Puestas de sol en acuarela

1. Intro: Hi. My name is Colby. I I'm so excited that you've decided to join me today to learn all about painting watercolor sunsets just like this one. If you've seen any of my other classes you know that I I'm not a natural artist. At least I don't consider myself one. I didn't pick up a paintbrush for real until about a couple a years ago. I didn't think that I was very good at art until I had some mindset shift and decided to give it a shot and I have not been able to stop ever since. I have a love affair with watercolor that is not going away and I love sharing that passion with anyone who wants to learn. Today in this class, we're going to talk about watercolor sunset night skies that are awesome for wilderness landscape paintings, which as you might know are subjects that I particularly enjoy painting. Through this class, I'm going to go through all of the tools, the materials that you're going to need, and all the steps to create a gradient watercolor nights or gradient watercolor sunset like this one. As a bonus, we're going to take it one step further and create cloudy watercolor sunsets just like this one. There are tutorial videos for both the gradient sunset and this cloudy sunset. Then for the final project, you can decide if you want to do a gradient sunset silhouette or a cloudy sunset silhouette. I decided to do cloudy. This is my final project and I can't wait to see yours. Without further ado, move on to the next video to learn all about the tools that you're going to need and I cannot wait to get started. 2. Materials: Before we get started painting, it's very important that you gather all the right materials to be successful at painting these wilderness sunsets. While I do recommend investing in professional-grade tools like the ones that I'm using today at some point because they just make a world of a difference. Do know that you can use whatever paints and everything else that you have on hand, and I'm sure that you can create beautiful things with those too. Without further ado, let's get into it. First, let's start with paper. Whenever I do practices and first start any kind of subject, I almost always use student grade paper to begin with because A, it is much less expensive and that's mostly the reason. [LAUGHTER] No, I said A. it's much less expensive than professional-grade paper, so If I'm practicing something, I don't mind using paper that is cheaper and less quality because I want to get the technique down, but when I do final projects, I always use professional-grade watercolor paper because it is more absorbent and helps make colors more vibrant on the paper, and it was also made more to buckle less when water hits the paper. That said your paper is always going to buckle at least a little bit. If you don't have a watercolor block like the one that I have. A watercolor block is basically the pad of paper that's taped on all sides and then you cut it out after. I would recommend getting some painter's tape or masking tape or washi tape or some kind of tape that will be nice to paper, but that can hold the paper down on whatever surface you're using so that it holds it touch that makes it not buckle as much. So this is Legion Stonehenge watercolor paper, cold press, 140 pound. And this is Canson Montval watercolor paper. You can also use Canson XL or any other student grade paper. Just know you know the difference between student-grade watercolor paper and professional-grade watercolor paper is what it's made of. Student grade is made mostly of wood pulp and like a combination of different things and professional-grade watercolor paper, the best kind that you want is 100 percent cotton. So that's my little spiel on paper. Next, let's move on to paint. As I said, I really prefer, especially for landscape paintings like this, to use professional-grade pigment-based watercolor. I've used all sorts of different watercolors from student grade to dye-based and liquid watercolor and everything like that, and specifically for landscapes, professional-grade pigment-based watercolor is just far and away the best. So today I'm using Winsor & Newton. This is the professional line of Winsor & Newton. Winsor & Newton also has the Cotman line and that is student grade watercolor. But again, use what you have because you can create beautiful things and we're going to talk about why I chose these colors in a later video. Next, I also recommend professional-grade paintbrushes. I'm holding two of my favorites here. The first, this Utrecht Sable, series 228. You can recognize it by the black handle. I bought this at Blick Art Supplies. I really love this line. I love it because it's the series of paintbrushes I found that most closely imitates this Princeton Heritage Series, which is probably my very favorite series of paintbrushes. Important things to note about these two paintbrushes. They are both shaped round. Paintbrushes come in lots of different shapes and for watercolor painting, I most like to use this round shape. There are also synthetic sable hair. Paintbrushes can come in synthetic or real, and usually, sable hair brushes are made from squirrel hair. But I actually prefer the synthetic sable hair, not only because it's cruelty-free, but also because I think they control water a lot better and hold their shape a lot better than sable hair brushes for watercolor, I can't speak for other mediums of paint, but in my opinion, synthetic sable hair is way way to go. So this is a round number 10 and a round number 0, and I'm going to be using both extensively during this class. Some other random things always have two cups of water. I'm only showing you one right now, but I always like to have two so that one can stay clean whenever I need clean water. I like to have a palette so that I can have a place to mix my paint. When I buy tubed watercolor like this, I like to squeeze it onto a palette and let it dry. That way it reduces the risk of waste with this more paste watercolor. I also like to have Q-tips on hand and the paper towel or a rag or a sponge or whatever you use to get water off of your brush and clean it while you are painting. I think that about sums it up for material. If you've seen my videos on Instagram, you know that I use a drying tool to dry my layers in-between so that I can paint my paintings right away. This is the one I'm currently using. It's a tool typically used for embossing. It's basically light like a high-powered hairdryer, except it's much smaller and hotter than that. I got this for 10 bucks on Amazon. Don't remember the brand, but if you look up heat embossing tool on any craft site, you should pop that up. I may be using that in this class definitely behind the scenes, if not in these videos. I think that about sums it up. Why don't you gather all the supplies you want and will need for this class and get started on the next video. 3. Techniques: Before we start painting, I wanted to be sure to cover the very most basic watercolor techniques that every artist uses to create their masterpieces. If you've taken any of my classes before, [LAUGHTER] you may have seen a video similar to this. But I think it's so important to be able to master any kind of watercolor piece, let alone watercolor landscape piece. That's why I talked about it a lot. This video will gear more toward particularly how to use it while we paint these watercolor sunsets. First, let's talk about wet on dry technique. As you can summarize, wet on dry basically just means that the paper is dry while the watercolor is wet. In both of these wet on dry and wet on wet, one of the tools you're using is going to be wet. It's always going to be watercolor. But the wet on dry technique is when you paint on a dry piece of paper or a dry anything that you paint on. The wet on dry technique is probably what you imagine when you think about painting, in general. It allows for crisp edges, and you have the most control over the paint during the wet on dry technique. If you do watercolor calligraphy, I don't think I've ever seen anybody do watercolor calligraphy using the wet on wet technique. It's always the wet on dry. Well, unless you want to blend, but that's a different class. [LAUGHTER] If you're interested in that, take my blending calligraphy class. That's my name. That's the wet on dry technique. We use the wet on dry technique for detailing. Specifically, when we do our final project and when we do our sunset, we're going to use it to create silhouettes. The silhouette tree line is always the last thing to go on a painting like that for me, and it's always using the wet on dry technique. Now, for the main event and the one that's a little trickier, the wet on wet technique is when you paint on an already wet surface. That can be wet with water or that can be wet with wet watercolor paint, which has water in it. Either way, water is the key to utilizing the wet on wet technique. Water control especially is probably the most important thing that you can learn when you're doing watercolor, especially with the wet on wet technique. Because the more you learn how to control your water, the better you can learn how to control the paint and have it do what you want it to do, while still maintaining the beautiful chaos [LAUGHTER] that is watercolor. As you can see, when I just wet this surface with water and put my paint down, it doesn't stay in one place. It moves to where there's water. Because obviously watercolor paint is activated with water. When you combine these water with water, it has more room to roam free. The key thing to remember with water and water control is that the more water is on the paper, the less you are able to control the watercolor. You want to be careful, definitely not to have too much water because I'll show you why. I'm trying to put just tons of water so you can see. If I have so much water that it puddles on top of the paper, the paint, this is moving. [LAUGHTER] Here, that's a better example. It just sits and swirls on top of the water and not onto the paper. You see how in these spots, the paint has tendrilled onto the paper and bled its way onto the paper here. It's not on the paper, it's in the water. The paint isn't going to get on the paper until the water actually dries. That leaves you a whole lot less room for controlling how you want your watercolor to be. We are specifically going to use the wet on wet technique to ensure a really smooth gradient when we make the gradient version of the sunset. We're going to talk more about what gradient means later. But wet on wet technique allows for colors to blend together smoothly because they haven't stopped yet. They have places to go onto the paper so that lets you manually blend them together. But if you have too much like this, then it's harder to control exactly where it's going to go, unless you just take matters completely into your own hands. But when you have the right amount of water, the color, it does what it's supposed to by itself, without you having to do everything just with your brush. How I'm tilting this color down, I've put a decent amount of water, probably more than on here, but definitely less than on here. You see how the watercolor is just seeping down onto the water exactly where I wanted it to go. That's mostly the wet on wet technique. But one other thing I wanted to talk about is for one of the sunsets we're going to learn, we're going to learn how to paint clouds and a sunset. It's really important that you'll learn how to control your water. Because when we're painting clouds, we want our color to go. We want it to blend into the background, but we don't want it to go everywhere. That is going to require not having as much water as in other places, but enough so that it moves around. We're going to talk more about that in that specific video, but I wanted to give you just a sneak peak, and explain more fully why wet on wet is so important. Right now, if you haven't already been practicing with me, I would practice the wet on wet technique, and practice putting the paint down with different amounts of water. Just see what happens when you do that. Just see how you can control the paint, and how you don't control the paint. Once you do that, we will move on. We're going to move on to colors next. Get ready for that. 4. Color: For our final prep class before we get started on painting and learning how to paint the actual sunsets, I want to talk about what colors to use. I am almost positive that if you are taking this class, you have seen a sunset before, and have just been astounded by the brilliance of the colors in the sky and how everything blends together like that, and I similarly have been astounded. If you've seen that, you know, that sunsets can be just like a wide variety of different colors. It can have a whole spectrum of like five or six different colors, or it can have just a brilliant yellow, orange, or red. It can be just about anything. For the class today, we're mostly going to focus on the sunset that has a wide spectrum of colors that starts with yellow and goes up to a light orange or a dark orange and a pink and then a purple and then indigo or blue at the very top of the sunset, where the sunlight doesn't touch the sky. In order to achieve that color spectrum, I'm only using these three colors, and I'm going to mix them together at some point. First, it's important to have a really pale yellow. I like to use this Naples yellow by Winsor and Newton. But if you don't have pale yellow, like if you only have a brilliant yellow, lemon yellow or something like that, that could work too. But pale is, I think, more true to what a sunset looks like. If something that could work if you don't have pale like this, is to make a tint of your bright yellow, which means that you add white to it. That will make it like a more muted pastel color. When you add white to any color, that makes it a tint of that color. Just a little bit of color theory for you [LAUGHTER]. First, I would have that color, and then I add [BACKGROUND] Quinn Red, which is more of a pinkish red. The Quinn Red, which is pink [LAUGHTER], will help me get the orange that I want, and then also the pinks and reddish color that I want as well. And then indigo is the final color because that's going to be the top of the sky, but also indigo mixed with Quinn Red makes this gorgeous purple. That's the spectrum that we're working with, and I'm going to show you [BACKGROUND] what they all look like. So let's start with my Naples yellow. I always, like I said, squeeze out my tubed paint and let them dry. So here's my pale Naples yellow, and you can see that it's muted. You can achieve this color if you, like I said, make [BACKGROUND] a tint of a brighter yellow if you don't have this yellow. That's my Naples yellow. Next, I'm going to show you what it looks like when I, to make like an orange with this Naples yellow mixed with this Quinn Red. I'm just mixing my colors and that's not quite as orange as I wanted, that's more like it. It's like a corollary orange, but this is like a pinkish orange that we are going to use in our sunset. And then here's the Quinn Red. You see how it's like reddish pink, and then we're going to mix the Quinn Red with our indigo. [BACKGROUND] Just one second. [BACKGROUND] I have indigo on a separate palette [LAUGHTER]. We're going to mix our Quinn read with indigo to make. We've made now just like a blue-violet. I'm going to mix a little bit more red into it. A little bit better. This purple will probably be more close to the top of the sky where indigo happens, and then to make it a little bit more red violet. There we go. See, that's going to blend into that color. And then finally, our indigo is going to be at the top. I haven't blended them all together yet because that's what we're going to do in the next video. But I just wanted to show you basically the color spectrum that we are going to be using for sunsets, and if you look at sunsets, if you google sunsets and look up pictures of them. The most brilliant ones have all of these colors and honestly even more. Those are the color mixes that I'm going to use. It's a good idea if you are going to be like me and only use three colors to make all the different spectrum of your gradient to go ahead and mix some of your colors beforehand and test out what they're going to look like, so that when you make your final piece, the next video isn't going to be a final. It's going to be like other practice, but It's just a good idea to see what you're working with before you actually put them onto paper so that you have a better idea of how they're going to mix together. Without further ado, you practice that and then when you're ready, move on to the next video where we are going to practice our gradient sunset. Can't wait. 5. Gradient Sunset: We've tested out our colors, we know what we're going to use and after we've tested out our colors, I like to keep my colors watch close so that I can see it as I'm practicing my sunset. I'm just going to put this off to the side and you do with yours what you will, and let's get started. The important thing to remember about creating a gradient sunset is that the lighter colors are always on the bottom and then they get darker as they move to the top. When you start getting into more complex sunsets, like when you actually have the sun in the sunset, that can be a little different because typically the sun is always the lightest part of a sunset and then it gets darker as it moves outwards, so sometimes it can be darker underneath the sun. If you decide to do a sunset with the sun, but that's a little bit more advanced and this is more of a beginners class. For this class, we're just going to focus on how to create a gradient that imitates the colors of a sunset so that it looks like a sunset once you put the silhouette in front of it. I've used the word gradients several times in this class, and if you don't already know what it is, a gradient is a visual representation of moving from one color seamlessly to the next. So that means you don't have to only have two colors, but there's one pure color on the top and one on the bottom and then you gradually move into the next color. My night skies are a good example of gradients. I have just one here where I move from this dark indigo blue to a very light blue, and it's gradual. You see how it's not like dark blue and then light blue, it gradually gets lighter as you move to the bottom. In my night sky class that is called when we decrease the value, we only make the value lighter and when you do monochrome gradients, that's what you're doing with watercolors. You're using water to make the value of a color lighter but with a sunset gradient. Instead of changing the value, we are actually going to change the color and while using multiple colors and blending them together. It's a little bit more tricky than those monochrome gradients because you have to do a lot more manual blending. First to start off, I'd like to start at least a little bit with the wet-on-wet technique and get the bottom of my paper wet and I like to start with the bottom colors first. I'm going to put at least, well sometimes I do top and bottom, but we're just going to do bottom this time. An important thing to remember is that the first time you put on a color is probably not the last time you're going to put on that color. There's going to be a lot of blending here as we make our gradient. I put down a wash of water on the bottom and I'm just going to put yellow. My Naples yellow in here with that wash. I have my Naples yellow here and that's going to be my first. Making just a little bit more pigmented. That's my first layer. Next, because I'm using Naples yellow, Quinn red, and indigo. You can either mix on the paper or mix ahead of time. Honestly, both will work fine. I'm going to show you what it looks like when I let these colors mix together on the paper. I've put down my first layer of Naples yellow. I did the wet-on-wet technique, getting it wet first so that it could spread it out. You could also do wet on dry for that as long as you push the color up before it dries. But I did wet on wet. I extended the water above where the Naples yellow is and now I'm going to put my first layer of Quinn read where the water is, extend it a little bit further so I don't get any dried paint lines. Then we're going to come back to that. I have just first put this layer of Quinn red. I'll put a little bit more. We want to make sure that these always stay wet. To make sure that they stay wet, you just re-wet them periodically. Then as we blend together, we can start blending if you want. It's a good idea usually to go from bottom to top, blending from light to dark. But, as we're beginning, you can start blending. Just start blending these two layers together. You'll see a pale orange starting to come through. We just want this to stay wet the whole time that we're working. I'm going to move on to extend now extending this color. This is a good idea, my water is getting muddied with the watercolors that I'm already using, so now I'm moving on to my clean water cup. I'm going to start with my wash of water on the top and that's where my indigo is going to go. We're going to watch it blend smoothly into this Quinn red in just a second. First, I'm going to make sure the water meets the water and then I'm going to take some of my indigo. The darkest goes on top. See how my paper is starting to buckle a little. That's okay. I put my indigo on top and I'm just moving it down. Not quite, so it hits the Quinn red yet. Because like I said, it's a lot easier to blend from light to dark. That's what I'm going to do first. We have all of the base colors on here and now we're just going to start blending so that we can start to see the other gorgeous colors. I'm pushing this down a little bit. As I blend this Quinn red with this indigo to get the purple. I'm going to get a little bit more Quinn red onto my paintbrush before I start blending. Then I'm going to move that Quinn red up like that so that it blends into that indigo. You can see a fine layer of purple of that red-violet starting to form. Now I'm going to do that same thing but with Naples yellow going into the Quinn red. I have my Naples yellow down here. I'm putting more on it and I'm going to blend moving up with my paintbrush, going from light to dark and then you can go down a little bit once you've done that. But if you want to blend something so it's just like a seamless gradient. You see how when you go from light to dark, that makes it a whole lot easier. I'm going to put a little bit more Quinn red and I'm going to put a little bit more indigo on the top. Honestly painting these gradients is a lot of back and forth and back and forth. I'm bringing down some indigo. It's okay to go from dark to light a little bit. But if you go all the way down, you can never go. I think that's probably the biggest difference. You can never go all the way down from dark to light, but you can go all the way up going light to dark and I'll show you what that looks like in a second here. I'm going to get a little bit more Quinn red, like we did before. Start down here and blend upward. If you want it to be smooth, you want to go from side-to-side wholly and completely from side-to-side. Because if you just go like that, you see how it creates a texture in the middle, which is cool and we're going to do that on the next video when we learn how to paint clouds and a sunset. But as we're creating this smooth gradient sunset, we want it to be smooth and so your brushstrokes have to be uniform. The best way I've found to do that is to just go from side-to-side like that. This time going all the way up, and I'm washing off my brush because now I've picked up some of that darker color. Then I'm going to do some more Naples yellow down here and go all the way up. I don't quite have the orange that I want so on the side, I already had some of this orange down here, so I'm just going to manually paint it in and maybe manually put some Quinn red down here and then I'm going to start blending again. It's okay if you want to put some color just to make sure you have some color on here before you make it smooth. Because that will make sure you have the pigment that you want. If that makes sense. Like sometimes if you only go from side-to-side without manually dropping in more color, it's harder to get it as pigmented as you want. But if you want to be a smooth gradient, you have to have it look uniform, so what I do in that case is I put the pigment down first and then I know I'm going to come back in later and blend it all together. I'm going to do that by moving from side-to-side and going up like that. I want to bring some of those Quinn red down to make a little bit more of an orange color. I dropped some yellow in there. That's okay. See right there. I didn't wash off my brush before I went up into the red and so, some of that yellow dropped onto the red, but that's okay. We'll get rid of it in a second. Then I'm starting from the bottom now that I've blended it together and I'm moving from side to side all the way up to the top. You can always go from bottom to top. When you're doing light. You can always go from light to dark, but you can't always go from dark to light. That is our gradient sunset and I could keep going to make the colors more vibrant. You can also wait for this to dry and then do another layer on top of it that would make it vibrant. But for the purposes of our practice, I'm going to call that good. The next steps if you decide we're going to learn how to do clouds on a sunset sky in the next video and you can decide then for your final project if you want your final project to be this gradient, this smooth gradient sunset or if you want to add some clouds into the sunset for your final video. But the next step either way would be to add some subject on here and that can be anything from mountains to palm trees to a forest to anything like that. But I'm going to do my classic tree line silhouette of a forest for my final project and you will see that as you move on. Let's finish up whatever practice you were doing along with me or if you're just moving on to the next video, head on over and we will talk about how to add onto this sunset by making colorful clouds. All right. See you then. 6. Cloudy Sunset: Now that we've done a gradient night sky, I keep doing that because night skies are something I do a lot. Now that we've done a gradient sunset, I want to go into a more textured sunset. And then once you've practiced both before we move on to the final project, you can decide which is the one that you want to do along with me. So, by textured night sky, what I really mean is I want to add clouds to our texture. I keep doing that. Textured sunset, I want to add clouds to our sunset and if you need to look up a reference photo or look up sunsets that have clouds in them, it could be helpful, but I'm going to use the full spectrum of colors that we used in our gradient. But for the sky, I'm only going to use yellow and blue and then for the purple, orange, and reds, that's how I'm going to make the clouds. I will show you what I mean right now. To make this textured sunset clouds look wispy and fluffy. In order to really get that full effect, we need to use the wet-on-wet technique so that the cloud seem to blend into the sky. The most important thing to remember with this technique for making a cloudy sunset is that the paper should always be wet and that's going to require re-wetting it sometimes. But we are just going to continually work with a wet paper. So as I mentioned before, the base of this painting is going to be yellow and blue. Yellow on the bottom, blue on the top. I don't know if you've ever seen the time, I think it's right before the sun starts to get really brilliant in the sky. The sunset with the colors start to get really brilliant. But sometimes there's a time during sunset when the bottom of the sky is this pale yellow and then the top of the sky is blue and like a light sky blue. It seems like those two colors meet, but they don't create any other colors. It's just this pale sky blue, that means this pale yellow and it's gorgeous, I think. There are lots of times where I've seen that in the sky and just looked up and all. But we're going to use that as a baseline. What I'm doing is using the wet-on-wet technique. I got my paper wet first and I'm putting my Naples yellow down starting at the bottom and then getting wider as I go up to the top. Then I'm going to put the blue on top and have it meet the yellow. But I don't want my indigo to be really dark. So, I want to get using this palette over here, I want to use a light value of indigo. I'm putting some pigment over here and then adding water to it so I can get that light value that I want. I'm going to start at the top. That's nice. I'm going to start at the top with this light value indigo and add more, but then also add more water to push it to meet the yellow down there. But where it meets the yellow, I want it to be really quite white so I don't want to make it green. That looks pretty good. I'm just going to add a little bit more. You don't have to worry with the gradient sunset, we really wanted to make it super smooth. You can try to make this a really smooth gradient as well if you want. But since we're planning it to be textured, it's not quite as important. That looks pretty good to me. Now, we're going to use the wet-on-wet. So, the reason it's so important that the foundation, the bottom layer is wet is like I said, because to make the clouds blend in, we need to have them blended in with the sky. We do that using the wet-on-wet technique. First, we're going to take the clouds like they're their own gradient in and of themselves. I'm going to show you what I mean. We're going to layer or clouds starting with the lightest layer, and then adding more color and adding more of each color to make them brighter as we go on. But we're going to start with a light layer of clouds and each cloud is going to have its own gradient spectrum. If you can use your number 10 brush if you want. I am going to transition into using my zero pretty soon. But for the first layer down, I made this orange on this palette over here and I added more water to it so it's a lighter value. Then I'm just pushing off, so it was a pigment because I don't want it to be super wet. Then I'm just going to tap a line of wispy cloud over here. It doesn't have to be big, should probably not be super big. Because often sunset clouds like this just make these little lines across in the sunset. I'm going to do a few of these in orange. This is like that pink coral fish, orange. One maybe through the middle here. It's really light right now but we're going to add more colors to it. Just to make sure to leave some of the sky open so the clouds don't have to take up the whole sky. Then as you put this orange see you in the blue, it's starting to turn a little purple and that's okay. I'm only going to use the 10 brush for this first, initial layer of orange, and then as we move on to the reds and the purples, I'm probably going to use my number 0 brush because if you use too much water, then this color see how the clouds are already getting bigger. If you use too much water then the clouds are just going to get huge and take up the whole sky and that's not quite what we're looking for. So, it looks like this yellow down here, has started to dry already, so I'm just going to re-wet it and made it. When something like that has happened, if you wet the part that is dry, in order to make it smooth, you just need to make sure that you extend the part that you've re-wetted up to where it's still wet, if that makes sense. I'm just going to meet at where this cloud is. Liked it like that because it creates the structure of the cloud, but we're going to call that good. Then to just smooth it out, I'm going to go from side to side. That was an unplanned thing technique that I just showed you, but very useful because oftentimes when I'm doing stuff like this, the part that I need to stay wet doesn't stay wet and so I need to re-wet it without ruining the blended effect that I had already created. I'm just going to add one more, a little line of cloud here. Well, maybe just one tiny one here. Keep doing this. Now I'm transitioning over to my zero brush and I'm going just a little bit darker with my queen red. I used an orange before and I'm going just a little bit darker with my queen red and my zero brush to add a little bit of an extra layer here. [inaudible]. Please try again later. That was Alexa if your didn't hear her. We don't want it to go everywhere. That's why I'm using my zero brush. We just want to create a little layer in here, and then you can do it along the top if you want. Again, that's where I'm going to add the final red violet but I'm going along the outlines of the clouds in case you can't see. Looks like this has started to dry out a little bit more. I'm going to add some water here. It's very important that you make sure that these stay wet otherwise you're not going to quite get the effect that you're looking for. I'm just rewetting around here a little bit. Once I've rewet, then I'm going to keep adding the layers of color that I want. If you're wondering, well, now I can't see any of the orange. I'm going to add more orange as probably one of the last things that I do to make it just a little bit more vibrant but for now, let's add a little bit more of this queen red to these clouds up here. Just adding very daintily and wispy because we don't want them to completely take over the sky. We still want to see some of that blue, some of that orange, and yellow. I'm going to rewet this a little bit. Now, I'm going to add a little bit more orange, like I said, to the places where I wanted the orange to be and that disappeared. That happens sometimes. It's okay because you can just add more. As long as the paper is still wet, you can always add more color where it may have disappeared where you wanted it. Making it just a little more orange. I'm concentrating a lot, so I'm not talking maybe as much as you would hope, but hopefully if you're watching you see where I'm just tapping this orange. It's important for these bottom layers, for the last part of this clouds that I'm doing it with this tiny brush because if I did it with a giant brush, it would go everywhere and the cloudy effect wouldn't be quite what I wanted it to be. That's why I'm doing it this way because I like it when these clouds are just layered on top of each other but you can still distinctly see the sky underneath. I've added some more orange and now I'm going to add just a little bit red violet in places. I have some violet over here. It's darker than I was wanting so I might make it just a little bit more red. I'm just going to add some of this red violet on top. Remember, like I said, the clouds are going to be like their own little gradient. It's what I meant. It's not quite a gradient because they're not smooth together but I like to layer them from light to dark because where the sun is that's where there's going to be reflecting the most yellow off the clouds. That's where the orange is going to be. Then the violet on top where it meets with the night sky. I'm still going along the shape of my clouds. Once I put down the first layer of orange clouds that is the shape that I am using for the rest of these layers so that I can maintain that cloud shape and the color doesn't just go everywhere. Add a little darker ones here. I'm just adding, honestly. At some point I'm going to decide that's enough, and at some point is probably pretty soon but I don't really have a whole rhyme or reason. I didn't plan out a composition or anything. I just went for it. I might smooth out some of the clouds in some places so there aren't these tendrils. You see how sometimes it's like they're these little tendrils that are bleeding onto the page. I don't quite want that effect with these clouds because clouds don't really have roots. I'm doing that by using not too much water, not a whole lot of water on this brush but enough so that I can blend it in just a little bit. If you have enough water on your brush that you can see a droplet forming on the tip, that's too much. That's one way to test it out. I feel like that's pretty good. I'm going to call it. Voila. There's your sunset with some sunset clouds. It's not too complex of a technique. It really just takes patience and learning water control and you're just tapping color in a controlled way. I say not complex, but it's probably one of the toughest things to learn about watercolor, to learn how to control the wet on wet because as you know, if you've done watercolor, it just does its own thing. It can be tricky but as you practice it more and you really learn that the amount of water you have on your brush and the amount of water you have on your paper really affects how much control you can have. As you learn to find that balance, which honestly you can only find by practicing over and over again. I can tell you till I'm blue in the face that the amount of water matters, but the brush that you use is going to affect that, the paper you use is going to affect that. Even if you are using the exact tools that I have right now, it would still take you figuring out how your tools work and how your paints work, and there's really no substitute for that practice but I hope watching me do it and listening to my inner monologue while I'm doing this has helped. Now I'm going to move on to my final project where I am going to focus on the cloudy sunset, and then paint a fun silhouette at the bottom. You can watch that along with me and I would love to see your work when we're done. Let's move on to the next video. I think I'm going to do the final project in two parts. The first layer, I'm going to do this cloudy sunset, and then the second layer is going to be the silhouette at the bottom. See you soon. 7. Final Project: Layer One: You might be wondering why I'm doing a whole another video, painting a cloudy sunset when I just barely did a real-time demonstration for you. Well, I like to do these final projects along with you so that you know that, often, when I do final projects, I do lots of practice beforehand. What you don't know actually is that, before I filmed this cloudy sunset that we just practiced, I actually practiced another one even before I did this and I've painted lots of these before, but I like to have lots of student grade paper on hand so that I can practice before I need to do my final project. That is just the life of any kind of artist. That hopefully will eliminate any myths about first-time doing anything, I practice a lot. Second, I wanted to show you the difference of what it looks like on professional watercolor paper. As I said, this is Legion Stonehenge, Aqua cold press watercolor paper, at least a 140 pound weight, I would recommend. I also recommend cold press as opposed to hot press or rough because I think cold press works better for me. Without further ado, let's do this final project for this cloudy sunset. I'm just moving the camera just a little bit so that it has the right angle. As we did before, I'm going to do the top of the sky and the bottom of the sky as the base. The top of the sky should be blue and the bottom of the sky should be yellow. Let's get started. We're going to do the bottom first. I'm not going to take up the whole paper. This is a watercolor block. I think I mention that before. It's watercolor paper that's taped on all sides. Watercolor blocks are helpful because they keep the paper [inaudible]. Your watercolor paper, almost always, is going to buckle. It's even buckled a little bit when I've used as heavy as 300 pound watercolor paper, which is as heavy as I've used it before. The paper's always going to buckle a little bit, but using a block or taping down your paper with painter's tape, helps a lot. I don't know if you can tell, but I'm just going to talk about the differences between professional grade watercolor paper on student grade as I'm doing this. While professional grade watercolor paper is made with 100 percent cotton, usually, those are the ones that you want to use, and that makes it more absorbent and that's important because the paper can stay wet longer but it doesn't make as nearly as many puddles. When student grade watercolor paper stays wet, it's made with wood pulp and, so it's not nearly as absorbent as 100 percent cotton is. When it stays wet, you can see like puddles, usually, sitting on the paper. That's inevitable with student grade, but with professional grade, it usually stays wet longer, but it doesn't have to have puddles. It doesn't make nearly as many puddles. The paper is absorbing the paint and the water without it drying completely. Now, that doesn't mean that it doesn't dry, because as you can tell as I've been talking, I've had to rewet it a few times, but it's much more effective than student grade watercolor paper in my experience. I'm just getting this paper wet, and then I'm going to add my light indigo as we did in the painting before. Here's my indigo. I'm going to paint the top of my piece and then bring this blue down with some water. I don't know if you can tell on the reflection, but much of this paper is still wet, even though it looks smooth, like it doesn't have puddles. Again, I'm just harboring on it, but that is one of the many reasons why, since investing in professional watercolor paper, I don't use student grade watercolor paper for final projects. Sometimes I'll use professional grade watercolor paper when I am just practicing, but it does cost more. That's a choice that you will have to make, but I highly recommend using it. Legion is one of my favorites. I also love Blake. Blake has their own premier watercolor paper. I like their blocks, and then arches is also definitely a favorite of mine. I think those are mostly the three that I use the most: arches, and Blake,and legion Stonehenge. I'm just rewetting this as we did before because in order to make the clouds, the paper needs to be wet. You can get puddles on professional grade watercolor paper. I don't want you to think that that's not possible either, but it takes a lot more water to make puddles on professional grade. That's why I still always like to have Q-tips on hand for situations like that, but don't need it right now. I just added a little bit more yellow so that it's just a little more pigmented at the bottom and that looks pretty good to me for the base layer. Again, if you didn't watch the video before, we're creating the first layer to be the sky and then the sun. Then the clouds are going to be reflecting all the different colors that the sunset makes and each cloud is going to be like its own little mini gradient. I'm going to start with my orange and I've pre-mixed some colors over here. You want to paint the clouds from light to dark there. Each of the clouds are going to have layers of color. But we're going to start with a light color and I'm going to do my very first layer with this round number 10 brush, but the other ones I'm going to fill in the other colors with my zero brush so that the water doesn't get away from me. I'm just tapping a line. Clouds in a sunset, I can't remember what kind of clouds are called hearkening back to first grade where I did all the different clouds. I want to say serious, that are like just a line, like a wispy kind of line, because I think cumulus clouds that are like big puffs. I don't know. Well, we're making just little wispy lines across the sky. I'm just tapping my brush and then in some places, having it filling out the line a little bit more. The water is going to move on its own and make the clouds bigger, so you don't need a whole lot at first right here. Otherwise, it's just going to make the clouds completely overtake the sunset, which is not what we wanted. We want to see both sky and the clouds in the sunset. I might do just one more up here. Maybe I'm just connected to that guy. There's my first layer and before I move on, I'm going to look for any spots where it might be drying. It looks like up here is drying a little bit, so I'm going to re-wet it by starting where it's dry and then meeting where it's wet so that it maintains its blending effect. Then I'm going to use my round number 0 brush to paint in some pinkish colors. I'm going to add Quin red to this. My palette over here and make it a little lighter with the value. Then using these clouds that I've made as a guide, these are now my clouds and so I'm going to do my best to stay in the confines of these clouds to keep their shape. I'm just tapping with my round number 0 brush in the shape of these clouds and this red it should be more like in the middle of the cloud because we're going to do a red violet on top, but honestly, watercolor does what it wants sometimes, so I'm just go with it. Then we're going to keep adding color. We're going to add orange again after so that it will show up because you might be tapping on here and you'll think to yourself, but my orange is disappearing. That's okay. It's the lightest color and we're going to add more at the end so that it does, so that we can't see it as much as we want. I'm just going to connect to this actually over here. Sometimes I feel like that happens, clouds are connected. As you're doing this, as you can see, sometimes when I'm painting, I have something in mind and then I just ad hoc look at how I need to change my composition, so that happens all the time. A lot of people, and it's a smart idea if you have something specific in mind to sketch it out or to have a composition first, but honestly, most of the time I don't do that. I just go with the flow and I think because painting is that for me, it's a chance for me to just not worry about whether I'm doing it right or doing it wrong. I just paint what I feel because a lot of other things in my life are not like that. There's my pink and now I'm going to add some violet to it. You can't see, I think, but I'm making some violet on the side, and I'm just going to add it to the top. It's better if it's a more of a red violet than a blue violet just because it's a little warmer. I guess if you want a cooler sunset, you can do that, but sunsets in my mind are usually pretty a warm color palette, so that's why I like to have the red violet instead of a blue violet on top. I'm just putting this red violet on top here as the top layer and then you can go back and blend it in by adding a little bit more red underneath it and that blends the two together. Then I'm just going to do that to all these clouds over here, just tapping my round number 0 paintbrush to add this violet to these clouds. Watercolor is so cool, especially this professional grade watercolor, because when you push away colors like what I'm doing right now with these colors by adding these purple onto this wet background, I'm like pushing away the other pigment. Then it just blends smoothly together, and maybe that's why I like watercolor more than other painting mediums because I feel like I like not having to control everything as much, like I like controlling the chaos. That's what watercolor feels like to me. I've added these, now I'm just going to add a little bit more orange to the places where it's disappeared. I've run out of that orange that I like so I'm making more by adding yellow to this red over here, so I have this like curly orange. I'm just going to add a little bit more orange underneath here and doesn't have to go far like I don't have to do it across the whole cloud because clouds are wispy. Some places there's just orange and some places there's just purple. Anyway, way point is like similar with painting trees if you've taken classes from me on painting trees, nature does its own thing sometimes and that makes it a lot less pressure for us as we paint it because there's really no such thing as like painting it right or wrong when you're trying to paint nature. Sometimes it might not look quite like you wanted it to look, but I think that's okay. But for me it takes off the responsibility of like if I make a mistake, a "mistake", I can always fix it and make it look like it's okay because nature is supposed to be wild and chaotic and unpredictable, and so I think that's how your painting should be too. There are my clouds. We have them. I feel like that's pretty good. If you want them to be a little more wispy or foggy or whatever, you can just add water like we were adding paint before and that will push away the pigment so that the paper underneath shows through so that you can see more of the white. That's a technique that I also use for painting misty trees, but it could work just as well for trying to create this effect with clouds. That's what I'm doing in some places over here, just adding a little bit more water to push away some of the pigment. Then I'm going to call that good for layer 1. Let's move on to the next video for layer 2. Actually, before we move on, I want to show you the difference here. This was our student grade watercolor experiment when we tried to paint these clouds and it looked pretty good. I was really pleased with how this one came out. But just to demonstrate the difference between professional grade and student grade watercolor paper, you see how the color still blends in, but also maintains its shape in professional grade. In student grade, it's obvious that it has moved around more and that's because, as I said, professional grade watercolor paper is a lot more absorbent and also you can see the colors are a lot brighter. I didn't add any more pigment than I did in the practice one, the professional grade watercolor paper just picked it up better. I always like to do it side-by-side because sometimes you wonder like, is it really worth it? I really think it is. That's just my opinion. Like I said, you can still create beautiful paintings without having to spend a lot on professional supplies. But if you want to make a real go of this, I would definitely recommend this supplies, the professional supplies. Let's move on and do the final layer to finish up our sunset sky. See you next time. 8. Final Project: Layer Two: We've painted our clouds, we've painted our sky. Now to finish up our final project, let's paint a little silhouette on the bottom. What I'm going to do is just paint some trees along the bottom similar to like how if you've taken my night sky class that I like to paint some trees like that. I'm using black because it's a silhouette. You don't have to use black for silhouettes, but I would recommend it. You can also use a dark blue. I recommended indigo, I didn't have back other materials for you. But if you have black, go ahead and use up. You can also use indigo and its purest, like if it's darkest format, and it's pretty dark. I will going to go ahead and paint my trees. I'm using my round number 0 brush. If you've taken my misty forest class where I talked about tree techniques, this is the blobby technique. I think there might be a class on the future where it's all about different trees and other techniques that I've learned since I made that misty forest class. Be on the lookout for that if you're interested. But I'd just like to paint a little tree line on the bottom. It doesn't have to go all the way across the bottom, mine won't. I like to do just like little clumps of trees here and there. Then I'm probably going to have one big tree over here to show perspective. One way to create depth with trees is to alter their size. I talk about this again in my misty forest class. You can alter their size or alter their value. Value is usually more effective, but when you're doing silhouettes, that's tricky because they're all supposed to be the same, like shadow we color. When you're doing silhouettes, one way to create depth is to alter the size of the trees that you are painting. That's good for that little clump. Then I'm going to do another little clamp right here. I'm just painting some trees, by blobbing them. I call this the blobby technique because after I paint the trunk, I just paint blobs [LAUGHTER] as the pine needles. I am very good at naming things. As you can tell, I have a very technically minded method of teaching. [LAUGHTER] I'm just laughing to myself. Yeah, I'm just painting some trees. You don't have to paint trees for your silhouette, you can do mountains or some people like to paint cabins or houses or a cityscape. I'm probably going to do a class pretty soon on cityscapes, which I think are cool. But just going back to smaller to create depth, sometimes I just like to make little dots right here to show trees in the distance. Make sure to vary the size of your trees, because trees they're not all the same size. To make it look more realistic, it's important to have variance. It's also important to vary how full your trees are. Sometimes they could be really full like a Christmas tree, and then other times they could just be really sparse like that, and that is also realistic. I like to have my pine trees go all the way down to the bottom, but pine tree is also sometimes stop like two-thirds of the way down the trunk and you could easily do that too. But for silhouettes, this is what I like to do. I'm just probably going to go all the way to the side over here, and then I'm going to paint one big tree to show perspective. You'll see what that looks like on top of all these other trees. Just painting and blobbing away with not a care the word. [LAUGHTER] Honestly, I think that trees can be so tricky, they really can be, but I think in general that people need to stop putting so much pressure on those house to make things look nice. Because with watercolor for me, what clicked was being able to just let loose. If I create something I don't like, then try to do it again. I've painted so many trees in it. The only thing that really made it better with practice. I'm going to paint some more dots here like I did before. Then like I said, I'm going to do like one big tree that goes over all of the other trees. It's okay if I cover up what I've just painted, that's totally fine. But this can be like the framing tree or whatever. Maybe I'll have another one next to it. That's more of like a framing tree. See, no rhyme or reason, just going with the flow. That is how I recommend you at least to try to paint because it makes it so much more fun. [LAUGHTER] But you see the difference that adding the silhouettes makes to this sunset. I just think it makes it look so cool. I like completely covered up that one tree, that's okay. Having layers of trees also makes it look like it has depth. I'm going to add another tall tree to the side so that it goes off into the distance. You should paint whatever you want to paint. I'm done. Well, actually one more thing. Sometimes. I haven't done this very often. I don't often paint birds, but if you're interested, sometimes it's fun to have like little birds coming out of a forest. I just do, I don't know, like a curve AV which is a little bump right there. If you couldn't see, it's like I started with a curve and then I did a smaller curve for the wings. I like to have an odd number of things, so I'm going to do one more down here, there. There is your forest sunset, you're cloudy sunset. If you painted along with me, I would love to see your end result, so be sure to post it in the project gallery. You can also tag me on Instagram. My handle is thiswritingdesk, and I may just feature you. That's the final project, and let's head on over to the recap. See you soon. 9. Recap: Congratulations. You have made it through the class. This is my practice gradient sunset and I added just a few little trees at the bottom. This is my final project. As you all have seen in the previous video, I decided to use the cloudy sunsets subject on my professional grade watercolor paper for my final project and I love how it came out. I cannot wait to see how your projects have come out. Please post your project onto the project gallery. If you have an Instagram account, post it on Instagram and tag me, my handle is thiswritingdesk. If you tag me, there is a very good chance that you will be featured in my Instagram stories. Again, thank you so much for joining me, sharing my love of watercolor wilderness paintings is one of my very favorite things to do in the world and very few things make me as happy as painting these gorgeous scenes. The best thing to do with something that you love is to help other people love it too. At least, that's what I think and that's why I'm grateful for platforms like Skillshare that make it affordable and easy for you to learn these techniques. That also helped me to support myself as an artist and grow and give you even more awesome content. Again, if you loved my class, please post your project on the project gallery and please post a review, give me a thumbs up. If you have any advice or suggestions for my class, I am always welcome to all of your honest feedback as well. Please tell me everything and see you next time.