your yellow, you're going to place a little bit of your zar and crimson just a tiny bit here and there in a very irregular unplanned way. Remove your red from your paint brush bristles and then we start with the blue over here at the top and we make our way down with the blue. Once again, that spot where you start with your color is the spot where most of the pigment and the color is going to be placed. Because obviously, when you load up your paint brush bristles, that's when you have most color in your bristles. As you continue painting, that color starts running out from your bristles. As you make down, there's going to be less blue in those bristles. Now, of course, this is not a super huge sky area that we're working with up here. Be mindful of how much paint is in your paint brush bristles as you make your way down or as you make your way up because essentially what you're looking for is having less paint in your bristles in that middle area right in between the warm and the cool because the more color you have in that middle area where the colors intersect, the more likely it is that you're going to end up with colors that you don't want, especially if you're still having issues with doing too much over blending. This is what my water is looking like right now. I need to go ahead and change this because we're going to be doing pre wedding with clean water before starting to paint in our color. I'm going to go ahead and do that and we'll start right away. These are the two brushes that I'm going to be using to paint the sky. This is a 1 " flat brush, which is what I'm going to be using to do my pre wedding. This is a size six mop brush, and it's what I'm going to be using once my sky has been pre wedded and it's time to start placing my color. We're going to be pre wedding all the way down to this horizon line. All of this, even the trees are going to be pre wedded, taking a little bit of clean water at a time from my container and smoothing it on. By the way, I have no fans on, no heating system on. Anything like that. I make sure to turn off when I am painting my sky, when I am starting a painting, honestly. I like turning off anything that might speed up that drying process because I don't want my paper to dry super quickly. Dry paper is thirsty paper. That is one of the reasons why I want to work on wet paper because that is going to help me a create those soft diffused effects that I'm looking for in these beginning parts of the painting process. Also it's going to help me expand my working time before things start to dry on me. Take your time with this pre wedding process. I cannot emphasize that enough. So many times I see people rush through this process and then not understanding why they're not able to get diffused effects, soft wet on wet effects, and why certain sections of their paper are drying way too fast. Take your time. I'm being very gentle with my brush strokes and I have not pre stretched my paper by the way. There is no significant buckling happening, all right? I have now arrived at that nice even sheen. I'm going to switch on over to my size six mop brush prepared by swiveling my paintbrush in my container of water, removing that excess water, and I'm going to start with my Indian yellow. I'm going to start by placing it here right above this little hilly area in the middle ground. If my yellow starts coming down into this middle ground area, that is perfectly fine. That's actually something that I'm looking for and that's why I pre wedded that area because this way that ground nearest the sun is going to look sun kissed. I remove that yellow from my paintbrush crystals. I'm going in with a tiny bit of this matter Lake deep. I'm just placing it roughly three areas right there. Removing this pink color from my paintbrush bristles, removing that excess water drippage. You can even tap the tip of your paintbrush on your absorbent towel. I'm just going to blend these colors manually just a little bit, just a tad. It's okay to blend these together because these are both warm colors. I'm not going to have any issues there. But once I start placing the blue, that's when I don't want to do much blending. I remove those warm colors from my paintbrush bristles completely and I'm going to get started with my blue before things start to dry on me, starting at the top and I'm going to make my way down. You can even leave little unpainted sections so that they can look like clouds if you want. Removing that paint from my paintbrush bristles, removing that excess water. I'm going to take a quick second here to clean up the edges of my painting here. Oftentimes when we do pre wedding, there's plenty of water left along those edges that is important that we clean up. Because those water drops can create these little backruns along the edges of our piece. If you want to, you can even explore tilting your paper to the sides downward. That can help you create softer transitions between your colors I'm even getting a little bit of that yellow into this area, which is what I wanted. I can take my absorbent towel, clean up this edge, clean up this excess water. Everything for me is still quite wet and workable. If I wanted to drop in even more color, whether it's the red, the yellow, and the blue, I can go ahead and do that. But if your paper has already started to dry, I would not recommend doing that because you're going to be left with this splotchiness, you can create back runs. In those cases, if you wanted to intensify certain colors in your sky, what I would do would be to allow everything to dry completely and then once everything is dry, you can do some gentle pre wedding with clean water all over this area again and then drop in a little bit of color in those areas that you're looking to intensify. But don't continue working if your paper has already started to dry. Because I took my time with the pre wedding process, things are still wet for me, I can drop in a little bit more color if I want to. Okay. Going to tilt my board again. For softer effects. At this point, my paper is not as wet as it was when I did my first tilting and moving around of my backing board. I can see this because my paint is not expanding and moving around as drastically as it was before. It's important to know that when we're painting with watercolor, we can work with different degrees of wetness. And as we continue practicing, it's easier for us to be able to tell whether our paper is already starting to dry. In which case, it's important to allow that paper to dry completely before attempting to do any more work, whether the paper is still partially wet or damp enough to arrive at soft looking effects, or whether the paper is super wet the point that we'll get a ton of movement and very dynamic effects if we drop in that paint. The more experienced we become with this medium, the easier it is for us to tell whether our paper is wet enough or dry enough for us to arrive at the effects that we're after. Going in with just a clean and slightly damp brush, very, very lightly softening the bottom edges. So sections of my sky are already starting to dry. I'm going to leave things as they are, and I'm going to move on to the next part of this process. Now, if this area right here where your trees are got a little bit too dark, as you were painting, you can go in and do some bit of lifting in those trees just to lighten the color in the trees. But as long as the color is pale in those trees, it's not really going to affect the greens and blue greens that we're going to be painting the trees with. It's time to allow that sky area to dry and let's move on to the next part of the process. 7. Grass, Flowers + Path: For my green in this piece, I'm going to be using olive green, but I do want to create a variety of greens so that those grass areas can look more realistic, there are shadows in there and it's not a flat color all throughout. I'm going to prepare a puddle of plain olive green, but I'm also going to prepare a puddle of olive green plus cobalt blue here. Which is going to make it cooler and it's also going to darken it at the same time. I want to create a light green. For my lighter green, what I'm going to do is I'm going to repeat my yellow. It's always good to think of how we can repeat colors in a piece because at the end, that's going to lead to more harmonious integrated results. That's what I decided to do for my three green values. Again, the lightest green has the Indian yellow in it, the medium green is just plain olive green, and then the darker green is olive green plus cobalt blue. And it is very important that we have our primary red that we're going to be using for the poppies, ready to go for us on our palette when we're painting the grass areas so that we can create those soft blooms with this red color. For me, my warm red, which I'm going to be using to paint the poppies is permanent red light. This beautiful warm red puddle right here. But I also want a bit of my cool red, which is the same red that I was using in my sky, which is Matter Lake Deep. So I have my warm red, which is the primary red that I'm going to be using in the poppies, which for me is permanent red light, and then I have a bit of this matter Lake deep, which is the same cool red that I used in my sky. This is only going to be dropped into certain poppies to develop a little bit of a range of red values in the larger poppies especially. I took a quick sec to change my water before getting started, and let's jump right in. Going back to my 1 " flat brush and taking a little bit of water at a time from my container, I'm now pre wedding this lower half of the piece everywhere from the horizon downward. Everything from the horizon line going down is what I am pre wedding right now. Take your time again with this pre wedding process. I really cannot emphasize enough how important learning to pre wet something effectively is when you are starting to paint with watercolor. I've arrived at that nice even chin all throughout this area. I am going to switch to my size 14 round brush and I'm going to start by painting in the largest poppies with my permanent red light. Those largest red shapes that you sketched in with your pencil to strap in some of your warm red inside of those shapes and allow the paint to bleed out. That's perfectly okay. We want those soft effects. Aside from those larger poppies, you can also add some smaller ones, teeny tiny blooms in the distance, and some red ones over here in those pencil shapes that I created for myself. Many poppies. Sometimes I'm barely touching the tip of my paintbrush to the paper, which is going to create a smaller bloom and other times I'm actually painting in more of a shape and moving my paintbrush from side to side. The wetter your paper is, the more movement you're going to have. You can see right here that I have a lot of red bleeding out from these shapes, I can go in with a clean brush and absorb some of that paint that maybe bled out a little bit too much. There is no need to perfectly clean everything up, right? Okay, great. I'm going to remove that paint from my paint brush bristles, remove that excess water, and we're starting to go in with the greens. Starting with the lightest green, which is my olive green plus a little bit of Indian yellow, and I'm just going to start dropping it in this area randomly in between my flowers. Making my way around the pencil shapes that I created for myself and around the poppies that I just painted. Quickly painting in that green I'm going to paint some lighter green over here, some lighter green over here. If some of these greens and reds go into the path shape, that's okay as well. Going in with a bit of a darker green, my plain olive green, popping it in here and there in between some of these poppies. What I'm trying to do is to develop a nice range of green values. Meaning I want some areas to look like a lighter green and other areas to look like a darker green. I'm trying to place less green as I make my way up and toward the middle ground. Removing this medium green from my paintbrush bristles, adding a little bit more cobalt blue into this green so that I can make it darker and cooler as well. Then I'm adding in a bit of this even darker green here and there, especially in this closest section to us. In between some of these poppies and where I want to create extra darker shadow shapes. I'm going to continue working on this in a bit, removing that paint from my paintbrush crystals, removing that excess water, going back to my permanent red light, the warm red that I am using as base color for my poppies. I'm now going to intensify the color in these poppies. Everything is still wet and workable because I took my time with that pre wedding process. If I hadn't taken my time with the pre wedding process, things would already be partially dry or completely dry. Great. I'm going to take a little bit more of this red, and I'm going to drop in even more red blooms here and there over my green. It's important that you paint in some red poppies directly on the white clean paper because if the red is painted right on the bright white paper, the red is going to look more intense than the red that is painted over the green. And we want that variety. Removing this permanent red light from my paintbrush bristles, removing that excess water, and I need to start painting the path before it dries. I'm going to take some of my yellow ochre, place it right here on my palette, where I have my warmer colors, and I'm just going to paint this in nice and quick. If you have any bleeding happening between your path and your poppy field, that's great. Allow that to happen. Now I'm going to take some burtsiena which is a medium brown. I'm going to add it into the yellow ochre and I'm going to darken some areas in the path. Remove that brown from my paintbrush bristles, remove that excess water, and I'm going to do a little bit of manual blending very quick. You can continue adding burnt sienna into the path. But just like with everything else, what I'm looking for in the path is a nice variety in brown values. I'm going to take my absorbent towel. Do a little bit of lifting in the path there, lighten the path a bit. Now I'm going to take a bit of burnt umber, which is even darker than the burnt sienna, add it into my burnt sienna, and I'm just going to place it here and there in those areas of the path nearest us. You can continue working on that path until you have a nice range of brown values. Okay. So here, everything is still wet and workable if I want to go in and get rid of any little textures around these flowers, I can go ahead and do that. Everything down here is still wet and workable. Go to absorb some of this excess water here along the edge of my masking tape. Now that the path has been painted and because everything is still wet and workable, I can continue dropping in more green in between the flowers. I can fix little textures as well. I'm going to use lighter green back here. You can intensify certain flowers by adding more of your permanent red light or whichever warm red it is that you're using. I'm going to switch on over to my size three round brush, prepared by swiveling it in my container of water. I'm going to take a little bit of my matter Lake deep and start placing it inside some of these poppies, especially the larger ones that I added in pencil. My aim is just to give these a little bit more of a sense of dimension and depth by developing a bit of a darker value. That's enough for this layer. I'm going to go back to my size 14 round brush and I'm going to soften this upper edge so that I don't have a super clean defined edge there. And a tiny bit of lifting in the back most parts of this path. Tiny bit of lifting over here. I want less color up here. We need to allow this to dry completely before moving on to the next part of the process in which we're going to be painting this middle ground area. 8. Middleground + Trees: Everything is pretty much dry. I have changed my water and it's time to start painting in this section in the middle ground and also these trees right here. We're going to be using some of the same colors that we were using down here, especially the two lighter greens and the permanent red light as well. The two lighter colors that we used in the path, which for me were yellow ochre and bird Sienna and we'll be using the same greens for the trees. But because the trees are in the foreground area, we can go ahead and push a little bit darker because these elements are closer to us. Whereas over here, I want to leave the color relatively pale and light so that there is a difference in value between this area that is farther away from us and this area that is closest. This way, we can create a sense of distance and depth. Having said that, if you need to create more of your green color mixers, especially your lighter green, which is a mixture of whichever green it is that you chose and your uh, warm yellow and also the plain green on its own. Go ahead and do that. Also if you need to prepare some of your browns, you can do so as well. Me, I need some of my yellow ochre and some of my bird Siena. I'll add some cobalt blue into the greens when I need it to be a little bit darker. This is definitely a smaller area. I'm going to continue using my size 14 round brush and just do some quick pre wedding here so that I can make sure that everything is very soft looking over here in the back. Section has been pre wedded. I'm now going to go ahead and get started with the lightest color that I'm going to be using in this area, if I started with the path, it would be the yellow ochre. I can just drop that in. It's a little bit too pigmented. You can see how I'm dabbing the tip of my brush onto my absorbent towel to remove some of that pigment. Yes. It's a little bit too dark as well. I'm just going to soften that a bit. You can always use the clean and at least slightly damp bristles of your paintbrush to soften the color if you need to. I'm going to start with my greens. I remove that brown from my paintbrush bristles, starting with the lighter green, dropping it in going in with a bit of a darker green, plain olive green now. That's enough color for now. I remove that paint from my paintbrush bristles, remove that excess water, going in and softening those transitions, softening that color, and seeing if that is enough color already or if I want to drop more in. I'm going to drop a little bit more of my green in plain olive green. Just so that the greens down here and the greens up here don't look too different because I don't want to lose that continuity, I will add in a bit of my cobalt blue and just drop in a little bit here and there. Very minimal removing that blue green from my paintbrush pritles removing that excess water. I'm just doing a little bit more work in this area. Everything is still nice and wet because I pre wedded, a little bit of an irregular edge here next to the tree. And I'm trying to get a lighter value in both the path and the grass as I make my way back. Right, I'm going to quickly switch on over to my size zero round brush. Everything here is pretty wet and workable still. Now, be careful because if everything is too wet and you start dropping in your red for your farther away poppies, the red blooms are going to expand so much that they're going to become a huge bloom. So you want to make sure that your paper is wet but not sopping wet, make sure that you're using a small brush and that you're just touching the tip of that brush to that paper, and you can even do a quick test to see how much that paint expands. All right. And if you notice that it expands too much, allow that paint to settle on your paper for a little bit longer and then try again. That's a huge bloom that I created right there. G to go in and soften. I do some more. See, that's a huge bloom that I created right there. I went in and I softened. You can see how I'm using more linear strokes as I simultaneously sometimes touch more of the bristles of my paintbrush down and sometimes do lifting. As I'm moving sideways, I'm pressing down to different degrees. All right, so just a small amount of red over here and the distance, very small amount. I think that's enough. Let's allow that to dry in the meantime, we'll paint these trees over here. I'm going to switch on over to my size three round brush. I'm going to start with my lighter green that has a little bit of my Indian yellow in it. I'm going to start at the top and make my way down that triangular shape. Start at the top, just the tip of my paintbrush and make my way down a scribbling motion, leaving little sections of my paper unpainted. I'm going to take some of my plain olive green now, trying to develop a bit of a darker value in some sections, so it's not flat looking. I'm going to take some of my blue green. My green that has the cobot blue in it, drop in a little bit of this blue green here and there for a little bit of a shadow effect. Going to make sure to bring this down so that it doesn't look like it's floating in the air. I'm going to remove that paint from my paintbrush bristles, remove that excess water drippage and I'm going to soften this lower edge so that it merges with this color in the middle ground. I don't want a sharp edge down here. I want it to blur and bleed down. I'm going to paint the other trees exactly the same way, starting with my lighter green. A scribbling motion. I do have a video where I walk you through brushstroke drills and exercises that will help you get better control over your paint brush, which is so important when you're painting trees or adding textures into certain elements of your paintings. I'll make sure to link to that video down below and the recommended resources in case you'd like to check it out. All right. Made my way down, removing that paint from my paintbrush bristles, removing excess water dripage, softening the lower edge. Starting back up with the next one, lighter green. Making my way down starting with my midtone green, which is plain olive green, visualizing the shape of this tree and also the irregularity throughout it and along its edges. Removing that paint from my paintbrush bristles, removing that excess water, running my paintbrush bristles along the bottom edge. Moving on over to the next tree, starting with the lighter green and I'm doing my best to not have the trees merge together into one single blob as I am painting them. If it's helpful to you, if you're finding that to be a problem, you can always skip one so that your previous tree can dry before you start with the next. Be watercolor is always going to expand when it's placed on wet paper or right next to a wet area, it's going to expand into that area. Dropping in some blue green for a bit of a deeper hue, removing paint from my paintbrush bristles, removing that excess water, running my paintbrush bristles along the bottom edge. Last tree here, lighter green. Making my way down, bit more of my olive green into the mixture to darken it. And there's the next little tree. G to add some blue green. Remove paint from my paintbrush bristles, remove that excess water, and run my paintbrush bristles along the bottom edge to soften the edge. Going to take some of this blue green and just drop it here at the bottom for a bit of a shadow effect. That's the trees painted. 9. Shadows Shapes + Final Details: So all we're missing is adding some more detail in this foreground area. We're going to be adding some grasses, some stems, some little bulbs, which are very much a characteristic. When you see poppy fields, you're going to see those little bulbs, and I'm going to be adding just a tiny bit of definition in the largest poppies. But we want to be very careful not to overwork the piece. The definition that I'm going to be adding in is very minimal. It's just going to subtly describe petals and edges in the largest poppies and I really don't want to overdo it. Finally, the last thing that I'm going to be doing in this part of the process is adding some little shadow shapes in the path to give it a little bit more depth and dimension, and we will be doing a tiny bit of splattering for visual texture and interest as well. Let's get started. For the stems, we're going to be using the plain green, whichever green it is that you're using, as well as the blue green, which is a mixture of your green and coal blue. We will be bringing in a tiny bit of our warm red, which for me is permanent red light for any little bulbs that we decide to add in using my size zero round brush and my lighter green, which is my plain olive green. I'm just going to start adding some stems into my poppies. Some of these stems are not going to come all the way down to the edge of my paper because the bottom of that stem is covered by another flower. Taking some of my darker green, popping it in there. Maybe disappearing some sections of my stems, making them softer looking. Notice how these stems that I am painting are not very stark looking, not super contrasting against that green background behind them. I want to make sure that I'm going in with a green that is dark enough to see but not so dark that they are going to appear very, very staark looking because that would be very distracting for the viewer. I want to make sure that I'm incorporating slight curves in my stems. C to do a little little bulb here and there. Remember that whatever you add in the farther away distance is going to be smaller, shorter than the things that you add into the closest areas nearest the bottom of the piece. Make sure to have that perspective in mind. Little bulb there. Maybe I add a little bit of my permanent red light into this bulb. I'm constantly taking breaks and seeing everything from a distance just to make sure that I'm not going overboard with the amount of stems and grass and little bulbs that I am adding in. It's very easy to continue adding and adding and adding, and that is going to end up looking too heavy, too overworked. The farther and farther back you get, the less stems you should be adding in. Because the less detail we would see. I'm going to add some stems to this area over here. As I'm moving through this, sometimes I'm adding a little bit more of my olive green or a little bit more of my pains gray into my mixture to darken it a little bit more, just to take it a little bit darker. I'm going to add a bit of pains gray into my green to get an even darker value. I I'm going to switch on over to my size three round brush again. And I'm going to go back to my permanent red light. And what you're going to see me do is I'm going to be creating these small abstract, irregular shadow shapes just here and there along some of the edges, especially of the largest poppies nearest us. And I'm just going to be adding very subtle detail. This is going to add more definition to the flowers, make them pop a little bit more. I am not trying to outline around my flowers. I'm just creating little shapes along certain sections of those edges. Don't outline because that is going to lead to flatter, more cartoony results. In some of these poppies, I'm also creating a downward more curved stroke coming down from the upper edge to create the illusion of separation between petals. Now if you can no longer see the shape of your poppies, maybe sketch them in with your pencil before trying to paint little sections around that shape. Create a gentle brushstroke coming in, mixing in a bit of my matter lake deep into my warmer red to get a bit of a darker value. Because we're painting on dry paper, we're being left with sharp defined edges around these darker red shapes that we're painting in. If at any point you want to go in and soften because maybe things are looking a little bit too stark, you can always remove that paint from your paint brush bristles and go in with a clean and only slightly damp brush and run those bristles over that color or along one of the edges of your shape that you're looking to soften. Creating a sense of overlapping petals by just doing a gentle flick coming in gentle flick coming in and down. I don't want to go overboard and overly describe these and I don't want to get rid of that beautiful softness in my painting by trying to overly describe things. That's enough. If you want to create an even darker red than what your cool red allows, why not try adding in a bit of your cobalt blue into your cool red? That is going to give you a bit of a red purple color. If you want to push the contrast even more, you can use that color. Keep everything very loose. It. That's all I'm going to do for the detail in my flowers. I'm going to go back to my size zero round brush, create a few more grasses. I'm going to switch on back to my size 14 round brush. Clean out a section of my palette here. Place some of my burnt sienna and a bit of burnt umber right here in the corner. I'm just looking to create some shadow shapes for a bit of an irregular look in this path. I'm just creating abstract shapes there in my path with my size 14, going in and darkening some sections here with my burnt umber, removing that paint from my paintbrush bristles, removing that excess water, softening edges. Bit of a darker brown. That's it. Popping in a little bit of green in that path so that I don't have a clean edge going in with a bit of my birtsiena back here. Softening this edge at the back. A little bit of green. Softening the edges. I don't want my edges to be sharp undefined. The last thing that I'm going to do is add a bit of splattering to the lower part of this piece. I took some scrap pieces of watercolor paper that I had in my studio and I'm just going to be placing them up here because I don't want any splattering in this area, and I would recommend using a brush that has a good snap to it. This is a size eight multimedia synthetic brush. I got it via Amazon, it was pretty cheap. Add more of my olive green into this mixture to thicken it up. I gently tapping my smaller brush on this back portion of this mop brush. And finally, I'm going to do some splattering with my warm red as well. Preparing a nice puddle of permanent red light, grabbing my two brushes again going in with some final splattering. That's it. Don't want to go overboard. Absorb some of these here in the path. I don't want them to be too visible here. Just to finish up, as an optional step, you could go in with a yellow prisma color pencil or even a yellow pastel pencil to add some grasses and bright highlight leaves and sections of stems with this. But if you are, make sure that the point is nice and sharp and don't go overboard with these final details. I am using my lemon yellow from my soft core wax based regular prisma color set. And I would recommend going with the lighter yellow because these would be highlights in the stems and those leaves. If you're going to be doing this extra step, make sure that everything is completely bone dry because if you go in with any sharp drying tool like a colored pencil, you can definitely end up damaging your watercolor sheet, especially if it's wet. Remember that wet paper is fragile paper, and you need to allow that paper to dry so that it can regain its strength. Alright, that's enough. We're all done with this piece. I 10. Thank you: You made it to this point, congratulations. I really hope that you enjoyed this course and that you learned new tips and tools that you can take with you to future watercolor pieces. Don't forget to share your work in the Projects and Resources tab here on Skillshare. I cannot wait to see what you created to help out with any questions that you might have and also provide any feedback that you might don't forget to follow me here on Skillshare because I have many new courses coming down the pipeline for you and make sure to check out all of the free resources and tutorials that I'm making available every week over on my website, my YouTube channel, and my Instagram. Thank you very much for joining me on this one. I wish you a wonderful rest of your day, enjoy your art practice, and see you very soon.