Watercolors & Ink: Creating Depth Through Painting From Light to Dark

1. Introduction: When I started painting with watercolors, every art tutorial or art class told me never to start with dark colors. Always paint from light to dark. It felt like the pointing finger. Don't use the dark colors first. You won't be able to correct mistakes later. Leave the white pads. Wide. Watercolors need a lot of planning. Yeah, I started out as a very anxious painter and still sometimes M because of advice like this, it sounds scary and intimidating because it actually is. Mastering light to dark gradient without messing up the colors requires a lot of precision, planning and control over the paint. But who has this in the beginning, right? For my part, I struggled a lot with keeping the white pads wide and I was so afraid to over paint lines that I wasn't supposed to over pain most of the time, I ended up with washed out results because I was too anxious to go darker with my colors. I tried adding the whites with rather cheap acrylic paints after I finished my painting than later, I switch to white gel pens. These methods work but only limited. But when I discovered masking fluid, my whole painting process changed to the better. Hi, I'm Ilya fovea and Illustrator at which, and treasure hunters from the Baltic Sea. I have been working as an illustrator for three years now. And in the beginning of 2021, I went full-time. Since I started, I worked for a government county here in Germany for a youth work campaign and also did follow a projects for the voluntary worker programs, as well as commissions from private clients. Alongside that, I'm constantly working on personal projects that people around the world have purchased postcards, prints, and stickers off in my Etsy shop online. I'm mostly known for my semi realistic animal nature paintings, as well as my art and lifestyle channel on YouTube, where I'll share my everyday life as a full-time artist and many behind the scenes of paintings and other work projects. As of lately, I also gained some attention over on TikTok for my watercolor and line at MMA fan outs. Up until now, I've been drawing and painting almost exclusively traditionally, my works usually done in watercolor, ink, colored pencil, or fine liner, whereas the wet mediums are my favorites in my former watercolor class, watercolor and ink, mastering wet mediums through playing and observing. I took you on an unhinged play session and a river. Metaphorically speaking, exploring different techniques and effects like the wet on wet method and sea salt. In this new class, I'm going to demystify and teach you what painting from light to dark really means. That it isn't as scary and intimidating as it might seem. That masking fluid will play a major role as a tool to take away the fear of making mistakes and set the focus on painting freely. We are going to paint the ocean from two different perspectives. First, you will get to practice using your masking fluid by painting foam on breaking ocean waves. Then when you've got a feeling for it, we'll dive deeper and learn how to effectively paint from light to dark by exploring some peacefully floating moon jellies. Additionally, I'll share my tips and best practices on materials and how to create depth in your paintings without complicated lessons on perspective. And are you hooked? Great. Let's dive in. 2. Your Class Project: For this class project, I invite you to paint alongside with me. You can either copy my process step-by-step, use my guidance as loosely as you like or create something that looks entirely different from what I do. It is fully up to you and your skill level. You are welcome to paint and explore whatever pleases you. Make sure to document your process. Beard with photos are in notes so that you can share it later with me and fellow students of this class in the project gallery. I cannot wait to see what you're coming up with and read about your experience with masking fluid. Especially want to know if it helped you as greatly as it helped me. So let's talk a little about materials and then get to painting. 3. Before We Start (Masking Fluid, Brushes, Paper): I hope you're already hyped and ready to paint. But as I do and all of my classes, I want to give you some tips on materials and preparation practices before starting. Let's begin with the star of the show, masking fluid. If you have never used it before, this section will spare you the frustration that I encountered when I started using it. There are of course, many brands of masking fluid. I only have tried the pink ones so far, so I can't give elaborate reviews, but I have tried different kinds of masking fluid. My favorite art supply store sells a transparent and a colored type of masking fluid. Imagine it like this. Masking fluid is basically liquid rubber that changes color when it dries down. Much like wood glue does, transparent masking fluid dries down. Well, that's transparent. Whereas the colored version, in my case, blue, dress down to be a slightly darker shade, translucency blue shade. That makes sense. The letter is therefore easily identifiable on white paper, and I prefer the colored kind for that exact reason. When I purchased masking fluid for the first time, I bought it in a glass vial. Don't do that unless you are planning on using a lot of it in a short amount of time. The problem with the whale is that it has to stay open the whole time you are using it. This exposes the liquid rubber to air and makes it dry out very fast. It also reacts with daylight, which it is easily exposed to it in a glass fail, I had to throw away my masking fluid because it turns stringy and wasn't usable for my detailed work anymore. There was a shame because even though it is affordable, it isn't cheap, especially not when you only can use half of it. To avoid this, I tried out the packaging that looks like a thick pen tool to game changer. You can either use it like a pen and cover large areas at onetime. Oral squeeze tiny bit on a scrap piece of paper and dip your brush in it. The rubber isn't drying up in this container as fast as it did in the glass veil. And it's also less exposed to sunlight since I store it nip up between other pens now onto brushes. Have you ever had chewing gum stuck in your hair? Yeah. Disgusting, right? Unfortunately, that's exactly what happens to your brushes when you use them with masking fluid. At the beginning, I used old brushes that I had leftover from school from ten years ago. I have them all in this old box. And let me tell you, I've been in need for an old disposable brush more often than I would have ever imagined. Although bristle brushes were fine with masking fluid, they clump up very fast and make it difficult to mask a tiny little details on your paintings. It helps to wipe them on tissue from time to time, but sooner or later the bristles will be so gummed up that you have to throw away your brush. I found a better solution. Not long ago I purchased this little silicon brush. Well, it's not a brush and common sense, but it has the same purpose. It is basically a small cone-shaped piece of silicon on a brush, and I use it for masking fluid only and it has never failed me. The fine tip allows me to mask fine lines and dots. And the cone is suitable for larger areas of my painting. It is easy to clean while it's still wet and even easier when the rubber has dried down. If you don't have all the brushes nor want to purchase a silicon one, toothpick will do two. It's great for small lines and details, but be warned, using a small wooden stick will take forever. Now some words on paper. If you've seen my other watercolor classes, I already talked a bunch about different kinds of paper. This time, I will boil it down to the essentials. The only thing that is important for this class is that your paper is suitable for water. And by that, I mean, a lot of it. The best choice would be any mixed media or watercolor paper that has at least 300 grams per square meter or a 140 LB. This is important because paper that isn't thick enough or has some kind of coating will either dry too fast or never rip apart or wavelike crazy. Also, although masking fluid is designed to be removable easily, make sure to test it on a scrap piece of your paper before you start painting. You really don't want to ruin your creation afterwards. As for paints, you can use whatever watercolors or ink you have. I own some professional watercolors, but for this class, I'm sticking with my trustee Holober and cleaner Skype Tinder and my favorite shade of blue. That concludes all I wanted to say about materials. So let's start painting. Shall we? 4. Work Station & Sketch: Okay, so before we start sketching, I'd thought I'd give you a quick tour of my working station here. First, I have my glass of brushes for watercolors. I use big and fluffy brushes which can hold a lot of water. Then I have two water containers. One of them will be for washing out the brushes and the other one will be two, dilute my inks. This is my painting towel. I use this for wiping my brush is clean and storing them in-between usage. Then I have this little pipette. This comes in handy to get the ink out of the veil because I don't like to get in there with my brushes. It's too dangerous to tip over the whale, so it's easier with the pipette. And I also use it to dilute the ink with water. Here, my silicon brush and my masking fluid pen, my ink. I'm using the var and Klinger five of five. I have two vials of this ink because one of them is almost empty and I just love this color so much that I repurchase it. This is my little mixing pellet, although I'm not going to mix any colors for this class, I will use this to dilute my paints because for obvious reason I wouldn't do that in the variable directly. And lastly, my scrap piece of paper which I will use to test the dilution state of my ink and also put my masking fluid on. And then of course, I have my paper which I taped down to the table. This not only prevents the paper from like moving around and moving out of the frame, which is particularly important for me because I'm filming this class. But also it keeps the paper flat. It doesn't wave as much and it gives your painting a crisp white frame in the end. For this class, I'm using the Honolulu Britannia paper, which has 300 grams per square meter. And this also hot pressed. That means that it doesn't have any structure for this lesson. And to get a feeling for your masking fluid, how it behaves and how you can make details or bigger areas. We're going to paint ocean waves from a bird's perspective. I actually painted this already last year. That's the painting. Last year I did the foam of the waves with a gel pen, which worked out fine. But this time I want to try it with masking fluid. And since this is a very easy to achieve motive, you can't really do anything wrong. And it's a great opportunity to learn how your masking fluid behaves on the paper. But before we start the masking fluid, I'm going to sketch out these wave shapes beforehand because I'm an anxious painter and I like a bit of guidance from pencils. So let's do this. I'm putting down the lines really lightly here. That's it for the sketch. Of course, you can sketch out the phone lines here as well, but I will do this spontaneously with the masking fluid in the next lesson. So let's do this, right. 5. Masking Fluid Exercise: The stick container of masking fluid that I have here invites to just use it as it is because it has a tip. This method is great for covering larger areas. But if you want to do more detailed work, I would advise you to use this scrap piece of paper. And what I do is I put a small blob like hazelnut sized, Not even hey, isn't that size on it and use it as such. So I get the masking fluid from the scrap paper onto my silicone brush and then start using and painting with it. I put it on the right side of my paper because I'm a lefty so I don't want to accidentally dip my hand in it. And with that, I'm now going to start making the foam patterns. Also, I'm working here from right to the left because I'm a lefty. As I said. As you might know from my former watercolor class, I'm going to speed up some parts of these paintings just for the sake of not wasting your time. So this won't be a real-time painting lesson that I think that's not a problem at all. Foam patterns are pretty easy to achieve because they are like round shapes that are connected with each other through like small little blobs. Also about masking fluid. The thinner the masking fluid, the quicker it will dry. Obviously, that also, the thicker it gets, the more frayed the outlines are later. For this particular motif, it doesn't really matter because we don't want a clean cut outline for anything. But if you're masking something that needs clean outlines, you have to be aware of that. Also, as you can see here, I'm not minding having gaps in between my lines that I do. That's also the beauty of this motif of ocean waves. No matter what you do, it will look like foam in the end. There are, aren't really thinks you can do wrong. When your brush or the silicon tip that you have here starts to clump up because the masking fluid, it's drying rounded. I tend to take my scrap piece of paper and just wipe it clean on there so that I have a fresh tip to work with. Also, of course, blob of masking fluid you have on your scrap piece of paper will dry eventually. So I'm dipping in the middle of it because it will dry first on the edges, on the not so thick parts. If that's the case, then use another blob of masking fluid. And if you find that dries too quickly for your liking, then you might work faster or choose a small head blob of masking fluid for the next time. So you can see I'm starting to fade out the foam patterns here in the end. Because of this part here is where the waves broke and here's where the foam already receded. You can also fill in some of the smaller gaps between the foam bubbles. This will give you great and realistic effect in the end. A problem I have is that I tend to make these bubbles very systematically and it will look too. Yeah, How do I call it unreal and staged? That the right word to artificial in the end. So I have to let loose a little more. Nice touch is also to add some droplets in-between. Some random dots masking fluid. If you're putting down very thin lines or areas of masking fluid, be aware that it will be likely that you will move it or remove it with your brush later. So especially with small droplets like I did here, you have to be very, very careful when you over painted. So you can't just go in there and rub your brush over it because that will remove the small little details just so you're aware of this. Okay, I think I'm done. Now, it is very crucial to let everything dry completely. As I said, the thicker the rubber, the longer it will take to dry. I wouldn't advise a blow dryer here to quicken up the process because this is rubber. Instead of drying, it will heat up and it could damage the paper or like color the paper permanently. And yeah, just let this sit for some time. I mean, painting with wet mediums is sitting and waiting half of the time anyways, so yeah. Maybe go for a walk. 6. Painting The Waves One By One: The masking fluid is completely dry when it has turned. This translucent, blue or transparent depending on which kind of masking fluid you use. You can test if it's dry with your finger and tap it slightly. And you will know when it's dry, it's dry, bad when it's not dry completely, it will feel a bit mushy and sometimes also sticks to your finger. I like to test this on my scrap piece of paper masking fluid. If this is dry, then you're painting is definitely dry as well. Also, if you want to correct anything that you did here now, this is the time to do it. You can easily remove some of the lines that you might not like. I will leave it like this. I won't correct anything. But, yeah, the possibility is there. Now for the painting, although this lesson is not necessarily about the light to dark concept that I will teach you later. We can already practiced a little. For my first coat of paint. I'm going to dilute my ink a little bit. Because this ink is very potent and I don't want the painting to be super dark. Just to demonstrate this, I will show you how dark this blue is. Diluted. Really dark. And I don't want to start this dots. I'm going to dilute it a little. It's also good way to multiply the paint your house to work with. The test. Dry, a little lighter and a little bluer than it is here. When I first started painting with this ink, I was a bit afraid that it was too green, but it actually tries down pretty blue. I think I wanted to do alluded a little more just to be on the safe side. Yeah, that's great. So what I like to do is to wet my paper first, especially when I'm painting loosely patterns like this. And instead of wetting all of my paper, I'm going with pattern that I painted. Also, this is a great way to test how much pressure you can apply on top of the masking fluid without removing it. It feels weird to overpay and the masking fluids since it's rubber and your brush kinda sticks to it, but you will get used to It's also made, makes this squeaky sound sometimes can then, right afterwards I'm going in with my ink. And I'm starting here. I will push the paint to the top of my page. Because if you think about it, the part where the wave broke, the water isn't very deep. Further you go back, the water gets deeper and actually overdid it a little with the water. You have too much water on your painting. You can use a clean brush, wet it a little, and then soak up the water from the pitch. C, I'm pushing the darker pigments back to the top of my painting. Now. Wet, I'm going in with a less diluted version of my ink and put the darker color just here on top so that it will bleed towards the not so deep part of the way. Maybe I diluted the ink little too much. Now let's actually working. And just like that, I decided to go in with an diluted ink, put in these little droplets just to give it a bit more texture. Nice. I accidentally over painted this part here. So what I did to not end up with a harsh line, I took some clear water and try to dissolve the harsh life I did there. This happens since this is just an exercise for getting used to painting with masking fluid, it's not that bad. So with this, on the other hand, I don't want to overpay the line. Very dark. That's also why I let the first wave dry before I started painting the next one. Although the masking fluid works kind of like a barrier here, I left some gaps here and there. And through those gaps, the paint would bleed through to the other wave and S. I don't want it. Just realized that I am very hypocritical because in the beginning I said that I won't put my brush directly into the ink veil. Now I did it for the first part of this lesson. But now I'm very aware of that and put some diluted ink into my mixing palette. Now, I let this dry completely. And then I'm going to remove the masking fluid, which is the most exciting process of it all, because only then I see what I have created. 7. Removing The Rubber (Best Practices): So now that my painting is completely dry, They are a few options on how to remove the masking fluid. The first one would be to use an eraser. And you can do this very carefully because you don't want to damage your paper. This works fine. But to be honest, I'm not a huge fan of the razor Method. I most of the time just use my fingers. Like this. I said You have to be careful, but you also have to use a certain force to do this, otherwise, it wouldn't come off. So you need a bit of purchase. On the small edges. I have really dry hands that aren't very oily. So that method with just my finger works actually very fine for me. But if you're a person with sweaty hands or oily fingers, by nature, you can also use tissue wrappings around your finger and do it like this. The only thing with the tissue is that it will rip. Eventually, you have to change your grip on it. That's basically it. The only thing that I haven't figured out yet is how to get rid of all these small little pieces because they are kinda sticky. Behave like glitter. They are everywhere. What you can do is take a dry brush, just use it like a broom and clean up your painting. And that's it for your masking fluid practice. I hope you got the feeling for your masking fluid, how it behaves on your paper, how much you will need and how you can remove it easily. So let's move on to some more complex painting. Shall we? 8. Diving Deeper: Like I did in my other watercolor classes. For this second demonstration, I'm going to dive underneath the water. Okay. What do you have learned until now is how your masking fluid works and how it behaves on your paper. So using it won't bear any surprises anymore. This risk is ticked off. So we can move on to some more complex things. The motif that I'm going to paint for this demonstration requires some more planning, but not too much, don't worry. Actually. I have painted this motif several times already. It's going to be this peaceful floating moon jelly painting. And as you can see, the result will be quite dark. This is the result of, I think, five or more layers of ink in different stages of dilution. And this is the essential light to dark method that every watercolor tutorial is talking about. But let's start at the beginning, shall we? I will start out with a light sketch. As always, you can skip if you like. But as I said multiple times during this class, I'm an anxious painter. So I like to have some pencil guidance. I'm starting out with big round ish, moon jellies. They are really easy to draw because they are just circles with small, not finished circles inside of them. I'm pretty sure that the name moon jelly comes from those unfinished crescent moon like circles inside of them. In German, they are called colon. Colon, which translates directly to ear jellyfish. Because those unfinished circles look like little ears. You can, of course use reference pictures. I bet pinterest has a lot of them. I actually live near the Baltic Coast, So moon jelly are quite common here, and I already filmed them a whole lot. They look so peaceful when they float. But they don't feel really nice. Whales swimming because they're all squishy. As I'm sketching them out, I try to make them flow randomly, which isn't that easy because my brain always tries to draw patterns. I'm trying to focus a cluster of jellyfish on this side of the page and then let the numbers fade out towards this side. Also, this painting is going to have way more depth than the waves painting. We are looking at a three-dimensional space on a two-dimensional surface. And so to create this death and to create the illusion of three-dimensional space, the jellyfish overlap each other. The sizes are varying because some of them are bigger than others, but also the size of them varies, which creates the illusion that some of them are far behind and some of them are nearer to the eye. So you can really go wild with the sizes and shapes like overlapping of individual jellies. This is also going to be a great exercise for creating depth, as I said, because there's no complicated perspective needed. Like you do need when you are drawing a room or something like that. Because it's water, it's just round shapes and darker and lighter spaces. Yeah. I guess that's it. When your sketch is finished, take a photo of it with your phone. Why? I'll explain in just a second. 9. Masking in Stages: Once you've taken a photo of your sketch, you can continue with your masking fluid. I will start with the jellyfish in the foreground. So these are the biggest and most visible to the eye of the onlooker. And yeah, so they will be the brightest. Again, as a lefty, I'm working my way from the right to the left side of my painting, like I did with the foam of the waves. I'm not doing this very precisely. I leave some gaps. I make some thick and some thinner lines just to make it seem really organic. And also a little abstract. I want outline every single jellyfish I sketched here. Because since I want to create the illusion of a three-dimensional space, I'm going to paint these jellies gradually. The further away the jellies, the darker they get. So it is necessary to over paint some of the sketch jellies. And at some point you won't be able to see your sketch anymore because the ink can get quite dark. And that's why we took a photo of it so we can reference it later. If necessary. My masking fluid has already dried up quite a bit. It's very hot in here today. That's why I'm working with small amounts, so I don't have too much waste. Since jellyfish are translucent. I'm going to let them overlap that you can see the outlines of the one that is behind the other one through the one that is more in the foreground. If that makes sense. Painting in some of these lines to indicate that they are dome-shaped and not just flat. So these parts will stay widen the end. Okay, I guess that's it. For the most prominent. Shelley's in the foreground. I would let this dry completely and then go in with the first layer of ink. 10. Painting Light to Dark: Okay, so finally some proper light to dark action. I'm going to start out, it has, the method suggests very lightly, so I'm going to dilute my ink or whole lot. That's really, really light. I think I'm not going to start that light. So I'm adding a little bit more of my ink. Doesn't see much darker. Well, at least darker than this one. And what I realized here is when a diluted too much, then the pink and purple pigments of my ink come through a little too strong. So this is better. I think that's what we can start with. S I did. And many other watercolor paintings. I'm going to wet my paper first very carefully. I'm trying wet the paper but not make it like really, really moist. I don't want puddles to form. So then I take another brush and go over it with my first coat of paint. For this layer, I'm using this square brush because I don't want to put in much texture just now. I just want to have my first layer of color, so to speak. And y naught. I'm going in with this fluffy brush and already add some speckles of darker paint here and there. As you can see, it's still the same color that I mixed, the same grade of dilution of my ink, layering it also darkens it. Okay. I think that is all that my paper can hold right now. So I'm going to let this dry completely and then go in with another layer of masking fluid? Yes. You can use masking fluid on already painted paper provided that your painting is completely dry, otherwise, the masking fluid will rip it part. Since my first code of ink is very light, I can still see my sketch. So I'm going to outline the leftover jellies that I sketched out. If you started out a little darker than I did, You might not see your sketch anymore and that's where you can look at your photo. Okay. All the masking fluid has dried. I will now go in with the second layer of link. Link of ink. Slightly less diluted. So I'm going to add more ink to my mixing pellet here. For the second layer of ink, I'm trying not to over paint everything completely. I want to keep the big jellyfish in the foreground quite light, so I'm trying to surround them. But if I'm going in like this, the ink will leave very harsh edges. So I'm interchanging with water and add some of the undiluted or less diluted in here and there, but also mix it with water here and there. So I get these pretty paint blotches. I would call them. You have to work rather quickly so the harsh edges aren't dry before you could blend them with water. Now the whole paper is wet again. And now I can go in with ink and add some deeper parts here and there. Just as I did with the first layer of ink. I don't really care about these puddles that formed here. I quite like the effect for the result that I'm going for. So yeah. That's the second layer of paint. Ok. That dried beautifully. I really like how the dark ink bloomed here and how it lightened up here. And there's a pretty hard edge here, but I think I can resolve that with the next layer of paint. But now I'm going to go for last round of masking fluid and add just a few more jellyfish. So it will also be very, very small because they are very far away. You can't really see their moon shapes anymore. You can repeat this step as often as you like and as many layers as you would like to paint. And of course, as many layers as your paper can take. I think it was going to be one diluted ink layer and then I will go in with an diluted ink. And that will be it. Another thing that I learned with masking fluid is that you don't want to leave it on the paper for too long, unnecessarily. So I did some paintings where I left it on overnight and it was fine. But on other papers and other paintings that wasn't fine. And the masking fluid had mixed in with the paper. And I destroyed my painting after I tried to remove it. Since I don't want these to be as dark as this one, for example. I'm taking a lot of water, wetting it and then just try to get some of the darker ink from the outside, inside of the masking fluid barrier and that should work out fine. Add some splotches here and there. This is a really loose form of painting with watercolors. I do also stuff where I have a lot of control over the pains that that is a topic for another class. So this time, I won't let this dry completely. And fact, I will go in with an diluted ink right now. And I'm again a hypocrite and will ditch my brush directly into the veil just because I don't want this to dry any further than adding. It's maybe not the best brush for this one. When I'm adding these really dark drops of inherent there was spread because the paper is still wet. And it will give a really cool effect later grade. And that was the last painting step. When this is completely dry, I'm going to remove the masking fluid. To remove the masking fluid of this painting, I'm definitely going to use the tissue method since it's very hot here. I'm a little sweaty. So let's start. You're going to do this very carefully since I softened the paper a lot with all the layers of ink and water. So really don't want to rip my paper. Especially on those areas where I put the masking fluid on already painted paper. Just realized that the tissue method won't work over that long period. I'm trying to very lightly with my fingers. I actually don't like going over painting with my hands like this, but these small bits, so annoying. This is actually done. Now, if you want it to be done, what I like to do is to get a thin brush and paint some details just to create that teeny-tiny bit more depth. And for that, I'm going to go paint some really, really dark round shapes. Those are the jellyfish that are way, way back there. Almost black. You could have done this before removing the masking fluid, of course. But I like to add the details afterwards because then I can see exactly how it will look like. I guess I'm done here. Let's remove the tape together. Shall we? 11. What Do You Think?: Now it is your turn. I cannot wait to see all your beautiful creations with masking fluid and read about your process and experiences with it. Also, if you have any questions about this class, feel free to post them in the discussions, and I'll definitely get back to you. But before you go, please give this class a good review. That not only helps me as the creator, but also other fellow watercolor enthusiast to find this class. Even a thank you for this class in the common section, totally make my day. Make sure to follow me here on Skillshare for more upcoming classes like this, or connect with me on my social media channels. You can find me pretty much everywhere under my name is Leah fovea. And lastly, thank you for taking this class. I hope you learn something new and had a good time. See you on my next one. Bye.