Watercolour Landscapes Made Easy: Master the 6 Essential Elements

1. Intro: Have you ever looked at a breath taking landscape, pain rush in hand and thought? Oh, boy. Where do I even begin? These majestic trees, glittering waters, the crystal clear skies. No wonder, some of us freeze up. Hi, I'm Khadija, a watercolor artist, a digital marketer, a mom of super busy toddlers, and a top teacher here at Skillchair. I'm not trying to find the perfect sunset to pin. You can find me observing how life goes through those different landscapes and creates those magical shadows that brings all our paintings to life. Growing up in the coastal town of Wizag in Andhra Pradesh, India, I understood the game changer to any landscape painting is understanding light and shadow. Once you understand this, you can take any landscape in front of you and paint it and create three dimensional wonders. Let's be honest, landscapes can be intimidating. I see three major challenges that make any artist sw. One is, where do I even begin? Which element? A leaf? What colors should I use? A yellow green, a blue green or a green green. What's all this fuss about light and shadow? How do I find them? How do I use them? And where do I begin? But here's my promise to you. This class is about having fun mastering six landscape elements in three easy steps. For every element, I'll walk you through how to create those light and dark tones in three simple steps, you can transform any of your paintings and add each element to any landscape you like. Between you and me. My favorite moment is when students have that ha moment where they understand light and shadow and the otherwise flat paintings turn into three dimensional wonders. By the end of this class, had the confidence to approach any complex scene, know where to begin, which colors to use, and how to build down each element and how to include them to bring life to your pinky. Come, let's break down these landscape, create those elements, and just have fun understanding each element of a landscape. 2. Class Project: Hi, there. Let's talk about your class project. It's refreshingly simple. Just select two to three elements that you like. It could be the skies, it could be the water, or maybe the hills are calling your name. Your mission to take these 23 elements and practice them again and again. No pressure to create a complete landscape or a masterpiece. This is your playground to experiment with color, with elements, and with all the different techniques that I'll be teaching. The best part, I want to see those not so happy attempts, too. That's where the real learning happens. So please upload them in the project section. I'll be happy to jump in and personally give you feedback on how to improve these Elec. You are feeling inspired to mix all these elements and create a beautiful landscape. Please check out these classes, we guide you, and you can use these beautiful elements that we learned today and create your own lans. But remember, this class is about focusing on each element and not having the pressure of creating a big landscape. Enjoy the process of color mixing of light and shadows and really getting lost in each element. Get ready to dive into color mixing and understanding those easy steps and easy brush strokes to create your beautiful landscape elements. 3. Art Supplies: Art supplies we all have a weakness for art supplies, right? Let's start with paper, which is the most important. I'm using a 300 GSM Canson coal press paper. You can use any brand that you have, but please see that it's 300 GSM. The reason being that this 300 GSM can soak in a lot of water. So it really helps with your wet on wet techniques. Besides that, I'm really good even you can use handmade paper, but have it watercolor paper, minimum 300 GSM. Moving to paints, you can use any watercolor paints you have. It could be cakes, it could be tubes, it could be anything that you have. I prefer using tubes because I love the pure pigment of the tubes, and I'll walk you through the colors that I'm going to use. But you can use any brand. I'm using yellow Mission gold. I personally love the way the um pigment keeps its unique properties and doesn't become diluted in the end, it's very free flowing and easy. So the colors that I'll be using specifically are red, turquoise blue, cerulean blue, um sap green, olive green, burn, sienna, Indian yellow, lemon yellow, which I will walk you through in color mixing and at the beginning of every class. So the way I look at it is cool shades and warm shades. In my cool shades, I'll have two shades of each. So two greens, two blues, two yellows, and I also taken two different browns and red. But feel free to use any shades that you have. I'll be explaining to you how you can use whatever you have. But the idea is to mix different shades of color. Now you need a mixing palette. I have this particular palette. Um, I love that, you know, you can mix in a lot of color. It is, it's from magello as well. But, you know, you can just use a steel plate. You can use a ceramic plate that you have. Just have a lot of space for mixing. I prefer using a limited palette and that's why I just taken two shades. I don't like the 24 48 colors. Um, I would also encourage you to use a limited palette and mix a lot to create your own shade of color. Brushes. I'm using one flat brush. It really helps with wet on wet technique. It's a three fourths size Princeton brush. You can use any brand you like. Just have two or three different sizes. This is the size ten round brush, and this is the size four round rush. Use any brushes, any brands that you have, but just keep two, three different sizes. And then just keep two different jars of water. One will always keep for fresh clean water and one will do our water mixing. Keep a napkin handy, keep a pencil and if you want a masking tape, and I think that's about it. Just pull out whatever you have because this is just a practice session. We are not creating masterpiece, so pull out whatever you and just get started. Don't overthink it. 4. Colour Mixing: Mm. To give your landscapes that raw organic look, it's important to mix colors. Let's start by understanding the color wheel. Back to basis, you have blue, yellow and green. For now, take any blue, yellow and green you may have. Mix your existing blue and yellow. The amount of blue that you use, the proportion of blue versus a proportion of yellow will change the color of your green. Colors depend on brand. Don't worry about any brand you have even if it's Camelin, start with it and do this exercise with me. Mix a little bit more of blue and see how your green changes. Now we'll mix orange, which is a mix. We create orange, which is a mix of yellow and red. Even this based on the amount of red or the amount of yellow that you use, depth of your orange shade will change. Lastly, in our secondary colors, we have purple, which is a mix of blue and red. We have three primary colors, blue, yellow and red, and we have three secondary colors, which is green, orange and purple. So mix these shades to just get into the rhythm before we dive in. For all landscapes that have trees, grass, and land, we'll be using lemon yellow, olive green, sack, green, cerulean blue, red, and burn sienna. You can mix these greens just like we've shared. But if you do a lot of landscapes, it's just easier to have two greens ready with you. Now I want to show you different gradients of green. First, I'm going to mix two green, sap green and olive green. Take any two greens you have, load your brush with a lot of pigment. That is your first. Now take clean water and pull this paint and see what gradient you can create. This study will help you when you're doing your tree grass, so you know how much water to put and how much pigment to take. I want to create a different shade of green. I'm adding blue to the current mix of olive and sap green that I have. You can see how much change has come just by adding one more color. This green can also be used in the sea. So based on just keep mixing your colors and think where you can use it. If you want, you can mix a little bit of red into your green to give that more of a rustic look. And this is a new shade. So by adding blue, by adding yellow, you can change your shade of green, and these different shades will create depth, light and shadow within your paintings. Now comes to the application on these greens. Greens are the most used in landscape. In grasslands, I've used lemon yellow, cerulean blue, sac, green, mixed it in different shades to bring my light mid and da. I've used in bush. In the bush, I've also added a little bit of red to get that earthy mix because we know brushes on the ground. I've used it in coconut trees. Over here, I've also added in burnt sienna to give that bark and the look within the trees. I have used it in summer trees, same colors, but look how different it looks. Greens have a variety of applications. Practice these greens, make your own shades or create completely new greens. Moving to blues, blues are mostly used in the sky and in water and everywhere in between, I use as primary in the sky and the water, I'm using two blues, a turquoise blue and a cerulean blue. Feel free to use any blues you have. In layman's language, you'll call it dark blue and light blue. But make sure to have more than one shade of Now I'm going to mix these two blues, but I'm using a much higher amount of cerulean blue. When you mix this shade together, you will see how beautifully it blends for the sky. Right now, I'll do an exercise where I'll show you gradients of two different blues. Both have turquoise and cerulean blue. But the sky has more of cerulean blue and the sea has more of turquoise blue. So do this exercise with me. Right now, I've loaded my brush with this mix and more of cerulean blue. Now I'm using water and pulling this color out. This is exactly how your clear sky will look where you've just created a gradient of a blue mix with more of cerulean blue. Now we're going to do a similar exercise for the sea and this time we will use turquoise blue. A secret to the sea is it also has green. Mix a little bit of olive green in this water turquoise blue mix that you have and you'll see what a beautiful gradient you'll get a green, blue mix that goes perfectly when you're painting the depths of the ocean. Do this exercise with me, then use fresh colour and pull out the color so you can see the beautiful gradient that you can create. Let's talk about the shadow of the clouds. This is going to be a simple purple like we've discussed in our color wheel, where we use the primary and secondary colors. Here we'll be mixing blue and red to give us a beautiful shade of purple. This is a purple that we'll be using in our shadow. Let's do a quick recap of the sky and the sea. In both, we use two shades of blue, turquoise blue and cerulean blue. In the sky, we use more of cerulean blue and create a gradient, especially for clear skies. For water, we use more of turquoise blue. The magic mix is green. Add a shade of green to your water to give that beautiful depth. For shadows of the clouds, I encourage you to mix and create your own purple. When you paint the sunset sky, I'm going to tell you it's all about the colors and blending. What are these colors in blending? Top color is purple, middle color is red, and then we have yellow. We are pulling these colors from our color wheel. Let's get mixing for you to understand what colors to use for your sunset sky and how to blend them. The purple in the sunset sky is going to be a mix of cerulean blue and red. Whatever blue and red you have, mix them together and see the shade of purple you're getting and if you're happy with that shade of purple. The shade of your purple completely changes depending on the amount of blue and the amount of red. By amount, I mean proportion. Keep mixing to see what works for you. I want to show you over here that when I use more of blue, what is the shade of purple I get? And then I use more of red, what is the shade of purple I get? Sometimes when you want to just show a beautiful atmospheric condition of the sky, you can change the proportion of red or blue and see these beautiful shades you'll get. Let's come to sand. The road mix, I'll be showing you in the class itself, in the lesson itself. For sand, we use Indian yellow and burn Siena. If you don't have Indian yellow or yellow occur, you can mix this by mixing. Red and yellow. Let's mix that and see how that turns out. If you have yellow ocher or Indian yellow, please use that directly, and then you'll also be using burnt sienna, so you'll have that mix. If not, take in the red you have and mix in if you have lemon yellow, lemon yellow, otherwise, if you have yellow och, yellow ocher and see, this is the mix that you will get. Very similar, but that's more on the orange side depending on how much of red that you mix. And then comes brown. I prefer to use burnt sienna and always keep it handy in my palette. Brown is not always the easiest to get the right mix because it mixes all primary colors or a mix of secondary colors and a primary color. But if you are feeling inspired and do want to create your own brown, what you need to do is first create an orange, which is red and yellow and then mix in blue and then keep experimenting with different proportions to see what works for you. 5. Trees - Summer & Autumn: Today we are learning a fundamental aspect of any landscape trees. I'll be teaching you the direction of the sun where to add tonal variations, and then we'll move on to summer and autumn trees. Let's begin. I'll be drawing two basic trees, keeping the lines very loose and very natural. So just think of a circle, but just keep moving your hands in a way to make a tree structure. Why I'm drawing these two trees is to explain to you where the sun will come from and where your shadows will be. Trees are all about creating the depth and dimension to light and shadows. On the left tree, the sun is coming from the left. So your shadows will be on the right side, just as I'm doing it. Do this quick exercise. It will really help you out. And on the left side tree, the sun is coming from the right and hence the shadows are on the opposite side. So just follow along so you can get a better hang of where the light and shadows will be. Recapping wherever the sun is coming from, the shadow will be on the opposite side. Two key things to keep in mind are light and shadow and tonal variation. Light and shadow creates the illusion of three dimensional form while tonal variation gives our trees depth and visual interest. Think of how sunlight hits a tree. Some leaves catch direct light appearing bright and vibrant while others fall into the shadow. For our summer trees, we'll work with three distinct layers. We'll start with yellow as base, capturing the warm sunlight that hits the leaves. Next comes sap green, which gives us the rich summer foliage. Finally we la erudian root to create depth and shadow to different areas. Coming to autumn trees, we'll use a different but equally beautiful palette. We'll begin with Indian yellow as our base that gives us a gorgeous warm glow that autumn trees are known for. The second layer will be mixing red with Indian yellow to create those vibrant tones, and our final layer will be pure red. We'll first start with a wet on wet technique and hence I'm using clear water with my round size ten brush and just wetting the section that I want to create the tree in. So don't need to wet the entire page, just section where we'll be doing it and see that it's an equal amount of water. Then as we discussed for the summer tree, we'll be using just three shades, starting with yellow, which will be our lightest tone. And the same way that I put a brother, sorry, I use the water. I'll just put round strokes and put the yellow. Next for our mid tones, I'm using sap green. But I won't be putting sam green everywhere. Assuming that the sunlight is coming from the left, I'll only be putting the green tones on the right hand side, just the way we discussed in our drawing and um what does this do? This gives that beautiful effect of light falling and some trees, some leaves being a lighter yellow and some being a little green. Now I'm moving on to cerulean blue for our darkest sheads. So what does this also I'll not be doing everywhere. I'll just be putting on the bottom right side of the gray. I'm also trying to go a little outside so that you know those little little trees or little leaves that come out to just create that beautiful little realistic effect. Going back in, taking my yellow and doing the same thing on the left hand side to create that beautiful organic look of the tree. Now I'm loading my brush with a little bit of born sienna and just put in a small stroke of the branch, and on the right hand side, I'm putting the shadow of the branch. In a few areas, you'll create a few sorry, that was a trunk and in a few areas, you'll create the branches. Now we'll be using the same technique for the autumn tree, and then the autumn tree will be equally beautiful but just different colors. Please paint this along with me because you've already seen us do the summer tree. So this will be a good practice to do it along with me. As you see, three different tones I'm going to take three easy steps. The first step, I'm taking an Indian yellow. What is the difference between a lemon yellow and an Indian yellow and Indian yellow is a more warm color. It has more of red, so it looks a bit orangish. I put clear water to make it a wet on wet and I put round strokes of Indian yellow. Now I'm creating a beautiful mix to create that warm glow. I'm mixing this Indian yellow with a bit of red. And even in this, the sun is going to come from the left hand side. So on the right hand side, I'll be keeping this orangish mix. You can even use a deep orange directly if you like. You'll, you know, create your own, um, hue of color. For the last tone, I'm taking red as it is, you can take a scarlet red a deep red to create that beautiful autumn look. Similarly, to create that organic look, I'm going to be putting a few branches in and out. So as I'm doing it, do it with me since you've already seen me do the summer dream or pause just class and do it. It's only when you practice, will you enjoy it. It's very easy technique, three simple steps that you can use anywhere. Again, I'm using burnt sienna, draw the Trump and the branches. But 6. Bush & Grass: Welcome. In today's class, I'll teach you how to paint a bush and grass in three easy steps. When you think of a bush, think of the larger shape. So I'm going to move my hand in circular motion like you can see. I'm first going to draw in pencil like I always do to explain to you where the sun and shadows will be. So don't think of each leaf within a bush. Think of it as a shape and that helps us break it down into a very easily digestible format. So if the sun is coming from the left, the shadows will be on the right. The bush is just about choosing the right colors and creating that beautiful dance of light and shadow. I'll be using three colors, which will form a light, mid and dark tone, which also form a step one, step two, and step three. Super easy to follow three steps, three tones. So it's going to be lemon yellow, sack green, and cerulean. Feel free to use any tone of yellow, any tone of green, and any tone of cerulean blue, you will create your own wonderfully beautiful. Now I'm using my size ten round brush, drawing out a line so that you'll know where the bush is going to be. And I'm using circular motions. So how do all of these different elements differ? A lot of them differ in the strokes that we use. So for a bush, like how a bush is round to get that shape, I'm going to use circular movement. And right now I'm covering the entire space with lemon yellow. So that'll be our first layer to just keep in mind the stroke that you're going to use and creating a beautiful first layer of lemon yellow. Now I'm loading my brush with a lot of pigment of sap green, but you see I'm not covering the entire space with sap green. I'm going to leave those spots of yellow to show where the light is falling in. It creates a beautiful when you look at a bush, some places are lighter, some places are darker. This is the easiest way to create it. In your second layer, just leave some places empty, which will show the first layer. And we'll do a similar effect in our third layer, which will create the deepest shadows. Now loading my brush with cerulan blue. As soon as you put blue on green and yellow, they will create a deeper mix of green. You can also use red possibly add in I picked up some red in my brush and adding some red to give that more raw color, like a earthy color of the push. About, you can see, I'm moving my brush in a circular motion, and you need to do it all in one go. So this is it's a wet on dry technique. Every layer is already wet by the previous layer. So when you're doing it, you cannot pause too much or don't dry it in between so that you can otherwise, you'll get very deep defined lines that you don't want because it's a bush. Just enjoy the process and when the paper is wet, keep adding the next layer. Here are my top tips. It's super easy like you saw just three layers, three steps, light, mid dark tones, and you're good to go. So use minimum three shades. So minimum three tones, light, mid and dark, which would be lemon, sap, green, and cerulin lo keep practicing the circular motion and create those beautiful bushes. Now, I'm taking my smaller size for brush and loading it with a bit of a mix of cerulinlu and sap green at the edges, I'm pushing their color out or adding a little bit of color. What this does, it gives a beautiful natural effect of a little bit coming out and it adds a lot of character to your push. So when I'm moving towards the lighter tone, obviously, I'm using the lighter lemon yellow sap green and in the darker tone, I'm using red and cerulinblu. But do add this. It gives a lot of beautiful character to your push. Learning how to paint grass is a game changer. It adds that unique character to any landscape. And it's super simple. I'll show you how. Landscape is all about the strokes. Put pressure and release. So when you put pressure on your I'll walk you through it. So you take your brush, put pressure and release. I want you to now pick up any paint any color you have, don't worry about the color. I'm using a size ten brush. If you are using a smaller paper, use a smaller brush. Use any color that you have. Right now, I just want to show you the technique. At a 90 degree angle, I'm putting my brush. I'm putting pressure and release. So you saw that beautiful stroke, put pressure release. Put pressure release. It's just that simple, and it's so much fun to practice. So take any brush, any color and practice. Once you practice this, do the same in many different directions. Because as you know, grass to create the natural look, it doesn't have to be, perfect. You want it to be imperfect. Then we'll add in tonal variations and depth. But it's all about the strokes, and I love painting brass, so please paint along, pause this lesson over here and practice these strokes. If you get these strokes right, you will just enjoy adding grass to any of your landscape. The colors. We'll be using four colors the same as the bushes, yellow, sap green, cerulan blue and red, similar to the bushes, in order to create that light and shadow, we'll be adding these three tones of yellow, green, and cerulan blue and we'll just add red to create the earthy look. Pull out these colors and practice with me. I'm going to load my brush with a lot of pigment. This is a dry on dry technique because you want those dry strokes, 90 degree angle, put pressure release, put pressure release. I'm starting with lemon yellow, and like you see, I'm doing it in different directions. Straight, right, left, go with the flow. Then I'm adding sap green. The first yellow is slightly damp so you can see they're beautifully mixing into each other. Now I'm going to add my third layer of cerulean blue and then I'll add red. Please pause this lesson, try this, put it in the project section. I would love to see especially your grass and your strokes, and I'm more than happy to guide you and give you feedback on how to improve these grass strokes and you can beautifully add them to any landscape in any amount you want. You can make the grass smaller, bigger, make it like a bush like we've learned or add just a little character to that bush or the grass. Here are my top tips. Keep it uneven. That's how it looks beautiful and natural. That's the most important tip. Put pressure and release to create those wonderfully beautiful strokes and just three minimum shades, light, mid and dark. 7. Skies - Summer, Cloudy & Sunset: Today, we'll be learning to paint different types of skies in watercolors, a crucial element that sets the mood for any landscape. Let's start with the sunny sky. The key here is creating a smooth gradient that captures the endless summer blue. I'm going to start with my flat brush. It's a three fourth size flat brush and I'm just going to create I'm going to create a layer of clear water. You can see that I have two jugs of which one will always remain clear water. In skies, we always prefer to do a wet on wet technique and we just give it one layer to create that beautiful transparent sky. Just see that there are no puddles. Now I'm going to be mixing two blues, turquoise blue and cerulean blue. The darkest part would remain on the top, and then we'll create a beautiful gradient where it'll become lighter as it goes down. So right now, I'm using a size ten round brush. You can use any brush. Basically, it depends on how big the sky you're making. Now what I'm doing is I'm taking clear water and pulling that color down. What this does is it creates this beautiful gradient of a dark to light, clear sunny sky. Like we discussed, the top tips to remember is to create a gradient to go from dark to light and to finish the entire sky in just one layer. It's really simple, pause the video over here and paint this, give it a shot. The only way you can get good with skies is just to keep practicing. I've used two blues, turquoise blue and cerulean blue, mix them both to create my own beautiful variation of a sky, but feel free to use whichever blue you have and create mixes of those blues because you'll create this beautiful new shade that's individual to you, you'll enjoy the process. Moving on to cloudy sky, here we huge use a slightly different approach. I first want to show you how to draw these clouds for them to look natural, organic and realistic. I'm starting with the horizon line. What is a horizon line is saline where the sky meets Celan or the water meets Celan. I've drawn a line in the middle and then drawn out lines to the outside, you can see how I'm doing it. Now, this will explain to you how to draw clouds where you'll make bigger clouds further apart on top and smaller clouds clustered together in the bottom. Once you do this, once you complete this exercise, and you put in the colors, you will realize how beautifully organic they look when you use this really simple approach. Similar to the sunny sky, what I'm first going to do is create a clean water wash. Again, I'll be taking my flat brush. Don't worry if you don't have a flat brush. Just take any brush. The idea is to create a clean layer of water. Here as well, I'm going to be mixing two blues, a turquoise blue, and a cerulean blue. However, now the difference will come between a sunny and a cloudy sky. Here you can see I'm not doing a straight wash. I'm just moving my hand very organically and leaving white spaces. The crucial thing to remember here is to leave white spaces. Those will be your clouds and that will look organic. Please note what I've done here, I've taken the deepest tone and put it on the top and use the lighter, less pigmented tones at the bottom. Also, I've left more white spaces on the top, which will be a bigger clouds and less white spaces at the bottom. Now I'm taking my smaller size six brush and I'm using violet color basically to create to give this fluffiness to the clouds which make it look really beautiful. Basically, it's like giving a shadow to the clouds. But you have to have a very, very light hand and light touch over here so that your colors don't get mixed up. Cloudy skies typically will take a little more practice than sunny skies, please do that. Practice with me, pause this video, and show it to me in the projects. I'll be more than happy to tell you how to improve and get this beautiful cloudy sky that you can use in any of your paintings. Now I'm just going to take some sap green and just where I had the horizon line, just put in a green field over here. The idea is just for you to understand the beauty of the sky. Once you have that green, you can understand the beauty of it. Let's quickly recap and get our top tips. Bigger clouds on the top, be darker on the top. Leave white spaces. Let them create their own shape. That's the beauty of watercolors that they'll create their own shape. Keep it imperfect, keep it organic. You don't need any perfect skies or clouds. You just need it to look beautiful, organic and natural. Like we discussed, similar to sunny skies. I've used turquoise blue and cerulean blue, but please just use the different kinds of blues you have. You want to mix more than two blues, you want to just keep it to one blue. That's completely up to you to create your own mix. If you have these two colors, please go ahead and use them. Now coming to sunset skies. Sunset skies are all about those beautiful colors, those pink, those purples, those yellow ochres, those reds, and how to blend them together. That's what I'm going to show you very three simple colors I'll be taking violet, red, and Indian yellow, which is basically Indian yellow, you could think of it as a yellow ocher, or you could mix a little bit of yellow and red to create a bit of a orangish tone. I'm going to make it in three layers, top, middle, and bottom. Make it asymmetric. You can put a little bit of purple, a lot more of red, a little bit of yellow or change that mix. But the idea is to create different colors. That's the beauty of sunset sky. When you look up, you'll be like, Oh, wow, today, the sky is pink. So I'm just drawing it out for you, roughly, think of it like this. Between each of these two layers, top middle and bottom, there'll be water that we'll be pulling blending these layers together. It's about choosing beautiful colors and blending them well. That's what we will dive into. All three skies start with the same technique where it's a wet on wet technique and we'll create a clean water wash. That's what I'm doing over here. You can use different strokes. The idea is to see that you do not get any puddles. Now I'm taking violet color, ultramarine violet, which will be my top section. I'm loading my brush with a lot of pigment, and that's the color that I'm adding to the top, you can see. Once you're happy with how your violet has come out, take red, load it with red, leave a little bit of space between the violet and red layer, and then take a little bit of water and put it in between. As soon as you put water in between, they will blend beautifully into one another. And right now it looks a bit equal, feel free to put in as much you want. Again, you can see that when I started the yellow, I've not started from the top, I've started a little bit from below. And when it comes to the blend, I've not taken so much pigin. I've just taken a clear water and die. Please, please practice this. Be easy on yourself. Just do one sky, practice it a couple of times if you need to, and again, put it in the projects and I can guide you how to improve those skies. Once you get your skies, you'll feel so excited to do different landscapes because you're like, Okay, I've learned this technique. I'm going to apply it here and I know what the colors are here. I'll beautifully blend it here. Play around. Don't make it equal, make it unequal. I know minus become a little equal. But as you practice, you'll learn. Let's do a quick recap because skies are crucial and their foundation. For a sunny sky, sunny sunny sunny sky, all we're trying to do is create a gradient. Use two colors, go from top to bottom, dark on the top and bottom on the light, use clear water to pull your color down. Then let's move to the cloudy sky. Like I explained, keep this image in your mind of bigger clouds on top, smaller and more clustered clouds at the bottom, and put a very loose stroke, use more pigment on top, less pigment at the bottom. Leave a lot of white spaces. You want to pick up the white spaces, you can also use a little bit of cotton to pick up those white spaces, and also add a little bit of shadow to create the fluffy clouds. When it comes to sunset skies, it's all about colors and blending them, feel free to use your choice of sunset sky, but do practice these three skies, practice them as much as possible. Don't worry about going wrong. See you in the next class. 8. Land - Sand, Grassland & Road: Welcome. Today we'll dive into another supremely crucial element of a landscape land. I'll walk you through sand, grasslands and road. If you take any landscape, you will need one of these three. If it's a beach or a seaside, you'll need sand, if it's something with the hills and meadows, you'll need a grassland. Especially if you're doing a urban sketching, you'll need a road. Let's dive in. Indian yellow or yellow occur and burnt sienna. Take out your paints and do this exercise with me. It's very easy flowing and a lot of fun. I'll be using a wet on wet technique. I'm taking my flat three fourth size flat brush and giving a clear layer of water. It's best to do, especially when you have a larger piece, it's best to do wet on wet techniques because the beauty of this technique is you let the medium do the magic. As I move and I put in the color, you'll see how the color easily flows through when we use our wet on wet technique. A smaller round brush and just see the way my hand is moving. I've used as a mix. I've already mixed both the colors on my palette, so that's why you can see in some places it's a bit moburn Sienna and some places the Indian yellow. And like you see, I'm just leaving it uneven, imperfect, organic. So that's the beauty of sand, right? If you look at sand, it's not a perfect line or perfect piece of like a little particle. So that's what we are aiming at doing. Just give an uneven tone. The colors should not be even at all, uneven colors, imperfect. So you have the liberty to have a lot of fun. So do this exercise, pause the video, do this exercise, and I really hope to see it in the project section. Now I'm going to lower my brush with much more pignin and this time burnt sienna, like you can see, I'll not be covering the entire space, but just some sections. If you have seen a landscape and you can see specific shadows, so then you can do it towards one side. Since I'm just showing you overall, so I'll be just moving my brush around to give a light mid dark tone. This is my second tone. The first one did was the first base light tone. Now I'll show you a super super fun technique. Cover the rest of your page or the rest of your painting with tissue so that it doesn't come onto that. Take two brushes, load the smaller brush with a lot of pigment, and now we are just going to sprinkle, as we are sprinkling sand on the sand, but it'll give this beautiful texture to the sand. That's what we're trying to do. So with my bigger brush, I'm hitting my smaller brush like you can see, and it's going to add a lovely texture. This that you're taking should I just just take burn Sienna or a mix, but it should be a deeper color so that you can see it. We'll have to do this a little and you can see the little sand particles coming. It's a very satisfying and beautiful technique. So enjoy it when you do it. That's it. Look, just so simple and you can create this beautiful sand. So top tips, keep it uneven, have fun, keep it organic. Next is minimum use two shades. I've been saying this repeatedly. That's how you'll get that beautiful tonal variation and in sand, add texture. Moving to grasslands, here I'll be using three colors, and each of these colors will be my light, mit, and tar tone. There'll be three steps. We'll be using each of these to add that depth and tone. One is lemon yellow, one is sack green, and one is cerulean blue. If you don't have these exact colors, I would just tell you to choose one yellow, one green, and one blue. Then we are going to be using a wet on wet technique. Like I've been telling you, this is a very beautiful technique and take some time to lovingly prep your paper for what's to come and see that there are no puddles, keep equal layer of wet. Now I'm taking Indian yellow. I'll cover the entire grassland section with this Indian yellow. I don't suggest you leaving whites, but you can leave a little bit of white if you want. Depending on how you want it, you can also use a more orange or yellow like Indian yellow, but I love that brightness of a lemon yellow. For a second tone, I'll be using sack green, and this time, I'm not going to cover the entire section. I'm only going to cover certain areas. There's no prescription to wear. But basically what this is you want a light mid dark tone. In some places the light will fall more in some places the light will fall less. Let's assume the light is falling from above. I'll just leave a little were of yellow and put in a little way of green so that you can use your own intuition to do. This is our second layer. Enjoy. For the third tone and third layer, I'm loading my brush with a lot more pigment. This time, it's going to be cerulean blue. I'm going to leave the top much lighter. Think of it as the top part, which is furthest away from us, it'll always be lighter. The ones closer to us, will be way more defined and darker. I've put in the deepest cerulean blue below. Remember, when you put blue on green or yellow, it will give you a deeper green shed. And I just put a little bit, as if you can see a little bit of, uh, you know, bushes somewhere far away. That's why I'm just adding that a little bit of depth and texture through um putting it just in a little places, not everywhere. Now I'm going to lower my brush with a lot more pigment of cerulean blue. You could also add a bit of red if you like, and it'll give a beautiful tone. I'm putting my brush at a 90 degree angles and just putting pressure release, put pressure release. These are your closest grass that you can see from right close. Always remember the things that are closest to you will have a lot more definition or details than the ones that are away from you. Since this grassland, these grass is closer to us, you'll be defining them in singular strokes. Like I've been seeing it along, top tips further away will always be lighter, and this is true not just for grassland even for mountains and other things. Add minimum of three shades and add elements like grass or bush, a little bit here and there. Roads come really handy when you're doing an urban landscape. They could be different shapes of roads like a triangle wedge all converging towards one point, or they could be a meandering road. Both these I'm drawing our one point perspective. For the purpose of this lesson, I'm not going to get into shapes, but how to approach this in terms of colors and how to add texture and make it look purely realistic and organic and fun. It's really important to choose the right color for your rod. You can choose to use black directly, but the beauty of any road is you never see it as an even black. You see different shades of colors depending on whether light is falling, what the material used for the road is and different things. What we want to do here is mix three colors, burnt sienna, pains gray and red. If you don't have pains gray, just use a mix of blue and red. You can see I've got this beautiful shiny black on the right side that you can see. So he just pause it with your hair, take out your colors and try mixing this color because in the road, the technique and layers are not as important as getting the color right. So the beautiful black ish, sort of a color. Now I'm going to load my brush with this mix that we currently created, and I'm going to put the first layer. So I'm using a thicker brush because I want to cover a lot more ground in place of your area of your road, you're going to put that color. Why are we not using This technique is called a dry technique. As you saw before, we'll be using a wet on wet technique, and now we are using a dry technique. Why are we using a dry technique here? Because roads are not easy flowing. You have sand and you have grasslands, sky. That's a part of nature, so they're easy flowing, but roads are not. We want to give a deep color, and then that's why we are using a dry technique. And now I'm going to go ahead and add my second layer because I don't want it to be so light. But you can decide how much you want to add over it. So you can add two layers or three layers, but let each layer dry. You can see a little bit of brown where my finger is. That's the beauty of mixing the colors. To create that road divider that we see, I'm going to be using a guash color. You can do this the other way by leaving that section white, but that's just too difficult. So take a Gauche, white, or you can take a Posca it ten. Use one of your older brushes on use of good brushes for this, and I'm going to take it directly from the tube and add the dot divider. Now, even the divider, just keep in mind the further away it is, the smaller it will be the closer it is to you, the bigger and thicker it will be. So that will give you that perspective that you're looking. The closer they are, they'll be darker and they'll be more wider and the further away, they'll become thinner. Whoo. Now you can add land, Skylans, roads to any landscape. Please try it. Just practice one if you like, and please put in the project section. My top tips for the road are the further away it'll it'll be slightly lighter, and that's why it's lovely to mix color, and the further away it will also be narrower, both the road and the divider. 9. Water - Sea & River: Welcome. Today we'll explore painting different types of water in watercolors. I'll show you how embracing imperfection and letting the medium guide you creates the most natural results. We'll start with the C. I'll first use a pencil to draw out how the sea is going to look so that you can understand tonal variation. Here we'll explore two different kinds of seas. One, where the sky meets the sea, which you can see on the left hand side, and you can see, I'm just drawing out the waves. Over here, it's about basically creating a tonal variation and creating those deep and light waves of the sea. And on the right side, I'm going to be doing land, sea, and sky. So you can understand when you go to a beach or something, you're sitting on the beach, how you will approach the sea. The main difference here will be the waves towards land, how we will approach them, and how best we can let Watercolor do its magic with water. Let me first walk you through what are the colors that you'll be using? You'll be using three colors. Two shades of blue and one of green. Yeah, I know it's surprising where am I using green. But once you put in green into your blue, it will create such a beautiful depth in your sea. You'll notice how beautiful it is and then you can experiment with different types of green. So turquoise blue, cerulean blue, and olive green are the three colors I'll be using. First, I'd suggest you to quickly draw out the horizon line like we've discussed, Horizon line is a line where the sky meets the land or the sea meets the sky in this case. I'm using a three fourth size flat brush. You can use any brush. The idea here is to create a clear water wash because you're using a wet on wet technique to create that beautiful, imperfect organic watercolor style of water and not control it too much. Wet your paper, see that the waters evenly spread. Now I'm loading my brush with a lot of pigment. This is a mix of turquoise and cerulean blue, and I'm using you can just see the angle of my brush. You can see that I'm trying to cover maximum space, and that's what I checked over here, see how I'm moving the brush and the angle of the brush is y flat. I'm intentionally leaving a lot of whites. The white is where the sun is glittering on different waves of the sea. So leave a little bit of white, not like the way that you do in the sky and clouds, but as in where you can. Now I'm adding green to blue, and I'll add in a deep shade over here. So again, load your brush with a lot of pigment, mix blue and green together. Now, you see that beautiful color that's coming around. And now what I'm doing is I'm trying to create the waves. So I'm not doing a full spread. I'm moving from each side. So either go from left to right and then from to left and the middle part will remain a bit of a shimmer. What I did here is I took my brush and tried to remove some color so that it has an uneven look to it. Now that you've created the background waves, we create the foreground waves. See, I'm putting my brush at a 90 degree angle. I'm using the tip of my brush and I'm creating more pigmented strokes. What this does is it shows us those waves that are moving. It gives that beautiful movement. So the technique is that your background, use a flatter side of your brush at a flat angle, and then for the foreground, you use it at a 90 degree angle. This is the effect you'll get. When painting C, you just need to go with the floor, let the paper always stay a little damp. For a sea meats land scene, we'll use a very similar technique, but you'll notice how the waves behave differently when they approach the shore. Similarly, with a wet on wet technique, we'll take a flat brush. If you don't have a flat brush, use a round brush, don't worry about it. All you need to see is that you create an even layer of water, and there are no puddles anywhere in that section. I'm going to lower my brush with a lot of pigment and see how I start at the edges of both sides and just how we shaped out the shore. We're going to use that same shape to guide us for the water as well, and towards the shore, it'll always be deeper and towards the end, leave a little white so that you get that beautiful, you know, way of how the sun hits the sea. That's the beauty of leaving the whites and letting watercolor do its own magic. Now we are going to create the more defined waves. I'm using a smaller size for brush and using only the tip of my brush and I'm trying to create that shape of the shore. I don't do it like a defined line, create those strokes. Go with the flow as you see curves. Wherever there are curves, it'll be darker. Define those waves through the curves. I'm moving back now that my sea and sky is a little dry and adding strokes there as well. For the final defined strokes, you can wait for it to dry a little bit and then create it so that, you know, but don't overdo it. Just put a little strokes here and there as you feel like adding more tonal variation to your painting. Now that my painting is almost dry, it's a bit semi dry. It's not completely dry. I'm going to go and add a few final strokes. This you leave to your own intuition on how many strokes and when you want to do it. I'm doing it in three simple steps. My first step was creating the entire blue. Second was defining the waves and third is adding these specific waves. Go in and define the waves wherever you feel could use a little more of depth. My top tips on this section, use a wet on wet technique. That's the best way to create this watercolor magic and use minimum two shades of blue to create a tonal variation. Now we'll be moving to a river. I'll be showing you two different types of river, a moving river, and a still river. The difference between them actually only come in the detailed stroke. Again, I'm drawing this out to show you the tonal variation. Similar to C, we'll start with the broader strokes, and now you can see the darker strokes are actually the waves. The first layer will remain the same when we move to the still river, only the second layer instead of us giving the waves from right to left, we will be showing the shadow of things that are around it. I'll be going from top to bottom. Like you can see. It's very similar to the sea, so I really encourage you to put this video on pause, take out your supplies if you haven't already, and paint the river with me. You all you need to do is practice. Same colors as the sea, two shades of blue and one shade of green. If you don't have these exact shades, take any two shades of blue that you have and one shade of green and you'll be able to create a similar kind of magic. If you haven't already, again, I'm repeating myself so that you actually do it. Go take out the supplies and paint with me. Now I'll be using a round brush instead of a flat brush because the area is smaller. But if you're doing a huge river, do you use a flat brush. Again, here we are doing a wet on wet technique. So what we want to do is create a clean white wash. So see that there are no puddles. Now I'm taking a mix of the three colors that we discussed and I'm creating the background of the river. When here, I'm moving from left to right, even in the base layer. So you move from left to right. That will be the same for both moving and still, and now I'm adding the second layer, which will be giving it a lot more depth. And this is also very three easy layers, the background, which will cover more, adding strokes and then we'll go ahead and add some detailed strokes a little later. So, um practice with me. This is very similar. Take out your colors. I'm repeating it again. I would love to see what you've done in the projects. But please do practice. That's the only way to get better at this. I'm taking my smaller brush, loading with a lot more pigment and adding my third layer, which will show the strokes. Wherever the whites are there, you see that I'm letting the whites be. I'm not really covering the whites, and we give it a natural look. Just go with the shape that you've chosen and just put a few strokes here and there, go with your intuition on this. Now moving to the still river, again, using a wet on wet technique to put a clear layer of water, and then we will do it in a three step process. Very similar to the moving river. Only the second step will be slightly different. The first step is again the same where I'm going to be mixing the three colors that we've chosen, turquoise cerulean and olive green, and put it and start from the edges, move from left to right, leave a lot of whites in between. The second layer is also very similar where I'm moving from left to right and creating depth. It's a third layer where you would see the difference where the difference will come in instead of moving from left to right, we'll move from top to bottom, we'll get to that right away. Now I've taken a smaller brush, put my pigment, you can see how I'm moving I am moving from left right, but I'm moving from top to bottom as well. Why am I doing this? There's always what happens in a still river, there'll always be something around it, a tree, hut or something for which the shadow will fall on the still river. And that's the beauty that you're trying to capture. It's a very subtle difference, but it'll really, you know, create that organic alistic effect at the end of your painting. So do try it. My top tips, use a wet on wet technique, keep it minimal and take minimum two shades of blue. If you haven't already, I urge you to take out your supplies and try the river with me. 10. Hills - Summer & Winter: Welcome. Today's lesson about hills, Hills form the backbone of any landscape. So once you learn in these three simple steps how paint hills, you can add them to any landscape. First, I'll start with drawing it out in pencil to understand how we'll be approaching the painting. So draw your horizon line, and here I'm drawing it in such a way that a major hero of the drawing or the painting will be the hills. Like you can see, there are few hills on the foreground which are bigger, and then you can see certain hills in the background. Now I'm just putting out a little bit of grasslands which will be in the front. Assuming the light from sun is coming from the left hand side, you see all the shadows on the right hand side. Drawing these shadows out to explain where the darker tones will come when we get to the painting. Now, when you see hills, you see many different colors. But what we're going to try to do is keep the colors as organic and natural as possible. I'll be using two shades of green and two shades of blue. Now, why blue, you may ask. When you see any hillscapes you see the farthest ones are really far away from you. They almost merge into the sky. The further ones will be in blue. W are these? You can use any two shades of blues and greens. The shades that I'll be using are stack green. And olive green, and I'll be using turquoise blue and cerulean blue, mostly because these are the blues and greens I have. So, feel free to use any two glues that you want and any two greens that you want. The greens will be the hills in the front, and the blues will be the one at the back. Super. Let's dive in. I'll be using a wet on dry technique, meaning your paper is dry, but my brush is loaded with a lot of color and a lot of pin. Why am I choosing this technique over here? Because I don't want the hills to be free flowing like the sky and the water. I want them to be a little more defined. That's why this technique works better. First, I'm going to give a base layer of the greens and the greens will be the ones in the front mixing both the greens and putting them across. And use different shades. So if you're using two different greens, put more of sap green in one, more of olive green in one. All your hills won't have to be the same color because then you want to be able to differentiate the hills the way you would like. Now I'm using a shade of blue or a deeper green and putting the shadows towards the right. If you want your hills to look three dimensional, it's very important to create depth to lighten shadow. That's how simple this is. I'm going to put one layer like your base layer and then one shadow layer, then you put in a little more highlights. In this layer, just on the right hand side, assuming my son is on the left, on the right hand side, I'm putting deeper shades of the same color or you can choose a blue to add it to the green, which will make it a deeper green. Adding a little bit of grass in the front so this is just like dot dot dot, dot, dot, dot, because your pages already wet a little bit, from your hills. Add in a little bit dots to get that depth of that beautiful little grasslands that are there. Now I'm drying out my brush, like you can see, and I'm going to load it with blue color. Now let's do the hills or the back. For this, I'm taking mixing the two shades of blue, and I'll also put in a little bit of green and do this very gently so that you leave the definition of the front hills as they are, but also add the beauty of the further of hils. Now, I'm doing the same for the other hills as well. So please pause this video, pull out your colors and try this with me. I really would love to see your hills in the project section. Even the ones that fail, that's the joy. It's over there that I'll be able to help you and guide you on how you could improve your hills. Hills are really crucial. So please practice, practice, practice, practice them in isolation. They really don't need to be a part of a bigger landscape. Like you saw, you just added in a little bit of shadows on the abo hills as well. Now you can see the background on the foreground hills. So once you add in the sky and the land and all, you'll be able to see the entire beauty. But like I said, just keeping in one element at a time to go on and practice your hills. My top tips for the hills as we've been discussing are that add shades of blue and shades of green. Look at the direction of the sun add shadow. Keep the ones that are further away the light is without great definition and the ones that are closer, add a little bit of details and highlights, select a little bit of bushes or grass. Let's jump into winter hills. So for winter hills, I'll be teaching on two different types of winter hills. One are normal, winter landscape and their hills and one will be snow peaked mountains. I simply love the snow peak mountains because I'm going to teach you this super easy and super fun technique called a dry rush technique. So we practice that a lot before we jump into it. So over here as well, the direction of the sun is super crucial because it will give us where our shadows are. So if you've watched a lot of my lessons by now, you know, it's all a game of light and shadow. Figure out where the sun is and the shallows and ala. You have a beautiful three dimensional hill, grass, sky, whatever you name it, right? So snow peak. Let's quickly draw that out. These will be sharper edged mountains and you'll see they just snow on the peaks. I want to draw it out first. Sorry for all the background noise, guys. I live in a city. There's a lot of noise. Can't help it. So yeah. So here is the snow peak that you can see. So just drawing it out to tell you where the shadows are and what we'll be doing and now we can jump into the technique. Grab your paint palette and try this technique with me. In my palette you can see there's already a little bit of blue. I'm not going to take fresh blue. I'm just going to scrub my very dry brush. I don't have any water on my brush on it, and I'm just going to put pressure and move. You can't see anything right now, so I'm going to go back in and take a little more pigment, but just see that it's more of pigment and less of water. If you need to add just add a little bit, like a drop or two and then dry dry out, and then just move it in strokes. See? Wow. This is what I was trying to get at. So this will know when it integrates into your landscape, it's going to look really beautiful because this will create your peaks. So in some places, you'll add a little bit more color. So some places you'd keep it like this. But overall, the effect will be beautiful. And heads up guys, like everything in life, you need to practice this. So it's called a dry stroke technique. So stop here. Practice it in Lilvet and then when we get to the actual hills, you can try it over there. I realize I haven't specifically told you about the color yet, but you'll be using the same colors, cerulean blue and turquoise blue. Mix any two blues that you have with you and paint along. So um, I'll be doing similar to the summer hills. I'll be doing a wet on dry technique where my paper is dry, but my brush is loaded with pigment. You can see over here, I'm not covering every part. I'm putting it very loose because since it's winter, we can leave, you know, paper white, like we call it. Was paper white that you let parts of don't put pigment everywhere. So let that white of the paper show. And like we discussed further away the hills are, they'll always be lighter color. Over here, what I'm doing, I'm not using a different color. I'm just putting a little bit of more water and adding that. Now I'm adding in the shadows. Since the sun was coming from the left hand side, all our shadows will now fall on the right hand side. You can see and remember, you need to do this when the paper is wet itself because you don't want super defined lines. You want it to be very soft your hills. The paper needs to be semi wet, you need to do this all in one go. Keep practicing it and it'll become almost second nature when you do it a couple of times. I hope you practice the dry brush technique. I'm using my smaller size four round brush and I'm mixing two different glues. I don't have much water. It's pretty dry and you can see I'm just moving my brush in a quick stroke. So you need to do it really quickly in order to get that effect. At the bottom part of my hill, I'm going to mix a little bit of water in the blue and let that be because like, you know, the snow will be on the top parts. So um, that's how I'm going to do it. Again, I'll put my shadows towards the right. To define the mountains on the top, you can maybe just put a little bit of definition. But keep practicing this technique. It looks really beautiful once you get it, and it's actually quite simple and a lot of fun. Now for the deeper layers, which will be your shadows, you can use a cerulean blue, you can use a pains. You can even use violet, that is gray color, and just on one side of your hills based on where the shadows will fall, put in some depth over there. I want the hills at the back to be too defined, but I still want to show snow peaks. So what I'm going to do is leave a little bit of white, the paper white in places. And this section has more of water and less pigment because further away, we don't want them to be very defined. When I look back at the first set of hills that I made, I feel like they need one more layer of shadow. So even though they are dry, I'm going to put in a stroke of shadow and then I'm using water to so that they're not defined lines. But this is your fall to take if you are happy with your um shadow layer. Don't do this. But I'm showing this to you in case you want to do this. So super easy guys, I'll just need to put the base layer and then put the shadow layer to give that depth. And as you put in the other elements, the entire landscape comes to life. Um, so please practice this, give this lesson a pause, and go and practice it. Now coming to my protein. Keep it soft. You want a winter landscape to look very soft. Don't give many hard lines. Use minimum two shades of note. And for the snow, like I've been harping on the dry stroke technique which I absolutely love, be try it, and then you can even use it not just on the hills, but any part of a winter landscape. It's super fun. 11. Thank You: Thank you for coming with me to this beautiful element adventure. I can't wait to see the two to three elements that you choose and try with these techniques. See share your projects in the project section. Even those just in attempt, not happy ones. I'll be happy to jump in, provide feedback, and cheer you on. And if you enjoy this class, I'll be really happy if you could leave me a review. It will help other students find this little corner of creativity at SkillSix. Want to know my behind the scenes, what I'm working on, what colors are mixing, find me on Instagram and follow me so that we can enjoy each other's journey. Happy painting and know that landscapes are just friendly little elements waiting to be discovered, one light, one shadow, and one stroke at a tie.