Winter Landscape with a Castle: Explore Loose Watercolor Technique

1. Introduction: Hi, I'm Irina Traskas, watercolor artist and illustrator. Welcome to my class channel. Here you'll find a big collection of classes for beginners. In today's class, we will be painting a winter landscape with a little castle. I hope you like this painting, and it's beginner friendly. If you're new this channel, thank you for joining. Press the follow button, and let's get started. 2. Supplies: So to paint this landscape, we'll need following supplies, watercolor paper. I'm using ganst cold pros, 140 pounds. And so you'll need a board and painter's tape to tape paper on top so it doesn't buckle. We need the paint, water, paint palette. Esa and an eraser. Also there is a drawing template in the project of a class. Also need a big brush. The bigger abra for this project. This is number 12, but you can go even bigger. Then we'll need a medium brush. This is number four and a small brush, this is number one. I don't need a paper to. That's it. Oh 3. Colors: So to paint our winter castle, we'll use not too many colors, and we'll use following till Indigo. Pain's gray. Then we'll also use a little bit of ultramarine. If you don't have it, it's okay. You don't have to. You can just substitute it with integral and to. As we'll use magenta. Cadmium orange. We'll be mixing those two together. Purple or violet. And for the windows of a castle, we'll be using naples yellow or yellow ochre if you don't have Naples yellow. And we'll be adding a little bit of detail with osela. So these are all the colors we'll be using today. Mm hmm. 4. Preparing For Painting: Sir, after transferring our template from the project section of a class, we need to tape our paper onto the board so it doesn't buckle when we add a lot of water. About a quarter of an inch on each side. Like this and all the way around. 5. Painting a Winter Landscape: Okay, the paper is taped onto the board, and now we can start painting. So we'll start by covering our paper with water. And it depends on your paper. If it's 100% cotton, you can cover it all the way to this snowbank. Mine is not 100% cotton, it's more beginner friendly, so I'll just we'll be covering in portions and we're adding more water as we go. Because otherwise it will be drying anyway. So let's start with our scull. And Van will take some indigo. And we'll add just a drop of till to it. And we'll add it here in the corners. Please. A little more till. Make sure you have your paper out with you so you can absorb excess of water. But don't make it too dry yet. Next, we can take some cadmium orange and a little bit of magenta. And I'll keep adding water. More magenta. Lift it up a little. And back to orange. Alright, let's get back to our indigo with tell. Me indigo on this side. Here we have, like, a mountain or something. And we'll keep it and water to this dry edge. Let's add some water here. A like this. Wever moves like this will be adding more intego with teal, but not too much. I tend to add too much color for winter scenes. And when you see we have this dry spot, so we can lead this water a little bit down on the hell, and we can always add some color a little later. I don't want it to be too squary. So I'm trying to soften up these edges more indigo. And an mostly water. Like this. If your paper is still wet and you are lucky one, then we'll take a smaller brush and we can add some little trees here. Could be like Christmas tree. So paint them, right. Into wet paper, so it don't look so sharp from far away. Like little triangles here and there. I dov this with indigo. You should do this only if the paper is still very wet because otherwise it don't look like it doesn't belong there. Alright, and here I have some dark spots anyway, so. Now let's take some of this mixture and we'll add a line here. Or with snow. And the last step at this stage, we need to splatter some water. And now we have to let it dry. I feel like it's too dark, I think it's a little too dark. It can lift up a little bit of color. But it also may lighten up when it dries or may not. It's always a surprise with watercolor. Okay, now let's let it dry and we'll see what happens. 6. Finishing Layer: Now when our first layer is totally dry, we can start painting our castle silhouette. But first, we'll start with windows. So I'll take some naples yellow, and we'll decide where I want some windows. I'd love one here. One here. And I think these are all the windows I want. If it's too dark, I want to lift some of paint, because it's too much pigment in there. And then on these little squares, I'll take a small brush is better. I'll take some rosina and I'll add a little bit of a darker shade. Oh. Then let's take some tea and mix it with some ultramarine blue. And we need it very, very way. And then let's add a little bit of this naples yellow. And now we can paint our silt. M? The straight line is a tricky one. And it's okay if it doesn't come out completely straight. When here, I won't be painting the entire roofs, but just parts of them like this because some of them are hidden by the trees. So just go with your intuition and pad parts of a buildings like this. So we can see some of building and some we can't because of the trees or a forest. This little roof. No little tower. And here we have our Munsin, so let's show it a little more. I switch to a medium brush at this point. I think it'll be better. I still had some yellow onda, but that's okay. So this is our mountain. And our castle silhouette. Now let's let it dry until we add a little more details. And for now, we can take some indigo. I mix it with a little bit of naples yellow. And let's make a branch here. Add a little bit of tell to you. It's too dark. You see how water it is, gives us a bit dreamy thel. Just a few branches to give a little more perspective to our paint. A little darker here. Like this. Alright, I want another branch here. Intersect and go this one. Okay, castle is drying off, so let's take some more till with integral and add a few more shadows here and there. A line here. A little bit of shade on this part. I don't want to make it too detailed, but just just attain it. And the same with a mountain. Just a few spots. Next, you can add a little more cheese branches like a couple leaves which still are hanging in we until spring. And the last step, we can add a little bit of tree detail. So I also took this very watery mix, and we have a small brush. I'll just paint a few tiny trees with branches here. And here. And I'm showing a little bit of detail to wash this off. And a little bit of more integoOto these branches. Like this. Now, let's add some magic of some splashes, and we'll be done. I'm taking more till with water. So this is our easy landscape in winter with a winter custom. S. 7. Thank you!: Thank you so much for joining me in this class. I hope you had a chance to paint the Winter castle with me. If you like the class, please leave a review and flow project to project section of the class. I can't wait to see what you create. Thank you so much for joining, and I'll see you in the next class. Bye.