Watercolor Winter Wonderland: A 7-Day Challenge To Nurture Creative Habit

1. Hello & Welcome Back: Painting with watercolors is like unleashing a magical want that holds the power to transform ideas and emotions into vibrant expressions. The very unpredictable nature of watercolor pigments as they merge and dance on wet paper, makes it so magical. Sometimes it may be challenging, but in the very next moment, it rewards you with a beautiful outcome that you will be proud of. This is the most satisfying feeling. Hello, my dear creatives. My name is Nil Um Roy. I'm an artist and an art educator based out of Bangalore, India. I'm also a brand ambassador for Mq Wash and to we arts in India. I love to explore different seasonal landscapes and out of them all, winter has a special place in my heart. Creating the moody snowy atmosphere, Capturing sunlit snowy pines, painting gorgeous winter skies, casting its glow on a snowy blanketed surface is such a magical experience. Altogether, I have been sharing my winter related watercolor paintings on social media such as Instagram. And many of you have reached out for a detailed step by step tutorial. And that is exactly when I was inspired to bring to you this class. Join me on a seven day watercolor journey where we discovered the joy of painting seven beautiful winter inspired landscapes. The main objective of this class is to help you build your creative habit by practicing every day. This will not only help you build your watercolor skills, enhance it, but also let you create beautiful, stunning masterpieces. In this class, we will paint series of gorgeous winter landscapes. Starting from a monogram painting to capturing gorgeous winter skies. We paint all characteristic winter elements which will allow you to explore and master different winter color combinations and technique. If you are ready to nurture your creative habit, join me in this challenge and let's paint together. See you in the next video where I discuss about the organization and structure of the class. 2. Class Organization & Structure: Before we get started with the class, let me quickly take you through how the class is organized so that you know what to expect from the class. To begin with the class, I will first talk about the materials required and then discuss in detail about the color palette At the beginning of every painting. We will also take a look at what alternative color mixes you can use in case if you do not have the colors being used during the course of the projects. The class is set in a daily challenge format. Each day, we will paint a different winter landscape. Exploring different color combinations and techniques, from the simplicity of a monochrome painting to an elusive display of magical skies. We are going to explore a series of beautiful winter inspired landscapes. This class is created with bigness and in students in mind, even if you are a bigger, do not worry. I will be guiding you through every step of the process. Each painting will take about 30 minutes or so, even less. If you opt for a smaller sized paper, it is absolutely perfect to fit it in your daily busy schedule. Sharing from my own personal experience, daily practice can help you bring so much confidence and boost in your watercolor skills. Take some time out from your busy schedule and nurture your creative habit by joining me in this class. 3. About Supplies: Before we get started with our day one project, let's quickly discuss about the important supplies that we are going to need. First, let's get started with our most important supply which is a paper. The paper that I'm going to use here for the projects is from Saunders Waterford Aquaral Series. This water color paper is one of my absolute favorites. Now coming down to the specifications of the paper, this paper is coal pressed and the size of the grain is grain fine. The color of the paper mentioned is white or blank, natural. And the most important part, it is 100% cotton mold made, archival grade, and acid free. And the GSM of the paper is 300 GSM or 140 LV. The size of the paper that I'm using here is a perfect square. I have cut my paper and sized it into 18 into 18 into 18 centimeter on all four sides, but you could use any size of your preference. You could go for 56. I have used the remaining cutouts of the paper as Swatch cards. Now if you're using loose sheets of paper like I'm using here, then you would need a non absorbent surface on which you can stick the paper and get to working. Now let's talk about a brushes. Do not be scared or intimidated, you do not need to own all of these brushes. I'll take you through one by one. These brushes are mob brushes from silver etelia, series size number 20 and size number 80 brush. This I'll be using for layering flat wash, especially the big rounded belly brushes. I use it for layering flat wash on paper. And the smaller ones, I use it for painting skies. Instead of this big round fat brush, you could also have a flat hake brush. Or simply go with your flat wash brush, whichever is available with you. Always remember the size of your brush is directly proportional to the size of the paper. So always choose the sizes of your brushes according to the sizes of your paper. Coming to your round brushes, I'll be sometimes be using size number 86 and size number two brushes from silver black velvet. Now opt for a bigger size drawn brush such as size number eight or ten, if in case you do not have a mop brush, which is made up of goat hair. Another brush which you might see me use most frequently is this silver silk size number four brush. This is a synthetic brush exclusively designed for watercolors. Now, apart from this, I will also be using liner or rigger brushes. Size number two from Princeton Heritage series is one of my most favorite rigger brushes. In case if you do not own any rigger brushes, you could also opt for the detailing brushes. These are also synthetic detailing brushes from Jimi or A Arts. Okay, the last brush from the brush series is this Princeton Angular shader brush. This I will be most frequently be using for lifting techniques. Now, instead of this brush, you could also opt for shorthair flat brush if you own them, or else it is absolutely fine to make do with whatever brushes that you have got. Coming to our colors, the colors that I'm going to use in this class are from Shinhan, RPWC watercolor range. They are artists, great or professional watercolor paints. Prior to every day's project, I will be swatching out the colors that will be required to create the project for that day. Do not worry if you do not have the exact same colors, I'll be suggesting you alternatives. Just go ahead and pick a similar looking color. Okay, the next thing that you would need is a mixing palette. The palette that I have got here is from Shinhan Arts polycarbonate palette. This palette has 52 wells. Now do not worry if you do not have this kind of bigger well palettes, you could go for a ceramic palette or a plastic 12 or 24 Well palette is also good to go or even a basic normal ceramic plate is good for mixing colors. Grab whatever is available with you and get started. The next supply that we're going to talk about is our masking tape or the normal carpenter tape. There are different sizes available in the market. This is the 1 " one and this is a half an inch choose whatever is available with you. Even wash tapes would do. Next is our masking fluid. This masking fluid is from Frank Borgois. You can use any masking fluid that you have got. Next will be our sketching supply. We will use some basic supplies such as a ruler eraser and a mechanical pencil. You could use any normal pencil that you have got, followed by two jars of clean water. Always remember to have one clean source of water, always by your side, and the other one to rinse your brushes. When you rinse your brushes, you need to dry them or pat them dry. For that, we will be using some tissue paper or tissue towel. 4. Day 1: Colour Palette: Before we get started with our day one project, let's quickly take a look at the color palette. For our day one project. We are going with monochrome. That is, use of a single color. And the color that I have chosen here is indigo. When we squeeze out our watercolor straight from our tubes and swatch it using our dam brush, we can see the actual strength of the color. That is the darkest range that our color can go for. So when we keep adding drops of water to our existing pool of color mix, we will notice a slight change in the total intensity. But as we keep adding water droplets in increasing amounts, we see the change subsequently until the Swatch is close to paper white. This is what exactly I'm doing out here. This change in range of intensity that a color or hue produces is measured in a nine point scale, which is known as tonal value scale. And this exercise is very, very helpful and crucial for all beginner watercolors. This tonal value exercise is very important for everyone, whether we are professional artist or a hobbyist painting, we should be able to understand and manipulate the range of light and dark tones, right? This is the reason why this tonal value exercise is so very important because it helps us to give us a clear idea for effective creation of depth, dimension, and contrast in our overall painting. In a day one project, we will exactly learn how to create different shades and tones using only variations of indigo. Helping you to understand the importance of contrast in a painting. And also to adjust the paint to water ratio, thereby controlling the intensity of your indigo. For a day one project, we have chosen a winter, gloomy, snowy morning scene. Now, if you do not have adequate knowledge about the value study exercise or the color scale, then we will not be able to pick appropriate tonal value range and thereby will not be able to capture the scene that we want to recreate. For example, if we use two dark values of indigo for a sky, it will repict a night scene rather than a morning scene. And hence, here comes the importance of tonal value study. I have talked in detail about this in my previous class on atmospheric spring landscapes. You could check lesson number five for more detailed information about the tonal value range and how it is important in depicting our landscapes. 5. Day 1: A Snowy Morning By The Lake: Hello my dear creatives. Welcome to day one of our seven day challenge. Today, we are going to paint this beautiful, snowy winter morning. To begin with, I already have my paper taped down onto the acrylic boat using my masking tape. I'm now ready to begin my pencil sketch. So one third of my paper, I'm going to leave it for my sky. As you can see, I'm creating a horizon line over here, just around a little bit more than half of the paper from the top, and then going ahead and creating the snowy landmass. Okay. Like this with my pencil. Make sure to go with very light pencil markings over here because you do not want the markings to show through when your watercolor dries. I chose to do the snowy landmass area on my right side of the paper, but if you wish to, you could also do the same on your left side of the paper. Okay. Everything will remain the same in the composition, just that the land surface mass will change to your left. That is also possible. It is totally left to your imagination. You could do that now for the broken snowy landmass that I have created over here. You could also mask them using your masking fluid. This process becomes easier when you mask it with a masking fluid. But in case if you do not have masking fluid with you, do not worry. I'm going to share the process how without the masking fluid, you can still achieve the same result. Okay? Now, I'll quickly finish up my remaining sketch over here, there will be some tall pines. Okay. So, this is how I'm going to just roughly eyeballing the positions. I'm getting started with the sky. To apply the water to my sky, I'm going to use my silver Atelior mop brush for the sky. This technique is known as wet on wet technique. This means applying wet paint over your wet paper surface. So I'm here applying the water first on the paper, making it wet, and then we are going to apply our paint on this wet paper surface. This will allow the paint to spread freely on the paper, giving us a very smooth blend of a sky. We are going to go with a gradiate blend of the sky, for which I have switched to a smaller sized mop brush size number 20. I am now mixing my pure pigmented color well, and dropping it in the other chamber where I had already added in some water so that I have a tonal value of four or five. That means the medium dark value of my indigo. I would recommend you to go ahead and do your tonal value study of your chosen color prior to this project, because this will enable you to follow my instructions smoothly. Choosing the color for your sky is of utmost importance in this project. Why? Because we are painting a snowy winter morning sky. If you start with a very dark value of your indigo and then tone it down to the lightest possible shade, then it will appear to be as a night scene, we need to keep it in the ranges between the low light to the lightest color. Right here you can see it has already appeared very dark at the start of the sky, right? So I'm going to tone it down a little bit more. So I'm just going to dip my brush in water. And using just the belly and the tip of my brush with to and fro motion of the brush, I'm just lightning the colors away till the top. I went here with one stroke at a go. Now I have tilted my board and I'm going to repeat the same step, just using the watery brush and moving the colors from horizon line to the top part of the sky. I have toned down the values. Can you see it now? Now the sky looks proper, It looks gloomy morning, winter sky, right? Once we are done with the sky, we are going to get started with our foliage, which will be just above the horizon line. We are going to go with control, wet on wet. And now's the perfect time to do it. Can you see how beautifully that paint is spreading above the horizon line because that area is wet? Make sure that you do this step in a very controlled way to not have too much of watery brush tip or too much of water added to your paint. Just a little watery paint mix should do this trick. When you're doing this step, always remember to start at the base of your horizon line. Just like I'm dropping the darker tones of my color at the horizon line, right? This is because when the color starts moving, it will lighten up and fade out a bit. And that is exactly what I want. If you do the reverse, it's going to look very weird and not realistic, right? Because the base of anything is dark, because that is where the shadows fall. So following by that concept, we are going ahead and using just the wet background to advantage to create this soft, diffused, feathered looking background foliage. I'm just going ahead and adjusting the values. Drop all the darker tones towards the base of the horizon line. Okay? So that's all about it. Now, once you are done with this step, just let the sky and your background dry out properly and then we are going to get started. Tar lake, our paper is in semi dry state. But look at how beautiful this is. Looking right with the sky and that smooth soft background. I love it. Let's proceed to our next step, which is painting our frozen lake. Now here too, I'm going with wet on wet technique. But here we need to be very mindful about the frozen areas or the parts that we have not marked with masking fluid, right? I'm going to go around those areas wetting the other areas, but being very careful when I'm near to the horizon line because there might be still a chance that I might be reactivating that area. Because my paper is still in the semi dry state. If the areas were marked using a masking fluid, the process would have been much easier because that would have enabled us to go over those areas without any worry of the paint spreading into it. Right. Since this was the first project and many of you might not have a masking fluid with you, I thought of avoiding that and showing you the technique of doing it without the masking fluid. Right here, I'm going and loading the tip of my brush with my darker paint mix. The same paint mix that we have used for the sky. I'm being very cautious, trying to go around those areas, but here you can see the water is spreading very uncontrollably. So I'll absorb all the water in the tissue paper from my brush belly and try to go around the areas. Now, now that I have removed all that excess water from the belly of my brush, this is giving me better control to layer the paint. And the paint is spreading nicely on the paper because I had already pre wetted the paper. This is the reason if we were to go with ton right technique over here, this would have been a very much hasslesome task. It is easier to do it with wet, wet technique, but you can do with tonight technique. But there might be chances that you might be frustrated easily. I did not want to get you frustrated at the very beginning of the project, since this is just a day one. So just take it easy, enjoy the process, and watch the colors flow and bleed on your paper while you create your beautiful landscape. Now as I move or approach the line, I'm going to go with lighter tonal value. I cleaned my brush of that excess indigo that I have had, and now you can see the tone have changed. Right? I have turned it into a lighter tone. Now this, I'm going to mix it back into the darker one. Blend it smoothly so that the blend looks uniform and gradient. Oops, can you see what happened? Near the horizon line, you have got your watery paint mix sled into the dried area. So here is another way to fix it. This was unintended and unintentional, but since it has happened, we are just going to try to fix it. I'm just going ahead and adding another layer of our background foliage with same vertical strokes. Okay, You can go ahead and do this step if something like this has happened or else you can totally skip it. Now it's time to add in the reflection in the lake. First, I'm going to start near the inner corners of the snowy ground, where the pines will get reflected here. Doing this step is essential because your paper is still wet and this will allow the colors to blend smoothly into the background. We want the reflections to be very smooth. Similar thing I'm going to go ahead and do, for the reflection of our foliage, which is near to the horizontal line. For painting the reflections, if you would have noticed, I have switched to my size number six, silver black velvet brush. Now using just the tip of my brush, I'm pulling those longer and shorter strokes to replicate the foliage which is there above the horizon line, right? So we are just taking advantage of the wetness of the paper and allowing our paint spread, just like how we did for the foliage which was in the background. Right now, I have switched to my smaller size number two round brush because now I'm going to go and start creating our pines. But the pines go with smaller strokes, fanning it out outwards, something like this. Now, as we come down towards the base of the pines, the strokes will go and this is to give the form and shape of the pine tree as in triangle. Now, I'm going to follow and create some more pines in the very same way. This one I have created a shorter one, but next to it I'll be creating a taller pine following the similar process. Make sure when you are creating this pines, you'd have controlled paint mix in your paint mixture as well as on the tip of your brush. Because if you have to watery tip of your brush, you will not get the fine, delicate strokes. You will get rather thicker and blobbier strokes, which will not look very nice to see when you create the pines. Okay? So be mindful of this exercise water control on your paint brush as well as in your paints using the same size number two brush. I'm going to go and create the darker outlines for the inner corners of that snowy land. Okay, just around this corner, I'm going to add some depth. So I'm spreading the colors horizontally, adding in some lines over there. My paper is still wet, so I'm going with vertical strokes to create the reflections of the pines more prominently over here. Okay? Do not do this step if your paper has completely dried out, Skip this step. Time to get started with a snowy ground. I'm here going with wet on wet, because this method gives you the most clean and more smooth finish to your snow, Especially with the shadows. With my size number 20 more brush using just the tip, I'm just going to go and add some rounded lines, something like this, leaving in space between the lines, The whites of my paper showing through this is very essential when we are creating shadows in the snow. The white part essentially denotes the snowy part, and the lines that we are creating with indigo are the shadows. Okay, this gives the depth and dimension to our snowy ground. That's done now. I'll squeeze out some fresh quash out of my tube and use the damp tip of my size number six. Brush it nicely and use this to create the remaining broken parts of the snow. Right. There were lots of snowy broken parts that we had initially sketched out, but since we worked wet on, wet without masking it, it has all got covered up using white quash. You can just do this tip easily. That's why this part of the area which is facing towards the snow land should be a little darker so that this white snowy broken part that you will layer with your white quash pops out more bright and beautifully. I'm going and adding in some random snow particles to this. But remember that the bigger sized snow particles or the snow broken part will be towards the bottom of the paper. And as you move closer to the horizon line along the circumference of the snowy landmass, the particle sizes are going to be smaller. So, keep this in mind and you will see that after finishing the project, you have created something which is very closely realistic, right? So this is what I'm going to do. And follow over here, creating tiny dots and lines over here just to indicate the snow particle. Okay? So with this step, you will almost be done with this. Now, it's totally up to you if you want the pines to be kept as such, or you can add in some dash of snow onto it. If you want to add the snow, just go along the direction of your leaves of the pine and add in the white gouache to it. But make sure to leave some of the gap so that your color of the pines are showing through. This will establish the light and the dark contrast that we are trying to bring through. Time to move on to the most favorite step that is to add in the snow, I'm going to sprinkle some of that white quash, make sure the guash is not too runny liquidy. Once the paint will start drying, you will see the sprinkles that you have just plattered of white will fade out too soon. So make sure it is thick but not to watery consistency. And just sprinkle the snow away. This your painting is complete, let it dry completely, and then we are going to peel off the masking tape. Now here I want to add one interesting note. When your paper is still wet when you're painting the lake, you could sprinkle some of the water droplets using just the tip of your size number two round brush. This will give you that dreamy and misty effect on the lake. Okay, this part I have skipped in this tutorial because I didn't want you to feel overwhelmed in the very first project. But this is another alternative and a new technique which can give a very dreamy feel to your painting. Now it's time to take off the masking tapes from all the four sides. Make sure that you do this step only when your paper has dried out completely, or else you'll run the chances of ripping off your paper along with the painted part. Congratulations on completing the first painting of a seven day challenge. I will see you tomorrow with day two. 6. Day 2: Colour Palette: Hello and welcome back to day two. We are going to paint this beautiful winter sunset for our day two project. Now let's quickly take a look at the colors required. The first color that I'm going to swatch out is my Naples yellow. Now, Naples yellow is a pastel light yellow shade. It's a very subtle and beautiful color. But if you do not have naples yellow, you could mix any of your cool yellow shade, P, Y 35 or so on, and mix a little bit of white quash into it and prepare the same color. The next color that I'm going to swatch is my yellow orange. Now this is a very warm color, as you can see, this is a very warm yellow orange. Now if you do not have this kind of color with you, you can always mix your warm yellow and a little bit of red to obtain this yellow orange. The next color is Opera Pink. Now instead of Opera Pink, you could use any of your alyzerine crimson color or bright neon pink color. If you have bright rose is also an alternative. But make sure your bright rose has the pigment red in it instead of purple. When your pinks will have the pigment violet in it. Violet and yellows and oranges will not go together. They will always create a muddy mix instead of giving you a warm color. And there I shared you my secret recipe for creating this bright, beautiful, pinkish orange. Sunsets. Yes, I always mix my warms together to give me bright warm colors such as Naples yellow, yellow orange, and Opera pink. I always use their combination and create my skies. This is how I have prepared this coral orange color. As you can see, I have swatched out, I have used all the three colors in the ratio of one is to one is to one. If you want it to be more pinkish, more warmer, then you can add in a little bit more of this opera pink into the same color mix and create this coral pink color. Just look how pretty and beautiful this color is, isn't it? Now for our class project, I'm going to use both of the shades of coral orange as well as the coral pink to create that sunset horizon. Now the next color that I'm going to swatch out is my indigo. My indigo here looks a little bit of paints gray. So if you have paints gray with you or your neutral tint, which is similar to black, you could use that because we are going to use this shade to create our dramatic sky, especially the clouds. And then go ahead and create the pines in the background with the distant mountains with varying tonal values, we will need another color, which is to create the shadow of the pines. That will be the mixture of my ultramarine blue along with a little bit of indigo. That's all prepare your colors and let's get started with a final painting. 7. Day 2: A Chilly Winter Sunset: Let's begin our day to project. But before that, I'm taping down my glute paper, which is glued on all four sides on this paper pad. So you could also use this kind of glued paper pad instead of acrylic or non absorbent board. And go ahead and do your painting. The paper is taped on all four sides. Now let's create the horizon line for our painting. So I'll be using 13 or almost 34 of the paper as the sky and the remaining will be our snowy ground here. I'm using my ruler to sketch out my horizon line, but if you're good with a straight line using your free hand, you're welcome to do so using that horizon line as our guide and using that as a base point. I have created here the small hillocks or small background mountains in the distance. This is exactly what we are going to paint. After a sky, there is going to be a midground, and then there will be our foreground, which is the snowy ground. So this will be our composition for our painting. Now, always remember to do a very light pencil sketching. You do not want this lines to be too dark or else it will start showing through your watercolors. Now I will be using my kneading erasers and then lighten out the darker pencil marks that I have created over here. This is a great tool in your watercolor painting. You can easily take off those extra dark graphite or lead marks. Time to get started with a sky. We are going wet on wet technique. Wet on wet technique means applying wet paint over your wet paper surface. Here I am layering my paper with uniform wash of water. You can apply this flat wash of water with any brush. Here I am using a round mop brush of size number 120 or 80. But you could also do this step using your soft flat brush. Make sure that you are going to and fro with your brush uniformly spreading the water. There should not be any pools of water standing on your paper. I have switched to my size number 20 mob brush from silver Elia series. This is a very soft hair brush. It's made up of goat hair, which is natural. Hence, it has more water absorbing capacity as well as paint retention. Here you can see I am not using two watery paint mixes. It's a very creamy consistency of paint that I'm trying to create. Getting my coral pink mix ready before we start layering the colors. Now using a size number 12 brush, I'll start applying the Naples yellow near the horizon line. This is where the sun is setting, right? Hence, this place will be the warmest of all colors. Using to and fro motion of the brush. I'm going and spreading the colors horizontally. Now I feel my paper has started to dry out a bit, hence I'm going ahead and layering it with a uniform coat of water all over again. Starting from top to bottom here, using just the tip of my size number 12 brush. Going ahead with another coat of my Naples yellow near the horizon line, since we had reapplied water to certain areas of the paper. Hence, the values have gone a little lighter. Now with the lighter values, I'm just going ahead and using just the tip of my brush and creating this slanted lines along the sky. If you so observe, I have left certain white spaces in between. Those are very essential for you. Do not cover them up with yellows or your oranges. Now, starting at the base of the horizon line, I will start applying our coral orange very lightly. I want it to be a little more pinkier. So I will just go ahead and layer my Opera pink just at the base, since the base is always the warmest of all colors right now. Using soft, gentle strokes and using just the tip of the brush, I'm slowly spreading the colors in slanted horizontal strokes. As you can see here, I want the tones to be very warm and bright, hence, I'm reapplying the colors again and again. But as you go up on the sky, please do not use such dark colors or dark tones of your yellow. Instead, go with little pinks because here you'll be adding the darker clouds, right? So you do not want this to turn very muddy and observe the pressure that I'm applying. I'm just working with the tip of my brush, not exerting too much of pressure on it. Be little quick. You do not want your paper to run dry or else the colors will not bleed with one another to give you a very smooth looking sky. It's time to start with our blacks or our indigo. The color shade that I'm using is a mix of my paints, gray and indigo. While I'm layering this mix of indigo and paints gray on my sky, I'm mindful of the paint to water ratio as well as the tonal value of my indigo. It is not too dark, it is not too light. It's just in the mid values, right? Use mid value tonal range of five or six while you are creating this darker clouds. And use just the tip of your brush. Very light, gentle strokes and leave certain gaps in between for your orange and your pinks to show through. You can see there is not too much of water in my brush nor in my paint mix, but yet the colors are beautifully blending into the background. Because my paper is still wet, this becomes a little hard when the paper starts drying out. I have switched to my size number six, silver black velvet brush. And using just the tip and toe of my brush, you can see how I'm creating those fluffy clouds in there, right? It's not too much of strokes, not too much of pressure. Just a slight little wrist movement. Be flexible with your brush and create the dreamy fluffy clouds. Now, using some more long striding strokes, just with the tip of my brush, I will go near the horizon line and paint some. My paper is still wet. This is my last chance to go ahead and create some form or shape of the clouds if I want to. I don't want to tinker with it too much, or else there might be a chance that I might be lifting out colors. Once the paper starts drying, do this step only when you know that your paper is sufficiently wet enough for you to do this. Once the paper starts drying up, you'll only get hard edges of your clouds. I'm retouching here and there slightly with just the tip of my brush. I think I'm done with the sky. Now for our background, distant mountains. I have prepared a bluish gray mix which is in the tonal value range of four to three. That is a low light tonal value scale. I'm just simply using the tip of my brush and creating the outline of the mountain. Do this step only when your sky has completely dried or else these are all going to bleed into the sky here. We do not want that. Here we are going ahead with Ton right technique. Meaning the paper is dry out here, but you're using wet paint to layer on it. Hence, this is known as Ton right technique. Now I'm creating this background mountains with a little watery mix. As you can see, I diluted the paint mix over there so that you get this misty, foggy effect at the foot hill of the mountain. Using the same size number six brush. And just with the tip of my brush, I'm just going ahead and layering another coat of my paints. Gray or indigo, bluish gray mix over there so that the outline of the mountains are a bit darker than the foothills. This step is used to create that illusion of depth into the painting and also contrast because you want the mountains to be standing out a little. Since it is sunset, the shadows are being casted by the setting sun. And hence, the colors are darker towards the edge of the mountains, while at the foothills it's lighter, right? This is the concept that we are playing with. If you observe nature closely, you will find out the beauty in all these little details. Now using the darkest mix of my indigo or paints gray, whichever color you are using, I'm going ahead and creating this illusion. Offer forest which is just near to the foothills or a background foliage. Okay? Exercising a little water control at the tip of my brush. I'm going ahead and creating these vertical strokes longer and shorter to indicate the growth or the natural look of how a background forest or a foliage looks. Right? So I'm just going ahead and following that step until I completely layer this end to end. The technique that I'm using here to create the foliage is wet on dry technique. But you may also do this step with wet on wet as well, like how we did it in project one. But here I wanted my pine forest to have some shape and form, and hence, I went ahead with wet on dry technique. If you're happy with how your background pine forest appears to be, then it's absolutely fine. You can skip to the next part where I'll be showing you how to go ahead and paint the snowy ground. But here I'm just adding a little bit more details. That is to add in the shape of the pines using my detailer brush over here. You could also use your size number one or size number two brush, and using the tip of your brush, you could create the shape of this pines. This step is going to be little time consuming as you are going to add in little details over here, but it's absolutely okay if you want to skip this step and you are happy with how your pine forest is looking in the background, it's absolutely fine. If you're painting along with me and you are also creating this pines, I would recommend you to first watch the entire step and then create your pines. Coming to the good part, that is to paint our snowy grounds. Yes, we have started with wet, using a very watery mix of my ultramarine blue. The total value range of this mix should be close to high white. I'm just going ahead and painting the shadows first. And then with a very damp brush, I'm just going to blend it into the whiter parts of the paper. This is another way of painting the snow, but you'll have to make sure that the total value of ultramarine blue that you are using is close to that of high white. Only then you'll be able to do this step without any fuss. Added in some rocks over there using my darker shade of paints gray with a very diluted paint mix of my indigo and paints gray. I'm going over the snowy ground all over again to create an illusion of a darker shadow. Now using a rigger or liner brush, I'm going to go ahead and paint the branch of the pine tree over here. Okay, So you could use any size number one or size number two round brush which has a thin pointed tip. If you do not own a liner or a rigger brush, creating very thin and delicate lines. Using this liner brush to indicate the thin branches stemming out of this pine, make sure to use a very buttery consistency of your paint. Too thick paint will give you some dry strokes. You want to avoid that at this stage of the painting. Now I have switched to my synthetic brush from silver silk series. This is size number four. And using just the tip of my brush and mid value tones of indigo, or paints gray, I'm going ahead and creating this shape of the pine leaves. I'm going to repeat the same process, but each time that I create the pine leaves, I'm going to do it in varying shapes and sizes. Some will be smaller strokes, some will be longer and shorter strokes. This will give the natural look of your pines. Going ahead and creating some thinner and thicker strokes to create the varying shapes and the sizes of the foliage of the pines. Okay? Going at random positions and places. Okay? You can Google out your own pine references and then paint it in your own style using the same technique. It is not necessary to copy the same pine that I'm doing out here. It's up to you. You can do it in your own style and your own preference, switching to a size number two round brush for better control. Because I want to create more thinner and smaller pines here at the snowy ground. I think we are almost done with a painting. Creating this pines is almost like the final stages. I'm here going to go with the natural shape of the pine, which is a cone shaped and inverted triangle, right? I'm going ahead and following this step. Thinner at the apex and broader at the base, right? This is what I am going to follow. I am positioning the pines at random places, but make sure that you create a perspective in here. When you are closer to the horizon line, create smaller pines over there. And when you are almost towards the foreground, which is closer to you, you create some bigger pines. This will establish the sense of depth and illusion in the painting. I'm going ahead and adding in more pines over here because I'm working on a larger surface area. But if you're working on a smaller sized paper such as five or six size, I think two to three pints should be good for you. I am here going ahead and creating some extra pins. Since I have to fill up this empty spaces on the snowy ground, I'm going ahead and adding one more pine towards the left side corner of the paper just to fill the space, because here it looks like it's kind of empty over here. I'm just going ahead and filling up the spaces in between the pines using the damp yet right tip of my mop rush, I'm going ahead and creating this slanted lines along the snowy shadows that we have painted. This will help us to create or accentuate the shadows a bit more. Here I'm introducing a totally additional step. Feel free to skip it if you're happy with how your pines are looking. Now, I just wanted to add a dash of very darker green onto it. It is not much making of a difference with the same paint mix. I'm going to create here smaller pines, but here I'm not going ahead and creating the full size tree. I'm here going ahead and creating just the leaves, the foliage. This is to represent that this pine trees have been growing and they have been subdued by the snowfall. You could also create some bushy grasses over here. That's totally up to you, but use a darker color mix to bring that contrast in your painting. Remember this rocks that we had painted using a darker mix of paints gray. So I'm just going over it and creating the illusion of a bushy grass or a bushy shrub growing over there. I'm touching up those pines with a little darker shade of this darker green mix that I have created. You could do the same using your darker mix of indigo or paints gray, whichever combination you have used to paint your pines. I am now preparing a creamy consistency of white quash to create the snow on the branches of this pine trees. So this is how I'm going to go ahead. Using just the tip of my size number one brush, I'm going ahead and creating this shape of pine leaves on the pine leaves that we have already created with darker tones. Can you see how I'm doing it? It's just that going randomly over the darker tones and creating this contrasting highlights of white quash. This will give the illusion of snow, but make sure that you do not cover it entirely. You want a little bit of the darker base color of your pine trees to show up. I'm going to repeat the same process until I have covered the entire pine tree along with all the other pine trees. This is a quick and easy way of doing it with white quash. There are multiple other different ways and different techniques that people paint snowy pines. Some use masking fluid to mask out the snowy pines or the snowy areas of the pines, and then go ahead and fill it later with shadows. That's another way or else you create the illusion of a pine tree using a very light tonal values of your shadow color, that is with ultramarine blue or indigo. And then use the darker color of the same color mix and create the leaves of the pines underneath. So that is one more technique which we will be using in our day four project. So there was a hint of what you can learn in the coming days in this class. Now coming back to our present project, I'm just going ahead and layering my white quash on top of the snowy small pines that we have just painted, or the shrubs, you could call it shrubs also. And just covered them up, leaving some gaps of the darker colors to show through. Now, near to the base of this tallest pine tree that we have painted, I'm going to create a ball of snow near the base of the tree and then use another small Detailing brush over there and create the illusion of leaves underneath. Okay, now using the dry brush pattern technique that is applying the dry gush on the damp brush, I'm just going to go over this stem of the tallest pine using my liner brush, which is size number two. I'm going ahead and adding in some darker tones in between those white quash. Okay? Just to give the illusion that it has been covered with snow. So the time has finally come where we are going to paint the snow on all the other pine trees I have here. Fast forwarded this part. Feel free to do it at your own pace. Once you are done adding the snow on your pines, now it's time to create the shadows of the pines on the snowy grounds. For that, I have been using my watery mix of ultramarine blue and with my size number one brush, I'm just going to go with the shorter and longer inclined strokes, planting towards the snowy ground. Okay. So this is how I'm going to do the shadows. That's all for this painting. With this, we wrap up our painting. We will wait until the painting is completely dry and then peel off the masking taste from all four sides. Here is our beautiful winter sunset painting for day two. I'll see you tomorrow again with day three project. 8. Day 3: Color Palette: Hey, welcome to day three project. For day three, we are going to paint this bright and beautiful winter sunrise. So let's quickly take a look at the colors required. First, I'll be starting out with the colors for the sky. I am here spotching out my cobalt blue. This is a warmer blue pigment. Now in case if you do not have cobalt blue with, you could also use alternatives of warmer blues such as thalo blue, which is also with PB 29 as a warmer pigment. Or ultramarine blue, which is also with B 29 pigment. You could also opt to use cerulean blue. The next color that I'm going to use is for the clouds. This will be gray. Now if you do not have pains gray with you readily available, you could mix your own paints gray by taking some of that burned sienna. I'm swatching my burned sienna out here. When you mix burned sienna and your warmer blues together, such as cobalt blue, ultramarine blue, in ratio one is to one, you get a very beautiful, neutral looking gray. Now if you add in more blue, it will have a more bluish undertone to it. If you add in more of the browns, then it will have more of the brown undertone to it. So you can mix and balance out the gray that you are looking for and you can create your own gray. I wasn't very happy with the mixture that I had produced, so I mixed in more of the blue into that mixture to obtain this gray. Now moving on to the next colors, which will be the colors near the horizon line will be our yellows and oranges. So the yellow that I'm going to use this project is my favorite, Naples yellow. Now Naples yellow, like I have already mentioned in day two project is a very soft pastel yellow. It is made up of with pigments Y 35 and PW six. But naples yellow from other brands may have some other constituent pigment. But if you have any pale yellow cadmium pigment with you, which is of PY 35 or so, you could mix in a little bit of your white quash and prepare your own Naples yellow. The next color that we are going to swatch out is a warmer orange orange that I'm going to use here is yellow orange. As I've mentioned in day two project, you can prepare your own yellow orange by mixing your warmer yellows with your warmer red. Now the next colors that we are going to look at is the colors of a shadows for the snow. For that, I will be using a mixture of two colors. First is ultramarine blue and the second will be a little bit of my mineral violet to paint the snow. You can also go ahead and use your cobalt blue instead of your ultramarine blue. But I like to go with ultramarine blue. Because ultramarine blue is a little granulating, it provides a nice texture to your snow when mixed with your mineral violet. Mineral violet in my case, is also a little granulating, hence it gives me that best combination to create textures on snow. The last pigment that I'm going to swatch out is my black or my neutral tint. Instead of black or neutral tint, you can go ahead with paints gray or your ivory black. Any black colored pigment that you own will do. Get your colors ready And join me in the next lesson where we get started with our final painting. 9. Day 3: A Bright Winter Sunrise: Time to get started with a project. I have taped down my paper on all four sides using masking tape. Now it's time to get started with pencil sketching our composition. To begin with, I'm going to apply the rule of two thirds to create the horizon line According to the rule of two thirds, it suggests placing the horizon line 13, or two thirds up or down the frame rather than in the center. This can create a more visually appealing composition in photography or art. So that's the reason why I placed the horizon line not at the center of the paper, but somewhere below the center of the paper. Right, I'm now going ahead and sketching out the shadow parts in the snowy land that we are going to go ahead and paint later on in the project. So simply sketch out the areas and demarcate the masses where you want the shadows to be prominently seen. Here, I'm going to go ahead and create the midground foliage that separates the sky and the foreground. Whenever you're sketching out your composition, make sure to go with very light pencil marks so that it does not show through your watercolor paintings. Time to get started with the sky. We are going with wet on wet for the sky. And for that I'm using my size number 80 more brush to lay a flatwah on my paper. I'm going to wet it till my horizon line always go with an even wash of water on your paper whenever you're painting sky. This is a very important step because if there are pools of water stranded on your paper, it will only make the next steps bit more messier. When you start applying the colors, go to and fro with your brush and spread the water evenly on your paper. So I'm going to start with layering the colors. The first color that I'm reactivating is my Naples Yellow. Squeezing out all that extra water from the belly of my brush and using just the tip to layer the colors. Starting from the horizon line, you can see I have left certain gap just right at the center, spreading the color from right to left. Now I'm going to make the horizon line a little bit more warmer by adding in some yellow orange hue to it. And just like how we went ahead with Naples yellow, the same pattern, I'm going to follow and blend my yellow orange with the Naples yellow. Now we will be starting with the topmost part of the sky with our cobalt blue. Now I realize that right side, I have went ahead with too much of yellow. I need to lift the yellows before the paper starts drying. So I'm just using my damp brush and lifting out the shade of yellow. This technique is known as lifting technique with a clean damp brush. Go over those areas just to blend out any remaining yellow hues that might be present over there. I have prepared a medium tonal value of cobalt blue and started layering it on my paper using my silver black velvet size number eight, round brush. Look at my brush strokes. I'm applying very soft, gentle strokes using just the tip of my brush. Spreading the colors in a very slanted way. You would have observed that as I laid my blues, I did leave certain wide spaces in between my blues, that is because those are my fluffy clouds. I wanted those wide spaces in between so that later on we can add in some shadows over there to create the depth in our clouds. Before I start to add depth in my clouds, I always do this step with a damp brush. I just go over the wide spaces all over again, making it wet so that when I start applying my darker grays, it automatically blends and smoothens out without forming any hard edges. Now, this step is the most critical point in your painting. If you feel that your paper has started to dry out already, Skip this step altogether, because if you go with a dam brush in those white pockets, you are likely going to make the water seep into the blues and make uncontrollable bleeds over there. It is not going to look nice, so you need to gauge the wetness of your paper. So practice is the key. Over here, I have learned to gauge the wetness of the paper over time and over the years with my practice. So yes, it is an important step. If you feel your paper has started to dry out, you can totally skip this step of adding the depth in your clouds. You can just retain the white spaces in your blues to create the look of the cloud. With my size number six round brush, I have started layering some darker clouds in between the transitioning layers of blues and yellows. Leaving the white gap in between the white space in between that we had retained earlier. Do not fill that space because that is exactly where we are going to create our sun with the emanating rays. My paper is still wet enough for me to do this step, but if you feel that your paper has started to dry out, please stop there. Do not go overboard with this. I will continue to add in some more darker tones over here because the clouds are fading out. So I'm going ahead and adding the darker tones, just underside of the clouds that we have created earlier, using just the tip of my brush. And with very soft, gentle strokes and with light pressure, do not put heavy pressure, you will be lifting out the colors. The area around my horizon line has started to dry out. It is in semi wet state. So I will just quickly go and start dropping in my burn sienna color over there to indicate the midground. This burned sienna color is a very warm color. Since the sun is setting down in the horizon, the entire horizon will be lit up with the warmer colors. And hence, I chose to go with burned sienna. Now, just around the area where the sun is going to rise up with the rays shining out, I'm going to go with yellow orange with the same vertical strokes, and connect it with my burned sienna, something like this. Just go and lay the colors with your burnt sienna on top of your yellow orange. And you will be good to go. At this point, I'm going to go quickly and try to lift out the colors from there using my damp brush. And I realize that my paper has started to dry in order to create warmer colors. Over there I go with a very medium tonal value of my yellow, orange, and yellow. Lightly blend it out with the tip of my brush here. At this point, I'm taking advantage of the wet colors. And now I'm going to lift the colors to create the full circle of a sun and then create the rays. I have switched to my angular shader brush to lift the colors. To create the rays, you can use any synthetic short flathead brush to do this step. Now, every time that you lift the colors, always make sure to rinse the brush in water, dab it clean in tissue paper, and then go ahead and lift the colors back. It is a continuous process. Now, using a darker shade of brown, I will quickly go and start adding the darker tones towards the extreme ends of this midground foliage that we just created before it starts drying out. To create this darker shade of brown, you can either mix a little bit of ultramarine blue or your cobalt blue into your burned sienna. Or add in your neutral black, or your paints gray into your burn sienna and turn it into a darker shade. It is not necessary for you to own a darker shade of brown, like Vandyke brown or your burn timber. For this step, I'm going to keep laying this color until I have reached the other end. Okay, I quickly grabbed my angular shader brush and I'm lifting out the colors once more to create the rays more prominently. I'm applying very light pressure. And lifting the colors facing downwards so that the rays are pointing towards us here. At this very moment, a big blob of water fell on that area. And as a result, I wanted to fix those clouds which ruined the sky. So I'm going again, re wetting the sky very gently with soft handed as you can see. Not trying to lift any colors. For this you would need a very soft brush like I am using over here from silver a tailor. Now again, I will start reapplying my indigo. This step is totally optional since I had ruined my sky. That's why I'm trying to fix it back. Okay. But not every time you can fix back your skies, because watercolor is not a forgiving medium at all. I'm just trying to focus on my reworking of my brush strokes just around the horizon line. I'm not going to go and touch the sky which we have already painted at the top. Okay, whenever you go with the rewetting technique, this is a golden rule. If you try to retouch all those areas, it's going to get screwed even more here. I'm going ahead with the lifting technique, creating brighter rays of the sun here. Using the tip of my size number six brush, I'm going ahead and creating those sharp lines just to indicate the tip of the forest. Okay. The forest trees over there just this do not go over the rays that you have just created of the sun. You do not want to double work over there, just go underneath that and fill those areas. To get started with our snowy ground just near to the horizon line, I'm going to go with wet on dry technique. Because here, if we try to paint the sun reflections here with wet on wet, then there might be chances that the wetness of the water will start seeping into the midground foliage that we just painted. And it might be screwing it up again, so I do not want that. Now for the remaining area, I'm just going to apply this even coat of water so that my reflections are well blended. Loading the naples yellow on just the tip of my brush, I'll be going ahead and creating some slanted strokes. The wetness of the paper will make the strokes seem well blended. This is the reason why we want to do this step with wet on wet technique. The wetness of the paper has made the whiter spaces disappear. So I'm going to go and lift out certain areas from here and there. Just to have the hitter spaces in between those reflections. This is here where we are going to start layering with our ultramarine and violet shadows for the snow. Here I'm preparing a mix of my coral pink or coral orange. You remember that we have seen in our day two project? So that I'm applying here somewhere in between those spaces over there. Okay, Do not go overboard and completely layer it and cover up your yellows. You need certain yellows also to show through. Now it's time to quickly go ahead and create the color mix for our snow shadows. I'm mixing my ultramarine blue with my mineral Valid to create the mixture for my snow shadows. This step has to be done quickly before your snowy ground starts drying up or else you will not get the blended snow shadows. I'm going to go with longer and shorter broken strokes or lines for the shadows. Do not cover up the entire area with your violets. You need certain of those coral pinks and your yellows to show through. Just use the tip of your brush and the belly to just layer the color. Do not lift any colors. Be extremely gentle and careful when you are doing this step to add more depth and contrast to the snowy foreground, which is closer to us, that is at the bottom of the paper. I went ahead and layered it with an initial coat of my coral pink. Refer back to project number two on how we created our coral pink. And then lay it with our ultramarine blue to create the depth and shadows of the snow. Now I'm creating the color mix for my shadows of the snow which we had earlier sketched out. Remember for that, I'm mixing a little bit of my mineral violet along with my ultramarine blue. Remember to exercise water control. Your paint mix should be creamy and buttery and not too watery. Here the tonal value should be ranging between the mid values. Do not go with very dark or intense tones. It wouldn't look like shadows at all. Using just the tip of my size number six brush, I'm going to add in some thinner lines and dotted strokes over there. Repeating the same process out here. But here I'll be adding some more blob of paint over there. And from there I will be going ahead and creating a shrubby existence. Now, with slanted strokes, I'm just going ahead and creating the shadows. I have mixed here a little bit of my paints, gray or neutral tint into it very lightly. I'm going ahead and creating the shadows with the help of my rigger brush. I'm going ahead and adding in the little shrubby grasses over there, which are already dried. Now, here at this stage, my paper is in a semi dry state. It is absolutely not dried, but it is not exactly wet too, So it will still give me that well blended look. Now I will add in some darker tones of the brown as well. I will be repeating the same process of a here two. First I will start with a darker bass tone. That is my darker browns. And then when I'm doing the grasses, I will go with a mix of darker and lighter tones. Once you are done adding the grasses, it's time to paint the shadows using just the tip of my size. Number six round brush and with slanted strokes, I'm creating the shadows of that shrub using the same mix of my ultramarine blue and mineral valet. I'm going ahead and creating the shadows of the grassy patches over here too. While I'm closer to the foreground, I will be here now adding some taller grassy shrubs and bushes and then creating their shadows. Keep observing. The method that I'm going to use here is right technique. I'll use a mixture of my darker browns along with my light burnt sienna and create the impression of the tall shrubby grasses which are already dried. I have your switched to my liner or rigger brush. You may also do the same, or else if you do not have a liner or rigger brush with you, you may do the same using a size number one or two brush which has a sharp pointed tip. I'm going ahead and adding one more shrub near to our foreground. This will be the last one. And then we are going to add the shadows and some branches coming out from the side corners of the sky. Okay. So that's the last overall steps that we are to do. I wanted to make this bush a little shrubbier. I've switched to my size number two brush and I'm going and making it much more dense and thicker. I'm happy with how the bush has turned out now. Time to add in the shadows. I'm going with the same shadow color mix that we have prepared earlier. That is the mixture of my ultramarine blue along with my mineral violet with a very light tonal value. Now, going ahead with wet on dry strokes, make sure that you have water control on your brush as well as in the paint mix. That yard strokes are thinner and not too blob and thick. Now going for the shadow, for our left bush. Now here I'm going to go with a longer shadow with very slanted and curvy lines of the bush. Replica. Make sure to go unidirectional over here. Do not spread out or fan out the Bush unless the real Bush is something similar to that. At this point, the paper has red completely, you can see there is no bulge. It's a good time to go ahead and add the last remaining branches jutting out from the side corners from our left. You could also do the same overhead branches too, but I just prefer the side angle more. If you want to create some overhead branches, you can just go ahead and do the same along with the side branches or it's totally left to your imagination. Choose whatever you are comfortable with. I'll keep adding these branches until I'm satisfied. But if you feel that it's fine for you, you could stop it out here. I am done adding the branches and now maybe I'll add some one or two leaves out here. And that's all. With this painting, our paper has completely dried. Now it's time to take off the masking tapes from all four sides. Make sure that you do this step only when your paper has dried flat. If you are doing this step when your paper is still wet, you might run the chances of ripping out your paper, so be careful with it. We finally have our day three painting completed. I'll see you again tomorrow with another brand new painting. 10. Day 4: Color Palette: Hello and welcome to day four. Let's quickly take a look at the colors that we are going to require. First, I will be starting out with the sky. Starting at the top of the sky, we are going to first watch out our lavender. This is a very soft and beautiful, pastel purple shade. The next color that I'm going to watch out is our blue gray. I will tell you shortly how to mix and form your own shades of lavender and blue gray. When you look at the pigment information labeled on both the tubes, you would notice that both of these colors are using a cool blue shade, which is PB 15 is to three or PB 15 along with the white pigment for lavender two, they have used the same blue pigment along with an additional pigment which is your purple PV 15 along with the white pigment. If you have any of the purples and blues with, you could mix white quash into it and form your own color. Now coming to the next color, we are going to swatch out a brilliant pig, which is another, a beautiful pastel pink color. Now if you see the pigment in formation, this has a red pigment in it along with a white guash. So if you have any bright rose ropia pink pigment, you could try adding in your white guash into them and turn it into a pastel shade. The next color is our warm yellow orange. Now if you have already watched day two and day three, you would know this is a common color in our color palette. So I'm assuming you already know how to form your yellow orange if you do not have this color readily available with you. The next color that I'm going to swatch out is our Naples yellow, which is another pastel yellow shade. This color, two, is a common color which we have used in our projects day two and day three, and have already mentioned how you can prepare your own naples yellow. Go check out the color palette section of day two and day three. Now the next color that I'm going to swatch out is our burnt sienna. Our very warm and beautiful brown. The last color that we would need is our burned timber. Now you can mix your burned timber by mixing a darker shade of blue or black into your burned sienna. And create your own burned timber. Now that we have our colors ready, let's get to our project. 11. Day 4: Golden Winter Part 1: Now that we have our colors ready, let's begin our project. First, I will be taping down my paper on all four sides using the masking tape. Once that's done, it's time to begin our pencil sketching. To get started with our horizon line, I'm going to follow the rule of two thirds. And like the previous project, I'm going to go and place my horizon line somewhere just below the center half of the paper. And now I'm going to go ahead and sketch out the landmass which will be covered with snow. So keep observing, it's a very simple composition. There is not much of sketching involved. We'll just mark out the areas where we are going to have our landmass, which will be covered with snow. I'll create another part of the land towards my right. So just notice how I'm going ahead with the pencil sketching. I would first recommend you to observe the entire sketching of the composition. And then you can pause the screen and then go ahead sketching out yours. I will also mark out the areas where there is going to be little shadows just here at the right corner of our sketch. Towards the left corner of this area, I will be going ahead and painting tree over here and the shadow of it in the lake. Okay. So if you want, you can sketch out that area. I'm not doing it right here. I will be directly painting it. So if you want, you can sketch it out using the reference that I just attached at the site corner. If you're happy with your composition, we can move ahead and start a painting. I just lightened out my darker graphite or pencil marks. Now for the sky as usual, I'm going to go with wet on wet. I'm going to layer my paper with a nice and uniform wash of water so that it does not dry up when I start painting. So always make sure to do this step a little patiently. Water down your paper well, so that it spreads the color uniformly. Do not allow pools or puddles of water being stranded on your paper. Spread it out evenly and smoothly. Now I have loaded the brush with medium consistency of Naples yellow. Now with the tip of the brush, I went ahead and created a circle, leaving a white space in the center. This is going to be our sun. And you might need to use your damp brush to leave the white space remain white because the colors will start spreading into the wet areas of the paper. It's absolutely normal. So you have to be a little cautious when you're doing this step because the colors will keep spreading. Or else you can just blindly go with a flat wash of naples yellow here, just starting from the horizon. And later on, you can come back and create the sun when your paper is still wet, using a damp brush or a tissue paper to lift out to create the sun. Now that step I'm going to show you in this project itself, do not worry, you'll see it in the letter half of the project. Now there is another method of doing this step. You could use masking fluid or cut out your masking tape in the shape of a circle and paste it on your paper. So in that way, you will be preserving your white that you want for the sun. And then go ahead and create a variegated gradient wash for your sky. I actually here, intend to go with a variegated flat wash for my sky. Now what exactly do I mean by variegated flat wash? It means blending multiple colors seamlessly while maintaining a consistent tone. Here, I'm trying my best to keep the color spreading into the whites of our sun by going over with a damp brush. Now I have started layering my brilliant pink shade onto the top parts of the sky. I will be now layering my lavender starting from the top right corner of the sky. In case if you do not have lavender, you could easily mix your lavender by using any of the blue shade, a little bit of your purple or pinks into it, and mixing it with white quash. That's an easy way how you can prepare your own lavender. But make sure to go with a cooler shade of blue, such as with pigment PB 15 or 15 to three. Any of it is fine. This is a cooler shade of blue which is not very dark and yet has a very nice subtle coolness to it. Let me tell you the reason why I chose naples yellow and lavender, or blue gray for creating the sky. This is because these are pastel shades. The tones are very soft, and when you mix blue and naples yellow together, it does not form any greenish hue. Instead, it forms a grayish gray, which is okay for our gradient blend of a sky. Now when you observe, it is becoming increasingly difficult to keep the whites of the paper. So I've just decided to go with a flat wash with naples yellow over there. It's absolutely fine. We will use a damp brush and go and lift out the colors once again over here, this will give us a very smooth and rounded finish, especially the corner edges to our sun. I'm using a damp brush and just lifting the colors using the circular motion. You can see how I'm swirling my brush. This lifting is only possible when your paper is sufficiently wet enough. Once the colors are absorbed deeply into the paper, you will not be able to lift out the colors anymore. Now I'm going to go with the midground foliage. The same drill like we have seen in project number one. Project number three, I'm going to go ahead with my burnt sienna, first layer with burnt sienna. And then I will be limiting the darker tones near the base of the horizon. In this way, we will be creating the illusion of depth. With the vertical strokes, you are only directing your pain to bleed into the sky vertically. But obviously it's going to bleed according to its own will. That's the beauty of water colors and that's the beauty of wet on wet process. I'm here again trying to fix my sun, which has again blended time to add depth to our midground foliage. I have started with darker tones here. I'm using a mix of my burn sienna along with my ultramarine blue. But if you do not have ultramarine blue, you could mix your black or paints gray. Any of the darker shade of blue or black would give you this darker shade of brown there. Again, the water droplet ruining my sky. The same thing had happened in a day three project and it was so tricky to fix it back. But in this case, somehow it is still be achievable to get the sky back because we are here dealing with vartigated flat wash. I loaded the brush with my lavender shade and went from top to bottom. Not blending it too much into the areas where my browns are there already, but just trying to be confining where my droplet of water had fallen over there. I'm going with this brilliant pink shade because the water droplet had removed the entire of yellow. So I'm just going to nice and cleanly blend it off all over again to avoid this kinds of accident, always make sure that you are not rinsing your brush too aggressively. Always do it very soft and gradually. Also, keep a tissue towel or a tissue paper handy, and absorb all that extra water from the tip of your brush. To avoid this kind of mistakes ruining your painting, I had to come back and fix the sun by lifting out the colors. Here I'm using a dry tissue paper and just using circular movement to dab it on the paper and absorb all that excess color bleeds. Before I get started with the stream and the snowy landmass, I'm using my kneading eraser to take off all that extra dark graphite marks. Now with just the tip of my size number 20 mop brush, I'm going to start with little watery mix of my naples yellow to create the reflection of the sky in the water. So I will just start to go along with the corners, leaving the whiter space around the center. If you so observe, I'm using just the tip of my brush to lead the colors and leaving the whiter spaces in between in some of the areas do not cover the entire area with Naples Yellow leave certain white spaces. We will fill them out later on with other colors which are being reflected in the water. Like same colors which were there in the sky. We are going to replicate the same in the water. If you observe, I'm here working first with medium tonal values. If required, we'll come back here and use a little darker tunes of the color later if required. Because in water colors, it's the golden rule that you cannot lighten out the colors once a darker color is applied. But you can build your colors by going first with light, then medium, and then darker tunes. So yes, this is the fundamental rule that we are following out here here to achieve that soft, smooth, blend. I am here using the damp tip of my brush and trying to lift out certain areas from there to achieve that soft, glowing water. And also to mask out the dry brush strokes that we have got in certain areas because we went on wet on dry technique. Now I will be layering the darker tones. I am here using the yellow orange mix, and as you can see, I have started with the inner corners, leaving out the center area to be white. But I'm going with this long and short horizontal strokes, going ahead with the lifting technique using the size number six brush. And I'm just going and lifting out the colors from certain areas to get that asymmetric reflection of the shimmery water, denoting the reflection of the sun. Now using a premix of my lavender and my coral orange, I'm going ahead and layering the brown gray strokes. Now towards the inner corners, I'll go with the lavender shade depicting the sky colors into the water. When you are at this step, make sure that you go with a bigger round brush. I'm here doing it with six, but I'm not happy with how my strokes are coming out. It's not going to blend evenly because it's wet on dry. So I'll be switching to my mob brush to even out and smoothly blend this areas all over again. I switched to my mob brush and loaded it with a little watery mix of my yellow, orange and lavender. And I'm going and blending this areas all over again, but creating this long and short horizontal strokes while I still maintain that white areas of the paper. With the help of my size number six brush, I will start to add these darker shadows for our snowy landmass. With the help of this darker shade of my burnt sienna, I have mixed in a little bit of my black into it to turn it into this darker shade. Or else you can also mix in your ultramarine blue or any darker shade of blue to get a darker shade of brown to it. Can you see the bleeding which happened over there because the paper was wet? I will now fix that area using a damp, dry synthetic brush. Using just the tip and going with some longer and shorter horizontal strokes, I have created a very smooth shadow over there. Can you see this is how I'm going to go and fix the bleeded or the feathering that has happened over there. Now, using more darker tones of my browns, I will just go and add in the darker shadows just beneath that snow mass. This will create depth and lution that I want for this. Shadows go with some irregularities, not very plain and smooth, but get some grooves and bounces into the snowy land mass. This will give it more dimension and depth. Now with the help of my rigger brush, I'm going ahead and creating this grass like form over there. Wherever we have created the shadows, I'm placing this grass at random position, but making sure that they are fitting into the grooves that we have created. With the darker browns repeating the same process here too. I'm not exactly filling all the grooves with the grasses, but leaving certain gaps and spaces in between them. I think I'm happy with the details that I have added here to the snowy ground. That's all for it. Now, I will see you next in the part two of the same lesson. 12. Day 4: Golden Winter Sunset Part 2: With the darkest mix of my burnt tumber. I'm going ahead and creating this vertical strokes to create a second layer for our midground foliage. You can see here, the colors are not spreading as it should. When the paper is wet, that means our paper has dried. So I will just go with a little watery mix, but not too watery. Just go ahead and create a buttery consistency of this mix. And use your vertical strokes with your round brush tip and create this foliage. Time to switch to a liner or a rigger brush and get started with creating the dead trees. By now, you must have noticed that all the elements that we are creating are with the help of wet on dry technique. Because a paper has dried already, and also all of these elements are having its definite form and shape. Wet on dry technique is most extensively used when you want any object or an element to have its distinct shape and size. Now, just by wearing the tonal intensity of my, this darker mix of burnt timber, I'm going to create the illusion of many of these bay trees in the background. I'm going ahead with varying shapes and sizes of the trees. Make sure to have a natural look of the trees by going with different taller and shorter trees altogether, adding some more trees out here. The lines that I'm going and creating are very soft and delicate and very thin. Here in the background, it is almost far away from us. So the trees should be not too thick and strikingly visible to your eyes. That's why I go with very soft hand and go with thin strokes using the frayed dry tip of my size. Number four, synthetic brush from silver silk series. I'm going ahead and creating the foliage of the dead trees which are also dead here. I'm just going ahead and creating this by dabbing the tip of the brush in very random strokes. I think at this stage we can go with a little bit more darker value of my burnt sienna. Here I used a medium total value of four to go and create this foliage for my bad trees. Now if you want to create foliage for your bare trees on your left, you could feel free to do so. I am randomly choosing and going ahead and creating the foliage on the trees. Time to get started with the reflection of the water. Now for the reflection of the water, I'm first going with a little diluted value of my burnt, timbered, and burnt. And with the vertical strokes, as you can see at this point my paper is. So in order to keep my colors smooth and blended, I'm going with another layer of light tonal value of my burned timber and burn canamix. Then I'm again going ahead with the vertical strokes. Now you can see the difference, right? The colors are blending well into the background and giving us this soft reflections. This is exactly what I want here. For the reflections, I'm using the darker tone of my burned timber. When I say darker, I mean the mid value tones of burned timber. You do not want the reflection to be very dark, because we are going to paint the reflection of the bigger tree and its branches on the water. You need this reflection to be soft, yet giving us the contrast of light and shadow. Now I see my color has faded out a bit for the reflection part. So I will switch to my mop brush. Now the tip of my mob rush is damp and dry. I have squeezed out all the extra water and using just the tip. I have frayed the tip and will drag the colors along the vertical strokes. Can you see the effect of the strokes? It's very nice and soft. This is exactly what I want for the reflection part. And now I'm using certain horizontal strokes along the edges to create the impression of the reflection. The right side of the paper has dried completely, so I'm just going ahead with a damp brush over the area again, so that it's easier for me to lift the colors which is seeming to bleed into that area where we have preserved the whites. Right? So with the help of my angle dagger brush now, I'm trying to take off those extra colors which is trying to bleed into there. And using some horizontal strokes, shorter and longer, I'm trying to replicate the impression of the reflection. Now coming to the shadows on the snowy land, I'm going to use a very diluted mix of my ultramarine and my mineral, valid, the same mixture that we have seen in Esters project. And I'm going to go and paint the shadows on the snow, along the same pencil sketched outlines. Now when I'm creating the shadows, I'm making sure that I leave out certain white space. Now using my damp mop brush, I'm going to go and blend this white and the shadows we just created, giving it a seamless loop. Once we are done with the shadows on the snow, now it's time to create the shadows underneath the snowy area. Here I'm going with a very dark value of my burnt umber mix. And you can see how I'm creating those shadows with dabbing strokes of my brush, creating the grooves, and then fanning it out horizontally, shorter and longer strokes to create this uneven surface. Now I will try adding some grassy patterns over the grooves over here. Okay, something like this, using my liner. A rigger brush, using very thin strokes over here to create the impression of the grasses subdued in snow. And then we are going to paint the reflection of the same grasses in the water as well, using the same rigger brush. Here, I'm creating the reflection with my rigger brush. Creating the grass patterns just like how we did at the surface of the snow. We are doing the same thing here in the reflection, Adding in some taller grasses over here because we added some in reflection. I'm just replicating the same using my angular dagger brush. I'm going ahead and creating some horizontal, longer and shorter lines around the area where we preserve the white. This is very essential because the white is the sun getting reflected in the water. The sun we are building the reflection. Use of the horizontal, longer and shorter strokes will create the illusion and depth. Repeating the same process to create the shadow areas on the snow using my mop brush and using the light mix of my ultramarine and mineral. Valid time to finally paint our tall tree with its branch reflecting in the water. I'm going ahead with my size number six brush. And using just the tip of my brush, I'm going ahead and releasing my strokes very lightly to generate those thin lines. Make sure that you exercise water control in your paint makes as well as at the tip of your brush. Because if you have to watery brush tip, you will not get thinner lines. Now I'll be switching to my liner or rigger brush of size number two. Very often when I want to create very thin branches. If you do not have a liner or rigger brush, you could go ahead and use your size number one or two brush, which has a very fine pointed tip. Or else you could also go with a size zero brush. In case, if you do not have size one or size two brush, keep observing my brush strokes as I create the thin and delicate lines. And then later on we will start painting the reflection of this branch in water. When I'm painting the reflection of the tree in water, I'm roughly projecting the area out the position of the tree branch which is getting reflected in the water. And then going ahead with my size number six brush here, you can see how I'm going ahead and creating those strokes. Now here is the trick to create illusion of reflection in the water. I'm going with longer and shorter horizontal strokes, following the guiding line of the branch that I have just created. When you are at this step, make sure that your lines are very thin and sharp. You do not want very thick lines out here because it will not give the illusion of reflection. You want it to look as realistic as possible. Hence the Sp and thinner your lines are, the more distinct reflection it will stand out to be. I will repeat the same process and create the branch reflection in the water. So keep observing. I'm going to add another branch to the left corner of the site because I feel that this part a little empty. But if you are fine with how your trees have turned out, that's totally fine. You can skip this step. I'm going and adding more branches out here. We are finally done with our painting. Now one last small addition that I want to do is paint some birds flying in the sky. So I'll be using my this liner or rigger brush because I'm comfortable doing so with this brush. But if you are not comfortable using a liner or rigger brush, you could go ahead with your round brush of size one or two. I'm adding these birds in random shapes and sizes and in random direction. You could add the same, or you could paint just one or two. It's totally up to you. The next step is to wait for a paper to dry and take off the masking tapes from all four sides. My paper has dried already. Time to peel our masking tapes gently. Do this step only when your paper has dried flat. And with that, we have successfully completed our day four project. Really proud of how this has turned out. I will meet you tomorrow again with this beautiful project. 13. Day 5: Color Palette: Hello, Hello. Welcome to day five. Let's quickly take a look at the colors that we are going to require to create a project. First, starting with the colors near to our base horizon line, I'll be starting to swatch out my Naples yellow. Now, Naples yellow has been a common color in our previous projects, and I have clearly explained how to create one in case if you do not own Naples yellow. Followed by yellow orange, which too has been discussed. The next color pigment that I'm going to swatch is my Opera Pink. Instead of Opera Pink, you could opt for alyzerine crimson or any bright rose pigments. Now, when you combine Opera Pink with maple yellow, you get a very beautiful pastel orange, which is our maples orange. Depending on your color preference. If you wanted to have a little bit of more pink dominance mix a little bit more of pink into it, and then you will have your required color. Now the next color that I'm swatching out is my blue gray. You can prepare by mixing white with your blue pigments and create your own pastel blue. Now the next color will be this warm, burnt sienna. The next color that I'm swatching is my mineral valid. Now you could mix your own mineral valid by mixing your pink reds with your cooler blues, you would get the color similar to mine. Now the next color will be ultramarine blue, which is a warm blue. This is present in most of the basic watercolor palettes. To create our snow shadows, we will be mixing mineral valid along with ultramarine blue and form very light tonal values of the color mix to create the shadows on the snow. Now we will be swatching our darker color such as neutral tint or paints gray to do the leaves of the pine. Now instead of paints gray, you could also opt to go for ivory black, or your indigo. I'm swatching out my indigo over here. So get your colors ready and join me in the next lesson where we will be starting to paint our project. 14. Day 5: Polar Sunrise Part 1: Let's begin with the project. I have already taped down my paper on Alpo size using masking tape. And now I'm going to leave more than two thirds of the paper for our sky. In this painting, our sky is going to be the main focus element. We will concentrate more on the skies. I am now going ahead and sketching out the other compositional elements, adding in some vertical lines to present my pins. Now I will be adding some distant background mountains here. Remember, the mountains are going to be a little smaller in size as compared to the other elements in the foreground here. The atmospheric perspective concepts will apply. If you do not know what are the concepts of atmospheric perspective, I would recommend you to go check out my class. Atmospheric Spring Landscapes, where all these concepts have been explained in great detail. Adding in some arches for our snowy ground over here. And that's all with the basic composition of this painting. Time to move on with a sky for sky. I'm going with Wet Hornet. That's my absolute favorite technique because it gives me the soft and smooth looking sky. Here, I'm layering my paper with an even wash of water. Make sure that there are no pools or puddles of water standing. This, I have been repeating from Dave Un of the project. It is very important guys, that's why I have been repeating myself switching to my Sis number 20 brush and using this dam brush to load my Naples yellow. Here, an important point is to exercise water control. I am absorbing all that excess water from the belly of the brush and using just the tip of my brush to load the paint and lay it on the paper. With horizontal strokes starting from the horizon line. I am here using a natural hair mob brush, but you could do the same using your normal round brush of size number eight or ten. But make sure the bristles are soft enough. If you observe, I retained some negative space closer to the horizon line when I layered the paper with naples yellow. This is because that's where our sun is going to be and the rays will shine through. I have now prepared a mix of my bright orange using the mixture of naples yellow, yellow orange and opera pink and retaining still that white space as I layer my orange. To prevent the top part of my paper from drying, I have went ahead and layered it with an even coat of water once again. And now continuing to work on my horizon area. I'm going ahead with half horizontal strokes starting from right to left of my paper. Now I will rinse my brush and squeeze out all that extra water, Load it with my blue gray. And starting from the left corner of my paper, I go with the slanted strokes, making sure that I don't directly pull the blues into the orange, yellows that we have layered in the sky, but keep some extra white caps in between the transitioning layers. I have started layering the sky with the same slanted strokes, with the light tonal value of mineral violet on top of that blue gray switch to a synthetic size. Number four brush. And I'm going ahead and preparing a color mix of lilac by mixing my opera pink mineral violet and a little bit of white quash or white water color. And then started layering the clouds, random, horizontal and some slanted strokes to create some cauliflower effect. Loading my brush with an intense tone of purple. When you mix ultramarine blue into your mineral valet, you would get this darker tone of purple, layering a darker color on top of a lighter color. When you are going ahead and painting your clouds gives the cloud its depth and three D dimension. I started layering some bright pink copia clouds. But you can see my brush did not have water control. As a result, it was all very smudgy. I switched to a size number four brush, which is from silver silk series. And with just the tip, I'm going ahead with this swirly, rounded strokes. Today I'm having a little hard time controlling the wetness of the paper. I think there must be some problem with the sizing of this sheet of paper that I'm using. You can see the colors are bleeding uncontrollably. It's not that I used to watery paint. Sometimes it happens, but you need to know the solutions for it. The solution is to use a damp brush and take away all that bleeding edges. Since that mineral violet is bleeding into the yellow, it will form a muddy mix, which I don't like for skies. Hence, I will lay those transitioning areas with this opera pink exercise water control over here in case if your paper is giving you problems like mine. But always do exercise water control when you are at this step. You do not want too much of water in your paint brush as well as in your paint mix. So go ahead and do this lifting technique while you do this. Because you need that whiter areas for the sun to shine through. Use a damp brush and lift off the colors that is bleeding into those whiter spaces very smoothly. You do not want to take away the colors very harshly. Now it's time to start painting the rays by the same lifting technique. Every time you go and lift the colors, please rinse your brush in water or dab it dry in tissue paper and then go ahead and do this step. Do not start to worry or panic if your sky is not exactly looking as mine. It of course, takes practice and little understanding of the medium which will come with time. So do not worry, just go ahead, follow my steps and try painting your sky in your own style. I'm still doing this lifting technique to create the sun rays over here. As you can see, the paper is not drying anytime soon, so the paint is continuously bleeding. The clouds at the top part of the sky is starting to dry out and hence, I'm going ahead and adding in some medium tonal values of my mineral violet over here. Just with slanted and random strokes, using just the tip of my brush, the paper out here is still wet enough for me to go and do this step. But if your paper has started to dry out, please refrain from doing this step because you do not want to have some hard edges. But it's absolutely okay in case if you have got some hard edges. It's all about practice and with time you will get better at it now using a clean damp brush size. Number four, I'm going ahead and creating this sun rays towards the left over here, cleaning out those certain bleeds that are still there Now, with the same brush and with a creamy consistency of my mineral valet, I'm going ahead and adding in some darker tones, using very soft, gentle strokes. At this point, my paper is starting to dry out, so I will do this step quickly, but making sure that I do not go overboard with it. This will add little drama to the sky. Now, on my left side, closer to the horizon line, I'm going ahead with a warm color mix using my burnt sienna. And I have switched to a size number zero brush, going ahead and adding a shape of a mountain first. And then we'll go ahead creating some vertical strokes to indicate the growth of foliage or vegetation over there. Now, I tried adding this shape of pines using this size number zero brush, which does not have a very sharp pointed tip. And as a result, I got certain messed up looking pines. But that's absolutely fine. It's okay. Since it is at a distance from us, the shape of the pines will not be a concern to us. I switched to my size number six round brush and adding in mid value tones or burnt sienna just beneath those pines. We'll be using a little watery mix of burnt sienna and then blending it into this area. Time to get started with a distant mountain. Now I'll be first starting with my mineral violet with a pistol shade that is a mixed little bit of white and opera pink into this shade to get it to a lilac shade. Now when you are closer to the sun and painting the mountains, we will be using some warmer tones. You could use either yellow, orange or a mix of burnt sienna. Either way, it's fine. And then when you go further towards your right, we will go and mix our lilac shade to create the distant mountains. Now below this mountains, we will go with a light tonal intensity. But first, I'm going ahead and sketching out the outline of our mountains. We are going ahead with wet on dry technique, because we need the definite shape of our mountains. We are going ahead with the lifting technique, again, to bring out the rays of the sun. Since we had covered it while painting the mountains, you have to do this step quickly before your layer of burnt sienna gets right below that first range of the mountains. I'm going ahead with a little bit more darker value of my purple and filling the range of this mountains. So this is our second layer of mountains. Now using a damp brush, I'm just going to blend in the color smoothly into the background here. I'm also going ahead and layering the paper with an even coat of water. Because now we will start painting our snowy ground. But using that brush will take a longer time, so I switched to my bigger mob brush and creating this flat wash of water on this area. Now we will start to paint the sky reflections, or the sunny reflections on the snowy ground. So I have first use Naples yellow on the wet background that we have just layered. And then using a slight tinge of my medium tonal values of my Opera pink along with it, little purple. And then I'm going ahead and using this mix of my lighter values of ultramarine and mineral valid to create the snowy shadows while keeping some of that whites of our paper still visible. Now using this damn dry tip of my map brush, I'm just smoothly going to blend some of those lines, which I feel have become a little hard on the paper. So I'm just going to lightly blend those strokes back again. Can you see the feathering that has happened near the base of the mountains? With a damn dry tip of my siim per six brush. I'm just smoothly going to blend it all in since our background, the snowy ground is still wet. So doing this step won't be a problem. Now, we will let this area dry and then we will start our part two of the process. 15. Day 5: Polar Sunrise Part 2: Let's continue our painting now till the time our snowy ground dries up. Let's quickly finish creating the shape of the distant pines in the background. This is a totally optional step. Since I wasn't very happy with the shape of my pines, I'm going ahead and doing it all over again, using the same burnt sienna mix and switching to a mini detailing brush with a sharp pointed tip. I'm going ahead and creating the shape of the pines all over again, but this is a totally optional step. If you're happy with your midground pines, please skip this step and move on to the next. I'm almost done creating this pines in the background. Now the next step is to create snow covered pines in our foreground. For that, I'm going ahead and creating this watery mix of ultramarine, blue and mineral violet. Why I'm saying watery is that because we need a very light tonal value of ultramarine and mineral violet to create the shadows of the snow on the pine trees. This is how our mixture is looking right now. Let's watch it on a piece of rough paper and see the tonal value. Yes, this is exactly how I want it. I'm going to show you how we are going to go ahead and create the shape of the pine using just the tip and the toe of the brush. I'm going ahead and creating this foliage like pattern, thinner strokes at the top of the tree. As you come down, we will have some broader strokes like this. Okay, Fanning it out, create broader base and a thinner epix, giving it a cone like shape and inverted cone. Now I'm going to add in darker values and create this needle like shape of pine leaves. Okay? Using just the tip of my brush, maybe this tone isn't very dark enough. I'll go and create some more darker tones. As you keep doing this, you need to be mindful to preserve those white spaces that you have left in between, and the strokes have to go underneath the initial shadows that you have painted. Okay? So this is how we are going to go ahead and create our pines. So this is how it's going to look at the end. Now on top of this lighter shadows, you could go ahead and layer it with white quash. And that's all my shadow mixes all ready. Now let's get started with our Pines. I'm here using my size number six brush, and if you feel that your brush tip is loaded with too much of water, you can soak up all that extra water from the belly using tissue paper or swatch it out on a separate piece of paper to check the total value of your. I'll be going ahead and repeating the same process that I showed you how we will be creating our pints on a scrap piece of paper. I have started with the base first, I will go with the broader strokes at the base. And then when I am approaching the top part of the tree, my tree should be looking thinner and thinner. So that's how I'm going to go ahead. From now on on this snowy ground, we will be painting several pine trees of varying shapes and sizes. The ones which are closest to us will be taller and little broader, but as we keep approaching the horizon distance, the pine trees will just go shorter and shorter. This is because we are applying the concept of linear perspective. Again, if you are not aware of this basic fundamental concepts, I would request you to go check out my class, Atmospheric Spring Landscapes, where I have discussed everything about atmospheric perspective, tonal values, and so on, which are required for a generic landscape painting that will be very helpful for you from now on. I'm going to paint pine trees of varying shapes and sizes like I mentioned earlier. But if you want to not paint so many pine trees on your snowy foe ground, you could go for one big centered pine tree right at the center of the paper giving it. As the focus. So that will become your focus subject for this painting. Okay, So that's another way of varying your landscape from mine. That was just a little idea. If you want to go ahead and try it out, you are welcome to do so or just follow along the steps that I'm showing you out here now, just around the base of the pine trees, I'm going to go ahead and add the shadows. I have used more of the ultramarine into the same watery mix that we had prepared earlier using a dam soft brush. I'm just blending the shadow as you can see. Now, I'll create the shadow over here around this part also. And blend it back smoothly with the help of a damp tip of the brush. Now I'm going ahead and preparing a darker color mix for creating the leaves of a pint. Here I have used my indigo. Instead of indigo, you can also go ahead and use your darkest shade of green, which will be almost closer to that of black. It's totally up to you if you want to add in some green element into this painting. You could go ahead and add the darkest shade of green, any of your permanent green or Hooker's green, and mix it in indigo or any black that you have got, and create your own darker shade of green. Or else directly go ahead with indigo as I'm doing out here. When you are going ahead and creating this darker mix, always make sure that you are making it into a creamy consistency and not too watery. Because too much of watery paint will not give you this result. Of thinner strokes, you will get very thick strokes, you do not want that. Hence, you need to exercise water control in your paint mix as well as in the brush. So in this case, I would recommend you to go for a synthetic round brush of size number one or two so that you can exercise better water control in it using the same calmics. I'm going ahead and adding the leaves of the pines. For all the pines, I'm going to go and do this step. So it's going to be a repetition of the process. But trust me, when you complete this process, you will see how the entire landscape has changed and your snowy pines will look gorgeous. Now comes the final step of adding little white quash to the shadow areas of the snowy pine to create the illusion of the shiny snow, okay? But if you feel that you are happy with how your pines are looking at the moment, you could totally skip this step. This is an optional step. Most of the times this itself looks like the snow covered shadowy pines, but I like to add in certain brighter, white element into it. So I'm just going ahead and covering some of the areas with this mix of guash. You can also add in a little tinge of ultramarine into your white quash mix and it will look something like this. This also looks equally beautiful, dropping in this white quash over here to actually help you dropping in in all the trees. I think I'm done with this tree. That's all about this painting. Once you have finished covering your pines with snow, the entire landscape will change into a wander land, isn't it? It's looking so pretty. We will let the paper get dried out completely, and then we will start peeling off our tapes from all the four sides. With this, we have successfully completed our day five. It looks so gorgeous, isn't it? I will see you again tomorrow with another beautiful project. Until then. By. 16. Day 6: Color Palette: Hey guys, welcome to day six. Let's quickly take a look at the colors required. I will be first watching out my Naples Yellow. Now, Naples yellow has been a constant favorite in all of our projects. This color palette is going to be very similar to that of day five color palette. I will be next watching out my Opera Pink. Now instead of Opera Pink, you could opt to choose and go ahead with neon pink, bright rose, or alycerine crimson. But make sure that it has a red pigment in it instead of purple or violet, as I've already mentioned in the previous color palette sections. Now when you mix all the three colors together, you would get a very nice and soft looking orange. Which is also known as Coral orange or Naples orange. Now when you mix in this color, little bit more of pink, that is your Opera pink. You would have a very nice and sweet pink, which will be very soft and subtle. This pink, we have named it as Coral pink. This pink is one of my favorites and I love to use this pink for most of my winter sunset skies. The next color that I am going to swatch is my mineral valet. Now this mineral valet, you could prepare your own by mixing your warm blues, such as ultramarine or cobalt blue, with your pink reds. That is Alizarin, crimson, crimson, lake, rose, medal, lake with this pigments. If you mix your blues, you would get a shade similar to that of mineral vallet. Now the next color that I'm swatching here is my indigo. Instead of indigo, you could also opt for paints, gray or neutral tint or ivory, black. Up to you. This painting is another of my favorites from the entire Seven Days collection. I really love how we have achieved that background and how soft and beautiful it looks. I cannot wait to get started, so grab your supplies and let's get started. 17. Day 6: Through the Snowy Woods Part 1: Hello my dear friends. Welcome to day six. Now I have already taped down my paper on all four sides using masking tape. Now it's time to sketch out the composition. The composition of this painting is very simple. The background is going to be a blurred, sunlit background in the foreground. There is going to be this mean branch with some dollops of snow accumulated on it. I'm here going ahead and sketching out the main branch on which there will be no deposition. Going with a very light pencil sketch. Always remember to go with light pencil sketch because you do not want your marks to show through your watercolors when you start layering them. I would recommend you guys to first watch this entire process of sketching until I'm done with the sketching part. Then you could pause the screen and go ahead and create the final outline. I am here outlining the other snow filled areas over here. Somewhere in between here two, I'm going ahead and creating an abrupt random shape of snow dollop. And then creating blurred background branch time to move on to a next step. Now we will be using a synthetic brush. And with the damp tip of the synthetic brush, we'll be applying the masking fluid over this. So dollops, these are the areas that we want to preserve. Now in case if you do not have masking fluid with you, but have a thicker masking tape such as two inch masking tape. You could cut out this area of the snow dollops on masking tape and paste it on top of the dollar areas where you want to preserve the whites. Yes, it's going to be a little tricky cutting the masking tape based on the size of your dollar, but it's worth the try. You could also go ahead and try out this method if you do not have masking fluid with you. One important tip, whenever you are using a masking fluid, use a synthetic brush, which you don't use very frequently because masking fluid generally ruins the tips of your brushes. Also, after you're done applying the masking fluid, immediately dip the tip of the brushes into a soapy water in solution, so that the masking fluid can come off easily from the tips of the brushes. I have covered up all the snow areas with the masking fluid. Now we will wait for it to dry completely and then go ahead and start our wet on wet technique. The layer of masking fluid has dried out completely. Now I can go easily with a flat wash of water on my paper applying a nice even wash of water. You can see here, I'm going ahead with vertical and horizontal strokes, ensuring that my entire paper is covered with water, absorbing all of the water drop lids over this masking fluid area with the help of dry tissue. Can you see my paper bulging up? That means my paper is sufficiently wet. Now it's time to go ahead and start a painting process. Dropping in some naples yellow in random areas, but keeping in certain white spaces as well. Keep observing my brush strokes out here. I'm just going ahead and lightly spreading out the Naples yellow. We, I'm leaving certain white spaces in between as I'm going ahead and spreading the layers over the paper. You observe, I'm confining my medium tonal values to the top part. As I'm approaching the bottom half of the paper, I'm going ahead with the lighter tonal values. One quick tip or suggestion when you are going ahead layering your mid tonal values of your Naples yellow. Make sure that you are exercising water control. You do not want the mid tonal values to feed out. Once the paper starts drying, now I'm going ahead and mixing my naples yellow opera pink and yellow orange to form my coral orange and coral pink color, which we have already seen in our color palette section. Now I will go and drop this color mix around my yellow areas, something like this, not entirely covering the yellow, keeping the whites and the yellows intact. There is no definite rule in doing it. Be free and go with very loose strokes, but making sure that you are not covering up the entire whites and the yellows keep it preserved. And when you are approaching the bottom side of the paper, go with more pinker shades, because that is where we will start with our violets. Now I'm going in and adding some water to those areas, my yellows and the whites, so that this areas remain wet for a longer period of time. As well as if you feel that your paper is drying out from the bottom, then you could go ahead and layer the paper one more time with the wet wash. Now, I have started layering my violets. As you can see, I'm using here my mineral violet shade. As I'm layering my darker shades of mineral violet as well as my ultramarine blue, I'm still retaining those white and the yellow spaces in between. If you so observe, when you are reaching for the top part of the paper, make sure that you use more of your mineral violet, which has a little bit more of the pinkish undertone to the areas where you had laid your pinks. So that it will not give you the brown muddy mix. Okay, because yellows react with violet to create this brown muddy mixes, we want to avoid it la, according to the biasness of the colors. Here, the importance of color wheel theory or the color theory will come in very handy if you are someone who are struggling with understanding the color theory. I do have a class on that, you could go refer back to my class on evocative golden hour landscapes, where I have explained about the color theory and the basic concepts of color wheel. The main trick to achieve this blurry background is to work wet on wet. Understand the wetness of your paper and work accordingly. Now it's time to create some magical textures on your wet background. Here I'll be using my water droplet method to create this very nice blurred defect instead of the sprinkling water droplets. You could also go ahead and sprinkle salt in the areas where you feel like to create some starbust effect. I'm going ahead and adding in some more water splatters because I wanted the blooms to come through more prominently. But somehow, the paper is not very cooperative this time. I think this has to do with the sizing of the paper. The last few sheets of paper, I have been facing the problems with the sizing. But anyhow, I hope you get the desired effect. The blooms will come out much more pronounced on the paper. We need to work a little quickly and then go ahead and create the blurred background branches, right? Because we are painting a bag bookede background of a forest, we will be going ahead and creating some branches. That's why we need the paper still to be wet. Now, in case if your paper has started to dry out, do not worry, there is a hack for this. Also go with a very light tonal value of your indigo and start creating the branches that would also be like the branches are blurred into the background. This is another alternative hack in case if your paper has started to dry out. Now when your paper is still wet and you are going with the background blurred branches using your paint mix, then make sure that you're exercising water control or else you will get background branches with bleeds or feathering effect. You do not want that. You want the lines to still have some blurred effect but yet have maintained some shape. So I so dab off all that extra water on tissue paper and then go ahead with medium tonal values of your paint mix because this is going to Get faded. Once it dries, I'll be going ahead and creating some more of this background blood branches using the same color mix and with the help of my liner or rigger brush. Because I like doing this tip with this brush because it gives me control and precision. But feel free to use any brush with a fine pointed tip, whichever you are comfortable with. As I went on creating those branches, my water splattered effect has almost disappeared from the papers. My paper is still wet, so I'm taking my chances and going ahead and creating the water splatters all over again to retain the effect that I want to have it on my paper. This is the best effect that I can get as of now from this paper. I will let it dry and then we will start painting the main branch. While your paper dries, I will rub off all this paint residue over the masking fluid with the help of wet tissue. Now, using a very light tonal value of my indigo, I'm going ahead and going over those blurred lines all over again. This, I'm going to repeat for the entire process, but for now I'm going to stop here and then go ahead and remove the masking fluid. Before removing the masking fluid, make sure that you have gotten rid of the paint residues that you might have. So I'm using an eraser and just scraping of the masking fluid, something like this, peeling it off with the help of my fingers. Now that we have removed the masking fluid, now it's time to go ahead and create our snowy branch. I'm going to use my liner or rigger brush now. You could use any fine pointed round brush of sizes 1.2 to do the same. Now I'm going to draw my stem and connect it to the snow. So this is very simple and easy. You just have to follow the lines, the outline of your snow and just connect it with the main branch. Don't worry about it. If you're not very confident, you can go ahead and create a pencil outline first. But doing this step is also fine with your brush, if only you are confident. But trust me, this is nothing much of a difficult task. You also can do it now to create the branch a little bit more realistic. I'm just going ahead and creating this very thin and short details on the branch. I will continue to add more of this branches or stems to this main branch. Okay, it's all about fine tuning the branch and creating more realistic details. One important thing to note is that when you are doing the foreground, branches go with the intense dark tone of your indigo or black, whichever color you chose. But when you are going ahead with the blurred background branches go with a very light tonal value. You do not want them also to appear very dark on the paper. Then the perspective becomes null and void here, it becomes confused, right? So the background branches should be blurred, while your foreground branches in focus should have this bold and crisp outline. Now to give this branch a little bit more realistic detail, I'm going ahead with certain curves and lines over here to indicate that because of the weight of the snow, the branch has bent over. Okay, so these are the little minute details that bring so much of difference into your painting. For this painting, I went with a very bright and soft background, but if you want to create a little bit more moody feel to this painting, then you could go ahead and create the same using a monochrome color, that is use of single pigment. You could opt for paints, gray, indigo, and so on. Pick a color of your choice, or even you could use just two colors and create a variegated background to give a very beautiful and moody feel to this painting. It's totally up to you with what color combination you want to go ahead. I wanted to go ahead with a bright combination. I went ahead and did this. Now, this part of the painting is all about filling in the details of the branches. Go on, add your branches, but do not go overboard with filling the entire painting with just the branches, leave certain gaps for the background to show through, and that's about it. I will continue to add the branches over here towards the bottom right of my paper too. I'm going to go ahead and add in the branches, but I'm using this light tonal value of mineral violet and ultrabarine blue mix. You can see how light those branches are, right? Go with a very light tonal value of your color mix. I think that's all with adding the branches, I'm happy with how the background is looking right now. I'll see you in the next part where we will start painting and adding details to our snow. 18. Day 6:Through the Snowy Woods Part 2: Let's get started with the snow. Here. I'm going with ton wet technique. Now here, be careful when you are going with weton wet technique. You do not want the water to go out of the boundary of the snow that you have created. Because if the water seeps out, then it will ruin the background. So you need to be extra cautious when you are doing this step. Now as the next step, I'm going ahead and preparing my shadow, Colmix for the snow. I will be using little tinge of opera pink, a slight tonal value of Opera pink followed by my permanent violet, or you could also use your mineral violet. And along with it I will be going ahead and using some of that ultramarine blue. Okay, so this is what exactly will give you the combination with mineral violet. Okay, now I will be going ahead and using this. You can see the tonal value, It's very light. I have not used very Taka tones out here. On top of this, I'm going to layer some ultramarine blue underneath base layer of the snow. I want to have the mineral violet because that's what we have done at the bottom of the paper, right? So it's going to get reflected here. It's all the play of light and shadows and we are painting the shadow on the snow. While I'm layering this color, I will also make sure that I leave certain white space around the edges at the bottom as well as on the top of the snow droplet. Now to make it look smoother, I'm going to use the dam tip of my brush and simply blend in that area. Okay? So it will be something like this and you'll have the beautiful blend over there. You can also darken the colors here at the bottom belly of the snow. I will be going ahead and using my same color mix which we have prepared. Using a little bit more value of ultramarine blue and mineral violet. Just lay it at the bottom of the snow. Okay. Something like this. Since the area is wet, it will automatically start blending it. In case if it is not, you can use the dam tip of the brush and help it to blend. I will be repeating the same process to the snow, which is towards the extreme left of my branch. I'm first here wetting the area. Now, when you are doing this step, be very careful of not to reactivate the darker tones of your indigo over here. Because if you do so, then it might spread uncontrollably, and then it might become a little difficult for you to have a light and a darker contrast. Now as I'm layering my color mix, I'm also following along the shape of the snow and leaving those white top edges okay. And then with a clean, damp tip of the brush, I have all blended in. Now for the bottom blob of snow, I'm going with wet on dry technique. First, you layer your shadow, mix with mid tonal values. Then with a clean, damp brush, you just blend it all in. And then layer your color once more time, let this area get dried a bit. I will be repeating the same process for this part of the snow as well, since the snow direction is facing up. So I'm going to use little bit tones of my Naples yellow mixed with my coral orange mix. And then for the other half, I'm going to use my shadow mix to prevent the muddy color mix. I'm going on top of yellow, little bit of opera pink. And there you can prevent your colors to get that muddy mix. Now using the damp tip of the brush, I will be trying to smoothen out the transitioning colors. Now I will be preparing the slurry of white quash. Make sure that you are not preparing to watery mix but make it creamy consistency or buttery consistency. Okay, now loading my brush size number six, brush with this squash. And using just the tip of my brush, I'm going ahead and creating the snow blobs on top of these branches. My guash paint seems to be a little watery. This will fade out to be dull after it dries. So I will have to go with another layering of guash. So if you are doing this step, just go with a creamy consistency, not this watery consistency of guash. I'm going with random, irregular patterns from just the tip of my brush dots and daps to form the irregular snow line on the branches. These are minute little details of the snow that you are creating. Now if you are going ahead with a monochrome painting of the background, then you could also add in some snowflakes by going and dabbing your gas filled tip on the entire paper to have the snowflakes, which will mean that it is snowing at the moment. Even that can be created since this one is a bright sunlit background. So I don't want to add the snowflakes over here, but instead this blobs of snow. With this step, we are done with our painting. Now we will let the paper to get dried and then we will be peeling out the masking tapes. I found this painting to be very relaxing and soothing, especially creating the background was so much fun, isn't it? I can't wait to see what are the effects that you got for your background. If you are creating along with me, please do upload your projects in the project's gallery resources section. We would all love to see each other's work and appreciate it. We have successfully completed our day six, and with this, we realize that we are coming to an end of our seven day long journey. Tomorrow is the last day for challenge and we will be painting this gorgeous northern lights. See you tomorrow. 19. Day 7: Color Palette: Hello, Hello, welcome to day seven. Today is the last and the final day of our seven day long journey. So let's quickly take a look at the color palette. To start with, I'll be starting to swatch out my cobal green. In the screen here, I have mentioned how you can mix and form your own cobal green shade, followed by mineral volet, then followed by Opera pink, which is a bright neon pink. We will be using the mixture of mineral violet and Opera Pink. The next color that I'm going to swatch is a very bright and beautiful neon green. This is cadmium green light from Shinhan art. Now the same color, you could get it in white nights in the form of green. But you could also mix this color by using sap green and lemon yellow. Next is ultramarine blue, followed by my neutral tint or paints gray. You can use either of your blacks or your paints gray to create the outline of the tree or the mountain textures. Grab your colors, mix it in your palette and let's get ready to get started with a main project. 20. Day 7: Elusive Dancing Polar Lights Part 1: Hello? Hello. Welcome back to day seven. Today is the last and the final day of our seven day challenge. My paper is already taped to the board, and now I'm going to go ahead and start our pencil sketching. I'm going to go ahead and sketch out our horizon line, leaving two thirds of our paper for the sky and the remaining to be our foreground. After we sketch our horizon line, I'm going to go over the horizon line and draw some mountain figures. I'm going ahead with some smaller and taller mountain figures. It's up to your will to switch things up and maybe reverse the sites. That's totally up to you. So this is going to be our basic composition for sky, the mid ground and a foreground. Towards a foreground, we are going to paint some snow arches or the snow land. Okay, Then the main focus element of this painting is going to be our bar tree, which is standing tall that I'm going to sketch out in a while. I would recommend you to first watch through the entire process of sketching. And then you can go ahead and pause the screen when I'm done sketching out the entire composition and then do your own sketching, I will be starting sketching the tree out. Keep observing, I am almost done sketching out our tree. So I'm going to add just a little bit more of the thinner branches or stems. We are going to start with our sky. For the sky, I'm going with my favorite techniques that is wet on wet technique, we are painting a northern light sky. I will be going ahead and using multicolors. For this reason, I will be making sure that my paper stays wet for a longer period of time. Hence, I will go with a uniform layering of water on my paper just to ensure that my paper stays wet for a longer period of time. I will be going ahead with two or more flat washes of water on the sky area, but making sure that there are no lumps or puddles of water forming at any corner. I will be spreading them out evenly and uniformly throughout my sky. Time to add colors to a sky. First, I'll squeeze out all that extra water from the belly of my mop brush, load the tip of my brush with my cobalt green. Now in case if you do not have cobalt green, you can mix your cobalt green by mixing in your cooler shade of blue such as turquoise blue or cerulean blue along with it. Mix din green and then a little bit of white quash. You will have a color similar to this cobalt green. Okay, now as you can see, I went with a swirl. Now using just the tip of my brush and exercising water control, I layered it. You need your colors to remain bright and vibrant. So you need to go with darker tones right now, because as it starts drying out, this is going to get lighter. Now I have switched to my smaller sized brush size number six, round brush and loaded with this cadmium green light color. Using just the tip and the toe, I'm going ahead with this vertical, shorter and longer strokes. If you see, I'm going ahead with some random zigzag strokes. Now this green is a very bright neon green. You could mix this green by mixing a little bit of your sap green and lemon yellow to form this green in case if you do not have this color available with you. Now I'm going ahead and using just the tip of my mop brush re wetting those certain areas of the top part of the skies so that it remains weight for a longer period of time. Now with just the damp, dry tip of my mop brush, I'm going ahead and fanning out the edges. Something like this. With long slanted strokes, I will repeat the same process for the area which is on my left. I will blend the neon green and my cobalt green color together using just the tip of my mop brush with this longer and shorter vertical strokes. And now I'm going to mix my opera pink and mineral violet color together to form this beautiful purple pink. Now using the longer slanted strokes, I'm going to blend it together with very light, gentle strokes. Here I am not using too much of pressure very lightly. I'm going ahead and creating this vertical stroke. The pinks look a little dull, so I will go ahead with little intense tone of pinks all over again. Using the same vertical and slanted strokes. Observe my brush movement. How light and gently. I'm just pulling the colors downwards. Now, while doing this step, I also want to make sure that there are some paper whites visible. I'm going ahead and with just the damp tip of my clean brush, I went ahead and lifted some of the colors. Now at the bottom of my paper, near to the horizon line, I'm going ahead and layering this purple pink shade and blending it with that same layer, using same vertical strokes. I'm going to add in my neutral tint or paints gray color. Make sure that whenever you are pulling the colors downwards, you do not go to and fro back motion. You layered the color in one direction. Only now I will repeat the same step, starting from the bottom of the horizon line. I'm just going ahead and pulling the colors upwards. This is what I'm talking about. You need to go unidirectional with your strokes, not blending it to and fro. Okay, Just using just the tip of my brush. I'm just going ahead and pulling the colors upwards. When I'm starting from the bottom, I want to add a little bit more mid value tones to my cobalt green. Just with flicking the brush, I'm going ahead with some upward strokes, as well as when I reach for the pinks, I'm going ahead with downward strokes, thereby blending the layers together. Now I'll be repeating the same process at this bottom part Also just slightly flicking the colors upwards with the damp tip of the brush. Make sure that you are loading the tip of the brush with indigo. Okay, And slightly flick the colors. This will ensure that you have blended the colors all well together. I'm already loving how the sky has turned out. I will not overwork this area but just let it dry. Now my paper is in semi dry state and with a fluffy hake brush, I'm just going to go ahead and smoothen out the edges of the sky, something like this. Following the same strokes or the patterns in the sky. Every time that you are smoothing the sky, make sure that you rub the tip of the brush on tissue paper or tissue towel. Now we let the sky to get right completely. We will be starting to work with our midground mountains. For that, I'm going to go ahead with a very light tonal wash of my ultramarine blue. Exercising water control, I'm going to go ahead and start layering my ultramarine blue mix on the mountains. I will be going ahead and keeping some of the areas white of the mountains. And using just the tip of my brush, I'm just going to go and create the strokes. Now we get started with a snowy ground. For that, I have created a mix using my ultramarine blue indigo and a little bit of mineral valid In a very light tonal value, I first led the color, and now I'm going to blend it in using a very watery brush. Using this watery tip of my brush, I'm going to go and layer a flat wash of water onto this area, leaving the tree silhouette. Once the bottom half of the paper is wet. Now we will start adding in lighter tonal values of your ultramarine blue with just the tip of your brush. Very nice and smoothly, leaving certain white spaces in between. We will also mix in a little bit of cobalt green because in basically the snow, the sky colors are getting reflected. So we will go ahead and paint the snowy ground with a mixture of all the colors that are there in the sky, leaving certain white gaps in between. I feel there is too much of that ultramarine blue to the left side of the paper. So I'm just going ahead with my damp brush and lifting out certain areas using just the tip of my brush and loading it with a light tonal value mix of my Opera pink mixed with mineral Valid. I'm going ahead and adding this small dotted lines onto our snowy ground. Since the background is still wet, it will all blend in. Make sure that this part you are doing only when your background is wet. Now, towards the bottom half of the paper, I'm going to go ahead and add in some more lighter tonal values of my cobalt green using the same lighter tonal value mix of cobalt crane. I'm going to go ahead and add it to the background mountains over there. Now, once these are added, we will let these areas to get dried, then we will go ahead and add some textures to our mountains. I'm going to extend my mountains on the right and level it to the snowy ground over there by using a mix of my indigo and a lighter tonal value of my ultramarine blue towards the left near the foothills of the mountains. I'm going to go ahead and add some foliage over there with some vertical strokes using the tip of my size number six brush. Now if you see any feathering or bleeding of this indigo or neutral tint, you can go ahead and use the damp tip of a mop brush and lighten or smoothen it out. We will let this areas to get dried a bit and then we will start adding textures to our mountains in our next part. I'll meet you at the next lesson. 21. Day 7: Elusive Dancing Polar Lights Part 2: Time to get started with the mountains. I'll be just going ahead with my size number six brush. And you can see I have exercised water control on the tip of my brush as well as on the paint mix I will be using here. A combination of wet on dry and dry dry technique. Dry dry technique basically means applying your dry paint with your dry brush Using ton right technique. I am first creating the darker patches on the mountains and then followed by tryon right technique. I will create some textures on the mountains. Now I have switched to my dry brush. Here I'm using my synthetic size number four brush from silver cell series loading the tip of my brush with this wet paint. It is not very wet, it's just the freshly paint squeezed out. Okay, and there you can see the dry brush strokes, right? This is because the brush is also, and the paper is also dry. Hence, you will get this dry brush strokes which will enhance the look of the mountains, thereby giving it some textures. I'm going to repeat the same process for the top of the mountains on my left as well. Here, just the on your paper surface. It will automatically create the dry brush strokes. Now towards the base of the mountains, I'm going to go with shorter and taller vertical strokes. This will indicate that there is some growth on the mountains over here. Repeating the same dabbing strokes from my brush and going ahead and filling the outer fringes of the mountain, I will be going and creating the dry brush strokes on the mountains to our left as well. Now here, always make sure that whenever you are picking up your paint on the tip of your brush, make sure to test it out on a separate piece of paper or a scrap piece of paper before you go with your brush tip on the final painting. This will allow you to gauge if really your tip is loaded with wet paint or if the paint is dry using my liner or rigger brush. I'm going ahead and adding in the smaller trees in the distance just near to the horizon line. I'm going to go with different shape and sizes of the trees. I will also be going ahead and creating the small vertical lines. Same thing that we have done for the mountains on our right. This we are just giving the illusion that some kind of growth or vegetation is there on the snowy landmass. But since it is at a distance from us, it is not clearly visible. I'll be going ahead and create one more tree over here. It's up to you if you want to create this one tree or you want to add few more in the backdrop in varying sizes, that's totally left to your imagination. And you will time to get started with the main focus tree on a foreground. I'm here going ahead and preparing a shadow mix first using ultramarine blue and my mineral valid. Observe the tonal value, it's very light and I'm going with watery paint mix over here using the size number six brush. I'm just going and filling out the outline of my tree that we had sketched with pencil earlier. Now towards the left, I will start layering my light tonal value of neutral tint. As you can see, look at the pressure that I'm using on the tip of my brush. I'll be layering some more black paint over here. Starting from the left. What I'm doing here, I'm confining all the darker tones towards the extreme left of this tree and while the right side of the tree is going to be in the lighter shade. Okay, The shadow will be at one end of the tree, whereas the other end, which is facing the light, is going to be in lighter tones. That is exactly what I'm trying to create over here. And this will give the tree so much of character and depth. Now, with my rigger brush, I'm going ahead and creating this small rounded strokes towards the right side of my tree. I'm going ahead just the half of the tree, if you observe, I have added in some more darker values of my black because as the tree was drying up, it was starting to all fade out. I'm going ahead with a little bit more darker tonal values of my black. And doing the same process of having those rounded strokes to create the textures on the tree. Observe my brush strokes out here. I'm going along with the curves of the tree that we have already painted. And just creating those textures, this will add so much of depth and dimension to the tree. Now I have switched to my liner or rigger brush with size number two, liner or rigger brush, and I'm going ahead and creating this thinner branches at the top of this tree. Now it's all about creating this side lateral branches of the tree. When doing this tip, go ahead and use your buttery or creamy consistency of paint mix. Even if you're using a light tonal value, make sure that your tip of the brush is not too watery. If you have too watery brush tip, then you will not be able to get this thin, fine, delicate strokes for your branches. It will be all very thick and will be watery. You do not want that. So please do exercise water control by absorbing all that extra water from the belly of your rigger brush and not from the tip. If the tip is moist, it will help you to go ahead with this fine strokes instead of having some dry patches. Time to get started with the shadow of the tree. Now, since the light coming to the tree is from the right, the shadow will be on the left. Okay. Why I say this? Because we have painted the right side of the tree to be in the lighter tonal values, right? That is where the light is hitting the tree. Left side is the darker side. Hence, I have decided to go with the shadow on the left side for this shadow, the same concept, I'm going ahead with a mix of my ultramarine as well as little bit of indigo with medium tonal value with your shadow mix. And use just the pointed tip of your brush to create the outline of the shadow tree. The left side of the paper feels a little empty, so I'm just going ahead and adding in some more thinner trees here at the backdrop. I think that's enough of the trees that I have added. So we will move on to the next step, which is plattering some stars onto our sky. So I'm covering the tree because we have already painted the tree. Now, you could do this plattering step before you go ahead and paint the tree, or you covered the tree using a scrap piece of paper. And then go ahead and reactivate your white a, make it thick and creamy, not too watery. And just dab the brush with your finger or using another brush, just go ahead and splatter the white quash. Now remember, if your paint mix is too watery, you will get bigger splatters. So if you want to have small, tiny splatters, exercise water control in your paint mix and you will be good to go. Now, did you see the shadow of the tree has tried out to be so much lighter, so I'm just going ahead with a light tonal value of my neutral tint or paints gray and going over the shadow one more time, okay? So this time it will be proper because you can see the intensity over here. You do not want it too dark like that of your tree. It's just the shadow. So this would be fine. My paper has tried already. So let's take off the masking tape. Peel it from all the four sides. Now I always emphasize on this, do this step very gently and slowly. Do not rush into it. You do not want your paper to get ripped. With this, we wrap up our seven day journey. I hope you have enjoyed the class. If you did enjoy the class, please do not forget to leave a constructive review for my class. It would help my class to reach wider audience. Also, I can't wait to see your projects do, upload them in the projects and resources section and we will all take a look and appreciate it. With this, we are wrapping up the class. Thank you all for joining.