Transcripts
1. Skies Intro: Hello and welcome to this watercolor NATO general course. My name's Angie and I'm a writer and illustrator, and in this course I'm going to share with you different ways that you can depict the sky in your journal. We're going to move from beautiful blue skies to cloudy, overcast days and stormy skies and even to doing the rainbow. If you haven't completed course one and two in the series, then don't worry. The courses are not sequential and they don't build on each other. Each one simply shows a different element of nature. There's just too much in nature to all showing one course, so I broke them up into different forces, so you don't have to do the others before you do this one. You can pick any elements that you want to illustrate and simply do that course. This course is also suitable for complete beginners, even if you've never painted anything before. By the end of this course, I'm confident that you'll be able to depict skies in your watercolor journal with complete confidence. So are you ready to learn how to paint skies in your journal? Different skies to show the different mood of the day that you had been kicking? All join me inside
2. Skies Materials: in this first section, I'm going to go over the tools that we need for this class. So the first thing we're gonna uses watercolor paper now you have different options. I normally buy cold pressed watercolor paper and I bother me bigger sheets. So this is 1/4 of a Shakya, and then I tell them to whatever size I need. Sometimes I use a big one. Sometimes I use sort of a five size and sometimes make even smaller depending. And if you are going to go with just blue sheets of paper, then you would also want to get some of these little rings. And, um, you could just make holes in your paper and clip them on the side. So you want to get these, and you can get these at your arts and crafts store. Alternatively, you can use a watercolor sketch book. So I've got this one, um, which has got nice heavyweight faith in it. When you go to your store, ask for a watercolor journal or watercolor paper journal to make sure that that it can handle the water. This one is for mixed media. It's not specifically forwards. Pellets were mixed media, but but it's okay for our purposes. Otherwise, I have also got a bigger one, which is a far Briana one. Enough. Also, I've had Fabbiano in the smaller size as well. And these are nice big sheets of these, all the papers of pages I'm gonna show you later. But so edgy conceal work in different journals at the same time, depending on what I'm being. But this is lovely, just kind of paper. And it works very well, so and they come in different sizes. So as for traveled journaling, if you're going to sketch while you are outside out of doors, then you would need some way to pack all your goods. So I've used one of these simple schoolbags before. That's just got some sips is lots of space to put things in. I don't use this anymore. Even the sip on years broken. But you get the idea. You can get a nice big profit, and you could put lots of things in. So, see if you can get something happens. It's got a little carry handle thing you did otherwise, if you confined at the thrift store up show biz, we call them here found one of these, which was really good. It's good sips. You bet on, obviously the handles and you open it up and it's got the zippered pockets inside, which I thought was really fabulous. So I snapped this one as soon as I saw it. And yer there's enough space for basic things, so you'd always need a bit of kitchen towel. And here's my small watercolor journal that I carry with me. And this is what lovely water kind of paper as well, and this one only stays in. Yes, so it's a nice small one, and I'll show you keep it out or threesome page from the just now at the end of class to this space for you. Generally, this sort of have a little sketchbook and things that I collect a normally popping as well , while I'm out and about. It's you normally feathers and stones and leaves in here, and it's also got space for your If you're going to use it, a travel brush, then you can use one of these and complete inside here. I'll show you how to use that, and then this was my first travel sit that I bought a zoo. You can see it's a little bit of mixing space. And if you're going to buy a watercolor kit for painting outside, then look for one that has a few mixing spaces and it will have your bicycle. So and that will be sufficient for your watercolor journal. This one is a I don't even know what it is not. I think it is. It wins in you 10 1 but it's a very, very sequence. So if you can get something like this or something similar that holds all your stuff when you're out and about, that's wonderful because it can get windy and you don't want things flying around. So this is quite a good one, and it has space for everything in it. So other than that, for this course in particular, you're going to need some watercolor paper calling for this girl. She's also going to need. Either you're going to use a travel brush like this, and they come in different sizes. You get a small, medium and large. This is a medium. I think Onda and I don't use it anymore. I never really took to them. I've tried them. I don't like them always just carry brushes in my in my bag. And this one, I think I even used Indian ink in and drew in the brushes the bristles. So, um, don't you think in yours? But you could use that if you wanted to. And if you don't know these brushes, they've got the water inside here. And as you push water comes out and I'll show you how to use it that, you know otherwise I use a large mop brush to be my basic washes. And then I have to separate brushes here because we're doing skies. You don't really need a small detail brush for anything, and we're gonna work quite seriously. So in a fairly large, medium sized brush will do the trick for you. Other than that, even though it won't be using this pretty bottle in today's class, they are very handy to have when you're painting out and about because sometimes as you busy during a wash, if it's a very windy day, could dry really quickly, and you could just give it a quick spritz and your paper will be weight again. So you do have to be careful with how much water you put on your paper, but it's a good thing to keep in your travel bag. Um, the colors we're gonna be using today are very limited. So we will be using an indigo, which you most likely won't have in a travel sit or a basic started kit. You might have to buy it separately, but you don't have to use in ago. What I sometimes do is I mix my French ultra marine and burned number, and if you mix them, you can get quite a nice dog mix for the thundery skies that we're gonna do today. Thunderclouds. So you could use either indigo or you could just mix burned under and French Altimari when these two colors would normally be in a star tickets anyway, so you just makes it on the side until it's nice and dog. The other thing we're gonna use today is, um, acrylic ink, and this is by date around the and it's the white one. You don't have to use it. I'm going to show you a little bit of an abstract sky that I like to do. Um, and so this is not essential. It's just something I have in my kit If you did the the sea that the ripples and waves cause, um, I used it in the as well. So it's something I use very often for detail and that sort of thing. But today I'll show you how to use it in the sky. But it is an optional. And then if you are going to use this ink and you need a separate place to mix it, so just get a little white plate. I've got this one, Onda. As you can see, this is where I always is. A bit of a town where always makes my white ink, and then I got a C p A. Include always goes there, so just get yourself a little white play to me to put it on. And then the other thing you're gonna need today other than kitchen towel. So a nice role of kitchen towel just a sweet to you. You would also need a queen. So at a opinion, which country you're in, But this is a $1 Quinn, and he's even $1 Quinn. So not too big, not too small. So just get yourself a coin on And, um, some kitchen tell, and that should be it if you have all your materials in one more thing, if you are going to paint out and about which we're not doing today, two days off his indoors. But if you have a water bottle with you, I have sometimes used my water bottle as my source of water, and then I don't pour it into anything else. I have a smaller water bottle that I put my water brushes into, and I just different water directly in the My brushes directly need to clean, but if you have even just a big one like this, you could always pour some water into your mixing wells. You could use it to fill up your spritzer. You could use it to fill up your travel brush, so having water with you when you go out painting even in winter is a good idea.
3. Skies 1 Blue sky: okay, so onto our first technique. So because this is a really a beginner's class, I'm going to show I'm going to show us. If you have never used water colors before, I'm going to show you the really basic technique. So the first thing that I want to show you is the travel brush for English. You haven't done the other close. Where did show the travel brush? But if you have one of these, like I said, some people love. Um, some people don't, and I'm one of the ones who don't. But how they work is they have the water inside, so there are useful for carrying around with you. They carry the water inside and you'll see on the side yet, says push, And that's where you push. And as you squeeze it, you'll see the water comes out my waters full of ink. I didn't clean it, but once you put India in Kenya, they don't doesn't really come out. So a zoo squeeze that the water comes out through the bristles. There, you can see that, and then that's how you'd wait your page. So let's pretend now we're going to do a lovely Blue Sky Day, So you would probably mix ultra marine blue in your travel, kids, if you don't, you'd have a dark blue warm blue in a cold Lucy might have ultra Marine and Taylor blue Maybe a lighter blue like civilian. Just pick what you'd ever Blue is closest to the sky that you see, I find French Ultra Marine is usually the best one. And if you don't have enough water with you to do a proper wash to wake your page first, then you would use your travel brush in this way. So I've got some paint on here and I'm just going to start streaking across as and I'm squeezing to get the water out and then you just push your paint along the page like this. Now, when you're painting just a blue Sky day, lovely summer Blue Sky day, you consult your page. Then if you look outside, you'll see that this sky is darker high up, and it tends to get lighter towards the horizon. So as you're doing your blue sky Day, you'd want the dog orbits to be at the top on the light of its to be at the bottom And if you're new to painting, then this is a very simple trick that you could use to make your pictures look a little bit more. Um, I guess, um not perfect. We really don't want to get perfect. Yeah, but just a little bit better than just a flat washed is especially nature. Things are never just one flat color. So if I have to do this all one plain blue color, that would not be very realistic. But at the top, it would be darker, then at the bottom. So when I paint with EU painting grass or skies, you don't want them to be a uniform color. You want some variation to be there, so even if it's just a blue sky, you want some variation. So as as a plain blue sky, that is how you could do it. If you didn't have a travel brush, just leave it to dry here, Okay, so if you're not using a trouble, brushes regular brushes, then you would rate your page first. And this is where a nice big brush comes in handy and you would with the whole page first, just likely. Make sure is with the water doesn't have to be running off. It can just be wait. And if you're not sure, if it's always, you contort your page towards the light and you'll see it shining everywhere. And then it's the same thing. You just mix your blue paint into a little puddle, a nice watery pedal, and you're starting at the top. I just work your way gently down to wherever your horizon, Linus. So today we're not putting in horizon lines or cliff saw rocks or anything. I'm just focusing on sky. May we all like that? And you would want to make sure that the top is a little bit darker than the bottom, and you just blend it in a portable captured again. It doesn't have to be perfect. In fact, it shouldn't be perfect. Nearly all the Nature Journal is the one place we were not aiming for perfection. The focuses on capturing your memory and on what you did that day said you can page through late. And so, yes, I remember that day with a big blue sky and and more right on the well you can write in the later I'll show you how I do it at the end of class. But these are two basic examples off just a plain blue sky. So if you're a complete beginner, just remember to which your page first and then I'll show you. Here, you mix your paint. If this is your paint, make a little puddle. Let me use a smaller brush. Conceive Better make it into a little puddle over the, and this is called a witting wit mixture. So you have a weak page and you are painting with loose sweet paint onto your week page. You don't want to put Dr Pain Tanya, not for the sky. So there we are. And then you can talk your page just to let the colors mix and blamed a little bit. If it's still wet enough, you can just leave it to dry. So if you're out and about painting, you can see this paper is bending. That's fine. You're you're either be using your journal page or you'll be using glue sheets of paper, and then you can either just use masking tape to tape it down on the surface and pain to keep it flat. Or you can use those bulldog clips and you can keep them down so that they don't bend and warp blackness. But that would be a beautiful blue sky. Remember to make a dark at the top and lighter towards your rise in line and if you find so this is the blue sky we did with the travel brush. So if you find that you have little puddles of water collecting Lee, you just want to soak them up, because what happens is if you don't they form these little the water runs back into your paint. We said that from Cali flowers, but they form ugly marks in your painting. Well, they can be ugly. This sometimes they can be useful. But for a blue sky, just want to keep it nice simply, and you can see it's darker they on, like to them.
4. Skies 2 Cloudy sky: so in this. Listen, I'm going to show you some basic cloudy days, so we're going to start with. We're going to pretend it's a blue sky day with white clouds. You have to look at the sky that you see the skies and always a brilliant blue. Sometimes it's just sort of white gray, depending on the time of day. But for the groups of this course, we're just going to pretend it's a fairly blue sky. And also because if you have the background color to light, then you won't see the cowards that you're trying to show. So when I pent clouds in my journal, I love skies. And so when I paint the skies there normally or the focus off the page, I don't put much else, and sometimes I do. But normally that is it, and I'll show you at the end. Of course, when I show you my pages what I do with him. So I love the focus of the sky. Just love skies. So once you've made your wash in whichever color you want, you take some kitchen, tell some kitchen towel and you just scrunch it up and you look at your sky and see if it's a little round puffy clouds. You could make little round perfect. Can't you just lift out whatever you see, Whatever you see, sometimes you see the sky as it's lovely sort of streaks on DSO you could even streak across, so the anything that you don't want in general is, um, symmetry. So you don't want to plunk one cloud here, one cloud the one year and one year you want them to be a little bit spread out like that, and you don't want them to be exactly perfect, either. So don't make them all the same shape trying to be reading habits. You see these are different sizes, and you can even add a little bit more to make them a bit bigger, depending on what your skies like. And here I did some streaking because the sky often has different kinds of planting is not just one kind. So this is not as these are not. Storm clouds thes air, the white puffy clouds that you see in the sky behind a blue background. So if you are painting clouds normally with watercolor with with any paint, actually then clouds are not just white blobs in the sky because if you look at clouds will see that they have a variety of color from different greys and that they have They have got body, they've got fluffy nous they've gotten, so they're not just thes white blobs in the sky. However, for the nature journal, which is more about your memories than about your skill as a painter, This will do just fine for cloudy days before yeah, for white clouds. So just now show you how to do stormy clouds. But these ones for white clouds would be just fine. So the second way that I want to show you how to do these is way I used the acrylic think use this piece of paper. So again I start with a wash. Just wait my sky and I will make this a beautiful blue. Hi, I'm just using. Okay, So the other skies I did with ultra Marine. Let's do it like this guy. This time I'll use a bit of a civilian you, which is a brighter sky blue that in the and then you do want to be wit for this technique and I'll show you two ways of doing it. Okay, so these my sky, let's make a little bit more the top. And you see, I leave the streaks. They My nature journal, is not a place where worried about perfection, even in my nature journal, I don't really pay attention to things that I would pay attention to when I'm painting proper paintings or not for my not for my journal. Then you know, by attention to things like your light source in your shadows and that sort of thing. But in my my nature, General, I don't pay attention to any of that because this is my space to just play. So while you paint his way to take your white acrylic ink and there are two ways to do this you either drag So you have this little drop a bottle stop a bottle, and you either just drag it across can do little wispy shapes. You can do big shapes, whatever it makes very interesting on actual these my abstract clouds because it just kind of gives the We all give a feeling off clouds in the sky and I really love they Look, I love the way it makes us otherwise, if you wanted something more, um, sort of blended. You can also take this ink. You don't need a lot of it. Just wonder up and I have a little drop ya and I'm going to just drop some water and mix it with some water to thin it out. Like that however much water you want And while the paint is weight, you have to do it. You can painted in lacquered. Yes. So you don't have to go away across. You could go little birds. It's up to you. God, I love the way it makes the sky Look, it makes to me I think it makes it look dreamy and wispy. If you have this white blended in the and if you are new towards the color, then maybe you don't know about whites. So in watercolor, we don't normally use white as a color by itself. If you wanted something to be wide, you either save the white of the page with masking fluid or tape. Whatever it is that you want the white off or you lift out kind of like we did previously. You paint a very and then you lift your color out to the white of the page can show through . But this see acrylic ink? There's a very nice job of putting some white, and because it mixes with the water, I think it does a beautiful job of showing abstracted kind of clouds. But I really love this look, and it's one I use very often. So that's another way that you could make easy skies in your journal.
5. Skies 3 Overcast sky: Okay, So in the sections, you know, we've covered beautiful bright blue skies which are dark at the top and lighter at the bottom in a nice wash. We've covered some nice white puffy clouds. So in this section, I wouldn't show you how to do some clouds or perhaps not so friendly on they have a bit of grey, a bit of rain building, that sort of thing. So the easiest way to do this again is to start with the wash. So you with your page all the way through, you see my waters of it blue. That's okay, because this isn't over caused A I'm not just going to use plain blue, ultra marine or civilian. Doesn't matter. I'm going to make it sort of a grayish. You can either use a very soft, very light knicks off indigo, and you can drag that across and again. I wouldn't do this in a very perfect where this is just a sort of over over cost sky. We're not really looking at clouds here just over cost like that. And you see, I'm leaving streaks and I leave him on the on purpose. I don't want this to be a flat wash and that in itself would actually be enough. If that's all you have time for, that would be fine. You could have some slightly dog of its Do you have a bit of drama If you want to Your sky just like that, you could add. So in our skies Yeah, I often see brown streaks And to me it feels almost like there Dusty like a dusty, stormy ever course sky. You could do that. So the thing I love about skies is that they give you a lot of freedom to play around with colors. They don't have to be exact. That can be. They just have to indicate what you want them to indicate. So if you looked at this and you could see that members to brown, that was differently. And over cost sky, Yeah, So if you pretended at the bottom yet you had some land or amount in a way, that you are perhaps a house depends on where you find yourself at the time of doing this. So you could use indigo for this, and you could leave it just like that. So if you've never used water colors You also have to know that watercolors a dry quite a bit lighter than when you put them on. So when this is dry, so gonna be as prices this. But that would indicate I think of feeling good. Just general over costs sky where there's no clouds. If you wanted to, you could off course go in as well. They have some clouds out in your over cost sky if he wanted to. If your sky head clouds at that time, you could also use the ink and drag that across. Just for if you did have some white evening that would make a good sky around with your size and see. That's why I like nature journaling because there's no pressure to be perfect. You could play around with different things, and if you don't mind if it doesn't turn up nice well, too bad it's your journal, and it's a record of what you what you were doing and where you offer that day. So that did never has to be perfect, but that would be it's a very quick, good, overcast sky. However, if you didn't have indigo, then which most beginner travel sits won't have It's a color you would buy separately. Then what I would do is wait my page just like that. Okay? And then you would mix again in a puddle in the center. Here, you would make some ultra Marine. Yes, French, Ultra Marine and the seas burned number if you wanted to. You could also mix been sienna, so it doesn't look like a lot of pain day. You don't need a lot, but it will be enough for our sky. So if I had more blue, it goes. Moo won the It's almost like an indigo color. If I add more, brown goes more to the brownie dust. Decide So while my pages wit on Dr Drag this across, you see, it's not that different. This is quite a dog mixture. I would definitely add some either white acrylic ink or lived some out. So now I've got some more blue on my brush because I want some variety in my Brusca in my stormy sky, and I like the streaks across the sky and I don't like to be a flat wash, and I like the rioting color. So sometimes when I mix my colors, I make sure not to make some to thoroughly so that every now and again you get a a bit of this shining through or a bit of that so you could have a bit of more brown, so this could be a very dog over cost sky. Consider straightening clouds coming through the and if you didn't want it so dark, you just make your mixture of it lights, obviously, and if you find that it's too dark and you don't like it at all, um, you take your trusty white acrylic ink because the white to start up a good will go over everything, but it will lighten it for you so you can just car, but they and that. Then it definitely looks a lot more like just a general over cost sky just like that. Then you would put as much as you want. You don't even have to cover your whole pages. If you have one section shows with more cloudiness, that sort of thing. That's fine. So there's a lovely over cost, even threatening sky that could be your sky and again. How dark with batteries just depends on your mixture. If you mix just to dog you just thinner down the mortar to make it lighter. But remember the combination off ultra marine blue with either burnt umber Ben C and I will do as well. Okay, and there's your stormy sky overcast sky.
6. Skies 4 Laden cloudy sky: so in the six. And I'm going to show you some a bit of a blue sky with some white clowns. But the clouds have some water in them, and they might be bringing rain later in the day. So again, we started that wash here is simple. And then your sky, you know, sometimes skies a yellow. We don't have to be blue, but let's just pretend for today the sky's blue just like that light at the bottom, Doctor at the top. That's fine. And keeping in mind, this is gonna dry lighter than what it is. So I'm not even mad a little bit more color. So that is not to like, You do want to see the clouds. Yeah, a little bit of unevenness. I think if you also allow your hand and to just be free and loose, nobody is going to look at your journal and say, this isn't perfect. Skies don't look like that. That isn't right. So always keep your mind with your Nature journal. Do not aim for perfection. That's the lost last thing you want in your journal. So once we've got that, we can live out some clouds again I'll just use the piece of kitchen tell from Ilya. So let's lift our It's a cloud over if when they may be put one down, they put a tiny one of the So let's pretend these are our clouds coming in and they're going to bring some rain later. So we're gonna have to leave that to dry just for a little bit, depending on where you are, Comtech, but longer. We're gonna leave that to dry, and then we'll come back to it. Is this one right? Okay, okay. So now that this one has dried, we're going to make our clouds give our counts a little bit more body, which is also fairly easy to do. I take my same burned number, ultra Marine mix. Except this time you wanted to be super super light. You could use into go for this as well that these spots of indigo would actually be perfect . And I might use that, but otherwise you'd take your boot number and ultra marine mix, and you just keep adding well attended. It's very light. So that's quite dog. Just keep mixing it until it's quite like you wanted to be like Bailey they kind of great. And then So this is not the way I would do it if I was painting a proper, um, piece of art. But in my nature, General, this is my quick way of doing it. So I'm going to take this very light color that I just mixed. And I'm going to basically color in my white clouds. Not exactly. And you want the mixture to be feeling nice and watery. Okay, Okay. Um but it has to be quite light, almost like just do ting those clouds of it and you must work quickly. Otherwise, you do one at a time. Because this is not, uh, no Busy, not it. So they once they're colored in you take your kitchen towel and then I just randomly lift out the color towards the top of the clouds just like that. And if you weren't quick enough when you're going to get a solid great clamp it like this and then I just stepped up dup so you can see in this cloud. This is ideally what you want to achieve because clouds or even the white clouds will have little bits of grain between. And it's quite hard to paint, you know, precisely orbits of great. So if you left out your white cloud first and then once it's dry, it has to be dry. Otherwise, it'll leak into your background your blue background. Then you quickly paint over the white in a very light gray color, and then you left out on the top of your clout. Who's left out? Little bits. But you see, this speaks of color shining through there. It's not exactly white and exactly great. And when you look at rain clouds, you'll see the top of the cloud is normally white. On the bottom of the cloud is where the gray, sometimes the bottom of the count, could be really dog gray. So if you if you do not like this grave, it's not sort of dark enough for you, you could you could do it again. We could color it in again. You'll use mixtures. It is more of a gray color, and then you just lift out the topic. Anybody want the white at the top, and it doesn't have to be precise. You want some of the lines from the texture from the kitchen, tell showing through and there you have not so precise. And there you have a cloud bringing in some rain. So you just make the mess Dhaka's you want or as light as you want. Sometimes they really are like like this. But even like this would make a fairly good clouds because clouds on like I said they needed, really, or just playing white blobs that was, have some body and by lifting it out with a piece of kitchen tell you get a variety of variation in the gray in the white of your cloud. So that's how you would do a blue sky with white clouds and a bit of grain.
7. Skies 5 Stormy sky: so it for this technique I want to show you how to do really stormy, easy, stormy clouds Not just a over cost sky whole because sky like we did in this one. Um, but even like this one but rial sort of stormy, heavy, stormy, scary skies Um, scary for somebody I love stormy skies. So we started the wit place like this. And like I said, I often see the brown in our skies here when the storm clouds rolling in. So I start with the mixture off ultra Marina and burned number, and I just put that in the back and I go for this. I would go sideways across my page again very imperfectly, and there's a little bit off. That's why I didn't mix the colors thoroughly because you can see different browns and blues showing through. If I wanted more of the brown showing through, I could just add a bit more brown in the want ads. What it's drying. I could Then you can either use the same mixture if you want, and you can also you have to do the same extra. You could use your indigo for this, or you could use the same ultra marine burned under mix and you just cover your whole page in a in a rough wash like this. You know I'm not leaving white spaces for clowns, you know, we will indicate them just now. So they're way off now. We've got heavy clouds coming rolling in. So now you want to take your mixture and really darken it. I'm so and that's where the storm is coming in from here. So there's some heavy clouds and you see him holding my brush far away. I don't want to hold it. Yo, making precise cloud, you hold it for away and you just bring in your cloud here very loosely. So there's one of the bottom here, just like that, and you just put them wherever you want. So I'm showing this storm coming in, so I'm going to make them come down in this direction like that. That might be enough. It's a pretend sky. Is he on my pitch? If you get a here on your page when you're painting, I managed to get it off, but you forget a here on your page, then wait for your page to dry and then you take it off. It's actually not easier. So keeping in mind that your colors are going to dry lighter, you want to make you'll a stormy clouds rolling in. Fairly dark, darker, probably darker than you think they should be. Andi I was a little bit more blue then I would put the Browns have more ultra Marine than I would put the burnt umber. And again, you want the colors to not be uniform. Just a big lucky are those are see. These are almost too dark, but they will dry lighter. So that's kind of what we want, really threatening skies rolling in from the side. Maybe a nice loose that's not a storm might want to be in. OK, so then what you do is because you need some front. Lex. A stormy sky never just has dark color. Well, sometimes it does, but usually it has variations, and they might be even some sunshine shining through your Kouts. So the way that one easy way to show that you know what these harsh lines one easy way to show that is to take your brush, make sure it's clean. Get a piece of kitchen town make sure it's clean. No paint on it, dry it. You wanted to be trying, and then you would do this funny twirl emotion through my clouds, not even in the direction of my trance, but just through them like that, and you wanted to be irregular. There's no reason why I put them anyway. In particular, I kind of just look at my picture. And if you see your twelves are not white, the new brushes got too much paint on it. It's picked up the pencil. Just clean it dry it and I normally do these tools only in the thunderclouds. I don't do them in the I'm smooth sky behind. Yes, and you see I'm twirling across like get and try not to make them the's fat snakes that you dragged across because that wouldn't look very realistic over there. So you want to 12. You could do this with the flat Russia's well, you want to 12 and keep them sort of nice and narrow. I think the thin ones were better because it's almost like just a bit of sunshine coming through the dog. Stormy clans. You don't want too many of these. Obviously, I wouldn't have that thick snake one in the middle. E you just put a few until it looks right to you. It doesn't have to look like the sky. You see, It just has to look right for you. If easing to you, that's all. And then you have a beautiful thunder thundery sky, sort of heavy rain clouds coming in through that side. But you still have some variety in your lines. You have some clouds coming through, and except for that money, it makes a beautiful looking sky. So that's another way you can do your thunder sky.
8. Skies 6 Rainbow sky: So in this section I'm going to show you how to do a basic rainbow, since that's a nice follow on from all those rain clouds. So again, you look and see what color the background for your rainbow is. Members can come in any sort of background color, stormy backgrounds, very light backgrounds, nice blue sky backgrounds. It depends where you are. So I'm going to just make a quite a light background just so that you can see the rainbow. Well, that's too dark. It's just gonna go to that down a bit. Maybe I want to see something So it pretend our skies, that color that seemed to go rather why very diluted in to go home. Okay, and then this is where you're going to use your yellow. So when you look at rainbows in the sky, um, we have beautiful rainbows. Young. Sometimes we can see the whole spectrum of colors in the rainbow, and it's just amazing. But usually what happens is that the yellow in the rainbow is the brightest, and that's the color you can see the most, and, um, the other colors sort of fade along. So if you're doing this week on weight, which is what we're gonna do. Your colors are going to split, and that's right. You kind of want that. But I'll show you how to contain it, so it doesn't just go everywhere. So this very base failure, it should possibly be a little bit drier. But I've got a bit of lemon yellow. Yeah, which is the bright yellow I'm going to use for the center so that we were going to start again. You just makes it into a little puddle with some water and our religious pretend It goes across the sky like a real the way you would if you were a child. You just make a little rainbow like that. So and you see, that's quite bright, and I make this yellow a little bit. Fetter. Um, I can push my brush down to make it better, because we're going to use this to make other colors as well. So there's a nice, bright yellow you see. It's really spreading, and that's fine. So then the first color in the rainbow would be read on, then orange, then yellow. But if you mix red and yellow, you get orange, so you just take your read. Um, I would take a not a very strong mix of red, fairly like any read you have in your city. And I would touch it to the top of my rainbow. So it mixes with the yellow and rent by. Colors are never that bright. Not like they were not like we think We thought they were in the red school and we made our beautiful bride Rambos. So there we are. Then it's a day you have the orange And if you don't have enough read Did you talk? I would just add a little bit towards the end of my rainbow Mike back a little bit more. Great day. Okay, so that you have a bit of, um it's probably not the best rate to use but invented in there. That's too bright now. So I would go over that and just remove some of that brightness. It will dry lighter, remember? So there you are. And if you're if you're rainbow is running in the water too much like over here and over here, it doesn't actually matter. But if you take your dry your brush and just run along the top they It should stop most of it from running to four. They were. So they have a little bit of read, a bit of orange, a bit of yellow, and then you would have green next and in blue. But if you mix blue with yellow, you get green anyway, so use a nice light blue and we touch it to the end of our you know, Yeah, you just go across like that. Um, and even that is too bright because Franco's never really all that bright, but I would clean it up a little bit. It's mixing too much into my yellow, but it's still get the green. And in here I would take some of it away. Okay, And there you have it, a very simple rainbow. So the color still look very bright now because they're still wait. And in a real life Rambo's. The colors are kind of muted, and sometimes you don't even see the read on the blue. Um, my brushes did. Sometimes you only see the yellow, maybe a faint glow off another color, in which case, maybe that's all you want to put. But like I said in your journal page, If you want to depict the rain bows, then by all means make it as bright as you like and is because you like It's your rainbow. But just remember when its weight the colors will look quite bright and a bit too much store. But when it's dry, there'll be a lot muted and more faded than this. But that's how you do a basic rainbow. Start with yellow in the middle and just add read to the top of a yellow and let them blend . And then I had a nice life glued to the bottom of the yellow and let them blend, and then you get a nice variety of colors.
9. Skies 7 Sunrise sky: So in this section I'm going to show you sunrise Just a very simple sunrise. And the thing with skies is that they are so many, so many different ones that I mean a sunrise could be anything from very pale yellow, two yellows and oranges to purples. Two pinks could be so many colors in the deep in. So I'm just going to show you one basic sunrise again. We'll start with a wash and when you do these in your journal, your whole page my water is getting but duty here. But that's okay. You're whole page doesn't have to be the sky. You could maybe just do a bit of sky appear and draw a horizon line or draw something else at the bottom. And really, it's up to you. It's just for the demonstration purposes that we're covering a little sheet. So what I would do and I would not do a sky is I start with blue so it could be a cerulean blue, depending on what you want to be ultra marine blue. I would keep it lighter because it's Ah, sunrise, not a sunset. We I would use darker palace, so let's just say we're not gonna make it all straight. You could make it all straight, depending on where you are. Let's just make a little bit, all right? You will make a different So there's a bit of cerulean blue now. Told that down to meet the colors run down a bit and you wanted to become almost you see, that's running the, um, almost white as it runs down. That's how light you wanted to be. I'm just like that, and you can be nice and loose and free with this. And then I would put in a bit of, uh, orange, but a lighter orange. So just over here, I wouldn't let them touch just yet. That can touch just now, Mr. But of orange. Yeah, Marcus abilities with a dent. Just bring them in a little bit with your brush. They see what your gauge from my streaks. And then, um maybe more that because it is going to dry, lighter, but early morning skies or not as intense as sunset skies. I think depending on the time of the of course, and then I would use that same lemon yellow that I used earlier. Just makes a mockery for the rainbow. And I would put that in the bottom cornea because we're gonna pretend the sun rises here and with the sun rises, it's at its brightest. So So he on the so nice bright here in the corner and again, you want to just sort of mix them a bit. Don't keep them as separate bands all together. A bit of a mix. Yeah, you can hold it If you contort your page consulted any way you like, commit them run that color is what That way as well, Okay, And that would be the basis for a sunrise That sort of really bright yellow where your son is coming from pretending it's coming from here It would fade, become off like an orangey color As it goes up, I just let your colors mix and blend on the page and look a side order make them even unlike the streaks to show in there for this sort of thing. I don't want the harsh lines there, but and then at the top, you have a nice blue sky just like that. If you had clouds and if you let the mix you get a nice variety of colors there. If you have clouds in your blue sky, you could put a bit of county. I'm I would probably put acrylic ink and mix it in their little birds, and so you could make your sky look about as vibrant or as muted as you like playing with your colors. But that's essentially a nice sunrise sky. So the last thing I want to show you about his sunrise, Um well, let's do it on a sunset, do a sunsets going.
10. Skies 8 Sunset sky: So our last one will be a sunset sky Now, in the sunset, your colors are going to be more. They're gonna be darker. So you again start with the wash, Okay? And then at the top, we're going to put in this time I'm going to use a docker. So would you say is ultra marine blue? I wouldn't use civilian because now it's a nice Dorcas sky. Okay, Just like that. Make your sky nice a door. And, you know, you could use your indigo for this if you had that sort of a really dark sky. Perhaps these, you know, rain clouds or thundercloud Sort of at the top some way. That depends on what you see. Let that run. And then you would move into your, um, raids and or injures. And they on our sunset skies. You can be They could be spectacular. They would have purples and streaks. And sometimes I think if I were to paint that sky, it would look like a photo shop sky. Because it's just that's so beautiful on, but almost looks unreal. So you see, I'm mixing it in. Yeah, she don't Just three bands of color. You want to have streaks and, you know, and then at the bottom, it's the same, um, range of colors as for the sunset, I would just go warmer and darker, not at the bottom. We're gonna pretend it's straits. By this time, I'm going to put the yellow, and this time I'm gonna put the yellow with the sunny sitting. So it's so the sun is sitting over here when I leave my yellow short of the that's gonna be my son and we are going to improve on that. Can you let your colors mix and bring little rundown? This is not the best you could put a bit of pink in there when we first came to New Zealand was the first time I actually saw, I think and purple skies I had never seen. There's really pink and purple ones before. To me, they were always sort of beautiful orange and yellow sunsets. But he's coming here have now seen pink ones. Purple ones, orange ones, vivid bright orange. So they really are quite inspirational. So around here were the sunny sitting. I would make a warmer, quite quite intense with my colors because this is our you know, you want to emphasize your sunsets and enjoy your warm colors and just let the mix of it without over doing it. I bet some I would try. Keep the yellow sort of clean. That's really your sunset. So I don't know if you can see it up there, but the mixture is very nice, is blue. There's even a dribble of purples in the there's some light or injures. Bright orange is a bit of pink shining through here, vivid pink and then are bright yellow. So what you gonna do is you take your the queen and I see Jet in the beginning. Can you take a piece of your kitchen? Tell and you're going to refuse Quinn into your in your kitchen towel like this? Just make a little pocket with it so you don't have to have a queen. You could use your brush maker dry and lift out your son. We're gonna use a queen, and I'm gonna pretend my whole son he's not visible. Just a bit of it. So I'm just gonna have my queen off the page of it, and you push it in. We just leave it the little bit, depending on how weak your pages, Navio like that. And that's really all you want. You want that because that is gonna be the brightest but of the sun that's just sinking below the pretty natural horizon, just thinking below the horizon. And then there's the bits of yellow streaking out. If your paint, if your water know if your page was still wait, it would run a little bit more. Money's already drying of it. So that's trying. Straighten it so you can see. So there's my sunset. If you didn't have a queen at hand, he just dry your brush. You could use kitchen towel and try Get a nice circle. Otherwise, just dry your brush and you just lift out your son chocolate. But if you do have a Korean or anything that's round and flat would actually do the trick, just lift it up, get wind of it around now. Looks like Aneke shed some, but that's right. You okay, so you just lift it out and remember to keep your yellows, the brightest yellows right around the sun we had sitting, and for the sunset I would pay to really but to drug. I would put very warm, darker colors, especially around the sun, And for this sunrise I would work with lighter colors. So that's a very easy way for your journal to do a sunrise and a sunset without getting bogged down in the exact colors and the exact details.
11. Skies My journal examples: Okay, so in this section, I'm just going to show you some of my some of my journal pages to give you an idea of how I use sky in my journal. So, like I said, I love skies, and they're often it is the only thing I would paint on that page. But I'll show you some idea. So yes, one that I haven't finished yet on. And it's on a loose piece of paper. But I did it at we went to the beach and so the beaches here. But I wasn't interested in the beach. I was interested in the mountains. In the back. This would be see, like us. It is not finished. It gets a little bit more detail in your on the storm. Clouds were rolling in, so I will start. Finish this. I will write on it. Um, but that's essentially where I used a stormy sky. And also it's so easy to put a distant body of land in your pictures. So if your new towards a color, if you just use a darker color, if you look at things in the distance, they don't have a lot of detail that essentially a massive color further away. And if there are far away, you would use a cooler, darker color. And as you come closer, you might use a a warmer doctor and just just look at what you see and try and match that. So I used Indigo for this, and I just painted My mountain ranch was quite four because they were too tiny sailboats and I still put in yet I was waiting for this to dry, but you can barely see the little white sales of the sailboat. So that's how far this mountain range Waas and I will start. Add them in with my wife critiquing. Okay, So thes ones I did show in my previous course on I think this is in the course on doing Grasses. So But again, there was just a plain blue sky, um, some sort of purple clouds. They That was really just easy, easy. And because the spy wasn't the focus in this picture, I didn't spend lot of time trying to make sky. I spend my time somewhere else. So I just wanted to show you as examples off what you can do. So again, Yeah, the sky was not the focus of the dunes and the grasses with the focus. But I did lived out just wispy here in the account, and I did a very light wash. I didn't want to draw attention the again the same thing here. Plain wash dark to the top, light at the bottom. Pretty standard. And I didn't even live clouds out here because this really waas the Blue Sky Day. It wasn't a cloud in sight. So on those days it's very handy to have just a plan wash and you move on, put your attention somewhere else. Otherwise, um, started this little one. So this little journal I keep with me often it's a watercolor journal and because I really like skies and I also like a bit more abstract, loose kind of painting, I really don't like to get detailed or realistic. Um, ever hear waas a day way. Uh, it was a be read what it says. It was an evening sky, and the colors were so there was so beautiful. There was so orange and so think they really looked like something. Photoshopped and I was just in off the sky, and I didn't want to do a whole big painting. I just wanted the sky. I loved it. So I did only the sky on this page. I wrote around the each of my page on as a reminder off what the day was about. And I used some texture. And this beautiful, bright pinker is, um, also acrylic ink. But it's the I think it's pearlescent police and pink one. So if you go to the archdeacon, get different colors like these. So I've got a police and I think in a yellow. But I think this was the police and think And this was my abstract interpretation off that beautiful sky that I saw and I wrote the memory around it. So when I page through my book, I know what that's about. Okay, so next I will show you again, huh? Another abstract, um, landscape that I did. So this was also from a journal page and I wrote on the back here, but the idea was that it was abstract and there was sky. You can see I used my India ink, not India Ink my acrylic ink in here. I let it run. I was very loose on this page. That's an African South African memory. This one. So there was mountains and they were trees and greenery and the beautiful sun and blue sky . And it was just all together. These So this was how I did it as an abstract form. And I'm sure you knew this to encourage you to be free in your journal. You don't have to paint exactly what you see. You can if you wanted to, but you don't have to. So, on this page, um, these were buffaloes in the mud, but there was a very stormy sky in the background and was gorgeous. Took a photo, and I and I did this indoors that do it outdoors. It was a beautiful, stormy sky rolling in, and they was, you know, sort of a green hell. And these buffaloes and a whole load of them stuck in the mud. And again, I did this in my journal way not in the way I would do it if I was doing a painting of it. But just in my journal, way very simple, with the colors at the detail with a pin for the buffaloes and leaves my stormy sky. Now this page I did because it was just the focus was actually the trees I was driving along and I saw to my daughter's horse riding. And there's this field like a posture has got these two gorgeous trees in there are just so , um, springing so at the tops of the trees, they just, like, true. That is always funny directions and this sort of wonky and they're just really cool. So, um, I did very quickly just the trees but the sky in the background is just blue. I don't even think I lifted the white out. Yeah, I think I just had a very rough blue sky and I just left pieces of paid showing through so you can do it that way as well. But this page I wanted to show you because this waas a page that I did on a really dreary Dole day and as you consider it a winter I found windows you quite hard to cope with. They get me down because of the lack off sunshine. So and on this day, I just the only thing I could paint was actually just from my dick what I could see and, um, essentially it was a pale sky. Pale thing in the horizon. Land pale, greenish, bluish. See a little bit of surf here that I just sort of lifted out. You can see I wasn't very motivated to do more. A bit of pale sand, nothing special. But I right now I wrote my memory on you and that everything is just sort of variations off to that. On that day, everything felt like variations of green. So, you know, fluidly sky greenish heels, greenish serve greenish see it wishes green. So that's an example of a day win. I did a Nature Journal page, but I wasn't hugely excited about it. And that's fine because the memories sitting right there for me. Now, on this day, you can see I was a lot more excited because I've bothered to put in some effort with my writing. My fund. You couldn't if you're into hand lettering, these some wonderful classes right for you to take Andi these books and these examples actual around us off beautiful hand lettering ideas that we can use. So I only put a rough border and and I'm quite particular about the borders in all my journals keep them rough, and I looked and I tried to scratch them. And it's a way off making sure the page does not want to be perfect and to emphasize the fact that I don't want my pages to be perfect. However, this was, as you can see, the sky's the focus off the page, and yet it's just a blue sky. It's dark at the top, light at the bottom, these notes nothing special about it. But it was that it was actually the perfect day because it had been winter, and this was sort of one of those beautiful blue sky days that came along. You know, it's the winter, but sky came along. There wasn't a cloud, it was warm, There was no wind. It was just perfect. And all I really enjoyed again was the sky. And I wrote them my memories down here off what I did on this perfect day with his Blue Sky day just sort of in point form, because it was really just a picture perfect day in the heat. So not even the heat in the warmth. So that is the way that I use skies. Normally, I used them as the picture on this page, I did a sunset sky, Andi. It was gorgeous. It was a really warm, purposely orangey sunset sky. They were birds migrating, I guess, because they were flying information. So you just basic simple birds. And I show you these pages because I want you to know that in your journal it's really not about perfecting anything. It's just really put what you see. It's all about the memories and about having them in color, and your skills will improve with time anyway, if you want them to. Otherwise these basic skills can take you really fall. The the point I've is your memories and yeah, I knew it was a beautiful sunset day and I wrote my memories down here. But as you can see, it's quite simple using the techniques we used torture today on this page is again. You see, I just drew very simply sort of a window, a window box, very loose style flowers and things. And these are biscuits. And I wrote my memory about the biscuit senior because it was another rainy day. Very gray Avery, you know, there was no sunshine was one of those dark sort of days, and I got the goals together and we did. We beg some biscuits, some cookies, and we had a near A in the recipe, and I'm ended up doubling everything, and we baked about 150 biscuits. So that's why you know, the biscuits was kind of the folks of the day, but I captured it like that in my my nature journal. And this page, which is the last one that will show you, is not complete yet. It's nearly just needs that writing on it. But I had to wait for things to dry. So you know, I don't do my pages always in one go. Sometimes if I wait for things to dry, I'll get back to them a week later, whenever so here I did the sky using the acrylic ink. I did some texture on the mountain and the writing will start. Go on top. Yeah, that's just another example of how you can use the Sky. New Journal
12. Skies Outro: Thank you for taking this course of me. I hope you enjoyed it as much as I enjoyed putting it together for you. And I'm sure you have some beautiful pages in your nature journal. Now, if there any other elements of nature that you're interested in depicting in your journal, then look at the other courses in the series and see if they would suit your needs. And lastly, piece, remember to leave a review for the class of the other students might find that as well. Thank you.