Watercolour Expressions Inspired By Autumn

1. Introduction: Hello, and welcome to my new class, Watercolor Expressions Inspired by Autumn. My name is Im Ran. I'm a graphic designer and illustrator, and I absolutely love the season of autumn, where the wonderful colors on the leaves, and on the trees emerging and turning into these gorgeous, warm, oranges, yellows, vibrant reds, sepia browns. It's so inspirational. As you go for your daily walks, or your daily chores, looking at the environment and seeing how these beautiful colors change. I find it super inspirational, and that's the reason I've done this class so that you can be inspired and enjoy wonderful colors and bring them into your artwork using watercolor. So in this class, we're going to start off by going through some simple exercises for you to follow. We're going to be looking at how watercolor can be applied in a few different ways to produce different outcomes and different effects. We're also going to look at how we can use inking mediums that can be added to add some detail. But do remember, this class is not about detail. This class is about being loose in your watercolors. So you want to express yourself nice and easily. We don't want to get bogged down with doing so many details and getting stressed. We don't. We want to relax with our water colors, and we enjoy this process of just getting those colors down and watching the magic happen on our paper. So what we're going to be doing is looking at how these colors so merge into each other by just using a simple primary color palette. And then we're going to start doing some exercises to see how ink and how water color affects each other and what type of results we can get. Then we're going to be doing a beautiful, step by step sketch and painting that will get you all warmed up and ready for your class project. This class is all about relaxing with water colors and being inspired by those beautiful autumn colors that we see, especially in this part of the season, where you've got these gorgeous greens and warm oranges and yellows. Just take a stroll outside, especially if you're watching this at autumn time, have a look at those beautiful trees and those leaves, and see the magic of autumn create these gorgeous colors and get inspired. Come back home and start dim in the class. So grab yourself a nice drink, get yourself a nice cake. Sit back. Relax and don't stress and get ready for the adventure of watercolor expressions being inspired by Autumn. And I'll see you on the next one. 2. Class Project: One, welcome back. I know you're super excited to get on with the class. So let's start off by talking about what your class project is going to be all about. So it's really simple. This structure of the class is going to be divided into doing some simple exercises, and then we're going to be doing a full sketch and painting that will be step by step. Once you've completed all of these little lessons within this class, then you're going to be ready to jump straight into your class project, where you're going to be able to express yourselves within watercolors by using the fantastic, gorgeous colors of autumn. And then once you've completed all of this, then you can just take some beautiful pictures of your lovely artwork, whether it be the exercises, full sketch or your gorgeous class project, and do post it onto the class project gallery so that we can all view your beautiful work, and it can inspire us and motivate us to produce gorgeous artwork in watercolor expressions. And that's all it is. Follow the structure of the class, follow the lessons, have a go at all the exercises, do the full sketch, do your class project, and you're done. So without further ado, let's now move on to the next one and get ready for our class supplies. So you don't have to wait any longer. Might be able to take a nice little coffee break before you start. I think I'm going to take a coffee break. I think I'm going to have a nice Americano, nice, gorgeous aromatic bean roast. So I'm going to have my Americano. I'm sure you're going to get yourself a really nice drink, maybe even a little treat, so we can start the class together. Let's not waste any time and get started with the class. 3. Class Supplies: Oh, that's a nice one that. Nice caramel style t. Oh, puts me right in the mood of some beautiful autumn colors. Okay, Dk, welcome back. Let me just put me t to the side. Now we're going to start off the class by going through the class supplies that you're going to need for this class in order to follow along. The exercises. So if I bring your attention to the screen now, we've got our surface, and this is our watercolor surface that we're going to use throughout this class. Now, the surface that I use is something that I like, particularly because of the quality and the grain of the surface. Now, you may have your own preferred choice of watercolor paper, and that's absolutely fine. But generally, for this class, you're going to be needing some form of watercolor paper. So watercolor paper comes in either standard watercolor sheets, in glued pads, or in actual, watercolor blocks, or it might come in the form of an actual sketchbook. So whichever watercolor paper that you have, just grab hold of that and get it ready and prepped up for the fantastic, exciting, lovely lessons that we're going to do in this class. So on the screen here, I've got a watercolor block, and this is the brand that I'd like to use. This is arches. It's a French brand, and the texture on this is absolutely fantastic. I prefer using the blocks, especially when I'm doing exercises, so I don't have to bother taping the corners down. So I've got this block over here in the cool press, and I'm also going to be using the rough paper. Again, this is by arches, again, 100% cotton, like you can see over here, and it's a slightly bigger pad, and you've got the individual sheets, if I just flick it through, and this one has a gorgeous, lovely, thick grain paper on top of it. So the grain is much more coarse than was on the cold press. But again, I'll show you this when I come to using this in the lessons. So the first main item was the surface and the watercolor paper. Now that we've got that, we can move on to the second and probably the most important item, and that is the watercolors. Let's move on to that one next. Okay, Dk, so watercolor, again, is an essential part of this class because we're going to be doing these beautiful designs using watercolor. And you can have any type of watercolor that you have available to you. I personally use the tubes myself. So what I tend to do is, I use watercolor tubes, and I empty out them in the pants that I have in my spare kind of palettes of watercolor like this Daniel Smith one over here. So you can see, I've got some empty wells over here, and what I tend to do is my favorite colors. I like. I tend to just empty them out into the little well so that I have my own personal preference and selected watercolors that are ready to use. So whichever watercolor you want to use, whether they're professional watercolors in the tubes or from the pans, or whether they're just student grade, it makes no difference for this class. Just get them ready and set so that you don't have anything to worry about. And again, over here, I've got this nice little set that contains a nice range of colors. This one is by Windsor and Newton. This is one that I like to use on my travels. Really nice and convenient, with a nice little swatch that I've made with a travel brush. So if you've got this one, that's an absolute great choice. And then over here, I've got Daniel Smith set over here. These are the professional colors by Daniel Smith. Very highly pigmented. I use these quite a lot. I also have other sets of watercolors that I use generally, and again, it's all on your personal preference. But for this class particularly, I'm just going to concentrate on the three primary colors. So we have lovely yellow, and this particular one that I've got here is new Gamboge by Daniel Smith, which is in this well down here. And then I've got a lovely red by Windsor Newton, and this one's called Windsor red Fantastic red. That one, that one is this here. And then I've got a beautiful blue over here. This one is by Windsor and Newton again, part of their professional colors, and this is called Windsor Blue. It's a red shade of that blue. So I've got these three lovely primary colors here. They're the tones that I like to use, and I'm going to use these in most of the exercises that we go through in the class. So get your water colors ready, get your watercolor paper ready, and let's move on to their next item now, and that is lovely brushy brushes. So let's look at them next. Okay, so for this class, I'm going to be just using my favorite round brush. This one is by silver black velvet, and it's the number eight brush. This is a lovely round, versatile brush. It's all synthetic. I'm not going to use any natural hair brushes for this class, although I do like to use my natural hair brushes. But for this particular class, Not going to be going into things in too much detail. It's very loose and expressive work that we're going to indulge in, so we don't really need very expensive brushes for that, whatever brush you're comfortable with, whether it's a round brush or maybe a flat brush like this. Just get them prepped up, get them cleaned, and it's ready to go. And then I've got this nice big one over here. This one is a number 1 ". It's just a synthetic studio brush like this, nice soft bristles on it, and this one is going to be used mainly to just spread around the water on our page. And I think that's a great brush. So if you have a nice big brush that covers a lot of kind of bristles on the page with a nice wide range of coverage. Then grab hold of that brush, but if you haven't, absolutely fine, you only need one brush for this class. Get your favorite brush out and get it all cleaned up. Let's move on now to the next few items that we're going to need for the class. So now what we've got on the screen here, we've got a nice little pencil, so you need any pencil. It makes no difference what grade the pencil is. Grab hold of a pencil to do with it a light sketch. Then I've got this fantastic little washi tapes. This why washi tape that we've got brilliant tool for watercolor creates gorgeous clean edges on your artwork. Very, very useful. If you have washi tape, then grab hold of some washi tape, and then let's now move on to more of the exciting tools, which are all about inking. Let's move on to them ones next. Dokey, now we've got some really interesting tools on the table here. Let's start off with what we've got here. This is a funky looking pen. I bet you're thinking, what type of pen is this? It doesn't even look like a pen? It looks like maybe, I don't know, a toy or something or just a fidget spinner or something like that. I assure you this is a pen, and it's one of my recent favorite pens. It's a beautiful fine liner style with a nice soft tip, and it's refillable. So I like to use this one as a fine liner. This is my fine liner pen. So if you have any type of fine liner, whether it just be standard fine liners like these that have got on the side let's just grab hold of these. So maybe you have some of these micron pens. You've got a uni pin fine liner. Then grab hold of these. If you have them, these are great to use. Again, I like to use this fancy one because I just love the feel and expression of it. So I'm going to be using this, but again, there's no difference between this and any other fine liner. So we just need a tool that we can do nice fine line work on to add a little bit of detail. And the color that I'm going to be using is a black, bluish shade. So whichever color you have, a nice dark color will be fantastic. So that's the fine liner. I'll move the other ones to the side. Then I've got a nice, funky little fountain pen. So if you've seen my class on fountain pens, you would have seen this funny little pen, which is the eco sport pen. This is a beautiful little mobile fountain pen. So again, if you've got a fountain pen with a nice thick nib on it, I think the nib on this one is a double broad nib. This is a fantastic tool to use to do some inking work. And again, the thicker the nib with a fountain pen, the more expressive you can get. So if you're comfortable using fountain pens, then maybe get your fountain pen all inked up and ready. I've just got a standard black ink in that one, so I'm just going to put that one to the side now. Then I've got a lovely, brushy brush pens. These are part of the fine line range from pigma micron. This is the brush pens. This is just a nice, fantastic little brush pen that can come up with beautiful, beautiful, expressive marks, which is going to be fantastic for this class. This color that I've got here, this is just a brownish sepia type color. If you have some brush pens laying around, then get hold of them, these are going to be fantastic for the class. Then finally, my favorite tool, and that is the dip pens. So I've got a couple of dip pens here. These are really used for calligraphy. These are very flexible nibs that I've got down here, but again, this is something that you may or may not have. If you do have it, it would be useful to get these ready and all cleaned up. And then obviously, you're going to be needing some ink in. So I've got my favorite ink over here. So whatever ink you have, If you have dip pens, then just get them ready for this class because these are the main tools that I like to ink with, especially with expressive watercolors. So that's pretty much it for the inking tools. Let's now just move on to some extra bits that you may need, and let's have a look at them next. Okay, Dk, what we've got now is we've got two jars of water. Yes, with water color, you're always advised to use two jars of water. At the beginning, when I started so many years ago, I only ever bothered with one jar of water. And then I soon came to my senses because I realized that you always need a clean brush with clean water to stop muddying those colors. So grab yourself two jars or two cups and fill them up with clean water so that you're ready to go. And that's about it. Let's have a look at all of our beautiful lovely materials all at once. Kiki, so we've got all our lovely materials and surfaced here ready for the class. And you know what? I've forgotten about one of the other main items that you need, and that is a mixing palette. I totally forgot about that because I got so excited by looking at my inks and my lovely pens and fine liners. So this is another item that we need. I've just got this flat mixing palette over here, whichever palette you have, if you have a little bowl, ceramic bowl, plastic bowl, whatever type of mixing palette you have, get that ready and all cleaned up, so we definitely need a mixing palette. And if you haven't specifically got a mixing palette, then you can just use the side of your watercolor pack, which usually has some indented little sections to it that you can do for mixing your colors because we will be doing some color mixing for one of the exercises of this class. So that's about it for the class supplies, get your class supplies ready, get a nice little warm have a sip sip if you like, just to get yourself revitalized and re energized and all excited, and we can move on now to the exciting stuff and start the exercises of the class. I'll see you on the next one. 4. Exercise Set-up: Okay, welcome back, Let's now set up our lovely paper so that we can do the next couple of exercises within the class. For this, what I'm going to do is, I'm going to use my arches, watercolor rough paper, with a rough texture on. I'm going to go ahead and I'm just going to cut this into smaller shapes so that we don't have too much wastage when we're doing the exercises. I suggest you do this too. But if you don't want to do this, you can just work on one page and just work different areas of your page so that you maximize that space of watercolor paper because we don't want any waste waste because we don't want to waste beautiful art materials, because we want to look after our environment. Yes, we do. So let's look after our environment and be good, be green, and let's make us start on this. What I'm going to do with this is, I'm just going to go ahead and I'm going to take out a sheet out of my glued pad like this. Then I can move this to the side, and then all I'm going to do is, I'm just going to go ahead and I'm going to divide up this page into smaller pieces. We've got nice, six lovely little kind of shapes over here, rectangles that we can use for all our exercises. So what I'm going to do next is, I'm just going to quickly cut this up into those beautiful shapes. Again, if you don't want to do this, then just work on the sheets, maybe draw out this grid that I've got here, so you've got four of the same and two of the same so that we can start working on these wonderful exercises. Let's quickly get this one all cut like and look at that, just like magic. My pieces are all cut up perfectly. Well, they're not too perfect. And you see I'm a little bit out of line over there, not to worry about my rubbish cutting skills, but that's it. So we've got ourselves some nice little rectangle shapes. What I'm going to do is group these ones up, so I've got four that are roughly the same size, put that to one side, and then I've got two that are similar in size. So we have a nice set. So let's just move these out of the way, and we can now start on exercise number one, and we're going to be looking at color and how color works with watercolors and how we can produce these beautiful effects and what type of results we can achieve. Let's move on to that one. Next. 5. Exercise 1 - Colour Mix: K, welcome back. Let's now bring our attention onto the screen and start off with exercise number one with our lovely colors and watercolor paper. So you can see on the screen, I've got my nice little square attached to my table so it won't move around. I've just attached it with a bit of blue tack, so that doesn't go all over the place while I'm showing you this lovely technique. So that one is attached on to the table, beautiful little piece of paper there, and I've got my palette over here for the mixing. So let's start. Let's maybe get some of our colors ready. So what I'm going to do is, I'm going to use my primary colors, like I mentioned in the previous lesson. And I'm just going to start adding in a little bit of these primary colors onto my palette there. So just like that, adding it on. Now, again, if you guys have not got these tubes and you've just got these in your sets, then just follow along using the colors that you have within your pants, and this one's not coming out. So come on, I actually need to replenish. I need to go to the art store and get some more because I've been doing so much of this watercolor, lovely, lovely kind of exercises on a day to day basis, and I'm running out of the lovely watercolor paints. So let's get that one out. You can see it's a little bit. Dry that one, isn't it? That's no good. No, it isn't, but we'll sort it out. So let's just add a bit of bluey blue over here. So we've got our lovely primary colors there ready to go. And now, what I'm going to do is, I'm just going to grab hold of my round brush. So I've got my silver round brush over here. And I'm just going to add a little bit of water into this, so just bring this into the water jar, so I'm going to use this jar for maybe clean. Water. So just like that, I'm going to get a good drench on that. So we've got this nicely wetted on the brush. And then what I'm going to do is, I'm going to go in over here on my paper, and I'm going to actually mix on the palette first, then go onto the paper. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to take a little bit of this yellow, bring it down over here. And just get a bit of yellow onto that palette to make it a nice, movable solution. So just like this, making it really nice and intense. And then just getting my bristles into that water there, just like so. And now, what I'm going to do is, I'm just going to go ahead and I'm just going to create a nice little swatch coming down like this, using the color that we made on the palette. So just like this, creating this lovely little swatch of color. So if you're following along, just do what I'm doing here, create that swatch, ensure that you've got a nice bit of mixture that you're bringing along. Now, your results might be different from mine, depending on the paper that you're using, because this is a rough watercolor paper. This tends to be very absorbent, and the paint usually dries up a lot faster on this compared to if you're using just hot pressed or just normal coal pressed watercolor paper. So depending on the paper and the humidity of your room, It will make a difference on the drying times of these. But you can see I've just added that lovely swatch of color onto the dry paper. This is the wet on dry technique that we're looking at. I'm just gently just bringing that color into the area that I've got the water solution so that it doesn't dry out. Again, just picking that in over there. And then what I'm going to do is, I'm going to go ahead with the same brush, I'm not going to clean it. I'm just going to bring in a little bit of red and just bring it down here, and you can see that with just that solution, that yellow solution that was already on the brush, it's kind of creating a second color from that red. Now what I'm going to do is, I'm just going to bring this in and just mix it up over here. So you can see we've got a nice mixy mix of the yellow and the red, and then I'm just going to drag a little bit more down over here. So that we can see we're getting a lovely lovely mixture of color from yellow and red, and you know what happens when you get yellow and red? Yes, you get orange orange. Beautiful autumn color that orange. That's what the focus is on again. These gorgeous autumn warm colors that we see on the leaves changing from the green to the oranges, yellow, reds, and those beautiful browns, fantastic stuff. That's what the inspiration is from using this color palette. Just like that, I've got a bit of orange there. I'm going to clean me brush. Now I'm going to add in some clean water from my other jar, and now I'm just going to add in a little bit of red over here underneath, so we've got the pure red. So we've got the yellow and red, orange there, and then I've got the pure red over here. You can see that's very nice and vibrant, very saturated, beautiful color. And then what I'm going to do is, I'm just going to go ahead and add this red onto The edge of this yellow. Now, you can see that the yellow is quite damp now on the paper. The paper is still wet to touch, but it's quite damp. So all I'm doing is adding that yellow on, give me brush a cleany clean. And then I'm going to pick some of that orange that we mixed onto the actual palette, and I'm just going to dab that over here. You can see we've got this orange now It's merging into that red. Now it's becoming a wet on wet technique where we've got wet paint, going into the wet, and that's spreading and creating a beautiful blend. Again, I'm going to pick a bit more of that orange that I created, maybe bring in a little bit more yellow, and just like this, I'm going to add it in between the colors where they meet. You can see we've got this beautiful gorgeous blend. This is the mixing on the palette and then bringing it in onto the paper. And you can see we've got this gorgeous gradation and change in color from the red orange all the way into the yellow. Fantastic, that isn't it? And remember, this was the wet on dry technique initially with the yellow. Then we went in wet on wet with the colors blending already onto that damp yellow. So let's give our brusher cleanly clean. Now, we're just going to see if this is still a bit wet. Now this is dried out from the bottom. What I'm going to do is I'm going to go ahead and just add in maybe a little bit more yellow, so I'll just get some clean yellow over here. I'm going to make sure that I've got a bit more yellow over here so that we've got a nice bit of damp wet solution there. Again, we just intensified it by adding that yellow, cleaning me brush. Then what I'm going to do is, I'm going to get that yellow, bring it across over here. And then just drag some of this blue into it. Now, you know what happens with blue and yellow? What do we get? We get greeny green, one of my all time favorite colors green. I'm wearing green today as well. We've got a nice bit of a green shade over there. Just like before, what I'm going to do is, I'm just going to go in, and I'm going to get some of that blue, which is very nice and saturated and vibrant. I'm just going to add that onto the corner. Of this just like that. Now you can see, Look at that. Look at that beautiful color blending in, looking absolutely fantastic, but we don't want to put too much of that in. Otherwise, it will overpower. So clean me brush, clean me clean on the brush, and then We're going to go in and add in our yellow. We've got yellow here, bring it back into that greeny mixture that we created, maybe bring in some from here, a little bit more of the blue. Then what we're going to do is we're going to encourage this blend. We're going to add in that onto this level over here. Onto that next level, you can see it's very nice and subtle, is blending into the yellow now. Then we're going to bring it across where they both meet just like we did with the red. And orange and look at that fantastic. Look at those greens. Then all I'm going to do is just keep dabbing it on top of where the edge of that blue is, so that it blends in beautifully. Look at that fantastic stuff. Clean the brushy brush and then maybe bring in a bit more of the yellow from here. We don't want it to be too mixed up and then just add in some more yellow in the middle, so that it starts to merge up with that lovely blue and green, and then just keep dabbing all the way to the bottom over here. And you can see, we've got this gorgeous gorgeous blend of color from yellow in the middle to orangey red on top. Then we've got yellow from yellow and greeny blue. Fantastic stuff. So cleaning me brush on that one. What we're going to do next is we're going to let that dry naturally. And then we're going to do a couple more samples over here to see what effects we can get. So I'm going to start with the yellow again. Pick up a little bit of that yellow. Make sure it's pure yellow. We don't want the mixed color at this moment. So with the pure yellow, It's going to go in, I'm going to draw in maybe just a boxy box shape over here. Doesn't need to be super neat. Just keep it nice and symmetrical as you can, don't worry if your kind of color goes all over the place. We don't want to stress. We want to chill and relax. That's what it's all about. Improve your well being with beautiful beautiful, vibrant water color. Again, I'm going to create another kind square swatch over here, just off that beautiful new gamboge color from Daniel Smith. Fantastic color that. And that's looking great. Now what I'm going to do is clean me brush. Then I'm going to go in and I'm going to pick up some red from here. I'm just going to pick this red up direct. This was un mixed red, so it was just pure red, and I'm just going to drop it in in the middle. Just like this. Can you see dropping it in the middle, then again, pick a bit more red to make it a bit more saturated, and then I'm going to drop a little.in the middle just like that. Look at that fantastic. So clean me brush, and then we're going to do the same with the bluey blue. So we've got this blue over here, just bring in a little bit more water just onto the blue, and then just drop that in over there. Look at that. Look at that magic happening over there. And then again, bring in a bit more saturated blue onto the tip of the brush and then just drop that in in the middle woe. Magic stuff of that, isn't it? Okay, so I'm just going to clean me brush and put me brush to a side, and we can just wash this dry for about half an hour. I'm only joking. I'm not going to make you sit down and wash it dry. I'm going to let this dry. I might even bring out me hair dryer, and then I've got another excuse to have another cup of tea because this one's finished, and I think I'm going to go get myself another one. I'll see you once that dried out. 6. Exercise 1 - Results: Okay, k. So now you can see that we have got a beautiful dried out, perfectly dried out swatch of magical color that's going on over here. So, you can see over here, if be analyzed, we've got this beautiful blend of that beautiful new gambo yellow color in the middle, and it blends beautifully into that red that winds are red. And then on the opposite side, we've got the beautiful windsor blue over here, the red shade, Windsor blue, that color there, and then it blends into that yellow, creating this fantastic green shade. And again, the shade on top is going from yellow, orange to red. And you can see that it's already bringing out that autumn vibe. So with the swatches over here, where we just did a little dab of that red onto it. It kind of spread out. It actually looks like a leaf in itself, doesn't it? It looks like a sycamore leaf. So look at that fantastic stuff. And then with the blue, we've got this beautiful spread of color, and that was the first color exercise where we mixed a little bit on the palette and added the color onto the dry surface of our watercolor paper to see what effects we could come up with. And this is what we're going to utilize in the full sketch and full watercolor painting that we do to get you ready for your class project. That was exercise number one of color. Let's now move on to a slightly different technique on color again and move on to exercise number two. 7. Exercise 2 - Mix on Paper: Oh, I did spend quite a bit of time on this one, didn't I? Yeah, well, I can see them details coming out. I wonder what fine liner I used for that. What did I even use a fine liner? I don't know. Hang on a minute. It was probably a dip pen. Oh, that's very interesting. Probably have a couple more sips of this lovely coffee. Oh, that's a good one. That's a gorgeous one. What a great copy of that. So I think we need to start the class again now. Oh, Okay, welcome back. Hello, we, welcome back. I was just getting lost in thought of what beautiful tools I used to do my doodles that are on the wall. And let's get ourself back into the mood of the class. So what we did in the first exercise was, if you see on the screen over here, we did the lovely wet on dry method. Then we went in wet and wet to create these beautiful, lovely little patterns with our watercolors. And what we're going to do now is, we're going to do exercise two, which is going to be similar, but different. So if we can grab our attention and bring it back onto the screen, you can see, I'll just move me coffee out of the way over here. And we've got a really nice, lovely sheet of paper like we did before, the same size. And what I'm going to do is, I'm going to grab hold of my big flat, wide brush over here. So if you don't have a big flat wide brush like this, then just use whichever brush you've got. It makes no difference. This is only to increase the speed of what I'm doing so that I'm not here all day trying to do these techniques, but if you do have one of these, then that's absolutely great grab hold of it. And all I'm going to do is, I'm going to get some clean water. And I'm just going to dip this into clean water. I'm just going to give it a little bit of a shake to make sure that there's no element of any colored pigment on there because we want to have clean water for this part. And I'm going to get a nice drench on that brush, so you can see over here, it's nicely drenched. Move that water out of the way. And then all I'm going to do is, I'm just going to very gently, just add a nice strip of water over here. And then I'm going to add a nice strip of water over here. Like a little boxy box, and then again over here. No too sure whether you can see that on the screen, but you'll be able to find out when we move on to the next step. So we've got these nice little kind of patches of water, effectively, they're resembling what we had here. So a nice strip of water there representing this, then two little boxes of water over there representing that. Now, we need to work quickly on this before it dries out. So I'm just going to get my normal round brush, mix it into a bit of water over here. And then I'm going to grab hold of my lovely yellow, which is slightly dried out now because I've left it for a while, so just adding in a nice bit of pigment on there. Then all I'm going to do is, I'm just going to drop that pigment into the water area over here. And I can see that the water is fairly damp, so it's not really taking too much of that pigment, but not to worry. This is just another technique where you have water on the paper before you apply the actual color itself. So, again, I'm taking a bit more of that yellow, just dabbing it on like this so that it spreads within the bounds of the water that we put on. And I might actually just go ahead, add a bit more water with me brush onto these squares over here. Nice bit of water there, nice bit of water water there. And then again, all I'm going to do is just grab hold of my lovely yellow, and you can see, we're getting much more of a spread over there. So just like this, spreading that on, keeping it wet on wet. And that's really the main difference between this technique and the one previous. We're just having a nice wet on wet effect over here to make sure we've got a decent amount of liquid on our paper before we start doing the color blending. And again, I'm just adding as much as I want to to make sure it's nice and saturated. And you can see, with this method, you don't really have to worry too much about spreading it because the water that's already there is kind of effectively doing that for you. So this is a great technique that I like to use, and is going to give a cleany cleaner on me brush. And now I'm going to grab hold of my red, so I've got a bit of red over there. Just bring it down into this area here, what we did before, just pure red over here, and let's just drop it in. I'm going to drop it in at the top over here like this, like we did before. Let that blend in. And then I'm going to drop the red straight into the middle over here like we did previously and a little bit more lovely. And then let's go to the blue, cleaning cleaning on the brush. Add some water onto that blue to activate it. Beautiful, stuff that. And then just at the bottom over here, look at that. Gorgeous stuff that, isn't it? Beautiful. Wet on wet technique, fabulous. So just like this, a nice bit of wet and wet. And what I'm going to do is I'm just going to leave that and let that dry. I'm not going to try encouraging blend to be perfect between each color. I just want to highlight this technique to you. So when we come to doing this in our full painting or in your class project, if you want to do this, it's just a great way to vary the visual effects of your colors when you come to putting your beautiful autumn artwork together. So let's let this dry on its own, not encourage it at all. And I think I might take a few more sippy sips of me coffee while we wait for that to dry. So I'll see you want that dried up. O k, OK, welcome back. Now you can see that we've got a lovely dry swatch of color over here and look at them results. They look absolutely fantastic, don't they? We've got this beautiful, soft kind of coliflower style blend going on over there. And that's purely because we had the water on first, and then we added more wet solution on, and we didn't try to encourage it by blending in between the lines like we did on the first exercise. So if we look at the side by side, I'll just grab hold of this now. Dk, so, you can see now we've got them side by side. This was exercise one over here. This was exercise two, and you can see that the results are very different. You get these beautiful, different effects. And this is what I wanted to highlight to you by doing this exercise to see the lovely effects and kind of differences we can get in varying the application methods. So with exercise one, we've got this really nice, controlled blend of color, and then with exercise two, it's nice and random. Creates this beautiful organic type of look. And you'll notice that you find a lot of these type of beautiful kind of frilly organic colors blending into each other in autumn leaves, and that's what it was all about. So give this a try exercise one and exercise two. Vary the color, maybe add more saturation of the red or the blue to see what type of results you get. And it will be a nice kind of warm up to your lovely class project. So two exercises done. Let's now move on to the third and final color exercise that we're going to do, and that is all about using your limited color palette to come up with different shades and beautiful warm colors of autumn. So let's quickly move on to that one next. 8. Exercise 3 - Colours: Welcome back. Let's now start on exercise three, which is all about producing various lovely autumn shade colors from the limited colors that we have, which are our standard primary colors. Let's get our attention back to the screen now, and we've got our lovely card here, watercolor paper, which was that bigger rectangle shapes. If you remember, we cut these smaller shapes, and we cut a nice bigger shape there, so I'm using my bigger shape over there. What I'm going to do here is, I'm just going to grab hold of my round rush again. Give it a nice little cleanly clean. What we're going to do is we're going to create a nice little matrix of colors that we have our three colors. I'm going to start off with a yellow. I'm going to work on this pretty fast because I don't want it to dry out so that we can see what results we can quickly achieve with this. I've got my yellows here, maybe start off with a nice bit of yellow. That's just pure yellow, a nice little round swatch of yellow, doesn't have to be perfect, throw in a little swatch. Then again, another one over here. And then maybe again another two or three across, depending how many you can fit. So just make sure you've got a nice bit of pigment there, and that's what I'm going to do here. So we've starting with the yellow swatch first because yellow again is one of the main colors of autumn, especially when the leaves start turning from the standard green. You just get this beautiful kind of yellowing of color, this golden yellow color, and then you get the oranges and the browns and all sorts of lovely lovely shades of kind of orangey red. Do a quick clean on the brush, while these are wet, let's now add some red to this. I'm just going to go ahead and I'm going to take maybe a little bit of red like this. I'm going to keep it nice and watery, so keep it nice and watery over here, little bit of red on the brush, and then I'm just going to add it to this bottom part of this swatch. Just like that, adding in a bit of red and keeping it halfway. Then what I'm going to do is I'm going to clean me brush, then I'm going to go in, and I'm going to add in that same red again over here using that watery kind of solution that I may, don't want it to be too thick. Then again, adding in that same amount of red over here. Beautiful stuff, and then you guessed it. What I'm going to do is, I'm going to go ahead and do the same again, a bit more water over here from the red water solution so that we have a similar look across all three of these swatches. What we've got here now is we've got a pure yellow, then we've got some red added to it on the three swatches over here. What we're going to do is we're going to start slowly intensifying the amount of red, and then what that will do is give us an idea of how much red we need to add to our yellow depending on the type of red that you're using to create a deeper shade of orange red. You can see over here, it's already blending in to the wet on wet. So we've got this kind of nice muted orange color here. Then what we've got here is a slightly darker orange, and then this is more red. What I'm going to do is, I'm just going to add in a little bit more red now. From my area here on my palette. I'm just going to pick up the red from the actual pigment itself rather than the watery solution. We've got a nice bit of red on the brush over here like you can see, and then just going to drop that red into the middle. Couple of drops in the middle. We've got the most saturated one here, and then maybe just one drop in the middle over there. We've effectively got a gradient going from yellow all the way to the darkest mixture of yellow and red. Now, we'll wait until that dries, let's just do a cleaning cleaning on the brush. Next, what we're going to do is, what I'm going to do is, I'm going to do exactly the same. On this next row, I'm going to just add in my four little swatches of yellow, so I'll quickly go ahead and do that. Ki Dokey, I've got my force watches of yellow again, and yet, you guessed it. I'm going to bring in some of this blue now, so I'm going to use that watery solution from the blue that I previously had, just the water solution not going directly into the paint. I'm just going to add a dot of it at the bottom over there. And again, pick up some, add a.in the bottom over here. Pick up some more again. Add that.in the bottom so it can spread into the yellow. Give a clean on me brush. And then what I'm going to do is, I'm going to pick some from the actual pigment here. If you can see on the right hand side, you can see I'm picking from the pigment purely from that pigment, so I've got a lot of pure pigment on there. Then I'm going to go in and do a little.in the middle like this. You can see how sharp that is, a couple of dots there, and maybe just one dot over there. Now, I'm going to wait until that dries out and what'll happen is, it'll spread nicely, and it'll give me that nice variation. So on the first kind of row that we've got, we've got the yellow with the red added, then on the second, it's a yellow with a blue added to create these lovely greens and shades of autumn greens that start merging into those beautiful warm yellow tones, brown golden tones. And then what I'm going to do again is, I'm going to go ahead and do the same at the bottom. I'm going to add in those yellows again, so let's quickly do that while the paint is wet. Okay, ok, now, what I'm going to do is, I'm just going to grab hold of my red, so just put it into the water part of the mixture over here like this. And I'm just going to add that red at the bottom here like I did before. A couple of dots there, a couple of dots here, a couple of dots over here. And then what I'm going to do is quickly clean me brush, get a nice clean on the brush. Then I'm going to go into that blue solution, where that watery part of the blue solution is, and then I'm going to add a dot on the top. Over here. And then what that'll do is, that'll mix these colors in really nicely, and we'll be able to see what effect we get when we have all these colors on a page. So while this magic happens, when while it dries, I think I might go for a little treat. I might fancy maybe a slice of cheesecake, but I think I better wait and have my dinner first, otherwise, it's not going to be good as it. We don't want to have too much sugar. No, it's not good for us. Keep it just as a dessert. So I'll probably take a little break and relax, and I'll see you once this is dried. Okay, k, welcome. Back. So if we have a look at this green, you can see magically everything's dried up so quickly for you, but for me, it took quite a while. But actually, little secret. I use the hair dryer to dry it up, and you can do that too if you don't want to wait for maybe half an hour to an hour for your watercolors to dry. So let's have a look at these gorgeous results. You can see on the top row, we've got this beautiful lovely stuff over here. You can see, I'll just show you with my brush. We've got this yellow. Then we've got this lovely orange, muted color, then we've got a darker orange, and then a darker orange. The darkest is on the right. Same with the lovely blue shades, the yellow. Then we've got this kind of tealish earthy type green coming up over here. Then it's more teal, more bluish shade there, and then we've got this beautiful blue and greenish look on the end. Then at the bottom row, we've got the yellow, and we've got the mixture of the blue and the red forming this gorgeous autumn type of shape over here, looks like a leaf that, doesn't it? Gorgeous merging of the orange and the green together with the yellow as a base. Again, slightly intensifying it towards the middle and the right. But the results are completely random, and that's where the magic of it all starts, where you start adding in these colors and letting them dry on their own accord so you can produce these beautiful, random, organic, lovely effects. And that's what autumn is all about, these gorgeous emerging colors, golden warm colors, and I absolutely love it. So give this a go with the colors that you have and maybe your colors in terms of the shades of yellow and red and blue will be different and you get different results. You may get cooler colors or more warmer colors, and that's absolutely fine. Whichever colors you have, try it out. If you have two shades of yellow. For example, I'll just get this on the screen over here, get me color palette on the screen. Like with the Windsor and Newton colors like I mentioned, in the earlier lesson, you get a different amount of color shades. You usually get two of each, you usually get two yellows. You get a nice cool yellow and a warm yellow. A nice orange, red shade there and a pinkish red shade, and then two different shades of blue. If you have this palette, why not try doing this exercise with each one of those colors? That'd be absolutely fantastic. You don't have to just use three color primary colors. You can even go ahead and start mixing with any other colors that you have to produce a various range spectrum of beautiful colors. Use the greens that you've got as well. The idea of using three colors initially is really to get you thinking about how colors merge together, and that's what the theme of autumn is all about. Merging from turning from green to yellow to orange, red, and then eventually to brown. That's a nice highlight of what's to come in the class. Do you give this a go, try it out with the various colors that you have and see what results you get. I think now it is definitely time for something to eat, something to feed the appetite, and then we can recollect our lovely exercises and move on to the next one. I'll see you on the next one. 9. Exercise 4 - Sequence: Oh, I think I need to change this one over here. This one's been here since my last class. Let's maybe change it to some lovely autumn colors. Yes, I think I'm going to do that for the next one. So, welcome back. That was me again, just thinking about my artwork on the wall. I want to give it a bit of a refresh with the beautiful autumn work that we do. Might go ahead and actually do that. So let's get back to the class. Now, what we're going to do is exercise four. So if we get our attention back onto the screen, we've got the last two of our lovely little cutouts that we did of our watercolor paper. So we've got same size next to each other. And what I've done is I've just kind of like taped it down. And on the right hand side, I've got me palette, I've put me yellow, red, and I've got my blue, the same colors that we were using. I've just added them on. You can see them on the screen as we we And what we're going to do in this exercises. It's going to be a nice and quick one. We're going to work on both of these sheets at the same time to demonstrate two different kind of sequences of adding paint and coming up with some design side of our illustrations in autumn colors. So firstly, what we need to do is grab yourself a pencil, so I've got my pencil here. And what I'm going to do now is, I'm just going to roughly draw out a shape of a leaf really nice and rough like this. I'm not using any reference. I'm just using this kind of basic shape. Effectively looks like a tear drop, doesn't it? A drop of water, but it's actually meant to represent a leaf. So just like that, really nice and easy. And then I'm going to do exactly the same on this one. Just try keeping it to the similar bounds and symmetry of that first one. If you're doing this, don't worry if your kind of shape is going all funny or all wonky. It makes no difference. This is just to demonstrate two slightly different sequences and techniques to apply our watercolor. So at done, you can see they're roughly about the same. Then what I'm going to do is, I should just get the pencil back on the side. Then I'm going to quickly go ahead, and I'm going to get my big flat brush that I did to add the water on to grab hold of a nice clean brush, a big one if you have it, and I'm just going to drench it in some water over here, so just like I did before. Just a nice drench of water on there, and I'm just going to move that to the side. Then what I'm going to do is on the right one, I'm going to go ahead, and I'm just going to add water to the whole sheet. So over the drawing, all the way to the edges, I'm going to go into it again with water and just make sure I've got a nice spread going all the way across. I don't want to do it on this one. I just want to keep it on the right one. So just like that, maybe aother layer of water. I want it nicely drenched with water. All the way across. If it goes on your table or all over the place, don't worry about it. If you want to tape down your piece of paper with your kind of washy tape, you can go ahead and do that. I've actually used blue tack to go ahead and just get it fixed in position on my table. So if you have blue tack, then that's a good one to use as well for this exercise. So I'm just going to get that jar out of the way. Now I want to work fairly quickly. So what I'm gonna do is, I'm gonna wet me brush, me round brush, I've got me round brush here. And I'm gonna go into the yellow straight away like this. With that yellow, let's get a nice bit of solution there. Maybe add a bit more water to this, get a nice bit of solution, pick up some pigment. And then all I'm going to do is, I'm just going to drop that into the top left hand corner like this. Maybe drop a bit over here, pick up some more pigment, maybe drop some down here. Go over the drawing that we did, randomly place this pigment in three or four different places, just give it a little dibby dab like that. Clean the brush, keep it nice and clean. Let's now move on to the red color. So again, adding a bit of water to the red color just like this, get the water really nice and in a movable motion with the pigment, just like that and we brush. Adding in a couple of red spots here, and maybe a couple here, let them merge up with the water, add a little bit more of that red. And look at that. It's looking gorgeous. That. Isn't it a beautiful, abstract, gorgeous bit of watercolor wet on wet technique. So go to clean me brush again. And yes, let's just pick up some blue here, some nice, beautiful blue and I'm splashing it all over the place, aren't I? Not being very neat, but it doesn't matter. Let's continue a bit of blue there. Look at that gorgeous, vibrant blue over there. And let's let that mix up, clean me brush again. Then what I'm going to do is, I'm going to go back into the yellow, now my yellow is actually muddying up and becoming green, but that's absolutely fine. Just adding a few more dots of that maybe green color that we've just created. Now clean your brush again. That's why it's really important to clean your brush and then go into a jar. Of normal water, as well. Oh, and I think I've run out of water. Let me go get some more water. I think my jars dry and empty. Let's go get some more water. Now I've got myself some clean water. Wasn't prepared. Then was I? No, I wasn't. So let's just give a clean and some clean water. Now my brushes nice and clean. I'm going to pick up some more of that yellow now, get some yellow on the brush there. And then I'm gonna start Throwing in that yellow in the different areas where the colors meet up. And you can see what's happening is. We're getting this beautiful blend of color from yellow to red, this bit of orange being formed, some greenish tones going over here. And then again, with that same brush, I'm just dabbing over the color to mute it out a little bit, to get it blending. And just like that, I want you to just throw in that water color, wet on wet technique nice and quickly onto your paper. I'm going to clean me brush again. Now I want to get some clean water on there. And the key really is to use your yellow as much as you can, because yellow is effectively the base color for our autumn kind of theme. And yellow is what will really merge all these colors together. So I'm just adding them on like this and making sure that they melt away really nicely on my beautiful little sheet and cut out of watercolor paper. And again, clean me brush. Nice bit of clean water on that. Let's now add some lovely, vibrant red. So let's throw in that red, and look at that. Look, we're getting that beautiful, lovely magical effect. Maybe throw in a little bit here. And now our brush is kind of mixing with the yellow and red creating this gorgeous warm orange tone over here, this brownish golden orange, just like that, I want you to throw it on. It doesn't have to be specific like I'm doing it in certain areas, do it randomly, but just ensure that you have a nice bit of color that's kind of vibrant on each area of your sheet. That's it for that one. What we're going to do is we're going to let that one dry, and as that dries, we're going to use our colors on the one on the left, so I'm just going to make sure I've got a nice cleanly clean brush. So with me brush now, I'm going to just going to pick up some pure yellow now onto me round brush, and let's focus now on this one. And on this one, we're not going to bother with the background. We're just going to go straight in with our brush. So this is effectively that technique that we did in exercise one, the wet on dry method initially. So we're just putting that first kind of underlayer of this beautiful, gorgeous gamboge yellow or whatever yellow color that you have, just to kind of wet the shape and get the outline and undertone ready for us to start bringing in those beautiful blends of color. So just like this, I'm just filling that in. And as that's wet, give me brush it clean. Nice clean brush. Let's now bring in the red. So nice bit of red there. I'm going to drop that red in in the top. Look at that. Beautiful stuff. And now that red's go to stay within the bounds of the yellow, and it won't spill over to the background. And even if by mistake, you accidently spill it over to the background. Don't worry at all. Don't want you to stress. These are just small exercises to show you the different visual effects that we can get with watercolor. So just carry on. Keep adding those wherever you like. I'm preferring to do it on the top left hand side. And then going to clean me brush. And then a bit clean water on the brush, and they're going to pick up me blue over here, me gorgeous blue. I'm just going to drop that blue in the bottom corner here. Look at that. Fantastic, that isn't it? Drop that blue over there, and then maybe pick up a bit more blue. From the actual spot of color there and then just add it there so we get that effect like we did in the previous exercise. So just like this, I'm going to let that spread, and I've got quite a lot of pigment there. I don't want it to waste, so I'm just going to spread it out on the palette over here. Just like that, we want to kind of preserve our pigment and not do any wastage so we can use it again. So let's just wait until these dry away, and then we can come back to them. So as we're waiting, we can go for another drink. My might even go get myself a nice milkshake, actually, yet. I Do fancy a milkshake. So I'm going to get myself a nice chocolate milkshake with some lovely hazel nuts, and I'm going to sit back and I'm going to enjoy this drying process. So I'll see you once that done. Oh, oh, that was good. That was a good one. That nice, bit of chocolate milkshake. I think I've finished every last Ah, sip. Okay, put that to the side. Let's get back to the class, kiki, so we've got a nice little dry on our watercolor, lovely, little kind of abstract like artwork. You can see over here, it's nice and dry to the touch. It's blended in really nicely. You've got some kind of, like, cool flowering going on here and there. And that's kind of what I wanted to achieve. And if you've not already guessed it, the one on the right is effectively the background layer. So we've got this background layer, and then the one on the left, we've got this beautiful blend of the actual shape. So what we're going to do now is, we're just going to get hold of our round brush again, give it a nice little clean. And me water colors all muddied up. I'm gonna get a bit of a damp tissue and get that away. I don't want that muddied color. I want to get a nice bit of yellow. I don't want it all becoming green. So just like that, get some clean water. Drag that down, and we've got some gorgeous yellow there. So what I'm going to do with this is now I'm just going to go ahead and add that yellow now into the shape. We can still see the outline with the pencil that we made, and that's all I'm going to do. So effectively, what we did first here was on the first layer, we just created this kind of mixture to create a background. And that's kind of really what I wanted to highlight in this exercise that you can actually go ahead. Drop in your background first with the water color and add in those beautiful blends, wet on wet to create this gorgeous effect, or you can just work on the actual shape of your element itself and leave it at that. So that's entirely up to you. It's good to explore different techniques and different sequences to see what type of results you can get with the same colors. So cleaning cleaning on the brush. A nice bit of clean water there. Now I'm going to add in some red, let's grab hold of this beautiful red again. And then I'm going to just add that red into the similar area where I did this one so we can compare and then drop that red in there, clean me brush again, and then a bit of clean water, grab hold of that blue solution, drop it in over here. Look at that fantastic that isn't it? And you can see it merges some nicely with the background. It's quite distinct. It adds a slight contrast to it, where you've got the sharp colors in the middle, and then you've got the muted colors at the back. That's all I wanted to do with this one. Let's just wait until this dries. Okay, ok, welcome back. Now, you can see that we've got a nice dry result, and we can quickly compare and contrast the results. You can see we went ahead and did the background first on this with the wet on wet technique. And on this one, we just went straight in the wet on dry technique within the bounds of the shape of the leaf. And then once it all dried, we effectively applied the same technique that we did here onto this with the background, and you can see we're getting similar but different results. Now you can see it just looks fantastic that, doesn't it? It was so easy to do, so quick, and nice and organic. So give that to go for Exercise four. And then we can take this to the next step and move on to adding some lovely details in Exercise five. So let's move on to that one. Next. 10. Exercise 5 - Outlining: Okay, Donkey, welcome back. Let's now move on to exercise number five. And what we're going to do is add some lovely little quick details to see the process through and move on to the next stage. So on the screen, if we bring our attention back, then I've got the lovely artworks that we produced, one without the background, one with the background. They're beautifully dry. What we're going to do now is do some inky inking. So what I've decided to do for this exercise is use my fountain pen. You can use any inking tool that you like, whether it would be a ballpoint pen, fountain pen, fine liner, or even one of these lovely fancy Cligraphy dip pens. It's entirely up to you. I'm going to save my Cligraphy dip pen for the full sketch and full painting, so I'm going to leave that for that for this kind of demonstration exercise. I'm just going to go ahead and use my fountain pen. Now, one thing to note is, in this stage, we're going to go ahead and do some little outlining work So if you want to add maybe watercolor after you've done your outlining work, then it's really important that you select an ink that is waterproof when dry. Otherwise, if you go ahead and add your watercolor after you've done your inking for whatever reason, then you're going to have some kind of like really funky designs coming out of your ink. I can assure you that, so, if you've decided that you want to maybe add or kind of experiment further, then do use your waterproof ink. The ink that I always use in my fountain pens is this one. This is Datriments. It is document black ink. And this is waterproof when dry. So do bear that in mind. So I've got my de atriments black ink in here. Let's just give this an open and make sure it actually works. Maybe give it a bit of a scribble on the back of some card over here. Does it work? Yeah. Fantastic stuff. So what I'm going to do is, I'm going to go ahead and just do some outlining work on maybe this one first, so I'm just going to go ahead and create this kind of like jagged pattern. Following the outline, just like this. Again, this is just a made up shape. This isn't a real kind of botanical kind of study or anything like that. This is just a nice funky little leaf, isn't it? So just like that, I've done a jagged line. And you can see it's brought out that illustration and it's just made it pop a little bit. Hasn't it? So in the middle, all I'm going to do is, maybe just drop in a line like this, and then just throw in some of these kind of veins, maybe wiggle them up a little bit, make them a bit random, entirely up to you, M two or three coming out of one, do whatever you like, just design it. However you like. It's your made up leaf. Just like this, I'm just going to go ahead and add that in. And you can see I did that just within a few seconds. It's so much fun, isn't it? So we're going to go ahead and repeat that process for this. So again, I'm just going to follow the actual shape of the edge of the paint there. And what that does is it creates this really nice organic look rather than it being too kind of robotic or straight. We want to give it more of a organic natural look. Even though we're not using any reference pictures, it just adds a bit more visual interest. You can see I'm getting this kind of jagged line that I'm following the edge of those kind of paint marks rather than the pencil mark, and it just adds a bit more visual interest to your overall illustration. So just like that, that one's done, and again, just dropping in a kind of wonky line there, throwing in a couple of these kind of vein branches over here. Beautiful, beautiful kind of leaf shapes and kind of representations of kind of, like these little branches coming out. They're absolutely fantastic, especially if you have a look at them. If you go kind of leaf picking, like me and my daughter always do, all the leaf that fall in all them on the floor. It's such a shame. They just get fallen and grinded and kind of disperse away or thrown in the bin. Why not pick them up and kind of preserve them, put them in a frame, clean them up. It's just a fantastic kind of visual of autumn. And me and my little daughter, we do this all the time, and then we go ahead and draw our leaves. So that's our inspirations. That's just another good point for you to kind of use as a top tip. So just go grab some leaves that have fallen, obviously. Don't be picking any fresh leaves from trees. That's not nice. We don't want to pull fresh leaves. Use the leaves that are going to be thrown away on the floor that people are trampling on, just pick them up clean them up, make them look really nice and be inspired in this class with those lovely findings of leaves. So you can see on the screen over here, we've got this beautiful little illustration, and that's about it. So what we did was, we just added in our watercolor in two different ways with the background, one with out, and it gives us different results. So practice this, add in whichever colors you like. Maybe you're using colors from your color palette, from your watercolor set like the Windsor and Newton, if this is one that you've got, or whichever one you've got. Just test this out with different colors, maybe. Do some browns, maybe some greens that you already have. Add them on, let them marble in the background of your lovely watercolor illustration, and use this as kind of an exercise step before you go ahead and do the full sketch and painting for your class project. So, that's about it now for the exercises. I know you're so excited and you just can't wait to start on your class project. But before we do that, I want to just do a small, little kind of painting sketch that kind of brings all these exercises together to produce a complete piece and something for you to follow along with step by step, if you wish, or just be inspired by what I do. So I think we should move on to that one. Next. 11. Full Sketch & Painting: Okay, welcome back, Let's now start the full sketch, the full painting, step by step. We can use all of the exercise techniques that we learnt and put it on a nice, full complete little painting of some gorgeous autumn leaves. Now, on the screen over here, if you bring your attention on the screen, I've got my lovely watercolor block. That I showed you earlier on in the class. This is the coal pressed watercolor block. What I've done is, I've just blue tacked it onto the table so that it doesn't move. So I've got that nicely in place. It's ready to use gorgeous coal pressed texture on it. And I'm gonna get my washi tape now. And what I'm gonna do with me washi tape is, I'm just gonna go ahead, and I'm going to add my washi tape onto all of those corners. So effectively we have a nice white border once our painting or drawing is complete. So I'm gonna quickly go ahead and do that now. Ok, got it nicely taped up, so we have a nice frame around my block. This doesn't necessarily need to be done, especially if you're using a block because the block is going to hold itself into place anyway. But I just like to have a nice white border around my artwork just to give it a bit of contrast. So do this step if you want to do it, but if you've got a block like me, absolutely fine if you don't do this. But if you're using sheets of watercolor paper, individual sheets, then maybe it's a good idea to get some tape and tape it around, so you have a nice frame or if you want to tape it into place to your table or onto a board so that you don't get too much warping, then go ahead and do that Next, what I'm going to do is, I'm going to get inspired now. So, like I mentioned, in the earlier lessons, me and my daughter, we usually go leaf picking and pick up the leaves from the kind of floor that have fallen down, especially in the autumn time, just to kind of preserve them and get some inspiration. And then what we do is with the ones that we've picked up from the floor, we kind of frame them in gorgeous little frames like this. So I'll just get to Zoomy Zoom back on this now so you can see And you can see, you've got me light shadow going on there. A me right light reflections going on there, but just ignore them. I'll just bring this up closer to the screen. You can see we've got some fantastic colors over here, all sorts of beautiful leaves that fall off the trees. And that inspiration is just absolutely fantastic. You can see over here, we've got the gorgeous, yellow and greeny leaf. I'm not a leaf expert, but I kind of know a few of the names, but I won't mention the So that, I don't get them wrong. So I'm just going to refer to these as just nice leaves. I've got a beautiful leave over here. Then I've got this one, which I think it might be a sycamore leaf or a maple leave. No 100% sure. They're all very similar in shape. But look at the color on that gorgeous bit of yellow. Then I've got this beautiful kind of like Christmas tree shaped type leaf over here. Gorgeous leave, that one. And then we've got these fantastic orange shade leaves over here. Absolutely beautiful these ones. And then over here, we've got more greeny type leaves, beautiful shapes and tones, and warm autumn colors. Absolutely fantastic. I'm going to go ahead and maybe do some drawings of some of these leaves just to fill my page. I will leave a image of this in the class resource sheet for you to have a look at. So if you want to follow along and do the similar kind of exercise and similar type of leave shapes that I'm doing, then just go ahead and do that, or you can use it for your class project. So I'm going to move this one to the side now, or I might just flip it up over here so that I can see on my screen, and then I'm just going to grab hold of my pencil.'s get a Zoomy Zoom back now again on the screen over here so we can see what I'm doing. And with me, pencil, all I'm going to go ahead and do is draw in a few of these shapes. So I'm just going to quickly go and do that now. Ok. You can see now I've got a nice coverage of different shapes of leaves. Now, I've not designed these perfectly or done, perfect botanical illustrations from the kind of picture of the leaves that I've got or the actual real leaves that I've gotten me frame. But it's just to get an idea of some rough shapes and sizes. And that's all I'm doing for this class. I don't even know how many I've got on here. Maybe about seven or eight, two, four, six, eight, ten, actually, I've got ten leaves here. But if you want to follow this step by step, then maybe just do a few. It's just to kind of express and show what all those exercises are going to look like altogether in a final piece. And again, I'm going to put this a lovely frame Of these leaves that we collected me and my daughter in the class resource sheet, so you'll have that as a nice reference to use for this exercise or for your class project. So what I'm going to do now is, I've done that. Let's move our lovely pencil out of the way. And for the background on this, what I'm going to do is, I'm going to use the technique that we used in the previous lesson. It was where we had our two lovely little leaf drawings over here. If you remember, we had a nice background on this one. We started off with a nice background. And this is kind of the technique that I'm going to go towards for this complete sketch. So with that one, let's just move these to the side. To start off with a nice wash of plain water. So let's just get the camera back into sink over here, and let's just get our brush ready. So nice bit of clean water. I'm going to spread it all the way on me page. So just like this. Nice bit of clean water, going to get it all the way around. I want it to be nice and wet. We don't want to have dry parts for the background, because effectively the background is only going to be part of this illustration. And if you remember, all we did was just drench the paper with water. And again, if you don't have a big brush, don't worry about this stage. If you don't want to do the background color, that's absolutely fine. If you just want to concentrate on the color of those leaf shapes, then go ahead and do that. I just think it's a nice way to kind of do an illustration before you do your class project so that you have a nice bit of kind of firsthand experience with your water colors, and just to really get you in the mood and in the flow of autumn, beautiful autumn colors and get ready. For this beautiful journey into watercolor expression. So just like that, I think that should be about enough, and maybe a little bit more because I am in quite a humid room here, got quite a lot of lighting going on. So I'm going to throw in as much water as I can. This paper, this arches, cold press paper is absolutely fantastic. It won't warp too much. It will warp, but it won't warp too much. But what we want is a nice spread. Of water like that. I think that should be enough. Let's quickly move that to the side and get working quickly now with me round brush. Let's just make sure we've got two jars ready. So with me round brush, let's just get a little bit of gorgeous gambled yellow. And I'm going to use those same three primary colors mainly for this background, so I'm just going to drop a little bit there. And again, maybe drop some over here. And just randomly place it into different areas of the frame of this kind of drawing background, just like that. Throw a little bit over there. Add a bit more water. Give me brush it clean. Maybe just take a little bit more of that yellow color and make it a bit more watery. Add it there. Yellow is really the base color. When we start building all these gorgeous color tones and values of autumn, it's a fantastic color, isn't it? So just like that beautiful And then I'm going to add a little bit of red now, just mix me red, and then start dropping that red in into these gaps just like this. I just want it to be subtle. I don't want it to be too overpowering. I don't want the leaves to kind of just blend away into the background. I want them to pop out, so I'm just going to keep it to this red and yellow kind of mixture. Don't go over all the leaves if you don't want to. I just want to make sure that these kind of edges don't have any white on it. Just want this beautiful spread of color. So just like that, I'm just picking the mixture up from my palette like this and just spreading it on. While the background is wet? So just like that, that's absolutely fine. And you can see, it just looks gorgeous, that, doesn't it? We've got this beautiful kind of mixture of yellow and red and kind of merging into these beautiful autumn oranges. Fantastic stuff. So just like that, give me brush a clean it clean and maybe add a little bit more yellow now, to start blending it in a little bit. Look at that. I love it when the red and the yellow start mixing to create that beautiful warm orange, gorgeous gorgeous tone of color, that pure autumn color tone. It's just fantastic. So just like that, maybe just add a bit more here to mute it out. We don't want too much sharp color for the background. And then, again, just getting this mixture of the yellow and the red, that orange mixture, just like we did. Previous exercises and applying it to our background, maybe having a little bit more over here, a bit more orangy over there. And I think that's looking quite nice. So again, your results are going to be different from mine, depending on where you place the water and how much pigment you use in your paints. So I'm just going to get a cleany cleaning on the brush. And what we're going to do now is, I'm just going to let this dry now. I want this to be completely dry so that we can start adding in those gorgeous tones onto the shapes of our leaves. So let's quickly let that dry. 12. Colouring Shapes: Oki doke, welcome back. Now you can see that the beautiful spread of color has completely dried. It's dried to the touch, and we can now start working in our beautiful tones, autumn colors for our leaves. Now, what I'm going to do for the colors of the leaves is, I'm actually going to go ahead, and I'm going to use my Windsor and Newton colors over here. So previously, we only stuck to the three primary colors for all the exercises up to now. And now this kind of main sketch, main painting. I'm going to go ahead, and I'm going to use the colors that I have in my basic Windsor and Newton color palette over here. So if you want to use the colors that you've got, whichever colors you may have, then go for it. If you just want to use the primary colors or the yellows and reds and oranges, then you can absolutely go ahead and do that. It's totally fine. So What I'm going to do now is, I'm just going to go ahead and I'm going to just wet maybe a couple of these colors with me brush. Another tip is that if you have a water bottle that can spray water, then use that to spray and activate your paints. That's a great idea. I've actually lost mine. I don't know where it is, so I can't do that. And so I'm going to have to just do it the old school way. So let's just get a bit of water onto me round brush. And I do like a bit of this color over here. To be totally honest with you, I can't even remember what these colors are because I have so many colors. I just can't remember their names. I should really write them down, but I've got this really nice shade over here, this kind of brownish shade. And I'm going to go ahead. And I'm going to wet that. I'm just going to add that on to maybe this big leaf over here. So if you look at the reference image, this kind of leaf was quite a brownish shade, and I do like that. You don't have to copy the actual image colors, exactly how they are. Just use it, however you that kind of picture that collage of those leaves was just to give you an idea to kind of get some shapes down, and then you can merge them into whatever shape you like. So just like that, I'm just going to add a bit more water to this to get a bit more paint out there. And then just add that on. Look at that gorgeous color that. It's absolutely beautiful. It's like a sepia brown color that isn't it? Fantastic color. So just like this, all I'm doing is, I'm just going to add that on really nicely with my brush, and then maybe just add a little bit for the stork that's coming out just over here, keeping it really nice and wet. So I'm going to effectively use this brownish shade for the base color. I'm not going to imitate the color that's actually on the real leaf. I just want this as a base color. Clean me brush. And then what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna pick up some of my yellow from my palette, my lovely gambos yellow. And then I'm just going to start dropping that in just like we did in our exercises, the wet on wet technique after doing the wet on dry. So as it stays like that, you can see that beautiful color adding on. Then clean the brush again. Some clean water, and then just get some more of this red. Make sure it's not too mixed up, get some of that red from the palette, and then I'm just going to drop that red in over here. Look at that. Beautiful. That isn't it nice, bit of red on the side of that leaf. And I think for this one, I'm just going to leave this one as it is. I've got quite a bit of red on me paint over here. So what I might do is, I might just start adding on a little bit of red maybe to some of these leaves over here. How about this one? Yet? Let's just add it onto this. Look at that gorgeous red color on this kind of maple shaped leaf beautiful. I mean, maple trees are just gorgeous. We have a lot of these type of trees. Where we are based in Manchester in, the UK, whereever I'm dropping off the kids, when I'm having a look around, especially at this beautiful autumn time, you can see so much gorgeous gorgeous colors, just as you're driving around, having look at the trees that are all posted up on the kind of pavements. It's just fantastic. One of my favorite favorite colors, this reddish orange shade. And I love the shape of maple leaves. They're just absolutely fantastic. So All I'm doing here now is, I'm just going to add in red, just like I did before. And you can see the underpainting that dried earlier on for the background. That's showing through when you're adding watercolor on top, so this beautiful transparent layering effect adds on. So just like that, you can see it's getting a bit orange over there, isn't it fantastic stuff? So I'm going to clean me brush. Don't want to waste me paint. So clean me brush, and then maybe just add in that yellow again, that gambos yellow, fantastic yellow, that one, maybe just add it on onto the kind of edge part of these leaves here. And I think that is just going to be great. Maybe just add a tiny bit over here, just to merge it all together. And that just looks fantastic, gorgeous stuff. Isn't it gorgeous stuff, right? Now, what I'm going to do is, I'm just going to go ahead and maybe choose another color from my palette over here, maybe more of a dull color, maybe this one. I think this is ok. Just a standard ocher color this. I think that's quite nice. And maybe we can add that to, let's say this color here here, this area here, sorry. So over here, I've got this beautiful kind of cha shade. And it's always nice to mix in these beautiful, warm, yellow type shades, brownish shades, onto your leaf shapes. It really just adds that another dimension to your drawing and illustration. Clean me brush. Just going to add a little bit of that kind of water to it just to help it along. Want to get it too heavy on the paint side. We want to keep it nice and flowing just like this. So I'll just carry on doing this one. And then what we'll do is we will just go ahead and maybe just add in a little bit of another color so that it looks a bit different so clean me brush. And how about we add a bit of this kind of pinkish shade of red over here. This gorgeous pinkish shade of red, and we'll see what happens. Maybe add it over here. Oh, that's gorgeous. That isn't it? It's so subtle, that, so just going to add a bit more of that over here. Look at that. Beautiful. Look at the way that color merges. Nice and subtle. And then if we add a bit more, we can get nice and sharp up here. We've got quite a lot of water on the top over there, which will probably just end up becoming a Cliflower shape, but not to worry, if you don't like this kind of pooling of water effects, then just get a bit of tissue, damp tissue to pick it up. I actually like that because of the style of my artwork. I like it when it califloers out. But if you don't like that, then just grab hold of some dry paper towels and bit at the end, and it'll soak up that water. But again, I'm going to keep it as it is, so I'm liking that the way that has turned out. Let's give a cleaner on the brush. Now, I'm might adding a little bit of green actually. I've got this beautiful green here, this standard kind of sap green color here. I'm just going to add a drop of this green here just on these corners, just to add that kind of merging from green to yellow effect over there. I think that looks quite nice. And again, a little bit more of that green, maybe just adding it over here on the bottom part of the stalk of the leaf, a little bit on the top. And then a little bit more maybe just over here, just to make it a bit more prominent. I think that looks really, really nice. So maybe add a bit to that green over here again. Just on the bottom area over here. Not too much. We don't want to overpower it with green. Just a little little speck of that green there. It just blends those colors beautifully. So let's get a cleaner clean on the brush. Now, I quite fancy doing something a little bit different on these leaves. So I think what I might do is I might go in with a nice shade of light yellow here. So I've got this lemon yellow color over here, this really nice lemon yellow color. And let's get a bit of green shades coming into our drawer, so a bit of yellow lemon yellow over the yellow lemon. Lemon yellow, whatever way you want to say it, and let's just drop it in over here. So you can see that gorgeous lemon yellow color over there, to make sure adults do so smudgy, smudgy with me hand. You've got to always be careful with watercolor. And because I can't turn my lovely paper around, because I've kind of pinned it onto the table and might end up creating some smudgy smudges. So do turn your paper around to ease the watercolor kind of filling in effect. So whatever makes it easy for you just do that? So let's just add a little bit of water now. Now, what I want to do is, I want to add in some bluey blue. I might actually go ahead and pick up blue from my palette here, that windsor red shade of blue. And now let's start adding this in. Whoa, look at that. Look at that. Beautiful magic there, eh. Gorgeous, gorgeous stuff. So got a bit of blue there. Let's now clean the brush and maybe add in some of our yellow gamboge color over here, that deeper yellow. And now let's add that to that blue. I want this to merge. And I want it to kind of really create this beautiful, beautiful color of green, going into yellow. And then going into that lemon yellow shade. Look at that. Fantastic that isn't it. Let's just maybe add a little bit on the stalk there, just to give a bit of an indentation that we've got some thing coming off over here, and then just add a little bit at the base. Then you can see this. Look at that. Gorgeous, gorgeous stuff mixing it on the paper, just like we did in our previous exercise. So have a play around with that. Maybe I accidentally put me brushing to me clean water. Can't be doing that. We don't want dirty water coming on our paint. So just going to give that a little rinse. And then maybe just add a little bit of that red and maybe put it on the tip over there, just like that, and let that spread out. I want to have that element of yellow, green, orange, red, and I just want to see how it emerges. And I'm just going to add a drop of clean water here just to encourage that blend. Just like that. If you're finding that the colors are not blending, just get, you'll brush, dab it into clean water and just add a couple of drops in the for it to blend, and you're gonna get all sorts of magic happening there. Fantastic stuff. So let's see what we're doing now for the time. I think what I'll do now is, for all these other colors, I'm going to use a similar combination for all of them, and I'll quickly go do that now. And then I'll see what the results look like when it's done. Okay, so now you can see that I've got that gorgeous blend of colors going on. They're all mixing, mixing away nicely there. And once these are dry, then we can move on to that final step of doing the Inky ink. So, let's let this dry, have a break. Enjoy watching those colors dry and merge up together. Absolutely fantastic and relaxing for your well being. It's great. Get yourself a nice drink. Sit back and just watch that magic happen. And I'll see you on the next one. 13. Inking: Okay, welcome back. Now, we're ready to do our inking process. And if you remember, earlier on in the class, we went through some inking tools that would be useful for this part of the class. And I decided that I'm going to go ahead and use my lovely dip dip pen. So if we bring our attention back onto the screen, we've got a gorgeous, nice, dry bit of artwork over here. I mean, just look at that. Beautiful, beautiful merging autumn colors all over the place, looks fantastic. So What I'm going to do now is I'm going to grab hold of my dippy dip pen. So I've just got my nice, flexible dippy dip pen over here. If you've got a dip pen, then maybe give it a go with your dip pen and ink, but if you haven't, it's absolutely fine. Use whichever inking tool you have and whichever one you prefer. I'm going to be using this lovely green ink that I've got. It's one of my favorite inks this, this kind of like fancy ink, but whatever color you have, just grab hold of it. A darker color would probably look better on this. So if you have a darker color ink, then just grab hold of that. But if you have a fine, use whichever color you like. So I'm going to quickly open this now, I'm going to be careful. I don't want to open this on top of my artwork. Never open an ink bottle on top of your artwork because you don't know what spilly, spilly might happen, and you don't want to ruin your beautiful work. So I'm just going to open this on the side over here and make sure that it's all good. So there it goes, so I'm just going to show you the color over here. Fantastic color, that beautiful green. It's going to get a nice little dip onto me pen. And then let's just move this away now. I don't want to have any spilly spillis on me artwork. So just like that now, I think I'm going to start off maybe with this one. I'm liking the look of this one here. So it's going to be the same kind of case of just going onto the edge and just following that edge, making it into a nice organic kind of pattern. So you can see, I'm just moving it along, and I'm just creating this kind of like rough edge, just like it is on a leaf all the way down there. And then, again, I might need a bit more ink on me pen, so I'll get a bit of a dip on that. And then from the side, I'm just following the edge, and I'm kind of like letting a bit more ink flow here just to keep it nice and random. We don't want to have robotic leaves now, do we? We want to have it nice, expressive and random, vary the line just to give it more visual interest, and it just makes it look rather nice. So just like that, I've gone ahead and outlined the outer part of the leaf. Now, I'm just going to go ahead and add a bit more inky ink with my dip pen, and then I'm just going to drop in a nice line in the middle, just like this, vary that line with, make it thin, make it thick, entirely up to you. Fantastic. How easy was that. So again, get a bit more ink. Ooh, I got a little bit of a spily spill on the side there. I better be careful. I'm getting too excited as usual, so I need to concentrate. So let's just throw in some of these kind of lines that we get on leaves. Now, I'm not really following the lines from the actual resource of those leaves. Oh, dear. Look, what I've done? I've done a drippy drip, but that's why I like using these dip pens because I want this to actually happen. Yes, I do. And now you're thinking, Oh, no, what's he done? But sometimes when you're using dip pens and you're moving along and you kind of like jerk the pen a little bit or put your hand with a bit of pressure on the pad, you get a little drippy drip, and that's absolutely fine. I actually love this effect, and I actually go ahead and do this right at the end, as well. I do a couple of ink drops. So that's a nice one there, isn't it? So let's just carry on. So I'm just going to go ahead. I'm just going to drop in these lovely roads that go into this kind of leaf shape over here. I'm just making this up. Not following no pattern. But if you want to kind of follow the pattern from the reference picture in the resource sheet, you can go ahead and do that if you want. This is just really an exercise to have a bit of experience on completing your beautiful shapes and outlining them. So that one is done over there. Let's now get a bit more inky ink and dip it in over here. Now I think I might end up doing maybe this one here. I like this one. This one is going to have nice bit of contrast. So what I'm going to do here is I'm just going to start off maybe from here because the angle is easier for me because I'm recording this on the camera. So just like that, keeping it nice, thick, making it thin over here, keeping that jagged edge. On the side of the lever. Oh, look at that. Bit of a drippy drip on there as well, but it will all add to the effect. I promise you. And if you're not using a dippy pen, then you're not going to have this kind of extra effect, what I like to call it, but it's absolutely fine. So just like this, my angle is creating more of this kind of jagged edge, following the edge of the watercolor, however, it kind of dried up on the page. And even if you don't go on the edge of the watercolor, that's absolutely fine. You can kind of have a line within the color or a line outside the color. It just adds to that effect. It just makes it look really nice and unique. That's what really this class is all about, expressing yourself, using your watercolors in these gorgeous autumn flavors. So just like that, what I'm going to do now is, I'm just going to go ahead, and I'm going to drag some of that ink up here, create this kind of broken line going all the way to the top. And then I'm going to bring in some of these edges, and then just join them up over here. And that's all it is, joining up these edges into these wonderful kind of shapes and roads that appear on these mini worlds, on leafs. Absolutely fantastic. What an inspiration. So, again, on this side, let's go in. And I'm getting a bit of feathering of my ink. That's just adding to the effect. That's why I like to use ink pen and nib Dipens. Absolutely fantastic, just like that. Look at that fantastic stuff. So this is what I'm gonna do now for all of the leaves. And once it's all done, we can see what results we get. H o. O kid key. You can see now I've done my inky ink with load of little ink dots that have just dropped onto those leaves, and I think that just looks absolutely fantastic. And me hands are all inky inky. So let's give them a nice clean. Oh, that was fun. That wasn't it. So, me hands are kind of clean. I've just got the ink, but that's the thing with ink. It just gets all over the place, especially if you're using a dips, we're going to do now is this is still rather wet, especially where we've got the kind of ink spldges. So I'm going to let that completely dry. Maybe go for a break. Maybe have an little coffee. Yeah, I think I do fancy a coffee. No had one for a while now, so I think I'm going to grab myself an ice coffee. And then once that's dried, we can maybe add in some more kind of ink marks or maybe some mini little illustrations using another tool, and I'll see you once that's done. 14. Expressive Marks: That was good. That wasn't it? What a gorgeous, gorgeous cup of dry roasted, beautiful coffee beans, and look at that creme. Gorgeous crema there. Okay, welcome back. Right? Now, let's look at what our inky inky is doing. And you can see, it's still a little bit moist, a little bit wet. I'll just get me coffee out of the way. And I think what we're gonna do is, let's just move on to the next part. I'll be really, really careful not to do any smudgy smudgies on those kind of ink dots. A lot of the outline has dried. It's just those kind of spldges. Ink, fantastic ink that, but we'll let it dry on its own accord. Okay, so next, what I'm going to do is, I'm going to grab hold of my brushy brush pen, if you remember, we went through these little items in these class supplies earlier on in the class in that part of the lesson. And I showed you this lovely brush pen that I've got. This is a nice brown sepia color that I've got over here. And with this, what I'm going to do is, I'm just going to go ahead. I'm just going to draw in some little leafy leafs like this. So just some little kind of outlines of some little leafs, just like this, easy little shape. A bit of detail on the inside. And I'm just going to kind of, like, pepper them all the way whereever I have a gap, so just like this, nice and lightly. Don't need to have too much detail in this, and maybe just a couple of other type of shapes over here like this, maybe some like this. And I think that's just a nice little way to add a bit more interest into your artwork. You've got some kind of empty space. I mean, you don't have to do this, if you don't want to. I just like to do this when I'm putting together my artworks, especially with terms. I just like having these kind of funky little leaves all over the place. It just adds a nice bit of visual interest to your piece. Just like that. Nice and rough. Maybe have one over here, but I'm going to end up spilling me ink. So let's move me inky ink out of the way first. We don't want any more accidents. So let's just do that over here, maybe just a nice, cute little leaf over here, just like that floating in that lovely background. Think maybe that's it. Shall we maybe do another one over here. Now, I think we'll leave it at that. So I just peppered a few little leafy leaf shapes. And what you can also do is if you really want to, if you want to kind of fill in these spaces, just do kind of little circles like this that look quite nice just to fill in those spaces. A couple of circles here, a couple of circles there. And what this does is, it just creates this really nice patterned look in your artwork. So you don't have too many gaps, just like this, just a couple of dots there, a couple of dots there. Maybe some random dots here and over here as well. And again, when I do a final kind of addition after I've done this brush pen work over here. So just like this, a couple of dots over here, and then just some random dots scattered across the artwork. I think that just looks rather nice, makes it look quite nice and organic. So just like that, just randomly scatter some dots. With your brush pen. And because I'm using another color, it's not making it too prominent. It kind of just blends in with the tone of the background. And I think that looks rather nice. So that's it for the brush pen. Next, and the final kind of thing that I'm going to do is, I'm going to get me watercolor out again. So, if you remember, we had our watercolor, our three main colors. Our primary colors. I'm just going to get a bit of clean water now. Open up me clean water jar. Get me round brush. And what I'm gonna do is get a nice little drench of water on there. Let's reactivate some of this mixed mixture. I want a bit of red in there as well. So grabbing hold of that red, I on an nice, bit of red, get that gamboge yellow back in there, create this beautiful orange, deep, reddish orange shade of color. I want quite a bit of water on here, so maybe add a little bit more water just like this. Then let's add this kind of final effect to finish off this illustration. I mean, you don't need to do this if you don't want to do this. This is entirely up to you. I just like to do this as a complete process. So just like this, what I'm going to do is going to grab hold of me brush now. I'm just going to put that palette on aside. Grab hold of me brush like this in me hand, and kind of with my index finger over here, I'm just going to do a little tap tap. Just like this, a little tap, and then I'm going to spread these kind of water tap dots all over the paper, whether it goes on the leaf, whether it goes on the background, and this just brings it all together. It gives it a really nice effect, picking up some more over here. To do this, you need to make sure you've got enough mixture on the bristles of your brush. And again, just like this, tippy tap tap, and it's looking great. So just like that scattering these dots all over the place, Just like that again. And then maybe I'm going to add in a little bit of the blue just to get a bit of a darker color. So you've got this gorgeous kind of mixture of blue tones, that beautiful warm brown. What a gorgeous color that is. That's just the pure autumnnss that you have in autumn. The ending is just brown on the leaves. And that just looks fantastic. So just like this, with the brown, maybe add a bit more of the blue to darken that. And again, we just use primary colors. Haven't we for all the background and all this type of special effects that we're doing. So just like this a bit of brown there. And there look at that gorgeous, nice, bit of detail. Spatter it on. Maybe add a bit more water to that mixture because it's a little bit dry, so bring in some more color, vary it, add it on, make it look gorgeous. And this is what your watercolor expression is all about. Again, I'm going to keep doing this because I'm having so much fun. It really is such a fun exercise, isn't it? So relaxing, just to splatter all these spludges of water everywhere. Just got to be careful. It doesn't go all over me camera. So can't be doing that. Otherwise, you're going to just see splashes of water in all my classes. So let's just final one. Nice, big ones there. Nice, big, sprigy spldges of water. And I think I'm going to stop. At that point. So let's just get that palette out of the way before I get tempted to do more. And I think that's it. So, just looking at the artwork, you can see. We've got this beautiful kind of explosion of autumn colors floating around. And it just looks so nice. How easy was that to do? Nothing difficult, So easy to do. You don't need any kind of super skills in drawing or anything like that. You just follow the kind of patterns and the shapes of the colors that you've put on paper, and it's fantastic. So I'm going to wait until this completely dries off, and once it's completely dried, then we can do a peel peel on the tape. But do you know what? I can't wait for that. I'm going to do the peel peel right now. Let's do the pee peel right now of the tape. I love this part. So I love taking the tape off and seeing that gorgeous clean edge. Look at that. Look at that gorgeous, clean edge. Let's get a bit of a Zoomy zoom back so that you can see probably one of the best parts of revealing your artwork. I know it's still wet. I know I've got inky inky spoges everywhere, but I just can't wait. So there's one bit of tape over there. Let's get the other one off, which way did we did this? You've got to remember which way you actually taped down your paper. So I've got this one here on the right. Let's just do that. Nice and slowly, don't do this too fast, otherwise, it can mess up or pull your paper depending on the quality of your paper. That ones come, Oh, dear. Look at that. See what I mean. So I've just gone ahead and pulled it a bit too hard, and it's messed up, hasn't it? But, not to worry. We're not here to worry. We're here to relax. Relax and carry on and look at that. Oh, I love it. Look, how gorgeous that looks, that beautiful white border. It really enhances the look of your artwork. Want it all dry. So let's just maybe, I've done it again. Let's just take it off the board, actually. Let's just take it off the board. What am I doing? So let's just grab hold of that. And again, I want you to see this part because this is the best part, isn't it? Taking it all off. Look at that. Gorgeous, and that ASMR sound absolutely fantastic. But then again, you probably can't hear it 'cause I keep talking. Don't I? I don't stop talking. Less talking and more drawing and sketching. That's how it should be, but it's all good, right. There you go. Look at that beautiful bit of artwork, autumn expressions in watercolor. And that's it, so we've done. Le exercises. We've done this full painting sketch. Let's now just have a look at some more of the artworks that I've done in this style so that you have a bit more inspiration, a little bit more kind of an open active guide of what you can do when you come to do your class project. So let's have a look at that one next. 15. Inspiration: Kiki, welcome back. Let's now have a look at some of the artworks that I've done in a slightly different style so that you can get inspired for your class project. So on the screen, I've got some funky little artwork over here. Let's have a look at this one. So on this one, you can see, I'll just get a Zoomy zooming on this. Let's get it on the screen fully. Can see on this one, I've been very loose with my drawings here. I actually went in with the paint first, and then I went in with the outlines. If you remember in the class in the exercises, we put the paint down first, and then we started the outline as we did with the full class sketch. But the only difference here is, what I've done is, I've gone in with the outline with the ink in a very loose fashion, so you can see I'm not keeping within the bounds of the actual color shapes. I'm just going within or outside. I did this one really quickly, and I loved how it turned out this kind of pure expressive, loose, relaxed kind of artwork. And I think that's just a fantastic style. So you don't need to worry about details and keeping it exactly to the kind of structure or the shape of the leaf or the pattern. You can just completely be in an expressive semi abstract form, and it's just fantastic. So that wasn't nice kind of semi abstract style. So let's move on to something that's a bit more controlled over here, so you can see, I'll get it the right way up. Let's get a Zoomy Zoom back. Over here, I've got two more that are way more controlled. So you can see the one on the right over here. This one has, again, a nice background on it. And then we've got the colors very similar to our class ful sketch. And we've got some nice autumn colors that really went in deep with those yellows and kind of those reds and got them to merge really nicely with a bit of blue there. And then on the left over here, if we just bring this one closer to the screen. You can see this is controlled as well, but we've not added a background on this one. This one, I've just gone in with the shapes, and I've kept it really close to the shapes concentrated on those beautiful lines. And you can see it looks really, really nice. And I even added a little bit of wordy wordy a bit of sketchbook journaling, if you remember from the previous class. So let's just put this one to the side as well. And then I've got quite a few in my sketchbook. I love to do this in my watercolor sketchbook. I'll just show you over here. So I've got a nice bit of a spread. I got a bit of a zoom back over here. You can see over here, if we look on the left, we've got one that's done without the background, so just the leaf shapes in that very loose style, and it's so much fun, especially when you've got a sketch book. So as I mentioned earlier on, if you've got a watercolor sketch book, absolutely use that for this class. And then on the right hand side, I've even added some colored pencil over here, so I've got some lines in colored pencil, and I've gone in very loose, very expressive. But in this one, what I've done is I've not actually colored the leaves in. I've put the watercolor on the back. So this one, I drew the leaf shape out, and then I started adding mixing the watercolor on the back. The background just to vary it. And that's what we want to do. We want to kind of do different styles of artwork in this expressive mood, in this autumn colors and fantastic beautiful shades. So try this out, try it out in a different way, but do try it out. And if you don't like the whole expressive type of artwork, then you can go in and do detailed work. So over here, you can see, I've got a nice, little double spread of detailed leaves. I've even got the names of the leaves on this one. So I enjoy doing this one. But again, this one takes a little bit more time. And what I don't want you to do is, I don't want you to stress. So if you don't think that you want to spend too much time on details or getting it right, then don't spend too much time on the details. Just be as expressive as you like. It's all about well being, and it's all about getting that beautiful color blend going on. And if you want to add in detail, absolutely, go for it. So that's it. So we've got All these beautiful, lovely exercise, ready to go. You've got your step by step sketch like we just did, and now you're going to be ready for your class project, and I can't wait to see what you produce. So let's just sum up the class with some final thoughts and get ready for your lovely adventure. So I'll see you on the next one. 16. Final Thoughts: Oki doke, we have now completed the exercises in the class, and we've completed the class sketch step by step. And I had a lot of fun. I'm sure you had a lot of fun. And now it's time to have even more fun and do your class project. So I hope you enjoyed the step by step processes that we went through with the color mixing and application of watercolor and seeing how watercolor reacts and creating Beautiful tones. Absolutely give these exercises a go. Maybe if you have a watercolor sketch book, do it all in there, so it's all nice and together and collated. And then just give your class project a go, try using this expressive kind of way of applying watercolor. Don't worry about the details. It's not about the details. It's about the journey. That's what it's all about. That journey, that adventure. In experiencing these magical colors melt into each other and form beautiful tones of autumn. So hopefully, you would have picked up some skills in this that you hadn't had already done, and if you already knew about this, then it's a new little adventure for you to start doing a little bit more watercolor expressions on a daily basis. So, I can't wait to see your lovely class project. I can't wait to see your class work. Whatever you've done, make sure you take a lovely picture of it. And post it onto the class project gallery so that we can see and keep posting to the class project gallery because that will motivate all of us, and it will inspire us to create more and get into this kind of habit of creating art on a daily basis. So hopefully, this will give you that lovely little push into the autumn direction and vibrant, beautiful warm colors of autumn. Do also check out my other classes. I've done so many classes on skill share or using different mediums. So give them a go if there's something that you want to learn. And again, keep sharing your beautiful artwork with us all. And if there's any question that you have on this class or on any of my other classes, then do drop me a lovely little comment in the discussion. Or you can e mail me if you want to just discuss it personally with me yourself, and I'll be absolutely happy to answer any of your questions. So Hopefully, now, I've done my little bit, and I think I'm going to take another break. Yes, I'm going to take another break. I think I might go to me coffee shop, maybe do a bit of sketchbook journaling, and then I'm going to come back, and I'm going to do my class project on this class, and I can't wait. So thank you so much for your time. Thank you so much for your help and your patience and your support. And hopefully I shall see you on the next one. Take care of yourself. Keep smiling, keep relaxed, don't stress, and peace.