Watercolor Postcards : Painting Rustic Old Doors in Watercolor

1. Open the doors!: As an artist, I've always been fascinated by these old drastic tools. It's like they have stories to tell the just transport you some other time zone. So I thought of giving this a try in the watercolor postcard series. So here we are. I'm going to eat that. I'm an artist and educator from India. And in this class we're going to learn how to be beautiful old drastic dose. So this is a beginner friendly class. So even if you have no experience with watercolors, it's completely fine. We're going to brush up all the B6 techniques of watercolors. And we'll also go into cover the basics of adding texture and capturing the night and shadows when it comes to the stores. And then we move on to pin three beautiful projects, all of them old and drastic, and magic goo. So I hope you'll enjoy this class and give the projects that try. Let's get started. 2. Materials Needed: So for the materials of this class, you'll need watercolor paper. Now I'm using the bot Hong of clean paper because we're going to try out the dry brush technique and something with a little bit of 3D helps. So go for any brand of people that sees a 100 percent cotton cold press paper, it's fine because I'll be sharing tips and tricks to get the brush technique on Congress people as well. So that's about it. Then you need masking, tape, masking board, or rather any bowl just so that you can take the people on it and get these neat right edges. Now for the brushes based on size of the paper that you're using, you'll need a few brushes, mainly for washes and a small brush body during so I'm using this A5 size of people. So I'm using a size six and ties for diamond G round brush for washes and Psi 0 for details. But that's about it. Now, for the colors I'm using, the Daniel Smith watercolors, these professional be in Sam, highly pigmented and kind of my personal choice. But you could go with any brand of watercolors. Something that says at a script works just fine. So we'll be using a few key colors, mainly in all the projects like the Cobalt Teal. And you can see on all these doors and a few grounds for the texture. But you could create these mixes with any brand that you're using right now. So there is no such restriction on any brand of paint, paper of brush. Just use whatever you have and let's get started with it. So in the next section, we'll quickly refresh all our basics of watercolors and also on the techniques that you need to know to get started with these beautiful dose. And they'll be separate section about the dim lights and shadows as well. So yeah, let's dive in. 3. Techniques Refresher: So in this section I'm going to quickly cover some basic watercolor techniques. So if you're someone who's already used to this medium, please bear with me. So we'll start with wet on wet. So wet on wet is when your paper is wet, either with water or layer of paint like this, and you drop in another layer of wet paint on it. So you can see that the blending happens mostly on its own. Watercolors is just doing its own thing. And this is your base layer. So all the base layers that you'll be painting will be done mainly wet on wet now, but, um, try on the other hand, is just painting on paper on a dry paper with your normal paintbrush. So all your detailing is done using a wet-on-dry technique. So in this case, the doors, the base layer of the doors painted using wet on wet. And all these small details that you see are done using wet on dry. So that's basically the all the detailing is done using wet-on-dry on the base layers or all the blending layers and I'm using wet on wet. So for example, if I'm just painting this tool, I'll leave my base layer. Now in this case I'm using the cabal. Now, you could use the same color with a slightly darker value, which means more pigment and add it in like this, wet on wet to create some texture on the door. And then once this is dry, we can add in all the details or lights, shadows, and everything using wet on dry technique. Now, another very interesting technique is the crime brush technique, which you'd usually use to create texture on the wall or on the door, et cetera. So you could use a brush which is kind of try not very loaded and just rub it on your hand like this so that it kind of takes away water from the brush. You could also use a tissue for this. Just roll the brush like this, and then just dab it on the paper and you can see that it kind of gives you that dry brush effect. Now, you won't need to put in as much effort if you're using a rough green paper because the paper itself does the trick. But you'd use this mean the for creating these texture on the dose or other steps, et cetera. So that's about the dry brush effect. And one last thing that I would like to cover is the glazing effect, which is useful for creating the shadows, etc. So once your paper is dry, once the previous layer is dry, you could use a nice thick layer of paint like this. Just apply it on the edges wherever you want to create those shadows. And then use a clean brush with a little bit of water and just spread the other edge. So this is kind of a wet-on-dry technique, but here you can see that we're not really using it for detailing. It is mainly to create a kind of shadow effect, which I elaborate further in the next section. So that's about it. That's in a nutshell, some very basic techniques. Now in the next section we'll cover all everything about lights and shadows. 4. Light and Shadows: Now talking about painting lights and shadows, the first step is to identify the source of light. So if you are painting from a reference, mostly be able to see the exact shadows and it could be pretty straightforward to paint. But if you're going to paint it from imagination or something that you just want to try out. New places, source of light. So like in this case, so sulfate is on the left, so my shadows would accordingly be placed on the right. So this is something that you need to keep in mind when painting. So just make sure that you have very direct source of light where you know which side it's coming from. And you can call it the piece, the shadows using the glazing technique and a little bit of it on credit. Now, another technique that I would like to explain is the negative painting, specific to this particular scenario? For example, if you have a bar, have bars like these. So you could either leave the bus and paint around them like this. Or what we can do is an easier way to do this would be to paint the whole thing like this, like this case, I've painted the block of t. Now I'll be using the shadow color. You could go with any color that you like. I usually mix my shadow color. I don't directly use black. So it's either mix of green and using the colors that I've already have an a palette. So you could just paint shadows here like this. So effectively the appeal in the bus, but indirectly, we are not painting the birth, we just leaving them as it is in this cobalt teal color and painting the shadows around them. So this is the negative painting technique. Not a lot of it is being used in the projects. Just very fun technique. So I just thought I'd share it over here. So we'll mainly be using it in the first project that we have a section just above the dual where we will be trying this out. And you can then further add liquid pigment to further enhance the shadows. So here we've used this technique in creed these bars using the negative infinity. Now coming back to this tool, we first painting it using a global team over here, just so that I can demonstrate actually how to go about the shadow part. So I'm using a cabal, initially a light wash to start with, and then we use a slightly darker value to act texture just around the areas where you'll have the shadow. So I'm just dropping it in here and letting it blend on its own. And once it's slightly, we'll add the shadow color. So I'm just giving it a minute. And then we add the shadow color like this. And we'll do the glazing techniques so that it kind of the shadow kind of merges in through using a clean brush and just blending in the edges like this. And then we give it another minute to dry completely and then add a darker value of the shadow color at the top. So in this we can see that there's an edge to the shadow. So it kind of enhance the kind of it's kind of more pronounced. So that's about it. That's the techniques that we will do cry out in our projects. So in projects burden you have a specific shadow like this, like the reference picture itself shows you the shadow. It's easier, it's just straightforward to paint it like that. Just that in the adding those edges to enhance these small areas where you have more rather darker shadow. But for the other projects, for example, you can either places or supply based on how you want it to be and then paint the shadows accordingly. But that's about it. That's all the techniques that you'll need to know to get started with these projects. So in the next section, we'll start with our first project, which is quite simple, a fun project to start with. 5. Project 1 : Locked Away: So we started with our first project. It's going to be a very simple one. I have tried to take simple compositions, nothing too intricate and simplified further while sketching itself so that we can concentrate on painting a liter. So I usually mark the center of my paper like this and then make sure that I have kind of a precaution for the dough. You can use a ruler if that helps. But since this is more about creating elastic dose, you don't need to have it exactly like a straight line. It could be a little bit wobbly, That's fine because it will just add to the overall effect. And that's it. So this is kind of an abandoned house, so you'll have a little bit of vegetation cracks here and there. So that's what we're going to capture in this composition. And we have that top here wherein we have those buzz of negative painting technique and a few cracks on the wall like this. That's about it. A very simple sketch to start with. Next, we'll start with the painting. So I'm just painting the walls around the dough first so that we can get the texture right over here. So once you pet the people, it will just drop in the Cobalt Teal. You could go with a different mix. Well, the idea here is to capture the essence of the walls, kind of the abandoned house that is dead. So just adding in these colors and also I'll be adding another hint of brownish yellow so that it kind of gives that field old rustic feel that is there to these houses. So first I'm just dropping in the cobalt in over here. So remember that your paper is already wet, so there's not much of blending required. You can see that it's just spreading on its own. Next time taking a very light value of yellow ocher and again, cropping it in. Not really covering the whole space because we still want to leave some white. So just dropping it at random places that it gives that old kind of fees to the wall. Now once the Wallace dr is topped with pH's, so I'm using the same capacity but slightly darker value. Just working on the edges like this, the door is going to be in a reddish orange colors, so I don't want to drop it on the door. It's just being a little bit careful while painting the edges over here. But at the top, if you remember, we just going to have those bars using negative painting technique. So I'm just Going for a FIFO over here, just painting it out. Adding a hint of brown to just show some old world where the paint has worn off. And at the base again, I'm using the Command D Now at the basic and see that it's much darker, more white printers work. So I just want to create a contrast in this. So trying to use a mix of values over here. Now I'll just lift a little bit over here. Just using a clean brush and trying to live a little bit of pigment off so that we have a separation over here. And the next style start with the little bit of vegetation that is there at the base of the door. So I'm using a nice light by brilliantly to start with. So this is going to be the base layer and then we'll add in some darker beans on top and a few shadows later on with the shadow color. But just starting with something that is vibrant than just popping out of there. And then we start with the dorsal. This is still wet. I'm not ready. Worried about the two blending because we're going to add the shadows later on. So at that point we can define the vegetation better. But now I start with a light value of orange and then they don't wet and just dropping in a slightly darker value. So you can see that how it's mixing. This not much I need to do over here. Most of the mixing is happening on its own. Now, at the top I'm dropping in a perylene maroon. You could go with any nice vibrant red trying to create that kind of blend over here. You can see that the previous value of orange, the darker value of our debt, this red, are giving such a nice, beautiful blend. So that's what you're trying to create over here. So use any nice vibrant red that goes well with the orange that you've used. And that's about it. So it's all happening wet on wet. All the details will work wet on dry. Lee Tuan for now. Just dropping the colors and let them blend. Now, while that cries, I started working at top part. So because we cannot really add in the things which are to be done. Some work on this part. Since this is mostly dry and we just need to use the negative painting technique to being the boss. So just being a little bit careful over here that it doesn't blend into the door. Just keep that little bit of gap between the two. You can use whatever shadow color you're using. I'm using a mix of Greece over here. So you can see that it is giving a very nice contrast in comparison to the cobalt teal that was there. Because it was a lighter values where the initial value that we added for cobalt II was pretty light. So it's giving a very beautiful effect over here. Now, once you do is try, you can start working on the vegetation. So I'm using a darker green to create kind of a grass like effect with very simple strokes, just dabbing a little bit of feathering technique and using it to this kind of a shadow. So the lighter green is still visible, just adding the darker green on top. And this kind of an effect and will further add a little bit more darker color foreshadows Louis Kahn. Alright, so now I've switched to a smaller brush and using the shadow color, I'm just adding a little bit depth to this. And you can see that those small little dots nucleate a lot of difference when it comes to a shrub or a vegetation like this. So just extending that to create all the little details or shadows that are there. So here we're just identifying all the cracks in the wall. So just marking it with this color right here. And then we'll add in the texture with the dry brush technique. So I'm using the same brush. I don't want to use the bigger brush. And just using the same brush and adding in the texture like this with a darker cobalt. So just make sure that your brush is kind of semi tries to get that kind of dry brush effect. Getting back to the door, I just added the darker cobalt teal now to give it a little bit more depth. So using this same color that we used for the grantor's technique here on the wall. Just a darker value to create the edges over here. Now coming back to the door, we'll start with adding details. Wet on dry. So again, I'm using a smaller brush to add the details over here. And then wherever we're going to do the glazing, I'll just use the bigger brush with a clean brush, not loaded with any pigment. And we'll just give that shadow effect. Now using a clean brush to blend the VCE quickly, just adding little bit of depth to this part. And then we continue with the other. Now, at this point, even if the lines are not perfect, It's perfectly fine. All plastic doors, modern door. And just enjoy the process where you just have one using a small brush, declare another round of using shadow colors. So just more depth and texture. Now we start with the shadow part. So I'm using the shadow color and adding, add these edges. And then we'll use the glazing technique to just blend it in a bit. But you can see that just by adding that shadow color at the edge, it makes such a beautiful difference. Over here you can see that the shadow is taking shape, which is what we're trying to do. And now we just blend it in a little bit. Giving it a little bit more depth and a slightly darker pigment at the top again. So here we are just trying to build up the shadow, giving it a little bit more character. And we do the same at the other edges, just adding in those details with the shadow color. Now going back to these walls, I'm using the shadow color. Maybe you can try it out with slightly lighter tone. Just using the dry brush technique do give it kind of redoing a little bit of the deal for these walls. We'd already marked these in the first round. You just enhancing it a bit. For this part, we'll just add in a slightly more pigment shadow color for creating that depth. You will find the fields closer to this. Now using a darker pigment to just once again enhance the shadows and the edges. Also adding this central part. So that was super-quick first project, I hope you enjoy the techniques that we cried out. Now I'll see you in the next one. 6. Project 2 : Orange Candy: Our next project, this one again is a simple composition. So the reason I went for this was that bright orange wall that is there. And the contrast that was created by this kind of very eye-catching wanted to try it out. So once again, we go for a very simple sketch, all the details over here. And then we'll be adding in most of the part directly. So just marking the steps and the policemen are all the parts, et cetera, during the sketching phase, but keeping it, you're done with the skating. So battles like simple paths. Now we will start with the door. So annexing Cuba and applying it directly onto the door, we display the values to create the texture over here. So at the top I'm keeping it slightly darker. And the bees, I'm just going to be adding in a little bit of water and pulling the color down. Now while it dries, we'll start working on the stairs because they're not connected, so we can just work on them separately. So I'm using very light beige brown mixture. Now the top of the stairs going to be as vertical part that is that you're facing. So I'm just going to lift up a little bit of color from that part. And then let us start working on the wall around it. So for a while again, I'm directly going with the orange, so I'm using the permanent orange over here. Like I said, this orange by big one was what caught my attention when I was searching for pigs. So just trying to capture that sense of the model over here. Again, when you covering such a large area with a single color, tried to get the values over here so that you can read the texture using a single chromosome. Audience, for example, if I started with just dabbing in slightly darker value here, Kim, slightly darker red. Now starting with the parts of the bees, I'm using burnt sienna to add color to them. This simple parts. Now, we'll start with a plan that is covering this. So I'm starting with light directly of clean sabji. And then literally the details onto this one with a darker. But for now we're going to start. Again. Now I'm dropping the darker greens. I'm using the paralleling green over here and you can see that it creates such a beautiful blend with the family. So just adding it to extending the plant. Next time, having a darker value of green to the shadows within the plant. So just using the same brush, simple strokes to create this kind of an effect. Now for the prompt on the right, I'm starting directly with adapt. So that kind of flipping a little bit of variation between the left and the right path. So starting with this damping, just dabbing my brush to create that leaf like structure. Now at these hill, towards the left we have this simple grass like leaves. So just adding them to the flick of a brush. Now starting with the stairs. So for the path that is what a good steward see, it's going to be darker. So I'm using the same mix slightly with the gene so that it matches with the overall mood of this picture and just being big data. So you can see that the top part is automatically highlighted because we're not painting it to its left. Back. Again, we'll be dropping with different values so that we can make this. Now let's start working on the doors. These cracks that are using a smaller brush, just simple strokes of the shadow. Darker color, just adding it randomly, not just heating the strokes so that you get this kind of texture. If you use your trash without picking up more pigment, you'll see that on a rough green paper like this, it ends up giving you that texture automatically. Now dropping in slightly darker value of cobalt between all this is part of creating that, creating that all drastic off the door. So that's the reason that we are doing this in layers. Most of it is here. You can see that it's done. So next we start working on the shadows. So I'm adding a shadow over here at the top. Now, I'm going to skip the glazing part over here because I really like how this looks great now that, that shadow in contrast to the beautiful Coval, stay on the door. So I'm just going to start working directly on the details of the daughter of a hill. Redoing those cracks in the world using shadow color with the brush, just using the tip of the brush, trying to create this texture. Now, I'm using the same shadow color but with a dry brush technique to just show the decay in the world. So using it just give these upward strokes. And you can see that it adds so much to the door. So again, just using the darker color. You can see that the shadow for the next week. Once again, using the dry brush technique for the Stones Over here. Using slightly light value of burnt sienna. This bragging appeal. And then using a smaller brush, I'm adding in all the other details. So for this, I'm using the darker shadow color and just be building upon these parts. So you can see that just by adding these secretions, it kind of gives the effect of the shadow as well. Now for the stairs here again, to just add in a bit of texture and using the technique. And just adding in a slightly darker color on top over here. So it kind of gives the stone finish to this. Then we move on to the shop again. So for this time round we are using slightly darker mix of green. And again, this is wet on dry. So you can see that even if you use the same value, that is going to be a double layer. So if we kind of look darker, last round up. For this again, I'm using the darkest color. So because we built it up in layers, because we are adding the shadows step-by-step. You can see that it kind of creates a depth in these plants. That's what we were trying to achieve over here. There's a reason that we went for so many layers separately is mostly wet on dry. So this is adding details wet on dry, but it helps in creating that depth. Now let's connect them all with branches. So I'm using burnt sienna, a dark value to. So it's staying with these bars around a bit. Now, let's add a few leaves, some data pollen from this plant onto those steps. And it looks nice like this. That's it. So that's our second project done. It was quite different from the first one because we tried to include a lot of greenery over here. But I hope you enjoyed this. See you in the next one. 7. Project 3 : Shadows and Cracks: Onto our last project, and this is going to be slightly more detail than the other two. But I'm trying to simplify it as much as possible. So we'll again start with a very simple sketch. In this one, we know where the shadows are from, the reference pic, but we'll follow the same steps trying to simplify the sketch first and placing all the elements right? And then we work on the individual parts. So just strength over here. Doors with the semicircle milliliters to break them down into simpler. Started with a rectangular. Added this on the dog. Building up the sketch without much of a composition. It helps simplifying the whole process. Just breaking them down into smaller chunks and then getting them out. So just drink, do that. Now, quickly adding on the door itself. So tiny areas where you have to add the shadows. Let me just mark them here. You're done. So I'll just quickly read this a little bit so that all these dark markings are gone. And then we start with the door. So for the door I'm starting with the cobalt and directly applying it. But don't try. For the first layer. We're just going to be applying it across the door. All the details related to the shadows, et cetera, maybe admittedly drawn. Now in the reference picture. Which kind of add, I'm going to add it here. And then we just extend the color towards the door. Now we can start painting an area that is not directly connected to the door while the door is still drying. So I'm starting with the pavement, am adding in a very light value of burnt sienna. And I'm just going to use this as the base wash for the pavement. Also, we can start working on the walls. So half of it is going to be white with a few cracks here and there. Whereas at the b's we have this kind of color. So I'm just going to start working on that in case your payment is still wet just for a minute before you do the step, or you can leave a very slight white line between the payment and the wall that you can start working on it even when the payment is wet. For me, this has dried, so I'm just starting correctly. Now after this, for the remaining ball will just wipe the wall completely and then add in all those cracks, etc. So for the first part, we'll just be using wet on wet while the walls completely clean water. We'll just drop in a hint of burnt sienna here. Now I'll start working on the bond that is. So just adding the simple strokes, just flick up the brush. So we're starting with the lighter green here, and then we'll add the darker green for shadows later on. By the system. Sap green with slightly darker value. And just dab it in here like this. Getting back to the door, now that it's dry, we'll start adding some using a burnt sienna. Adding the texture on this wet, on dry, using the dry brush technique later on. Again, this is just the bees clear. So just make sure that the door and the wall is completely dry so that it just doesn't start bleeding into the other. Give it to manipulate dry and start working on the spot. So just try to work on. Elements are areas that are not really connected to each other. So you can just wait for one part to drive when trying out the other area. Like in this case, this part is nowhere connected to the part that we just painted. So we can just go ahead and try painting this. So just a way to save some time in case you don't want to use a hair dryer. So now we'll start with adding the details onto this plant. So I'm using the darkest green perylene green to start with. Alright, now that my DOT heads headstock working on the details, so math this area with pencil. So in case you can still see the outline you can just follow. It will be adding shadows and details later on with a darker color separately. This is kind of just in this case, we'll be adding a lot more detail onto this. Now. That kind of just adding a little bit of pigment, semi-truck, giving it back. Now we start with the pavement. I'm using a bunch of these, just add a little color to the school picture. So keeping into mix of burnt sienna. Now we start adding the details using a smaller brush. So I'm using Payne's gray for this, highlighting all the areas where we have slight imperfections, a bit of texture like this. We start with the shadows. I'm using a gray mix. Just first add the first round of shadow. I'm not going to blend it a lot because you're going to have shadow which is there. So for that, I'm just going to add shadows to the other parts. So all these carvings, I'm just adding the same shadow color. Now I'll create the shadows that are on the reference pic. Same kind of effect. There's also a bit of texture at the Bs over here. So I'm using the same shadow color and adding the texture like this. Going back to this drop shadow, I'll just be mixing a slightly darker color to enhance this a little bit more so you can still see that the top part is still looking great. We wanted color to the kinds of shadows. So adding seem blackish gray mix over here. So you can still see the slight greenish color below the shadows. But that's the effect that we're trying to mix. For the shadows that are there on the white dwarf. It looks much better. Look at it now and just be fixing the edges of the shadows on the wall. And then we will start with adding the details. Now, I'm using a smaller brush to add the details on the door. So just adding in these little shadows that are there because of the patterns are carvings that are there on the door. Adding another layer of dark shadow color so that there's an edge to the shadow. Almost done. We're onto the final round of building up the shadows in this manner helps you get this kind of effect. There's also a hint of shadow. We're going to use the technique, so I'm just applying a darker pigment first and then using a clean brush, I'm just going to blend the stone part. The veteran have shown a bit of cracks and texture. So at the top we'll just be enhancing the spots which are kind of protruding so it will be shadows on these as well. Just rank demands that over here. For that, you can, again use the same color that is burnt sienna, a darker value. Or you could directly go over the shadow color as well. I'm using a smaller brush and just adding those cracks on the wall. So again, using for the shadows for this. So just adding darker shadow color. Also go with very pigment pins, gray or black as well. So just adding it over to enhance the shadows that you've already painted. And we are done. So that was our final project. It was slightly more detailed than the other two. But I hope you enjoyed the techniques that we used in this one and we'll give this a try. See you in the next section. 8. Thank you and beyond...: So thank you for joining me on this adventure. Then painted some beautiful old desktop tools. I hope you learned something new. I hope you enjoyed the techniques that we tried out that these projects, and if you do create a mouthpiece, don't forget to upload them in the project section. If you are on social media and you're uploading your projects, you can find me on Instagram, Facebook, and Pinterest. I didn't have a dedicated good just for a dose on Pinterest in case you want some inspiration and wanted to try out some more. You can just find. And do you have any feedback, positive or negative about this class are my other classes on Skillshare. Please do reach out to me. It helps me better classes. So that's it. I hope you stay in touch.