Watercolour Skies: 7 Day Challenge

1. Introduction: Hi, I'm Shalika, and I welcome you to this watercolor daily challenge class. In this class, we will be painting seven beautiful skies in seven days, each with its own mood, colors, and composition. Each day, we will focus on a different sky and add an element to it like birds, trees, slots, et cetera, to make the scene more interesting and complete. These small additions will help you understand composition and storytelling while keeping the process beginner friendly. This challenge is perfect if you want to build a daily painting habit or if you struggle with skies and want to paint them confidently. I'll guide you step by step through each painting, sharing tips on blending, layering, and adding those little finished touches to bring this skyle to life. By the end of seven days, you will not only have mini collection of particular skyles but also confidence to paint your own versions and experiment further. So gather all the materials discussed in the next section, and let's get started the day one of Sky painting journey. 2. Materials Required: Let's have a look at the materials that we require for this class. Starting with the paper. I have used Saunders watercolor paper, which is in 300 GSM and 100% cotton. I have this paper block, and this is a big size of paper. What I usually do is I cut this one big size. Into small papers. I've cut these into six papers and that's what people use for today's watercolor painting. Next, are the brushes. I've used mostly these three brushes, two silo Velvet, and one from Princeton. You can go ahead with any brand that you have, but basically, we would need one large size brush, one medium sized brush, and a detailed brush to add in the details. Next, are the colors. I've used a mix of artist create colors, be it from Shinhan white knight, anilar or Michelmson gold as well. You can go ahead again with any colors that you have. Next, you would need a tissue paper to clean off our brushes. We'll also need a glass jar of water. We also need a masking tape to tape down the paper onto a board or onto a surface. I would be using this board to tape down the paper. I'll use this masking flute in one or two class projects, so if you don't have it, it's okay. If you have it, you can use that for the class project. Palette, you can go ahead and use any palette. I have the ceramic palette that I generally use. This is just to mix your colors. This is all that we need to start our class projects. Grab on all the materials that you have beat, any brand, be a student gait or an artist create. Grab onto your materials and let's kick start the class project from the next section. 3. Project 1: Stillness of Evening Sky: I have my paper he ready using the masking tape, I'll take down the paper onto this board. The paper is ready. I'm just running my fingers across the tape to make sure that there are no gaps between the tape and the paper. Now for this class, we will be just leveraging one color. I'll be using bright blue from white knights. This is the base colour that we will have, and we will also use paints gray or black to add in the details. There is no sketch for this one. Using my Hake brush, I will just add on layer of water to the paper. This will just help us lend the colors seamlessly. I think this should be enough. Taking in my large size silver velvet brush and bright blue, we'll start with the gradient wash from the right side corner. I'll just keep my paper this way. This is the wash that we are going to go ahead with. You will have the darkest tone over here. Let me take out more of the blue. This is the darker tone. And as we come down towards the bottom, we get the lighter tone. I will just tilt my paper and paint it this way. So usually your gradient washes happen from top to bottom. But this time, we are going to have it tigal. Again, picking in more color and just blending this out. The paper has got a little wet. Let me just quickly first reapply the water to maintain the wetness of the paper. Now I'll just move my brush from this top, which is basically the right top to the left corner bottom. Again, picking in more color, starting from the top right and just blending all of this out. So whenever you pick your color, start from the top right and then bring it down. Again, picking in more color, starting from the top right, and just trying to bring this down. You can see I'm just running my brush very loosely. I think that's it one more time moving my brush from top left to bottom right. Now, we will wait for this to dry. But meanwhile, I'll just use this tissue paper and dab off all the excess water that we have outside our masking tape. This will ensure that the water that we have here, the puddles that we have here, it does not see back into the paper once the paper starts to dry. Just taking a new tissue and dabbing off all the excess water from the corners of the paper. Side as well. Again, tap off from the top as well. Now, let's just wait for this to dry, and then we will add the details. The paper has not dried. Now using black or paints gray, we will add in the final details. I'll be switching between my china brush and my small detail brush using the round size detail brush for now, taking in black, drappic of all the excess water. You're painting electric robes. One goes here. Say the other one goes from here. We have three coming from this set. Let me just add those as well. This is the first one. The second one. And then have the third one. Now again, using these detailed brushes only, we will just paint out some birds sitting on these wires. This is the first one. Then we have the second one. Say it is looking this side, you have your slight beakish over there. The third one being here. We have one which is flying the more sitting the side. You can just paint how many you want, thin fat looking in whatever direction you want. I will also add few flying ones as well. More sitting the side. So there's a group of 56 birds sitting here. You have you sitting this side as well. So there are two sitting close to each other. And a little bit more over here as well. And what I lose I will also add few faraway words into the scuff. The more nearer the bird is, you see my strokes are thicker and the farther the bird is, it's more thinner and just a slide brush. That's it. This is all that we had for this first class project, simple and serene, building up the activity or the practice to paint daily. Starting something very simple which is not too overwhelming for you all. I think we can just peel off the masking. This is the final look of the painting. Hope you enjoyed this. We'll be back soon with another one. 4. Project 2: Golden Hour Meadow: So for the next class project, I have my paper here ready. Using the masking tape again, I'll just tape down the paper. So the paper is ready. Again, for this class as well, we don't need a sketch using mahakebush, we will just apply even go to water, and then we will start with the painting. Spend some time on this step and make sure that your paper is wet thoroughly from all the corners and there is no puddle of water or any part of the paper. I think this should be enough. Just take this tissue that I have and tap off all the excess water from the corners of the paper. No, taking in my large size brush and starting with the yellow apply that starting from the one third of the paper. I'm purposefully keeping the slight white hair to depict the sun now using orange, just add another layer. And the third color is Vermeilion taking in that as well, dabbing off all the excess water, add that to the top layer. You don't need a very dark tone of vermilion, a very lighter tone to have just a tinge of redness to the sky. Just adding that. You can see my strokes are all horizontal taking in yellow, dabbing off all the excess water and applying the sheet to blend all the colors out. Towards the bottom side, let me just first clean up my brush and just try to maintain this light whiteness that we want onto our paper. It doesn't have to be a proper circle, like the sun shape, but just a very light tinge to just, you know, depict that there is sun at the background. Meanwhile, I'll also remove green to my other palette, a very light tone of sap green and using that, we will add that to the bottom of the paper. We will add in the details later, but just using the shade, just adding in the tone of green to blend it with the background. Again, cleaning up her brush thoroughly, dabbing off all the excess water, I'll continue to lift the color from the background. I'll just take in yellow, and again, we'll just blend all of this out. I'll just take my tissue and dab off all the excess water from the corners of the tape. So that, you know, when the paper starts to dry, these colors do not go back into the paper and cause cauliflower defect. So just very slowly dabbing off all the excess water from the corners of the paper. Let's wait for this to dry, and then we will add in the more details. Okay, so the paper has not dried. Now using my detail brush and mixing in yellow and green to get lemon green or a lighter tone of green, we will add in some. So now we'll paint the meadow, right. So we will add in the grass streaks. And what I'll do is we will have because this is the sun here, you will have the lightest streaks somewhere coming here and here we will have the darker one because the sun rays might not be coming in. So for now, I'm just adding in at the top only. So you can see I'm just taking in the color a mix of yellow and green. It might not be always visible as well, but I'm just playing around with the leafy structures. You can see I'm just playing around with the leaves. It could be in multiple directions. So could be long, some could be short, just applying this Now, the same mixture, I'll add more of green and get a slight dagato then we'll apply that. We will go layer by layer, and we'll build on the meadow slom bit by bit. Some could be thick, some could be thin, so that's okay. Again, I'm trying to build in multiple directions. So no taking in sap cream, we'll add in the next layer of grease. Again, you can paint this in any direction that you want. If you want, you can add this all in one direction, so this could depict a wind is blowing and everything is in one direction or it can be in multiple directions. There is no wind. It's just the leaves the way it is. Some of these strokes, I'll also add in from a little bit below as well. So we just need to keep on building on this with multiple tones and multiple colors, adding in some lighter tones as well in between, just to give another dimension that mostly light ones would be at the top because, again, the sun effect. That you can see, I'm just laying around with the grass. Now to the screen, I'll just add a little bit of indigo or any blue that you have to give it a slighter darker tone. You can also add in Pain's gray. Actually, let's add in the pains gray instead of blue. This will give us a darker tone of green. Then again, repeating the strokes, we will build on it. No This is like a therapeutic exercise. There's just no nothing wrong. There's no definite pattern that needs to be followed. There is no definite technique that needs to be followed. You can just play around and, you know, and in these brush strokes. You can have a mix of dark black, you can have a mix of dark green, and sap green. Adding a little more of paints gray to get a little more darker tones. Adding a mix of just dark green playing around with these different tones to build in the depth of the meadow. And now taking a little more tone of pains gray and just adding that out in between. With all the shadows coming in, these small grasses would be a very darker tone because it has all the grasses from the side on the top blocking the sunlight. These will have a very dark tone. Just adding those so this is the meadow that we have now. What I'll do is I've taken out some white guash here, and I will add in a tinge of quin rose, taking the mix of white and quin. So this will give us a pinkish shade using that. And because I have used white gouah so ideally if you apply pink or red on top of the screen, it might not come out well because it is a darker tone and you're adding a lighter tone or a low tone color. But because gouache is opaque in nature, you can add those. It will come out very well and it will give you the textures. These are very little far, so I'm just randomly dropping in some flowers. A few dots here and there. Just adding in some places a little more of pink to bring in some diversity. This will give it a feel of a flower filled meadow. You can paint the way you want. There is no right or wrong for this. Just keep in mind that we will also add one more color. We will also add white flowers as well along with these pink. Just make sure that you have some plays for that as well. Because these are nearer, I'm just trying to paint like you have petals and show that out. There might be some in between as well. Small flowers, some petals seen between these grass that we have. What I'll also do is using a diluted tone, let me just cover up a sky area. I'll just add some splatters as well. Let me take a little bit more of water and there you go. Got some splatters right. Okay. Now, just taking in some white directly from my Guash tube and just adding some of those in between. The same pattern, same way, we will add some white flowers as well in between. This will give a feel of flower filled meadow and you also will get a variety of flower, another white color of flowers. Just adding those in Again, it is all very random. You can place it around the way you want. The shape. You can place it around the way you want, the shape you want. It is all very random. Just play around and work on it till you want it until you're happy with your widow. There is nothing, no right or wrong on this one. Okay. Again, let me just quickly take a diluted tone, cover my sky and add some white spatters as well. This is the end of the painting. Let's just wait for this to try. This is now al right. Let us just peel off the masking tape now. This is the final look of the painting. This looks beautiful, right? Thank you for joining me in this class. We'll see you in the next class project. 5. Project 3: The Quite of the Dusk: Okay. I have my paper here handy. Using the masking tape, we'll tape down this paper onto the board. I'm just running my fingers across the tape to make sure that there is no gap between the tape and the paper. But this one has a small sketch, using my pencil and eraser, we'll start with the sketching. You'll be having a fence over here, just sketching it out. It's a wooden fence, so it would be slightly irregular and not exactly straight lines. We'll also have some gaps between the wood like this one. So just sketch out fences the way you want. They could be of any shape, any length. So these vertical fences are joined together with horizontal fence. So let me just first add it and see this one ends here and another one starts here. The vertical fence is what is visible from our view. The horizontal fence is basically blocked. I'm just trying to remove these lines data coming through. It would be very clear once we close this. Say this is the sketch. Okay. Each of these vertical fencing are joined to the horizontal one with the help of a nail. We'll just add that. At this one, because there are two planks coming in one till here, and then the other one from here, this one has two nails because it's holding onto both the planks. This is the sketch for today and the color stack we will use is quincle down rose. I'll just add that onto my palette and boil it for the sky. I already have that onto my palette. Now, using my Hake brush, I'll apply even coat of water throughout the paper. Spend some time onto this step because we want to work on the sky, wet-on-wet background. The more time spent on this, the longer your paper will stay wet and the longer you will have time to work on your sky. Just make sure that there are no caps, no puddles onto the paper, and just make sure that there is no corner which is not wet. I'll just leave it for a few seconds and then I'll add another layer of water. Okay. So now my paper is thoroughly wet. Using an old tissue, I will just dab off all the excess water from the cutters. This is just to make sure that once the paper starts to dry, the wetness from the corners does not seep in into the paper. Because if that happens, the paper blooms and it gives out a cauliflower effect onto your painting, which is something we don't want to happen to our sky. Run through my finger and cross again to make sure there is no gap. This side I feel some water has seeped in between the Again, just adding in a very light layer of water to maintain the wetness. Now, using my large size brush and quinradon pink, diluted tone of the same tabbing of excess water, we will start with the sky tattoo from the middle portion. That's where the pinkness of the sky will be seen so I'm just adding that. I'm starting with a very light tone, and as we paint, we'll gradually increase the tone of the pink. I got a slight orange from my palette, but that's okay. No worries. I just peel off my brush, dab off all the excess water, and I just lend this out. Okay. So this is the beauty of painting with watercolors and to wet-on-wet, you can easily rectify your mistake. Just clean in your brush, dab off all the excess water, and run your brush through your mistake. Okay. Now I'll use violet. Again, starting with the diluted tool, dabbing of excess water, and we start with the top. This is our violet e. Now violet and pink are complimentary colors to each other. Hence they blend out perfectly. Let me clean my brush, dab of excess water, and lend this out. You can slowly bit bit work on your sky. That's the reason we spent some time in making sure that the paper is wet. This is the darkest purple. This is the layer of purple that will come, just the purple. I'm just adding that to the bottom, taking in more color and just add. It's still not too dark, that the fencing that we will paint would be brownish shade, that will still be seen through the layer of the wallet that we're adding right now. Cleaning up my brush, taking a little bit more of wallet and I will just add some darker tones towards the top. We just blend this out. The strokes that you see right now is all horizontal because that's the shape of the cloud sky that I wanted to depict in this scene. Sometimes you see streaks of purple and pinkish sky. That is what we are trying to achieve in this painting. Now, let me just take my medium size brush, Dave off to the pink. Pink, above all the excess water, and I'll just try to add those streaks. If you feel that these streaks are coming a little thicker for you and you want thinner streaks, use your detail brush. Feel free and play around with the sky the way you want. Even if you don't want to add a lot of streaks, then you can just let the sky be it as is. It's a lighter tone sky, so you can still continue to have it the way you want. That's the beauty of painting skies. It's you can just continue the way you want and when you're happy with your sky, you can just stop applying more color and more streaks and let it dry. I think I am also done with the sky. I'll just add in some darker tones here, as well as towards the top and that would be it for the sky that I have. Some darker purple over here, and this side as well. Running my brush to blend out the colors and not have any harsh edges between the colors that we have. This will become lighter when this dries. I want to have a lighter tone of sky. That's why I'm not adding more tones to the sky if you want to build another layer on top of it, you can and if your paper is wet, only then apply a darker tone of let and quicon rose to the sky. But I don't want it to be a darker tone. I want it to be lighter tone, and that's why I'm just in here, do all the excess water from the corners and we'll just wait for this to dry before we add in the fences. The paper has now all dried. Now we'll paint the fencing. First, we'll paint the horizontal one because that's at the back side and the vertical ones are at the front. When we paint the vertical ones, it will overlap the horizontal ones and we'll give a look that's towards the back, whereas your vertical ones are towards the front. For this, I'll be using my medium size brush, and the first layer will use white knights Indian gold The sketch has become too light, but because we had sketched it out, I know which other places we need to paint the vertical ones and the horizontal ones. So for now, I'm just going ahead with the horizontal one. The graphite marks are there, but it's just very light. So I'm just leveraging those marks and painting it out. Okay, so this is where this ends, and this is where the second one starts. Okay? Just adding the shade. So this is the first layer. It's okay if it doesn't come out to be super well. Now, using my detail brush and burnt sienna, we will add in the details. I'll just tap off all the excess water and just in some place, we'll drop this color and lit because the base color is also wet, so it would just blend it out. Okay, so I'm just dropping this color at some places and letting the water do its magic. This is still the base layer, so it's okay if it doesn't come out to be super proper or the way you want, because we will be adding in another layer once this dries. I'll just clean my brush and just try to bring the soft blend on this side of the horizontal wood. So I'll just smooth it out the blends. Now, I'll add in a little bit of pain scrape to burn sienna and basically get the sepia shade and using that dabbing of all the excess water, we will add in more depth to this. You see wood in these fences has these dark brown lines. I'm just trying to recreate those. Very carefully just creating these lines. This one, it's still a little wet, so it's platting out. I just taken a little bit more of dense colour. Done with this. Let me just take a little bit more of this darker tone and add a little more in some places. Some section of your w will be too much darker versus the others. Hence, I'm just trying to get that effect. Cleaning up my brush and I'll just blend out this part. This became too prominent that we've added another layer, so just blending this out. So this is done. Now let's wait for this to dry and then we will paint on the vertical streaks. So this is now all tried, and now we'll paint the vertical ones. Again, I'll use my medium size brush and Indian gold above all the excess water and start with this. Similarly, for this one, I'm just adding the quarters first, and I'm having a flat wash done for now. And then later, we will add in more details and more tons. Okay. What I'll do is I use born Siena tab of excess water and add some bits of it. This is actually CPA. My born sienna has got mixed with paint scre We had mixed that for the horizontal nine. I'll just take up a little bit more of born sienna and then we'll continue on this. Now, taking in Indian gold, dabbing off all the excess water. And now taking in burn CNA, dabbing off all the excess water. I'll just drop off the sheet. It's all going to blend out, right? It is not going to be the exact way it is coming out for my vertical fence, right? So just play around with your own fence. Somewhere it will be a little bit darker with burn Siena, somewhere it with the sepia. So that's the beauty of it because that's how your natural logs are right? It's not all the same. Play around with these three shades for now, and then once this dries, then we will add in the sepia as well. Again, taking in Indian gold. Indian gold also, as you see, it's not a flat wash, there is a darker tone over this side, but it's a light tone as I come down. That's all okay. That's how we will try to build in the tones bit by bit, okay? Now I'm actually playing around with the mix of Indian gold and bon sienna and we'll apply that to all the fences over here. And then we'll play only with bon siena and sepia to get the different textures on the wooden fence. Let me around with this first and then we'll add in those details as well. I'm going to use two of my brushes, the thin, the detailed one, and the medium sized one. So these are still wet. I'll not touch them for now, but we'll start with these ones. So I will first take in sepia, dab off the excess water, so that's when the people will be here. And I add in the darker shades. So vertical lines like we did that horizontal lines. Similarly, we'll do the vertical lines. Now, I use clean water, dab off all the s from this brush, and I will just blend this out. The harsh edges of the new color that we have just applied that we see, those gets blended out. If there are any harsh edges, I'll just lend it out. You see the shape of my brush has changed. It means that it has almost zero water. Using that is what I'm blending out all the harsh edges. You will have your darker tones, the area where your wood is either cracked or broken, right? That's where you can add these textures and tools. Okay? I feel there is no need to blend this out. This is bringing out the natural texture of the wood. I will just add in these vertical tools from the top and then from the bottom as well. This would be a darker side because it has this this wooden is broken, right? So it has this cut over here. Thanks. Every wooden pane, if you see, it's painted comes out in a different way. So it gives out that natural look, not all of your wooden paints will be in exactly similar manner. It will have different textures, different colours, some will have a darker tone, some will have a lighter tone. All of that has to be taken into consideration when you paint this. Okay? Now, what we'll do is using black, we will add in the fine very thin details. Those cracks, lines, all of those we add with these. You can randomly add these black streaks. Again, it has multiple broken sections over here, right? So those will have black coming in. Then you can add that very thin, very light tones towards the other side as well. It's a very soothing and calming process. Just don't worry about the outcome. Don't worry if line is coming out to be super thick, super thin, just paint around. Just create these lines and once you are into this into creating these lines in the textures, it could be such a peaceful moment for you. You'll feel so seri working on this. Now, while I'm painting these black lines, I feel that we can also add some pern sienna lines as well in a very dense texture. It will also give a good look. Once I'm done with this black lines, we'll also add not too many, but some of the brown lines as well to just bring about the texture of the you also have to add. Remember those nails that we added. Skits add that as well. That is also going to be of your black color. And now, taking in Gn sienna, tapping of all the excess water. I said very few, so I'm just adding in very few lines of born sienna and burn sienna and a little bit of pains gray as well Sapia mix. I'm picking up some time burn Siena, picking up sometime a mix of burn sienna and pains gray. We don't need to be too prominent. It's just that it should have that little tinge of born sienna coming in. So in some parts of your wood where your base shade is lighter, right, you'll be able to get that burn sienna tone coming in. So this looks done. I will just add in little birds on the sky just two, three birds. That's all for this last project, let us now peel off the masking tape. This is the final look of the painting. Hope you enjoyed this class. We'll see you on the next one till then. Bye bye. 6. Project 4: Luminous Nightfall: Okay, I have my paper here. Using the masking tape, we will tape down the paper onto the board. I'm just running my fingers throughout the paper to make sure that there is no gap between the tape and the paper using my silver velvet hake brush, I'll just add an even at of water throughout the paper. Spend some time on this step and make sure that each and every corner of your paper is wet and make sure that there are no pools of water on the paper. Using the tissue paper, I'll just dab off all the excess water from the corners of the paper. This is to make sure that when the paper starts to dry, the water from the corners does not seep in back into the paper, applying another even coat of water, and then we will start with the painting. Using my large size brush and cobalt blue, you can use either Prussian blue or cobalt blue, any one of them. We will start with the painting. It's a monochrome scene which majorly painted in blue. The corners will be darker, so I'm just taking in denser tone of color. And what I'll do is a very clean brush and yellow. I'll just add some streaks of yellow and pink at the bottom. Done with yellow, now using in pink. Adding those as well, cleaning up my brush, dabbing off all the excess water. And I'm just smoothening out this blend. We don't want a darker tone. We just wanted a very light tone of the pink and yellow coming in. So I've just got that. And now, again, we will build in the blue. Okay? So here is a darker tone of blue that will come in. So just trying to get that I've added in the major chunk of color. Now to get in the details, I will switch to my medium size brush. Use cobalt blue and add in some darker streaks and cleaner streaks. So here is a darker bunch of clouds which we'll be adding in. Those are coming here, too. So we just need to add in the blue so that the orange and the pink that we have applied, that just shines through the darker tones of blue that we're applying right now. The yellow and the pink is not very prominent. It's just shining in through the blue clouds that we have on top of it. Okay. So just trying to get that look. And then again, on the top, we will have more clouds coming in. So I'm just adding those with a denser cobalt blue. So your corners are always the darkest. So just trying to build that Okay. Middle is where we will have some cleaned look. So you will have a very lighter tone of blue coming in, either that or we will maintain the whiteness of the paper. Okay, let me take in my large size brush. Let me take in the cobalt blue, dab off all the excess water, and try to build in the sky streaks. Now, I'll again take a little bit more of cobalt blue, but I will also add in indigo to it. Let me just do that. And then we'll try to build in the darkness of the sky. Switching to my medium size brush for now, just to make sure we get the right look and the texture. So I just have just added little bit indigo to the cobalt blue, and I'm trying to build in the top layer of the sky using that Takato. Let me also use my large size brush, dab off all the excess water, and we try to build in the sky. So this is another layer where we will have the darker tone. So I'm just trying to build that. You see my strokes. These are those cloud like strokes that we have, right? I'm just trying to get that onto the paper. Similarly, those dark strokes we might have here as well. So just adding onto that. Okay, you see my streaks. It's all horizontal. And now using in cobalt blue, I'll just try to blend this all out. Okay. Cleaning up my brush, dabbing off all the excess water, and just trying to get that darker to lighter tone. Again, dabbing off all the excess water, cleaning up my brush, dabbing off all the excess water. And we try to maintain the whiteness of the paper. Just blend the darker moreton the corners. I like how this one has turned out. I'm not touching this section because this is something which is looking very pretty. This is exactly what I wanted to achieve. You have your pink and yellow just shining through the blues. Now let's wait for this to dry, and then we will add in the black tree at the photograph. While we wait for this to dry, I'll just dab off all the excess water from the corners to make sure again that whatever color we have applied, we have also applied water with it, right? So that does not see back into the paper, and we do not get blooms onto the paper. Okay. So just to avoid that, again, dabbing off all the excess water from the corners. Now, let's wait for this to dry, and then we'll work on the other details. Okay, so the paper has not dried. Now using a medium size brush and black we will add in a few details over here. Okay? So it's like a shadow or say sunset view. So you have the black silt over here. Okay, so this is the foreground. Let me just take a little bit more of black. And right in the middle or towards the three fourth, we will have our tree. So let me see where to get this. I'll get this somewhere over here so that we don't cover out the white the yellow and the pink that we've got. Say, this is what the tree looks like. It has a thicker trunk. But then you have multiple branches out of the tree. And you will add in all the minor details as well, okay? You can add in as many branches as you want. So first, right now, I'm just adding the first layer of branches which can be painted using the medium size brush. And post that, I will leverage my detailed brush and add in more smaller branches. They will be intertwined with each other. Okay. And say for this one, as well, you have another one branching out from here. This is the soothing part, add in as many branches as crooked, as straight as much as you want, okay? Now using my detailed brush, I will add in a lot of these branches, okay? Se starting from here. So you add in these branches. And then I'm thinking, let's add the leaves as well. Or we can have it barren. If it's barren, then we show all of these tiny branches coming out. I see I'm just playing around with the branches and adding tidy, tiny branches towards the end of each of these small sub branches that we have created, okay? Add as much as you want. If you feel that's enough, stop, and then do not add anymore. Let me actually add some this side as well. It feels a little smaller over here. So I'll just extend these branches little and add slightly more smaller branches, this side as well. Okay. This looks good, right? Let's just wait for this slightly to dry more, and then we will peel off the masking tape. Okay. So this has now all right. Let's peel off the masking tape. This is the final look of the painting. Hope you enjoyed working on this. 7. Project 5: Wings in the Fire Sky: I have my paper here ready. Using my masking tape, we'll tape down this paper onto the bowl. So I'm just running my fingers across the board to make sure that there is no gap between the tape and the paper. Now, using my hake brush, I'll apply even coat of water throughout the paper. Take some time on this step and make sure that no corner of your paper is left from applying an even coat of water. And also, make sure that there are no pools or puddles of water anywhere on the paper. Now, using my large size brush and yellow dabbing of the excess water, I'll just start with the painting. We apply yellow coat bright though with some parts of your paper. Somewhere here as well. Now, cleaning up my brush, taking in orange, add in another layer. The white stuff do you have? We will add in the orange color. For now, this is enough as the first for orange. Now, cleaning up my brush again, taking in vermilion tab of excess water will add that color to the top and also some of the darkest points on the paper. Save this one. Okay. And we have another one over here and at the very bottom. Now, a thin up my brush will take in yellow and we'll blend this out. Okay. Yellow is a complimentary color which blends well with orange and red. I'll just pick that up and run my brush throughout the paper. Whenever I reach the yellow section, I'll clean off my brush, take up fresh yellow, and apply that. Again, this area, I clean up my brush, take in fresh yellow tab of excess water, and just apply. So it's easier to apply yellow on top of red. But when you come to the yellow region, it's important to maintain or retain the yellowness of that region. For that, clean up your brush and just then pick up the yellow that you have. I'll just take in a little bit of vermilion more and add that to the top of the painting just to bring that darkness. Now cleaning up my brush, taking in more yellow, dabbing all excess water, I will just clean up the sky. You can see whenever I'm trying to play around with the yellow, I'm going back to my tissue, cleaning up my brush and then working on the yellow region. Okay. I'll just take up a little bit more of yellow onto the palette, a little bit of vermilion as well. I want to bring out that bright vermilion shade onto the paper. So going again ahead with my large size brush using in yellow, tabbing of excess water, try to add that color onto my yellow area. Now, cleaning up a brush, taking in vermilion and working across the darkest stones again. Okay, as well this side, and then at the very bottom. Now can cleaning up my brush, dabbing of excess water, taking in yellow, and blending all of this out. We do not want a very evident split between yellow and the reds that we have painted, but we want to also maintain the yellowness of the sky. Hence, I'm just being very careful while playing around with the yellow area, but it's okay to have some overlap between yellow and the red to give you the orange tinge. That is why we had added or orange as well to bring that toll to the sky as well. The red and yellow, you get the orange. When you're working on the final layers, you might not need to apply orange because your yellow and red when mixed together, will take care of that color combination. Just blending this out to remove the hair like strokes that we have and also remove the very evident demarcation that we had between the red and the yellows. Cleaning up my brush, taking a little bit more of yellow, and I think just trying to clean this up. Okay? I just picked up a little bit of red to bring that darkness to the top and the bottom area. But I think we should be now good. Just making sure everything is okay. Now using my tissue, I will just dab off all the excess water from the corners of the paper, to make sure that when your paper dries, the water from here does not see back into your paper. For this one, just play around with the shades and try to get a blend of yellow, orange and reddish skies. Before we'll go for this to dry, just dab off all the excess water. I see some hairline streaks over here. So with the damp brush, you know, it does not have any water. You can see it's changing the shape, right? Because the paper is still wet, that's why I'm doing this, okay. If your paper has started to dry, please do not do this, but I'm just running my brush, blur out the hair like streaks that we're coming in. Let's wait for this to dry, and then you will add in our flock of bods. The painting has almost dried. You can see there are some patches on the top and towards the left corner. This patches means that the paper has started to get spoiled and you do not get to know if your paper is spoiled before starting the painting. It's only after you paint. That's when you realize that your paper has started to spoil. Now your paper, just a pro tip, I purposefully had kept this class still on Skillshare so that this one, everybody can get to know what happens when your paper gets spoiled. This is what happens. So this happens because it could be that your paper might be an older one. It might not have been stored in a very optimal situation away from humidity, from sunlight in dark covered at all. So even if you do that and still your paper can get spoiled. That's okay. That's why I'm not I could have again painted it on a new paper and given you a new class project without these patches, but I still wanted to give it here and show it here so that, you know, you still get to know that it's okay, these things happen and you're painting, but it still will be beautiful and you can embrace it as is. Now I've taken up my detailed brush and I'm using black, and we will add in a flock of birds just on the middle side. Okay? So there's a flock of birds, which is flying back home. It's a sunset view. That's all we want to show as another element of the sky. So I'm starting from here. That's a bird. There's another one. All of these words are flying in this direction. That's what I'm trying to build here. There might be some which are flying very near to each other. Can form any shape that you want. There could be some flowing down as well. Okay paint as much as you want, as many as you want. There's no right or wrong on this one, even if it doesn't look like a bird, it could be something. There are two birds flying together, so it's just not coming out very proper, play around. Don't worry with the way it is coming out to be. It might not always be perfect, but that's okay. We are learning to paint here. And sometimes they might not look like the way we would have wanted it to come. That's okay. We learn along the way. I just feel that it's very empty. What I'll do is I'll also add few here and there. They could be they could be flock, which is just entering. I'll just add few birds. Another flock of birds. So could be flowing in the opposite this direction as well. We can try to build that too. So birds are here. I had initially thought to just have one set of birds, one flock of birds. But now I feel I just love painting birds. Now I feel it's okay. I can add few here and there as well. So it could be two block of birds going back home. I think that should be enough. This looks beautiful, right? A very calm and serene sunset view. Let me just peel off the masking tape. So this is the final painting. This looks gorgeous, right? A very calm and serene one. That's, that we have for today. We'll meet you again tomorrow with a new glass project. Thank you for joining me for this one. 8. Project 6: A Playful Sky: I have my paper here ready. Using the masking tape, we'll tape down this paper onto the board. I'm just running my fingers throughout the masking tape to make sure that there is no gap between the tape and the paper. Now for the pencil sketch, we will sketch out a kite in the sky. This is the ribbon that we have. H I just sketched it out a little upside down. So this needs to be the longer one. And then you have the shorter one over here. And say, this is the string that goes. I'll just lighten up the graphite marks. Again, taking in my brush, taking in the soap, using the masking fluid, I'll just take out some masking fluid, add a little water, and we'll upright this to the whole of the guite. If you want, you can apply just towards the corner, but I prefer applying it to the whole of the object. Like, for example, here, the kite, it gives me the freedom to then just play around with my background the way I want. Otherwise, even with the masking fluid, I need to be cautious. Hence, then I prefer to add in the masking fluid to the whole of the object on my paper versus just the corners of that object. This is done. Let's just wait for this to dry, and then we will start with our sky. So this has not dried off. Now, using my hake brush, I'll just apply even coat of water throughout the paper. Take time on this step and make sure that your paper is thoroughly wet. Also make sure that there is no pool or puddle of water anywhere on the paper. Using my tissue, I'll just tap off all the excess water from the corners of the paper. This is to make sure that once your paper starts to dry, the water from your corners does not see back into the paper. If that happens, it causes blooms and we do not want that to happen. I think we should be good. Now, using my medium size brush and cobalt blue, we'll start with the sky. I'll just apply the colours in some places. We are going to paint a clear sky with white clouds. So I'm just trying to get the first layer done in. Taking in more color, dabbing off all the excess water, and I'm just working on with my brush. Is the clear sky, the blue strokes as of now. So places we will have darker tones. Now, cleaning up my brush, dabbing off all the excess water. I'm just lifting off some blues color from some places to get the whiteness of the paper. Now, using very, very diluted tone of pain scray I'm going to just drop it off at some places to get that cloud effect. Okay. You can see it's very, very light, and I'm just adding it to some places only, especially the area where we have some whiteness. We can add in a tone of gray to just bring it out the shadow of the clouds. Let's wait for this to dry. I'll just tab off the excess color from the masking fluid. The area where we've added the gray, right? I'll just with my tissue, bring out little whiteness onto the paper. That's all. That should be enough. Now, let's wait for this to dry. Okay. This has dried now. You can just use your fingers to peel off the masking fluid. Taking in my medium size brush and just taken in vermilion, tabbing off all the excess water, we'll just paint it out. To this side, we will paint in the vermilion. It's a half vermilion and half yellow kite. I'll just take a little bit of pain scrape, add it to the vermilion, a darker tone, and just drop that color over here. This bob let this drip post which we will paint out the yellow, otherwise, the colours will flow between each other. So I'm just painting out this ribbon. Again, taking a little pains grave, adding that to our vermilion and dropping that dead some places. Meanwhile, taking in the yellow and adding the ribbons. Now again, taking in the medium size brush, taking in yellow, dabbing off all the excess water, and we will just paint this out. This has just started spilling over. So we'll just make sure to tap off all the excess water and blend this out. It's okay, even if it's getting spilled over. Meanwhile, I'll just keep on running my brush across this to make sure it doesn't get spread a lot. While this is still drying, what I'll do is I'll take red. You had in some highlights on some parts to make it more evident. Similarly in the yellow as well, you will not have the same color throughout, right? It would have some shadows and all right, so I'm just trying to add it. Let's wait for this to dry. Once this is dried, then we will add in the details with the black color. Using in black and my detail brush, dabbing off all the excess water. I just add in the thin line, the thread of the kite. Trying to add in few details on the guide. These might not be exactly visible. I'm also trying to if you see I don't have accounting lines broken at some places, right? Similar to this side as well. Just trying to get some details. Not very evidently visible, but just there. Let's wait for this to completely dry. Okay, let's peel off the masking tape. This is the final look of the painting. Hope you enjoyed this. 9. Project 7: Chasing the Sunset: Okay, I have my paper here ready. Using the masking tape, we will tape down the paper onto this board. I'm just running my fingers throughout the paper to make sure that there is no gap between the tape and the paper. Now, there's no sketch for this one, so we will directly start with the painting. Using my hake brush, I'll add in a layer of water onto the paper. Take some time on this step and make sure that your paper is thoroughly wet. The more time you spend on this step, the more time you will get to paint your background. Just keep on running your brush throughout the paper. Make sure there is no section which is not wet and also make sure that there are no pools or water puddles anywhere on the paper. You can also apply your water on a slanting wave so that all the extra water flows down below. I'll just use wet tissue and dab off all the excess water from the corners. Using my large size brush and Quin Rose will start with the background. So I'm just applying a very diluted tone of quinn rose to the top. Using an Indian gold, we'll apply that to the middle section. And then again, using the quinn. So I'm just applying it from the top and we'll apply it also onto the bottom. Stabbing of all the excess water and color from the corners. Again, using in more of pink, adding it to the top. And then just blending it out with the Indian gold that we have. Towards the bottom, I'll also take burn Siena and just drop off the color as well. Just something like that. I'll just blend out this pink a little bit more. And now using my detailed brush and sepia or a mix of bone sienna and paints gray, dabbing of all the excess water, I'll try to add in some branches. This one we are painting out to be wet on wet, which would feel like, you know, there are flowers and there are some branches at the back, which would give the blurred effect because we are painting it out all wet on wet. You can also take some of your burnt sienna as well and add that to as the branch. So you can see I'm just very random I'm just carving out some grass like streaks. And now cleaning up my brush, taking in bright opera, dabbing off all the excess water, just dropping that out to show the flowers all in the background with the blurred effect. You can add in as many as you want. You can also take a little bit more of your quin rose and add that sad as well. It will just give a little dimension and more depth to your painting. Using my large size brush, I'll just clean this out. Let me just take a little bit more of pink and just blend all of this out. Again, continuing with the pinks. And now what we'll do is notice a little bit, cleaning up my brush, taking in the sepia, the burn sienna, all that mixture, will try to get the branches again, connecting these flowers as well. Random streaks, as you can see. The first time when we built on it, the brown was also wet from the color that we had applied, and then the streaks were not coming out to be too prominent, right? So that's why while we added that, it got blurred out and merged with the background. So now just Again, added these strokes and mostly these will not get blood out. We will anyways be painting more on top of it. This is just to give the effect of some flowers being far from the eye. So that's why you have this blurred effect coming in. I think this looks good. Now let's wait for this to dry. And then we will paint in the flowers and the grass again, which would be once after this dry. So I'll just take my tissue paper and dab off all the excess water from the corners to make sure that there is no water or paint that seeps in into the paper while this dries. So just going around the board and dabbing off the excess water. Okay. Now let's wait for this to dry, and then we will continue with the painting. This has not dried. Now using my detailing brush and burn Siena, we will just add some more flowers of the meadow on the front. So starting first with burn Siena and a darker tone of burn sienna, so I'll just add a little bit of paints gray or black to it. So for now, I'll just add in the stems, and then we will add the flowers a little later. So you can play around and add it the way you want. It doesn't have to be exactly the same place or the same way that I am painting it. Play around with this and add in as many flowers as you want. So shorter. I'll just add some two, three short branches over here. Now, cleaning up my brush, taking in the quin rose, and we'll just add some flower strokes. So you can see I'm just adding some dotted flower strokes. So it's a group of flowers together. That's how we also painted when we painted these flowers or the wet and wet background, right? So taking in the same pattern, we will just add the flower. Add in a little bit of oprah pink as well. So places to bring in that tone and depth as well. So I'm mixing with the colors. I'm adding the queen rose at some places and also adding in the opera as well. I think that is all that I wanted to add in the meadow area. Now, you see, I got a spot over here because I think it was removing a fiber while we were painting the background. So what we'll do is we'll add some birds and we'll try to cover this with the birds. Be careful because this is still wet. So be very careful while painting your birds. Add in as many birds as you want. I think I'll just add a few more here, and then we will wrap this up. That's all for this painting. This is almost dry so we can peel off the masking tape now. So this is the final look of the class project. Hope you enjoyed this class. 10. Conclusion: Congratulations. You did it. You have completed the seven day watercolor skies challenge. Over the past week, you have painted skies with different moods and learned how to enhance them with simple elements like slots, birds, trees, meadows, et cetera. More importantly, you have developed a habit of painting daily, even just for a few minutes in a day. I hope this class showed you how much variety and expression you can bring with just the skys. Remember, you don't need to stop here. Skies are endlessly inspiring, and I encourage you to try painting them in different colors at different times of the day and in different seasons. I would love to see what you have created. Please upload your projects in the class project section, whether it's all seven skies or even just a few of them. Share your journey, your experiments in the discussion forum, and I would be happy to help you out in any guidance that you need. Seeing your work inspires me and your fellow students. If you enjoyed this class, don't forget to review this class. This will help this class to reach more audience. Do follow me here on Skillshare so that you will know when my next class is reviewed. Thank you for painting along with me. I truly hope you enjoyed this class as much as I did by creating it. I can't wait to see your skies. Till then, bye bye. Happy painting.