Transcripts
1. Intro: Whenever I travel to a new place, I really enjoy getting out my painting supplies and capturing the essence of that place. Instead of quickly taking a photo and moving on, I'm actually spending time in that place and I'm paying it to all of my senses. It's just an awesome mindfulness exercise and you also develop your art skills. Hi, everyone. My name is [inaudible] and I'm an Illustrator and artist. Much of my work revolves around the natural world. I often travel to different natural locations to document the things that I see and in the past, I've collaborated with the Smithsonian, the National Park Service, the National Audubon Society, and I just love illustrating anything that's related to the natural world. The technique that we will be learning today starts with a pencil sketch, and then we go over it with archival permanent ink. Then the third step is to bring that drawing to life using watercolor. For the first portion of the class, we're going to be talking about how to illustrate a landscape from a reference photo. Then later on I'll actually take you along on an art adventure outdoors. I'll be going to the New River Gorge, which is this incredible, beautiful, iconic location in my home state of West Virginia. You're invited to find your own location to paint from. It doesn't have to be a majestic mountains view, it could just be the park down the street, just anywhere where you want to be still and be present and really soak up the place. This class is for anyone that's interested in becoming more observant and mindful in the outdoors and regardless of your talent or artistic experience. The really cool thing about painting in a sketchbook is that it's just for you, it's a personal documentation of the world around you, so no pressure at all. I'm so glad that you're here and I can't wait to see your interpretation of the places that inspire you.
2. Project Introduction : So let's dive into exactly what today's project will entail. First, I would suggest watching all the videos through and then going back and actually following along, it'll just help you get an overview of what we're going to go into. Your project today is to create a simple landscape painting from a photo or from life. When you're finished with your piece, I'll show you how I like to photograph my work to make it aesthetically pleasing to share with other people and then you can upload the picture of your work to the project gallery section. You could either upload the finished painting that you created from the reference photo or you can upload the painting that you created from life. That way we can comment on each other's work and you can see your classmates where it gets a really fun collaborative experience, so I'm looking forward to seeing your artwork. If you hear any clucking in the background, those are our chickens, so just don't mind them.
3. Your Materials: Now let's talk about the materials that I like to use to paint landscapes. In this brush roll, I have a few different sizes of brushes and I am not attached to any of these particular sizes, but these are ones that just give me a nice variety. These are watercolor brushes. Instead of having any old like acrylic or oil brush, it's really important to get watercolor brushes. Then these are actually all the same pen because I just used them so much but this is an O5 permanent micron pen, which I use for all of my line work. These are nice because they're totally permanent and archival so they won't smear when you add watercolor. Then I always have a couple of sketching pencils just in case one falls off a cliff or something, there's actually one that it's a little bit firmer and one that's a little softer depending on what sketching I want to do but you really only need one pencil. Then I have a pencil sharpener and I have a office eraser for getting rid of my pencil strokes. Then I always have a little bit of paper towel ready in case I make any mistakes. I always have a sketchbook. You can also use loose watercolor paper if that's what you have, just put it in a little folder and that'll work well too but this is a sketchbook that's a nice size for me. Next I have this little palette of homemade watercolors and you can use all sorts of different watercolors for painting from life. I like this one because it's really small and compact. This one also has a lot of nice earth tones and that really helps if you're painting landscapes. Then I just take a little baby food jar with me because I can put a lid on it and then I can fill it with water before I head out on my hike or I can just take my water bottle and fill it with water right when I get there. I'd also recommend using a paint palette for mixing up your colors. When I'm painting outside, I prefer to pack really light, so I don't always use one, but when you can, it definitely helps. That's all that I use.
4. Understanding Composition : Now we're going to talk about how to find a reference photo that is visually pleasing. So there are a few things that you want to think about before you take your reference photo or if you're looking through other photos before you select one to draw and paint, there are few things to think about. The first is focal point. The focal point is the main subject of the landscape. Unless there's one subject, it makes your painting a little harder to have impact. If you have a clear focal point, that's what the viewer is going to immediately see. That'll help strengthen your painting. That brings me to my second point, which is considering the foreground and the background. The foreground is whatever's closest to you, and then background is whatever is behind that. If you look out at a landscape, you'll notice that things that are farther away, like mountains or a forest, are going to be more muted in color and they're also going to be a little blurrier. We want to translate that to our painting so that it really looks like there's this illusion of depth. Then another thing to consider is what's called the rule of thirds. While this may sound technical, it's actually pretty simple. It's just instead of thinking of your page as one big rectangle, it's breaking down your page into a grid. Instead of having your subject centered, which a lot of people tend to do, you create a more dynamic composition by having areas of interests than your landscape fall along that grid. I chose this photo to reference because it has a strong focal point of foreground and background, and it adheres to the rule of thirds. Not all landscape scenes will fit this criteria, but I'd suggest looking for at least a few of these key factors. So now that we've talked a little bit about composition, it's time to begin our pencil sketch.
5. The Sketch: There are a few things that you want to keep in mind when it's time to start your pencil sketch. The first, is that we're going to be erasing all of these lines, so don't get too attached to any of them. Don't worry if you're not very good at sketching things, we're just trying to lay out our painting and your pencil sketches really the time to work out issues with your composition. I'll often sketch out a whole piece and that'll be like, oh shoot, I didn't want to have this thing here. It's not working, and then I'll erase part of it and just rework it. This is where you're just working through your idea, trying to capture roughly what you're seeing, but don't get too attached to making it perfect. I'm noticing that because I'm using vertical reference photo, I want to turn my sketchbook this way. That way, I can really show off the whole tree without cutting anything off. I think the first thing that I want to go ahead and put in, is the little section of grass towards the bottom. Then I want to go ahead and add in my focal point. I'm noticing that this tree is not centered, it's a little bit left of center. You don't need to have a perfectly straight line. Trees are never perfectly straight up and down. Then I'm going to look at the rough shape of this tree. Next, I'm going to add this hill that's back here, and then I'm going to add in this hill that's behind, and then I'm going to take my pencil and I'm going to go back into the tree and add a few more details. I'm not going to go crazy here, but I'm just going to add a little bit more. Then I'm going to make leaf clouds on my tree. Instead of focusing on every single needle and branch, I'm going to make blobs of leaves on my tree. Again, this doesn't need to be exact. We're trying to capture a little bit of what we're seeing, but this is just your interpretation. Cool. There we have our tree sketch. Then I'm going to come down to the foreground and I'm just going to add some nice criss-crossing blowing grasses. Instead of having these blades of grass be perfectly lined up, they're going to be overlapping and going every which way because that's just how grass grows. Grass is very chaotic looking. Next, I think I'm going to add the little evergreens that are coming up this hillside. I'm noticing that while my original shape was a semicircle, there's a bit of a debit here. I'm going to add that. To create tiny evergreens, I just create one center line and then a lot of small horizontal lines. They're small at the top and bigger at the bottom. I'll draw one up here so you can see a little better and then I'll erase it. One central line like this and then start towards the top, and then create lots of little horizontal lines, small at the top and getting bigger as they get toward the bottom of the tree. This will really help to create depth in our painting because the viewer is closest to this big tree, which is our focal point. Then as they look farther away, they're seeing these medium-sized trees. Then really far away in the distance, we have this mountain with just the slightest texture to show that there are trees, even though they're very muted and far away. All of these layers of trees, are going to be really nice to create depth and interest. Cool. Next, I'm going to add just a little hint of these clouds up here. But you don't need to spend a lot of time drawing these in because we're going to mostly develop these clouds using watercolor. Sweet. Now we have our pencil sketch.
6. Adding Ink: Once we have our pencil sketch down, then it's time to use our permanent pen and go in and add our lines. I'm going to start on my tree. I want to start with something that I know will help to ground the drawing. I'm going to start with the central part of the tree. Next, I'm going to start adding those branches that are coming off from the center. I'm going to add short, choppy strokes to allow myself to correct mistakes as I make them and also just to add some interest and variety to my lines. Instead of having one continuous line outlining the whole subject, I have lots of short, choppy strokes. This is really helpful because it allows me to put down marks without worrying about getting it right the first time, so I can easily correct my mistakes. If I have a line that starts to get wonky, I can easily put in another short stroke and remedy that without ruining the whole thing. That takes away some of the stress of adding pen, because a lot of people are worried. Once you put the pen down, it's totally permanent, you can't erase. But if you work with short strokes, then it's not as intimidating. Now that I have those basic branch structures, I'm going to start adding leaves. I'm using lots of little strokes here. I'm going to head over to the grass in the foreground. Like we did with the pencil strokes, I'm just going to add lots of loose crisscrossy energetic lines to show the movement of this field. Next I'm going to add these medium-sized trees that are in this midground area. As I'm looking at my drawing so far, it looks flat. So in order to make it more interesting and more bold, I'm going to start varying my line width. Really all this does is instead of having one line throughout, I am going back over certain parts of my line to create different widths. This will immediately make some of your subject pop out more. I'll often use this technique with areas of my composition that I want to be the focal point. Like if it's the tree that's in the front of my landscape, then I'll go over those lines several times to make it heavier, and that way, people will immediately look at that instead of the background, which also will have pen, but it won't be as thick. A great little tip for drawing or painting tree trunks is that if you make the sides of the trunk darker and leave the center of the trunk lighter, it immediately makes the trunk look a bit more rounded. Now I'm going to each branch, and wherever the branch is leaving that base of the tree, that trunk section, I'm going to make those lines a bit thicker. Anywhere there's a crook in the branches, I'm also going to add a little extra ink and thickness there. I'm going to add a little extra ink and weight to the base of the tree down here, and that'll really help to define it as the focal point. I'm also going to come over here and just fill out this hill a bit between the trees. Now I'm just adding lots of little lines to the tree trunk to add a little texture that hints at there being bark on the tree, but I'm still going to leave the center down the middle of the tree a little bit lighter. Here I'm just revisiting different parts of my sketch to add additional contrast to really build up all the lines and make a really detailed drawing. There we go. That is it for the ink. Now once all of your pen marks are down and you've let them dry for a few seconds, you can go ahead and take your eraser and erase all the pencil strokes because you won't need those anymore. One of my favorite things about this technique, where you start with pen and then you add watercolor over top, is that if you run out of time, you could totally just leave it as a pen and ink drawing, and it would still be really nice. But if you have the time, I really recommend continuing on and adding in watercolor because it'll add a lot of extra interest and vibrancy to your work.
7. Mixing Colors: Now that we have our patenting drawing totally complete, it's time to add watercolor. To start off, I'm going to do a quick color palette exercise to help me better understand the colors that I'm working with. I spend a few minutes really looking at all the colors that I'm seeing in my landscape and then I tried to match what I'm seeing. This is just to practice getting used to mixing up the colors that we'll need to bring our painting to life. Color mixing is all trial and error. I am just playing with different combinations to find colors that roughly match what I'm seeing in my landscape. But I'm not trying to find the exact colors. Sometimes I will pull colors directly from my palate. Like there's a yellow och-re that's part of this palette, and sometimes I'll use that directly from the pan or the tube. But then other times, it's nice to mix multiple colors together to get your own unique variation of that yellow. Then any of these color combinations could be made lighter by just adding more water and letting the white of the paper shine through or they could be made darker by just adding more paint and having a little less water on your brush.
8. First Layer: Now we can get started with painting our landscape. I'm going to get a little water on my brush and I'm going to use my smallest brush, mix up a nice dark brown shade, and I'm going to start with my focal point because that's always the most fun. I'm noticing in this tree that there are a lot of gray blues and gray greens. I'm going to mix up those two shades, and I'm just going to revisit all of these areas of leaf clouds that made up my tree. I'm going to go over these lines with the watercolor, using short choppy strokes like we did with our ink pen. But you'll notice that using this watercolor really immediately makes our drawing turn into a painting by making it nice and bold and vibrant. Our tree is looking pretty good. We have our first layer complete on the tree. A couple tips that I would recommend when you're starting out with your watercolor, is first making sure to let your watercolor dry completely between each layer. This is such a huge factor in having control of your piece. Otherwise, if you start adding in more layers of water color before your first layer is dry, it'll start merging together and becoming brown, and that's when people feel like watercolor is just super hard because they're not letting the layers dry. Next I'm going to take a slightly bigger brush and I'm going to move over to my grass area. I'm going to start off with just a light layer of a springy yellowy green. When this first grass layer is done, I'm going to just go ahead and let that dry and then I'll revisit it later with some other fun grassy colors. With one of my bigger brushes, I'm going to move on to this hill back here. I'm just go ahead and block in that whole hill with a muted cool green color. I'm going to visit the back hill and I'm going to block that section in with this nice blue gray color. Now, it's time for a really fun part, which is painting the sky.
9. Painting the Sky: To paint the sky, I'm going to use my biggest brush and I'm going to really load it up with water. Then, I'm going to put that water down with no color on my brush, all over the background, wherever I want my sky and clouds to be. I'm going to be really careful here not to get this water on these other sections that I was painting just a little bit ago or else it might run. I'm going to mix up my sky color, which is a nice gray blue. Then, I'm going to just add a bunch of this paint all over this sky area. See how when we add this pigment now, it spreads out immediately and that's because we already wetted the surface of the page with water. It's fun to play with that technique. It's called a wet-on-wet technique. I pretty much only use it for skies. Now, it's time to make the cloud. I'm going to take my paper towel and I'm going to bunch up a section of it. Anywhere where I'm seeing clouds in my subject, I'm going to put down my paper towel and just blot up, and immediately, the white of the paper is going to shine through. It looks very much like clouds. This is a really fun quick technique that you can use over and over again to create realistic looking clouds with watercolor. As I'm working on these clouds, I'm noticing that there is this little section of pure blue sky that's shining through. I'm mixing up a brighter blue color and I'm going to go back in and add another layer to show that little gap in the clouds.
10. Adding Layers: Then as these cloud layers dry, I'm going to revisit my foreground and focal point, and I'm going to add more layers to create extra contrast and interest. One of the first things that I'm noticing is that this Back Mountain looks super flat. I'm going to mix up a blue-gray and I'm going to come along this ridge and add a layer of paint to just create a little bit more contrast there. The next I'm going to focus on the tree, the big tree. I'm going to mix up a dark blue and a dark brown color to make a super dark rich gray. That's my favorite shadow color combination. I'm going to come over to these branches and just add another layer of that shade in order to make it really look 3D. I'm really going to try to build up my layers with this painting. Because a key to having a really beautiful, interesting looking watercolor painting is to have one part of your painting be as light as possible and one part of your painting be as dark as possible. Then another thing that I really like to keep in mind as I'm adding watercolor, is to leave one part of your painting paper white if you can. Any highlight areas that are like a really light blue or light yellow, I just leave those paper white because you can't go in with white liter. That's not how watercolor works. You have to let that paper shine through. I'll create a lot of dimension and contrast by having one part or a few parts of my painting being really dark and then a few parts being really light. Here I'm just continuing to revisit all of the different parts of my painting to make it look like it has more depth. If you're painting, isn't looking like mine right now, don't worry about it at all because you'll have your own unique style that you will bring to your paintings. Now I'm going to come back to the sky. I touched it and I know that it's totally dry and as these layers are drying, they get lighter and lighter. You just have to come back to them. I'm going to mix up a nice bright blue to revisit this section of the sky. I really want this sky to stand out because it's a big part of why I chose this reference photo so I want it to look super cool. Now to imitate the sunlight that's reflecting around the clouds, I'm going to add a little bit of light yellow throughout the sky. One of my favorite secret tips for landscape painting is to add some dark crimson red towards the end of your painting to the shadow areas. Even though we didn't include that red in the palette, I'm gonna go ahead and add it now. The human eye loves the color red, so adding a little bit of it throughout your painting, even if you don't really see it in the reference photo, makes it a little more dynamic. This is an example of a time when you can use your creative freedom. Because I didn't really see red in my reference photo, but I'm adding it anyway because I wanted to. Once you start incorporating little touches of red and you're painting, you need to try to carry it throughout the whole painting so that the eye doesn't only look at the sections of the painting that have the red and there we go. Our painting is complete.
11. PART 2: Art Adventure! : Now that we've practiced with creating landscape paintings from a reference photo, we're going to take it outside. Now that I found a location where I want to paint, I'll sit there and I'll get out all my supplies, and I like to do a couple simple mindfulness activities to help me be familiarized with my surroundings. The first one that I like to do is to create a simple color swatch palette in my sketchbook. Really, all I'm doing here is looking around, looking closely at the scenery around me and thinking about all of the colors that I'm noticing. Then using my paints, I try to replicate the colors that I'm seeing on my page and I'm not going to use that paint for my actual painting, but I'm just getting used to mixing up those colors and I'm starting to look more closely at what I'm seeing. Then a second exercise that I like to quickly do right next to the page where I'm going to do my landscape painting is actually a little journaling exercise. I like to think about different senses that I might normally ignore and in that moment when I'm in that inspiring landscape, I want to really tune into those senses. Starting with sites, right now I see the new river corridors and I see a huge bridge of river that's flowing down through it. Then the sounds that I'm hearing include the river in the canyon, and I hear some traffic from the bridge, lots and lots of bird sounds. For smells, I smell dirt and just smells like the morning. Tastes. I taste the beautiful aftertaste of a Lara bar, granola bar. Feeling I think in this spot because it's a point that's like jutting out and overlooking the whole Canyon. You just feel like you're flying.
12. Composition from Life: [Music] There are a few differences between painting from a reference photo and painting from life. A couple of those include changes to lighting. When you take a picture, everything is frozen in time and it's a little bit easier to work from that, but when you're working from life, things are changing constantly. I would recommend not getting too attached to the lighting. I don't need specific point and maybe leaving that for one of the last steps, and focusing on what will be the same throughout the painting process. Focusing on your focal point, focusing on developing all the shapes that compose that landscape. Then towards the end, that's when I really look at the lighting. Towards the end, I'll try to quickly put in the clouds and quickly put in the highlight areas. It's easy to get overwhelmed by everything that you're seeing in all of the details. In order to help with that, I use my hands to visualize the boundaries of my page. This helps me to not be overwhelmed by everything that's happening around me, but instead to limit what I'm going to be putting in my sketchbook to just one section of what I'm seeing. [Music]
13. Sketch from Life : For this scene, my focal point is this awesome bridge, and I am going to start by putting in this nice straight line, which is part of the reason that I picked this scene is because it had a pretty straight line. I try to line up the top of the bridge with the top of the page, and I wanted to just capture the shape of the bridge, which is almost like a bow tie. It's really narrow in the middle and then it gets wider and wider and wider, and then it looks like it's growing out of the hills on either side. I decided to center the bridge because it is my focal point and there are so many other things that are happening that are off centered that it's not like it's too symmetrical to have the bridge front-and-center. Now we add the ink.
14. Adding Ink and Watercolor: Now, I have my sketch and I'm going to start with my ink pen. I'll make the bridge nice and detailed, and then with the background, I can pick and choose which elements I want to outline and which ones I just want to have the simple wash. I like that with this landscape, the bridge is totally man-made and symmetrical and like perfect lines, and then with the rest of the landscape, everything is loose and the winding river and the rolling hills. Then I'm noticing a whole bunch of vertical little lines that are coming across this top section of the bridge. Oh my gosh, there's a big bird, watch out. Claire, what if they attack? Claire, they're coming close. We just had a mild interruption by a family vultures. It's a little scary but very, very cool. That's one of the benefits of painting outdoors because you have literally no idea what's going to happen next. So now, I'm going to go in with all of the detail, and I'm just going to go really quickly with these. Now, I'm going to make this bridge 3D, and I do that simply by varying my line weight. I want the underside of this arch to look like it's standing out from the mountains behind it. I'm just going to add a thicker line underneath that bottom line. Anything that you really want to stand out in your drawing, look for the shadow area and then add these thick lines. Then next, I'm going to add the trees. You can see I'm adding little like dots as I go because that immediately adds some texture. Typically, I want to add more detail in the foreground, and then I'm going to just add the tiniest hint of detail and with pen to these back sections. Now, I'm going to start adding that varied aligned weight throughout the hills to make them all look distinct and three-dimensional. Every little dip in these areas that I've already sketched out, I'm just adding a big blob of ink. I think that I want to zoom on down to the river, and the river has a very rocky edge all along here. I think a lot of people are afraid to paint or draw bodies of water because they're moving. But trying to look at a body of water as though it was frozen in time really helps. You did not get overwhelmed by all of the action that's happening. I found that, and a lot of situations adding these horizontal lines immediately gives people the impression that it's water. Then in the same way that we made the trees look a little bit more three-dimensional by adding very line. We're going to do the same thing for the rocks. For the last step before I add the watercolor, I want to add some little sprays of lines to make it look extra realistic and to make it look like they're just trees everywhere, which there are. Now, we're ready for watercolor. Now, that we have the pen and ink drawing completely done, it's time to add water color. I'm going to start out with the most prominent color that I'm seeing, which is green. There's tons of green in this scene. Don't worry about this layer like at all because we're going to go over with several layers. Now that my whole first of green is dry, I'm going to start on the blue layer, and I'm going to add a lot of water to this blue. But I'm going to be pretty careful with this and try not to let the blue touch the green. Now, I'm looking for the blue-green of the rivers, so I'm going to mix this blue and this green together. I'm going to start on the bridge. The bridge is just this nice red rusty color, which I'm really excited about. I'm using my smallest brush. Now, my blue is totally dry, so I'm going to add a little bit of blue-green right at the top of the mountains. This is a trick with mountain escapes that for some reason if you add a little bit of a darker shade along the top and it makes it look a little more realistic. Now, my green is totally dry, which is awesome. I'm going to revisit those really dark shadow areas that we went over with the ink before. Notice how when I'm painting these trees, I'm trying to add a lot of texture and variation just in the way that I'm adding the color, like picking out my brush a lot and dragging and all around because trees are bumpy and full of life. I want that to be reflected in the brush strokes. Next I'm going to add some yellow. Adding yellow simulates the way that the sun is hitting the tops of the trees. Around the edges of the river, I'm noticing that it's a little bit darker, the waters a little bit darker where it's meeting the rocks. I'm going to reflect that. I feel like there are some things missing, and one of them is that I want to spread out the red that's in the bridge throughout the rest of my painting. I'm going to mix up a dark blue and brown and green combo. I'm going to come back here to this shadow and strengthen. Hopefully, this will tie back together because it's looking a little bit re-frame now. It's looking like most of my paintings do at some point where it just like, is this going to turn out? But the nice thing about sketchbook painting is that it's totally fine if it doesn't turn out. I might be a little bit discouraging because you want it to look as beautiful as the scene that you're seeing in real life. But it will still captured the essence of the place, and you will have spent way longer enjoying the view than you would have if you had simply taken a picture and moved along. I just want to add a slight hint of clouds because I don't want to overpower the rest of this craziness. It's getting very busy. I'm going to first add water to all the parts, and then I'm going to just barely dip my brush into my blue, and then I'm going to just drop it on there and see how it immediately spreads. Then I'm going to take my paper towel and block up the areas where I want it to look like there are clouds. With that, I think I'm going to call it a day, so I'm going to sign my name.
15. Photographing Your Painting: My painting is complete. Now I want to take a really nice photo of my sketchbook to upload to the project gallery, which I'd encourage you to do as well. So here's some tips for creating a really nice little scene around your sketchbook when it's time to take that photo. I'm choosing this background because the green grass makes a nice contrast to the white sketchbook, and I really like these yellow leaves too because it sets off the yellows in the painting. I'm also including a few of my materials. I play with the tools a little bit until everything is arranged in a way that I like. Then I take the photo from directly above so that there aren't any weird angles on the sketchbook.
16. Final Thoughts: Thank you so much for taking this class with me. I love landscape painting and it really does help me to feel more mindful in the outdoors. I hope that it does the same for you as well. Make sure to take a photo of your work. I would love to see what you make and I'm sure all of your classmates will as well, so you can upload that to the project gallery. Thanks again for joining me and happy painting.
Rosalie Haizlett, Nature Illustrator | Top Teacher
