Winter Lights: Paint Glowing Winter Skies with Watercolor | Elina Zhelyazkova | Skillshare
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Winter Lights: Paint Glowing Winter Skies with Watercolor

teacher avatar Elina Zhelyazkova, Watercolor Artist

Watch this class and thousands more

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Taught by industry leaders & working professionals
Topics include illustration, design, photography, and more

Watch this class and thousands more

Get unlimited access to every class
Taught by industry leaders & working professionals
Topics include illustration, design, photography, and more

Lessons in This Class

    • 1.

      Welcome to Class!

      2:04

    • 2.

      Class + Project Overview

      1:58

    • 3.

      Materials

      3:34

    • 4.

      Color + Mixes

      9:46

    • 5.

      Exercise I - Day Sky

      6:28

    • 6.

      Exercise II - Sunset Sky

      9:55

    • 7.

      Exercise III - Night Sky

      8:26

    • 8.

      Sketching

      6:19

    • 9.

      Painting the Sky

      11:49

    • 10.

      Shadows and Textures

      9:06

    • 11.

      Finishing the Mountain

      15:28

    • 12.

      Painting the Water

      5:07

    • 13.

      Details

      7:44

    • 14.

      Wrapping Up the Class

      0:51

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About This Class

Painting winter scenes with watercolor is not always easy. We need to recreate the fragile beauty of winter by emphasizing the magical lights that appear in the sky or even from a glowing house or city, while at the same time we need to keep some parts of our paper white in order to depict the snow.

In this class you’ll learn how to use the power of colors to do that effortlessly.

I’ll give you my favorite colors and color combos for painting snow. Yes, even the snow is not completely white and choosing the right hues to paint it makes all the difference.

We’ll have an exercise session where we’ll paint a few types of winter skies - cloudy, sunset sky and northern lights. From there you’ll learn my techniques for soft or dramatic skies. You’ll also learn techniques that will help you to keep a part of your paper white. Gouache is great for painting snow but leaving the paper white and painting it with watercolor afterwards makes a huge difference.

Finally we’ll paint a beautiful winter scene with northern lights, mountains covered with snow and some sparkling city lights. 

This class is for everyone that loves to paint with watercolors and wants to learn some new tricks or techniques, especially when it comes to using the colors to create a light and airy atmosphere.
After completing the class you’ll feel ready and confident to tackle more and more complex winter sceneries.

Are you ready to create some magic?
Join me and let’s have some fun together!

Materials:

Watercolor paints, tubes or pans

Watercolor paper, 300 GSM, 100% cotton

Watercolor brushes

A palette

Two jars of water

A towel or a napkin

A board and a paper tape

A pencil, an eraser, a ruler

White gouache

Meet Your Teacher

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Elina Zhelyazkova

Watercolor Artist

Top Teacher
Level: Intermediate

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Transcripts

1. Welcome to Class!: Winter is a magical season. It's a special time when we witness wonders, otherwise impossible. It's a downwind nature still. But there are also these rare moments when skies are bursting with brilliant colors. They swirl and flow into each other, creating a staunch in contrast with the snow. And what better medium to depict these wonderful side of watercolors. Hello friends. My name is Elina, and today I invite you to embrace the beauty of winter and paint magical winter skies with me. I've been painting with watercolors for the last four years. I quickly fell in love with the medium and constantly looking for new and fun techniques to try and to teach to my students here at Skillshare. My goal is to help you go past the initial frustration this million can bring at first, and to feel the beauty and joy that firewall when you get the hang of it. I love to paint landscapes with gorgeous guys. And recently I found out that they got amazing new world with snow and mountains and fields. Maybe winter scenarios with watercolors is a tricky subject. We need to recreate this fragile delicacy of nature and to emphasize our centerpieces while keeping the most of our paper white. This class will help you with this complex task. We'll start by going through my favorite colors and color mixes first now and skies. These are what make go into the landscape convincing and have a big impact on the overall feeling of the painting. We'll explore color combination and techniques in our exercise session, where we'll paint three different skies, day, sunset, and night sky. Finally, we'll dive deeper into the subject by painting a growing mountain city under the Northern lights. If you're just starting with watercolors, I suggest that you have a look at my first-class watercolor secrets, techniques for adding magic to your paintings. Otherwise, I invite you to make yourself a cup of hot chocolate and join me on this noble adventure. In the next video, I'll tell you more about the class and the final project. 2. Class + Project Overview: We'll start the class by reviewing some of my favorite colors and color combinations for painting winter sceneries. These are crucial for each landscape painting but when it comes to winter landscape, it is extremely important to get your colors right in order for the painting to look balanced and convincing. I will show you how you can mix your own indigo, cobalt green, and Payne's gray in case you don't have these colors in your palette. Next, we'll practice using those colors in our exercise session. There we'll paint different winter sceneries: day, sunset, and night sky. I will show you my techniques for keeping a part of the paper white, painting snow and mountains, and of course, gorgeous winter skies. For the final project in this class, we are going to paint a beautiful winter scenery with Northern Lights. You can paint along with me or watch the videos first and then try at your own pace. I will paint on a big piece of paper about the size of A3, but you can choose a smaller one if you are not used to paint in a larger format. In this case, just pick a size that will feel comfortable for you. We'll start with a pencil sketch that is simple and easy to make. Then, we'll paint our objects separately which will give you enough time and opportunity to work on your own pace and take breaks while the paper is drying. The techniques that we'll use don't require any special skills or precision which will allow you to let go and enjoy the process. At the same time, they are fun and enjoyable and once you get used to them, you will approach any winter landscape with much more confidence. The painting is beautiful in framework and you can even use it as a gift to your loved ones. By finishing the final project, you will get the opportunity to practice and solidify everything that you've learned in the class. Once you complete your project, don't forget to upload it in the project section of the class. I check and comment on all my students' works. In the next video, I'll tell you more about the materials that you're going to need in the class. 3. Materials: In this video, I will tell you more about the materials that you'll need in order to complete the class. It is not necessary to have exactly the same materials. First is paper. The paper that I'm using is Saunders Waterford, it's 100 percent cotton paper, 300 GSM. It has very nice texture. I suggest that you use 100 percent cotton paper, at least for the final project because otherwise some of the techniques might not work well. Also, the paper that I'm using is high white, means that it has pure white color compared to some of the watercolor papers that had more like excel color or ivory. It's better to have high white paper because we're going to paint snow, and we want to leave some of our paper white to the pink to snow. For the color swatches, I will use these Fabriano Artistico. It has this cream color that we've talked about. You can see the difference. I will tape my paper to this board with the paper tape. It's a regular paper tape, I buy it from hardware stores. I will use my ruler, an eraser, mechanical pencil for the sketch. Then for colors, we're going to use these colors. They are by different brands, and we'll have a separate video for the colors, so we'll discuss the colors then. I will also use my palette by Art Philosophy. Don't worry if you don't have some of the colors, I will explain how you can mix them in the next video. As for the brushes, I will use as usually my big hake brush to water the paper and this smaller one that I use to blend out the colors. For painting, I will use my silver black velvet, size 8 and size 12. If you're painting on a smaller piece of paper, you will probably need smaller brushes, and you can use just whatever brushes you'll feel comfortable with. I will also use this flat brush. It is synthetic and narrowly use it only for one of the techniques, so don't worry if you don't have one, you can use your round brushes for that. For white details, I will use these bleed-proof white, which you can use just regular white brush. I will use this ceramic palette to mix the colors, two jars of water, one for rinsing my brush and the other has to stay clean. Cotton towel and paper towel as usually, a small spray bottle filled with water. I will use that to activate my paints and for one of the exercises, I'm going to use this masking fluid. You don't need to have it. You can just watch the exercises and then decide if you want to get one or not. It's just one of the ways to keep our paper white and I want to show this option. In the next video, we'll talk more about the colors that you're going to use in this class and the mixes that they usually make when painting winter sceneries. See you there. 4. Color + Mixes: [MUSIC] In this video, I will tell you more about the colors that I'm going to be using in this class and also for the final project. I will also show you how you can make some of them, and also my favorite mixes for snow, skies, and winter mountains. I will use my tubes and pens. Basically for the colors that I will need the bigger quantity, I will use my tubes, and when I need just a small amount of paint, I will use my pens. Let's start. The first color that we're going to use is Viridian Hue. You may have it in your palette as emerald green. It is called green or blue-green. Next is Indigo. Most of you are familiar with this color. It is very nice color and a lot of artists love to paint monochromatic pieces with it. It's very dark and deep blue. I will just place the tubes next to the swatches. Next is this Cobalt green. I find is the perfect color for northern lights. It's by Mijello. We'll swatch it now. It is very pretty color. I really love it. I will show you how you can mix it, so don't worry if you don't have it. Next is Violet by White Nights. It's my favorite violet. It is very deep, dark, and rich. If you don't have violet, you can mix blue and pink or blue and cold red. Next is Payne's gray, this one is by Jackson's. It's another beautiful color that is very widely used and it's perfect for monochromatic pieces. I will show you how you can mix that one too. Next, I will show you how you can mix your own cobalt blue if you don't have it, so for that, we'll need some white paint. I will take some and plate here on my palette. Next, I will add to that the viridian hue. If you don't have a viridian hue, you can mix any cold green that you have, or you can mix blue and green and see what color you get. Let's swatch the color. Now I will add cobalt blue to the mix and we'll get this more bluish color, it's also perfect for northern lights. This is what cobalt blue looks like. Don't worry if you don't have it, you can mix ultramarine instead. Next, I will show you how you can mix Payne's gray if you don't have it. I will mix indigo and black here on my palette. I'm adding more water to see the color because when it is concentrated, it's mainly black, and I'm adding more black because it's quite blue. Let's see. It's still quite blue so I will add a little bit of crimson to that and this will make it more purplish. That's more like it. You can try and mix your own Payne's gray if you don't have it. Next, I will use Prussian blue. I will mix it here, with black and I will try to make indigo. I'm adding black. If you don't have Prussian blue, you can use whatever dull blue you have on your palette, am adding more black. Let's see what we have. The next color that I'm going to use in the final project is permanent brown by Art Philosophy, it's really nice brown color very rich and deep. Don't worry if you don't have it, you can mix your own warm brown. I will try to copy the shade by mixing burnt umber and some red. Now, this is not quite right. Let's add some more red. That is more like it. You can mix whichever brown you have in your palette, just add some red to it. Next is my favorite shade for snow. I'm just adding a lot water to the cobalt blue and I get this nice color for shadows in the snow. Next, I'm adding to that some opera rose or some other pink color that you have, and again, with a lot of water, we'll get this nice shade for coloring the snow. The final color mix that I want to show is cobalt blue and burnt umber. You mix that, then you add a lot of water and you get this bluish, grayish color. You can use that when painting snow or mountains. Also for some of the details, I'm going to use the colors directly here from my palette. I'm going to use lemon yellow, permanent yellow deep, permanent yellow orange, opera rose. You'll just use whatever you have in your palette. It's not necessary to have exactly the same sheets. Again, don't worry if you don't have some of the colors, just use whatever you have available. In the next video, we'll start with our exercise session when we'll practice on winter sceneries. 5. Exercise I - Day Sky: [MUSIC] Let's start with the exercises. I'm going to paint all three on this big piece of paper. But if you want, you can use smaller pieces, you can paint all the three exercises or you can paint just the ones that you like or you can just watch the videos and practice everything in the final project. It's completely up to you. Let's start with the first one, I'm going to make a simple sketch. These are going to be our mountains, I will paint the sky first by leaving the mountain dry. This is one of the ways that you can keep a part of your paper, white. I'm carefully going around the mountain with clean water. For this kind, this one I'm going to use cobalt blue, this is going to be a day sky. I add water to the cobalt blue and I will add a little bit of burnt umber just to mute it down. I'm just making some horizontal strokes with this color, I will use white gaps which will be the clouds. For the bottom part of the sky, I will just drag the color down with the damp brush. Usually, the top of the sky should be darker and brighter because this is the part that is closer to us and the bottom part of the sky far away so we see the color, less saturated. That's it for the sky, now I will leave it to dry and we'll paint the mountain separately. Now the sky is dry and we're going to paint the mountains. I will just add some details to the sketch just to make it more interesting. I will add more cobalt blue to the mix that I have here on my palette, I will add some more waters, and now I will paint the shadow of the mountains so they are covered with snow. The sky is clear blue so our shadows are also blue. Usually, the snow reflects the color of the sky so keep that in mind. I will just paint this portion of the mountain with the color that I have. I'm just filling the shape. You don't need to make the perfect wash here, we'll cover that with more details so don't worry, I'm just taking my time because I like this process. I added more water here so that my wash is more interesting. I'm switching to size 8. I have some paints gray here on my palette, and I'm taking the color with very little water on my brush so this is the effect that I'm going to use to paint the mountains, it's called dry brush. Basically, you take very intense color, and maybe you will need to dab your brush on a paper towel to take out the excess moisture. Now with that, I will just make some marks with my brush. I'm just touching my brush to the paper here and there so each time I take the color, I dab my brush on a paper towel to take out the excess moisture. Now, I will continue with this part over here so there is no specific pattern, I'm just pressing my brush here and there. I'm adding more color now, I'll continue with the same technique over here. The longer you paint the less paint you'll have on your brush and you'll get these smaller and smaller marks. Now I take my size 12, I'm adding more water to the cobalt blue mix that I have here on my palette and I will go over some of the marks that I made. Because the paint is not completely dry, I take some of the color with my brush and it feels very pretty and creates this nice effect in the mountains. Now I'm just going with the water from my jar. Now I'm just blending some of the edges. Now I'm just looking at my painting and I add some dots here and there with paints gray just to make it more interesting. You can do this on dry paper or on wet paper, either way, the results are going to be great. You can also try to splatter some color. This is it, we are ready with the first exercise, I will see you in the next video where we'll paint our sunset sky. 6. Exercise II - Sunset Sky: [MUSIC] Now we'll paint our winter landscape with sunsets sky. Again, I'm going to make a simple sketch. This will be the mountains and hill will have a road in this snow. These are just two lines that meet in the distance. I'll start again by wetting this sky first. I'm taking some lemon yellow. Then I'll just make some diagonal lines in the sky. Next I will take care of our deep, I will add that to the sky. I just placed this color next to the yellow. Now, without even washing my brush, I will take some opera rose I'm adding that. Fi nally, some cobalt blue for the corner over here. I'm adding some upper rose to that and I get purple. I'm mixing it directly on the paper. I'll just drag that color a bit. With the **** brush, I will mix the colors now. I'm adding more opera rose. You cannot colors while your paper is still wet. If your paper is starting to dry, you better live the sky as it is. Now with the **** brush, I will take some of the color, here because I lost some of the lemon yellow, which creates a the glow in the sky. Next, I want to paint some clouds. I'll mixed opera rose with cobalt blue. Again, this nice purple. I'm not using a lot of water here. I'm dabbing my brush on a paper towel to take the excess moisture. I'm just making some sports with my brush. Now, I'm adding more opera rose to the mix. Now, I will mix whatever I have on my brush with orange. I'm adding some opera rose, and I'm getting these busty orange for the clouds over here. I'm adding more concentrated color, and now I will use my hairbrush to blend the colors better. I'm just pressing very lightly and I held the colors to blend on the paper. Again, your paper needs to be still wet but without pulse of water. So with very light movements, I have the colors to mix. If you prefer more dramatic sky, you can leave the sky as it is. I just loved to have such smooth blends in this case. I love to use this technique. Now, I won't wait for this sky to dry. I will just add a little bit of water here on the bottom part of the painting. With the purple mix that we used for the clouds, I will just cover the mountain very carefully. Now, if you use a lot of water here in your sky is still wet, your color will flow up to the sky, so be mindful of that. But if your sky is just a little bit of wet, you will get this nice soft edge. This is what I'm going for here. Don't worry if the color mixed with the color of the sky will go over the mountains again and will fix that. I'm trying to fix the edge of the mountain here. It doesn't need to be perfect, because we will go over that again with a darker color. Now my sky and the mountains are completely dry and I'm taking some paints gray. Again with the techniques that you use in the first exercise, I'm going to add some dark spots here and there. I will make the road more visible. Now, I will add to the purple mix some cobalt blue. I added too much blue. I'm taking some opera rose to bring back the purple shade. I will just add some more shadows to those snow here, I'm using my size 12. I'm Smudging some of the Paints gray and I get this nice effect again. I'm washing my brush and now with clean water, I drag the color down. Now, I'm adding more opera rose to the mix because on the other side I have this pink parts in the sky and I want to make this part of the mountains more pinkish. I add this color to the mountains on the left. This is how we fix the edge of the mountains. Now, with just some clean water alpine draw, I pick up some of the color with my damp brush. You can even sprinkle some water here to make some additional effects. I'm going back again with Paints' gray, it's very concentrated so it's not spreading too much on my paper. I'm just adding some tiny details here and there, make some deeper shadows. I'm adding more lines to the road. Again, this is just an exercise. It doesn't need to be perfect. Just practice these techniques in order to feel more comfortable when we start with our final project. I'm adding some coupled both of the same mix over here and now we'll add some lines to the rock. Now, I will add some details which will make it more interesting with very concentrated Paints gray, this is completely optional. Same on the other side. You can add a tiny house or people if you like, but I will give this very simple. This is it. We already with our second exercise, I hope you had fun. I will see you in the next video while we'll paint beautiful northern lights. 7. Exercise III - Night Sky: [MUSIC] Get ready for our final exercise. For this one, I'm going to be using masking fluid. If you don't have masking fluid, maybe you can just watch the video and then decide if you want to get one or not. The masking fluid is basically fluid that we apply to the paper when it's still white or when we want to preserve some of the colors that we already have. To apply the masking fluid, you need to use an old brush, or in my case, I'm going to be using this silicone tool that I have, because when it dries on your brushes, it may ruin them. Here I have a mountain and I will go in to apply the masking fluid, then I will cover the entire mountain. I will speed this process up. Next, you need to leave it to dry completely. Now that my masking fluid is completely dry, I'm going to water the paper and I will start adding colors without worrying that they may go onto my mountain. I will start with lemon yellow. Then some varian hue and I take this directly from the pants. Next I'm adding some more Burroughs. Finally, I will add some indigo. I will fill up the blank spaces that I have on my paper with indigo. Since the paper is still wet, they blend very beautifully, but I still want to help them blend even better. Now I will tilt the board. You'll see the colors start to flow. I will take the excess water and color with my paper towel. Now I'm just tilting in the opposite direction. This will help the colors to blend very beautifully. The more you tilt your board, the more your colors will flow, so I tilt it in all the directions, but each time I'm taking out the paint that is flowing into my paper tip. If you see that some part of your paper is starting to dry, you can spray some water or you can add some water or some paint with your brush. I'm tilting my board again. As long as your paper is still wet, you can do this until you are satisfied with the result. Just don't forget that you need to take all the excess water and paint, otherwise it will go back to your painting. Now I will use my brush and I will help the colors to blend even more. I will use these vertical movements because I want to recreate the effect of the Northern Lights. I'm just touching the paper very lightly with my brush. I want to add a little bit of Opera Rose here. I'm spraying some water to keep the paper wet. I'm tilting again. I find therapeutic to just watch those colors flow on the paper. Again, with my brush, I'm just helping the colors to blend even better. Now everything is dry and I'm going to remove the masking fluid. I'm just peeling off this edge over here and I'm starting to pull. You can remove the rest with an eraser. Now I'm adding some water to the mountain. Some Cobalt blue, here and there. While it's still wet, I'm adding again some Payne's gray. We use Payne's gray on the wet paper so the color starts to flow beautifully. Again, I'm just touching my brush here and there. I'm blending those colors. I'm adding more color here, some dots. Now I will leave it to dry. Now I'm going to use the dry brush effect on the dry paper. Just adding some brush marks here and there with Payne's gray. Again, you can go with the damp brush and smudge some of the marks. Don't forget to leave some of the paper white. Now I will paint the stars. Taking some white, and I will splatter it. You can also use white or cover some of the white areas on the mountains. You can do this on wet or on dry, and this is it. We are ready with the exercises. In the next video, we'll start with our final project. 8. Sketching: [MUSIC] We're ready to start with our final project. Here I have my tray with my jars of water, my towel, and my brushes, and my pencil. Here's my eraser. I will also use these paper towel occasionally, so I have it ready [MUSIC]. I will keep this here on the side. Again, my paper is about the size of a tree, and I will tape it down to my board with a paper tape. So I'm putting the tape first on the top and on the bottom, and then I put it on the left and on the right of the paper and this makes it easier for me to peel it off once I'm done with the painting. Now I'll start with a simple sketch, so first I will draw the horizon line. It is very low on the painting. Next, I will quickly draw a mountain. I hold my pencil high, which makes it easier for me to make more spontaneous and irregular lines [MUSIC]. Here I also have some lines. I make darker the parts of the painting that I already know they're going to be in the shadow. This makes it easier for me when I'm painting. This part is really dark too, and here it goes like that. Here also I have a darker part. Here Here we have something like an island, so I'll draw that too. I will use again my ruler to make it more straight. You'll need to be precise with this lines. Let's repeat the colors again. Here is my cobalt green, my violet, my Payne's gray, my gradient hue, my indigo. I will mix these here on my ceramic palette. These are the colors that I'm going to use now for the sky. Now we'll prepare the mixes before a hint. When I start to paint, it will be easier and faster. I suggest that you do the same. So I squeeze a little bit of the paint on my palette, and then I will add some water and we'll make a bit both of the colors that I'll need. Now I will spray some water [MUSIC]. Now we'll mix the color with my brush. If you use tubes like I do, you just squeeze a little bit of paint on your palette and then add just a little bit of water. If you don't have a spray bottle, you can also use an eyedropper or you can use a bigger brush to introduce some water into the well, the idea is that you have a lot of paint and just a little bit of water, so the mix is very intense and bright. We need those colors to be intense and bright because we will have a lot of water on the paper. If our colors are diluted with a lot of water, then will have very transparent colors and that is okay. But in this case I want them to be very bright and pigmented [MUSIC]. I am ready with my mixes. If you don't have tubes of the colors that you want to use for the project. Of course, you can use bands, but then you will need to put an extra effort in order for your mixes to be thick enough. My advice for that will be to spray your bands before you start to work. This will activate them and we'll make it more easier to pick them up with your brush. As for brushes, I suggest that you use an old brush, which you can use the pickup some of the paint. It is better if the brush is really stiff one like this one that I have over here, so it's really stiff and it can pick the colors easily. In the next lesson, we'll start to paint the sky for our painting. 9. Painting the Sky: We start with the sky for our painting, so I'm taking my big brush, I'm taking some water, and I'll wet the whole area of the sky. I will keep mountain dry for now. Again, if you don't have a big brush, it's okay, you can just use a smaller one, I'm just using this one because it's easier and faster for me. I'm putting my paper tape here so that the board is tilted this way because otherwise water and paint can flow into my mountain and I don't want that, I want them to flow in the opposite direction. Now, my sky is wet, and I take the mix that I have prepared over here with cobalt green, and I just place the color on my sky here and there. My brush wasn't clean, so this is why the color here is a bit dirty, but I will wash it now, and I will pick up some fresh color. [MUSIC] I will place the color here and there on the wet paper. I carefully go around the mountain. [MUSIC] Next, I will switch to violet. You can see how beautiful it spreads on the paper, it is really dark and beautiful color, very intense, it's why I like to use it for such paintings, so I place it next to the cobalt green and I take some more, I'll put a little bit here, and now I switch to indigo. Whenever I have water and paint on my paper tape, I blot it immediately with my paper towel. [MUSIC] I go back to the cobalt green, and now, I will cover the rest of the sky. [MUSIC] I'll leave just a little bit of white space here because I want this part to be really bright because this is where the light comes from. Now, I'll tilt my board, the colors start flow, I have my paper towel ready to blot out any excess of paint and water. [MUSIC] Then I switch directions. [MUSIC] Then I tilt it on the other side. [MUSIC] You can see the direction your colors are flowing, and you can tilt your board in the direction that you wish your colors to flow. It is a good idea, at least in the beginning, to tilt it in all the directions so that the colors mix well. [MUSIC] Here, I have a dry spot and I will use my spray to moisten it again, otherwise, it will look patchy when the paper is dry. [MUSIC] This is that effect that I want to achieve, these vertical lines because usually this is how the northern lights look like. I'm blotting some more paint. [MUSIC] You can already see the nice blend that we managed to achieve. [MUSIC] Now, I will take care of this part over here. I wanted it to be light, but it's too light, and now I will spray it with some water because it's already dry, and now, I will try to make the color to move so that this area is nicely covered. [MUSIC] I will use my brush also, so I will gently guide the color, I'm not using much pressure here because I have such nice planes, I will try to keep them. [MUSIC] I try to keep the edge of the mountain clean. [MUSIC] Now, I will use gravity to do the rest of the work. [MUSIC] I want the colors to flow naturally. [MUSIC] This looks good. [MUSIC] Now, I will take a little bit of indigo, and I'll mix it with a cobalt green over here, [MUSIC] I'm adding some purple too. Now, I'll paint some clouds, just some random spots with my brush, size 8. [MUSIC] Since my paper is still wet, they spread out beautifully with a soft edge. [MUSIC] Now, we will use my hake brush to blend them even better, so again, with very light movements, I softly guide the color and help it to blend. [MUSIC] I try not to touch the pool of paint that I have on my paper just above the clouds, I want to keep the brush dry. [MUSIC] Now, I will try to make that pool disappear into the sky by tilting my board again, so that mix flows into the sky. The paper is starting to dry now, so the colors are not spreading that much, so it's harder now to make that pool of paint to blend seamlessly into the sky, but again, I'm tilting my board in all the directions. [MUSIC] You see the nice blends that we have over here. This is why I decided to use this technique for the sky because that kind of small blends are very hard to achieve if you are using just your brush. [MUSIC] I continue to try and guide the colors by tilting my board, and now, with my brush, I will try to fix some of the places that I don't like. [MUSIC] It is important that when you decide that you're done with your sky and you are happy with your results, and your leave your painting to dry, it is important that there are no pools of water on your painting and no drops of water and paint on your paper tape. The sky should have this nice even sheen. [MUSIC] You can leave your painting to dry at an angle, this will help the colors to continue to flow in the direction in which your board is tilted. Now, I'm happy with how my sky looks like, and now I'll leave it to dry. 10. Shadows and Textures: [MUSIC] Now my sky is completely dry. You can test yours by touching it with the back of your hand. If it feels cold, then it means that you need to leave it to dry a bit more. Now I will continue with the mountain. I take the indigo that is left here on my palette. I add a little bit of water to it, and I get this light and transparent blue. I will use this color to paint the shadows of the mountain. I try to make these random spots with my brush. I have one over here, it goes down like that. It has this half-moon shape. A little bit over here. Some around the spots here. These don't need to be precise or perfectly painted. These are just random spots and we will cover most of them either way, so don't worry. Now I'm adding more water to the mix. Somehow it looks even lighter. I will continue to paint the lighter shadows here below. Again, just random movements with your brush. I have a little bit over here. I drag the color up. Since my brush is already dry, I get a dry brush effect, which is perfect for the mountain. It creates this nice texture. More color here and there. I dry some of it with my paper towel. I will pick some of the color here also. It creates this nice texture on the mountain. Now I will use the permanent brown by Art Philosophy. I spray some water to activate it. I will prepare this water and mix here on my palette. I will add a little bit of indigo to it, so I get this grayish, brownish shade. I add more brown color. This is the color that I got. Now we'll cover with that this part over here. I'm just filling the shape. Now I use concentrated permanent brown from the pen to create some texture. I drop it here and there. So again, I make these random movements. I try to make it look natural. I cover almost the entire spot with this color. I take some indigo and drop it here and there to make the color even darker. This makes a nice variety of colors and helps with the realistic look of the painting. Even if you paint some distant object, it's nice to have a nice variety of hues and colors. I make this part really dark. I take out the extra paint from my brush and I just help the colors to blend here and there. I will add some water to this mix that I have over here, is the mix that we used for the clouds. I will just add some brown, a little bit more indigo. This is the color that I got. It's really dark grayish color. You can use also just Payne's gray for the purpose. I will start with a dry brush technique on this part of the mountain over here. There is no specific pattern. I just press my brush and I get these random marks. What you need to be careful for is not to make it too repetitive, and try to make it look as natural as you can. I try to make small marks and bigger marks so that I have a nice contrast and variety. Somewhere I leave more whitespace. I'm adding some last touches. I just look at how my painting looks and I decide if I want to make something else. I think I'm ready. I'm just adding concentrated color here and there to make it more dark. I'll leave this to dry now. In the next lesson, we will paint the rest of the mountain. See you there. [MUSIC] 11. Finishing the Mountain: Now we'll paint the rest of the mountain using the same techniques that we used in the exercise. I'm just preparing again a grayish mix, so I mix burnt umber with indigo. If you look at the photo reference, you can see that on the left part of the mountain the shadows are more warm and on the right side the shadows are more cold. When I paint the mountain on the left I will add more permanent brown, and when I paint the shadows on the right I will add more indigo to have a nice variety of colors on the mountain. Now I start to paint the mountains using the dry bar technique. I just look at the photo reference and put some marks wherever I see that there are some details on the mountain. I will cover this part with green paint that I have here. I'm not following the photo reference completely, I just look at it to see how the mountain is looking and decide if I want to follow that or not. Now I will continue on this side. I start from the top and then go down to the bottom so that I don't smudge so much some of the paint. I use the same mix of paint. It's nice to have a brush with a sharp tip like this one to paint such tiny details. First I will paint the bigger spots here on the mountain and then I will add the little ones. Basically, I try to follow the overall shape and the structure, but I won't follow the photo reference 100 percent. Here below I have these more darker part so I will use more thick mix of paint. You can use directly Payne's gray for this part. Don't make it completely black, but still it needs to be really dark. I try to keep the part where the water will be clean. Same on the other side but here I add a little bit of permanent brown to make it more warm. Here I have more darker spots. I start to drag this color up, and again I get this nice texture of the dry brush. Again, here the waterline is a bit below the waterline that is on the right because here we have something like an island, so I'll bend that now. There is more brown in my mix. You'll see that my brush is really dry. Whenever I feel that I don't have a lot of paint on my brush, I just go through some bigger portions of the mountain to add more texture. Just remember not to color the entire mountain with this dry brush effect. We still need to have some white spaces where the snow is. I prepare some more of my mix. With more concentrated paint I will go over this part again here and there, dragging some of the color up. Again, my mix is permanent brown and indigo. I'm just looking at my painting. Again, I'm trying to assess where I need to add some more color. Now, I'm adding more brown and I continue here on the left side. Again, my brush is really dry here. I add more depth to these cracks over here by adding more color. More dry brushing here. You see how nicely our mountain is coming together. It really looks like a mountain now. Now, what I do is I take some clean water with my brush and I'm going over the mountain, so I smash of some of the color, I get more nice shadows. These really add some depth. Now, I will take a little bit of orange. I will mix it with the brown. I give these colors something between orange and brown, I mix it here on my palette. I'm adding a little bit of red. This is permanent red. I will continue to work on this part over here. It has a really warm color on the photo reference, so I'll start to fill in the shape. It looks strange now, but if you look at the photo reference, this is really how it looks. I'm adding some permanent brown here while the color is still wet. Then some lines like that. Adding more brown here below. I'm adding more indigo to this part here so it gets a little bit darker and it connects better with the rest of the mountain. I'm just going over with my brush. I help the color to spread. I'm going back to this part over here with a mix that has more indigo in it, than brown. Just dry brushing here and there, adding some more spots, some more texture. Once you start with this, it's really hard to stop. You see that that mix that I'm using now is more dark and concentrated. You can even spatter some colors. I will do this now, but first I will cover my sky because I don't want some spots of paint to go into my sky. I take my mix with permanent brown and indigo and I will just spatter some color. I get these really tiny dots and if I don't like some of them, I can smudge it with my brush. Some more here with a more brownish mix. I'm not taking much paint so the dots that I'm getting are really tiny. Some more here. Okay, and we're done. See you in the next video where we will paint the water. 12. Painting the Water: [MUSIC] In this video, we'll paint the water. I'm watering the portion where the water will be. I try not to touch the edges of the mountain. This time I will place my paper tape like that so the water doesn't go into my mountain. Now I will just repeat the colors that I have in my sky. On the left part I will have more cobalt green and on the right, I will have more purple just on horizontal lines with my brush. Now let's mix those colors. I'm going carefully here. Now I am taking more concentrated cobalt green, and I will just paint some stripes like that. Now with my head brush, I will blend this. Again if you don't have a head brush just use your biggest softest brush, but remember that it needs to be dry. Now with Payne's gray, I will add some darker spots here and there. Again, I will add these below the darker spots in my sky. Now again with some Payne's gray, I will go over the line where the water in the mountain meet. I'm not going go over just the wet part or just the dry part, I'm going just between. Part of the paint goes on the mountain and part of the paint goes in the water. This will connect them in a natural looking way. When the water is dry, we'll fix the edge so this is nice and straight. Don't worry about that. You can see that my brush is very dry. I'm blending some of the color. More dark spots here. Again with my head brush, but this time with vertical movements I will blend the color. Now I will splatter some clean water while the paint is still wet. Now I will leave this to dry. 13. Details: [MUSIC] Okay, guys. We're on the final stage. First, let's fix the edge between the mountain and the water. Again, I'm taking some Payne's gray. [MUSIC] You can see how thick it is. I'm using very little water, and this is my size 8 Silver Black Velvet, so I'm activating the paint. I take some very thick consistency on my brush. Look how thick it is. Now I will use my ruler to help me make some straight lines. If you want, you can use also paper tape. You can place it on your painting, and then fix the edge and then you can remove the paper tape, but I think this way it will be easier for me. I'm just going over the edge, and I fixed the line. I drag some of the color up, very quickly with some white movement. We are ready with this part. I'm wiping my ruler, and I will go on the other side with the same mix. Dragging some of the color up. If you have a flat brush, you can take it, and we'll try to smudge some of that color into the water. I'm just going over the paint, with a dry brush and I'm dragging some of the color down. It creates this nice effect of reflections in the water. I will just blend these a bit with my hake brush. Now, I'm adding some final touches to the mountain with really dark paint; this is Payne's gray again. Now it's time to paint the stars. I am just covering everything except for the sky, and again, I will use my white paint. I'm taking some white, my size 8. I want it to be very thick because I want to have tiny stars. If your consistency is more watery, you will get bigger stars. But I don't want to add too many, just some stars here and there, mostly on the top part of the sky. I'm writing bigger stars with my brush. Now, to the mix that we used to paint the orange part of the mountain, I'm adding the white paint from my brush, and I get this thick consistency of slightly orange color. I will just add some situ lights, just tiny dots. As it is starting to come together, I will add a little bit of yellow to the same mix and I will paint some yellow lights, if you want, you can leave your yellow lights, just one color. They can be white, or yellow, or whichever color you like. What I want to show that there are many options. Now I will paint some yellow lights. Finally, I will add water to the same mix, and I will repeat the process. That is one glowing city and it is finally time to remove the paper tape. I'm sure you will agree that this is the best part. I'm slowly peeling off the tape. I peel it off at an angle, very slowly, and this part, and yay guys. We are ready. Finally, with our final project. It looks so beautiful. I really love the blend in the sky. I love the texture of the mountain. I like how the water is looking. Congratulations if you made it this far. I will see you in the next video for our final words. 14. Wrapping Up the Class: Congratulations on completing the class. I hope that you are happy with your new work of art. Painting landscapes are challenging but they are so beautiful; it's worth the extra effort. By tackling new challenging subjects, we are stepping outside of our comfort zone, and this way, we're gaining more confidence in our practice. Give yourself some credit for doing this today. [MUSIC] Don't forget to upload your project in the project section of the class. I'm super excited to see what you'll create. If you post your painting on Instagram, don't forget to tag me @inkpapersquirrel, I'll be happy to share your work in my stories. If you have any questions for me, just post them in the discussion section of the class and I will get back to you as soon as I can. Until the next class, guys. Happy painting.