Winter Wonderland Watercolor Scene & Framing

1. About Kellie Chasse: Hello. My name is Kelly Chassis, and I'm a professional artist and instructor. And I've been teaching watercolor classes since about 2007 and in my classes. Really, Like I said at the beginning, it's about enjoyment. It's about being creative. It's for beginners and for hobbyists. For anybody that just wants toe. Sit down, relax for a couple hours and paint. And my scenes are usually fairly simple. Usually, they'll take you about Ripley two hours to paint from start to finish, and I'll go through everything step by step with you in my classes, and you can start, Stop pause. Um, you know there are no mistakes and it's really like I said just about having fun and enjoying yourself, so give it a try with me. 2. Fenced In Forest Intro: Hi and welcome to my course. This is Kelly chassis and today will be painting a beautiful winter scene. This one has a red cardinal sitting on the fence, and I'll go over how to quickly do a sketch on our painting. And then we'll go over how to use a medium called Wash. And I'll show you some detail ings on how to put some snow in on the fence and then finally will use a toothbrush for the Miss mystical snow at the end. And then we'll also show you how I frame up my paintings. So please join me. Come paint with me. 3. Lesson 1 Materials Needed and Taping Down Watercolor Paper: so to get started, we'll need a foursome watercolor paper, and I'm gonna be using 100 £40 cold press paper for this class. Any of a smooth side and you have a rough side will be painting on that rougher side. We'll also be using a backer board. And this is just a nice thin foam board that we can use to tape down or painting or paper to, so that we don't get any buckling when we start to add the water to it. Now for watercolor paints, you can use any kind of pains. I'm happy to be using some pan paint Cesaire made by Windsor Newton. There, great little starter kit will also be using a number two pencil today toe lightly sketch out our painting scene, and I also use a black Sharpie a lot of times just for some fine detail. Work also to sign my work at the very end. If you need to use an eraser, I would recommend using a nice polymer racer. So are your paper, and I'll be using a light wash brush oval brush. Really, any medium size brush will do, and also you want to make sure that it's nice bristle so that you have a nice amount of water that can be absorbed by that brush. Also, you don't need a fine detail brush. This one comes with our Windsor Newton kits, a nice little fine sable brush that I used a lot in my paintings. And I also try to use for most of my classes just two brushes, which makes it easier. So this is wash. This is like wash. It's a non transparent type of paint. Confuse with watercolor. If you add water to it, it becomes more transparent. And this is great. Will be using this for our snow Today course we'll need some water, and I usually use two cups of water for most of my classes. Again, I have a clean water and when I have one that they use for dirty. So that way I always have some fresh water so it doesn't muddy up your paints, and then another thing will need are some paper towels, and we'll just use this for cleanup and also when we change our brushes, if we need to take extra water off of our brush, we can use that so one more thing we'll need is some masking tape or some blue. This is Blue Painter's tape, just regular three m tape. And what I'm gonna do here is just tape up all of these corners on my paper, and this will keep the paper down when we start to add water to it. And by putting it on, this backer board will be able to turn and change on the direction of as we're painting a little bit easier than having something taped directly down onto our table. So it's all taped down here now, and I've given myself just enough space around. They're about 1/4 Angelelli around. So this eight by 10 Matt will fit perfectly on there. And as you can see, there's no blue tape showing, which means my entire area will show when I frame it. 4. Lesson 2 Sketching Your Scene: Okay, so let's get started with our sketching. We're gonna sketch in the mountain area in the background just for me where your snowbank is, and then we're gonna do some little fence post along the back here just very lightly. These air, often a distance. They don't have to be too big. Just make sure that they're straight up and down. You know, you're following along that Stowe path and then down in the front, we're gonna do some a little bit larger posts, and they don't have to be perfectly straight. Was the old fans fill those in and then will attach those across the back with the top fence? You just gonna fill these all in here and then we're gonna do the same thing across the front and again, it doesn't have to be perfectly straight pillows all in. And then we'll do our second row of the old fence across the front here. Great. Okay, so then we're gonna add in just a couple little cardinals just lightly where there's air gonna be just little little top of the head will circle on a little lying down. And that's really all we needed will finish by painting those in a little while. So let's start with our trees. These trees are gonna be some wannabe taller, so we're gonna be shorter. The ones that are often the distance are going to be way to the back. They're gonna come all the way down in the middle of your snowbank and you could feel it as many trees as you like. They don't have to again be perfectly straight. These are just trees off in the forests. But make sure you bring some down near the front here as well. So it's up close to you. It looks good. 5. Lesson 3 Painting Background: All right, so we're gonna start with a little Cottman said, and I have some ivory black, which is just to paint over here and then just add some water to that makes it nice and dark. The other thing you could do is make your own black, which would be using a little bit of the ultra marine blue. We'll get a nice little puddle going on the side nice and dark. And then we can add some of the burnt number to that, and you can adjust the light or the darkness of the black. But you could see these air very close to the ivory. Black Sea could make your own without having to buy a second tube of paint. So now that we have that all mixed up, I'm gonna go in here with my homemade black, and I'm just gonna kind of lightly fill in the upper area of the background here on, and I'm feeling this is all just a little bit too light. So I think what I'm gonna do is a little bit more the black paint to this Mary got a little better. Maybe this is still a little like you want it fairly dark because you want your snow to be able to really pop out on that dark background. So I'm just kind of touching it up here. I'm gonna mix up a little bit more and go right into that a little bit richer, black, and they're nice and dark so that we can get that snow to really pop it. I'm just kind of blending this out, trying to get my brush strokes across here to fill in some of those lighter areas. I'm just kind of adjusting here as I go. That looks good. 6. Lesson 4 Painting Trees: though we might want to blow dry. Now, if you're backgrounds, not already done this on low and you want to try to keep it away at least six inches away from your paper so it doesn't get too hot. So we have that all dry now and we're gonna start on our trees. I'm gonna go back into the black, you know, the ivory, black, or you could make your own again with ultra marine or birth number together, and I was going to use the to paint. Here's I want it nice and dark and I have two different brushes. I have, ah, larger brush where I have the small detail brush in its whatever you're comfortable with. But we'll start with the big breasts just so you can see it's pretty much a one stroke up and you have it just Oh, it's on the bottom to the top and you can go back into pillows in a little bit afterward. It was kind of touched up. Remember the bottom of the trees, or use a little bit wider than the tops of the trees, and they're just kind of sitting down there in the snow. So I want to switch to my small brush so you could see the difference. And you can get a lot more in our, um, paint in through here. Kind of sharp. Innings up a little bit. Kind of adjust image to go along. We will bring it down a little bit lower. Some roots showing in the snow. I was gonna go through all of these trees. Remember, trees are perfectly straight. They have little nubs and bumps bark on. There, you can adjust, sees as you go along. We're gonna go ahead and fill all of those trees in. And if you find that you're running out of paint, nudism mix up some more, we move along, their next step will be, uh, painting in the offensive, simply mixing up some brown burn number raw sienna. Well, what? Finish this up and just let these dry and maybe through a couple little thicker ones in here and some more in the background so you can have as many trees as you want. If you decide that you want a little bit more in there at the end, you can a few more full thin ones in here. Maybe some letter fallen in the background. But it's your tree, so there's no right or wrong. Do what ever you want with it. So we're just going to continue making very fine lines, adjusting the trees as we go along. Some are shorter, summer taller, and we want toe adjust. Anything. We can do that. The very ex would want to make them a little bit more foreground. You would just bring that line down just a little bit lower down in the front. A lot of my students will ask me, When did I stop? One's enough? Enough. It really is up to the artist. A lot of times, what I'll do is all this working on it. And then I'll set it aside and this. Wait a few minutes or so and then I'll go back to it and decide if I'm happy with it or not . It just gives you a little break. Give your eyes a break, a little rest, and you can do decide if, uh, if you want to stop at that point on, as you can see. Yeah, I haven't stopped yet, so you just keep adding some smaller ones in the background and darkening them up and just kind of play with it until you're happy with it. 7. Lesson 5 Tree Shadow: All right, let's begin on our shadow area and you want the shadows to go basically in the same direction all one way. And what I've done is I've taken that black paint that we had mixed up before, and I'm just watering it down by a lot. She wanted very transparent, very, very light. You were gonna step up a little bit of that extra paint on there where it's really dark, See the color and we're to start over here and we're just going lightly. Bring that shadow all the way down each one of those trees and you can see on these wider trees you're gonna basically take whatever with you have skinny ones. That's gonna be a skinnier shadow. This is a wider tree. So I'm gonna put in a wider shadows. You're basically gonna match whatever with your tree is your shadow will be the same. George is gonna continue to bring all of these down and go right straight through that one in front. You pick up a little bit of the black paint from that. If you have what enough on your brush, and you can kind of keep extending those down. The skinny trees are very thin, and I bring that shadow all the way across to the very, very bottom. I think that that's good. 8. Lesson 6 Painting The Fence: we're gonna get ready to start painting our fence area, and I'm gonna use my small detail brush for this, and you can see I have a very fine point at the end of it, which will make a little easier doing those fine lines. So I'm just gonna mix up little water in my burn number again, and I'm gonna turn my slightly sideways. Didn't find it easier toe my little lines this way at an angle, and we're gonna put those fence post in there very, very narrow. Very small lines of these air far away. We don't want them to be too big those air in behind the trees. So I'm going in between each one of these is I go down getting a little, we'll narrow a little bit larger that comes down to the front, and they were going to do the same thing on the bottom here with the larger posts up in the front and again, I don't want this perfectly straight. I wanna have a little bit of, um, old original looking fence to it. Someone's gonna continue on and gonna go back, fill in my posts from the front here one of them. No. I'm gonna do the same thing for the ones in the back. It's keeping a few here and there between that are hiding behind the trees. I think I'm thinking these up just a little bit. You want to make sure that you have, ah, thick enough fence Post that when we gotta put snow on top of some of these piles on the top of this. 9. Lesson 7 Adding Snow: well using Google Wash today and this is white wash titanium white, and it comes in a big tube in a small tube, and we're just gonna plop some of this build dot of it in your palette. Make sure it's in a clean palate because the paint will pick up every color and it will change the change the tone of your paint quite easily. So make sure you have a clean brush and we're gonna add just a little bit of water to this . We're gonna thin it out. It's almost like toothpaste, so we're gonna thin it out almost the texture of what house paint would be. You don't want it to thin because it will be become too transparent. We want to start our snow. The top here with just a tiny little dots, were just kind of dotting along with top of the fence. We're adding stow low pile of snow on each one of these. I'm going to go all the way down, load up of more pain if you need to on just gonna keep going all the way crossed, and then we'll come down the bottom. We're gonna do the same thing We're apologists a little bit higher on the tops of those posts along here. It was kind of dab it then here. I'm just putting a little bit of snow on those posts away, down. And don't forget the little back section as well. Just like tapping in here very lightly. 10. Lesson 8 Let It Snow new: all right. And now we're going to use our toothbrush. I'm good. Just load this up with some paint, and we're gonna do some spritzing, so I have our watch that we started with a wrench. Tweet, Brush off precise and clean. You want to tap out all the excess water in there because you don't want it to running. It will be too transparent once against We want some nice, thick pain in. There's kind of get your toothbrush in the paint loaded up, and then we're just gonna move that aside and bring in our painting. You take your thumb across the top of your toothbrush and we're just gonna sprints that snow all over. That's so cool. This is my favorite part and just kind of score. You could have as much snow as you want to be loved. Snow. Load it up if you want just a little bit of snow, you could just do it very lightly. As you can see, I like a lot of snow on mine is not awesome. I love it. And you can see um, my thumb has whitewash all over at the great thing is about water colors. Wash you Dios can rinse it off in some water and you're good to go. So next is our final stage is gonna be the 11. Lesson 9 Adding Cardinals: the final touches were any of the cardinal with this little tiny brush and a rented off make sure nice and clean. And we're gonna go into some Eliza in crimson, some red, and we're also gonna add to that some cat red, which really looks like more of an orange. And this will give your cardinals a nice pop of color. They'll stand out against that dark background and snow, so we're gonna just start out with a little dot here for the head on top of the fence. It's a little circle. And then from that, we're gonna bring it down to make its little tail just very tiny, cause there your small little tuft on top of the head that they have. You have yourself a cardinal. Let's do another one here. So again, a circle the tail comes straight down. You can a little tuft on top of his head, and I think it would make it just a little bit wider. Give it a little bit more of ah, tailing a belly here. Well, it more of a tuft. Bring that tail down. So there we have it and rinse airbrush home again. And if you want? We can detail those cardinals just a little bit. So I am a little bit again of the cat. Read the orange for the beak. It's basically just a little spot of color there for the beak and rinse that off and then we can make some black again Or use what you have there. But I'm gonna mix up some new stuff with the ultra Marine blue again. And also the burnt number. A little bit of water does thick here a little bit more blue, just a little bit too brown. So we're gonna add this to the chest of the cardinal just a little bit on the chest. You won't see a lot of this, but it's just seeing those little extra touches of detail and then we're gonna add just a final little bit of snow on them. So they've been hanging out there in the snow. I was gonna grab my toothbrush once again, and we're gonna load it up with a little bit of squash and just very lightly to a little bit extra snow on there. Just so it has a little snow on top of the cardinals and a lot of old snow to everywhere else. Because, like I said before, I love Snow specially here in me. And we get a lot of it that I'm gonna use my Sharpie and we're gonna finish signing this off in the corner here. And then we'll be ready, Teoh mad it and hang it up if you so choose. So thanks for painting with me today and hope to have you back at another one soon. 12. Lesson 10 Framing Final Video: so we'll need a few things for framing. Will need a backer board and, of course, your picture a frame. And then I'll have a list at the end here, with all of our tools that will need, um And also, of course, your frame choices an eight by 10 for this particular one. But you can use any size in the same thing. Um, and then there are a few different tapes that you'll need is well, so let's get started here with our arm. Adding, what we want to do is first just kind of adjust where a picture is going to go. And I've got this perfectly set into an eight by 10 map and then I have some artists tape and what I'm gonna do with this just kind of peel off just a couple little pieces here and I'm gonna fold this underneath, tuck it in under here, and just give it a little tab so I could get that stuck down onto my backer board. Do the other side as well. This is one of the toughest things to do. You going to try to line this up with your, um, your mats and you're backing, so you just need to adjust. Were ever You need to I want to get that. I think that's pretty straight. And then just match up and make sure that your mat well fit over the top of that. All right, so now we're just gonna set that aside, and I'm going to grab the mat again, and we're gonna use some double sided sticky tape, and we're gonna take this Matt down to the backer board, And this way, it's not gonna actually stick to the painting itself, will just have it on the edges of the mat. So if anybody ever want to change these out, they can easily do so without damaging the painting. Make sure it's all taped down there real good. And then we're just gonna peel off that back edge of the double sided tape each side. Careful, not toe lift any of the sticky tape. We want to keep that down there, and sometimes they're hard to gribble edges of these. It's gonna get your nail into their poll. So are you can see where the tape additional shiny hair. We're gonna grab the backer board again, and we're just gonna line that up. Be careful here, because when she put it down, it will stick and you can't adjust it, get it right where you want it, and then you can push it down when you're happy with where it's at. All right, So what I'm gonna do next, we have our matting already to go. We're just gonna clean our glass on a frame. Really good. Make sure you get all corners and edges and you just don't want to have a little streaks of little fingerprint thumbprints. All that good stuff once you get this all together. So I'm always double checking before I do my final seals here. I'm gonna flip it over. Get the other side as well. Make sure you get your edges. You can use really any kind of glass cleaner with this double. Just get the other side as well. One last before I place it inside. And I'm just double checking for little smears. Bring my frame over and we'll pop the glass right back in here and again. It's double check. The rest of those was once this the backing Zeldin and seal that you cannot you cannot take . Take it apart again. Toe fix these smudges without having start over. So I'm just gonna take our painting, and I'm flipping it over and adjusting it in here. You can see I have little tabs on this one. I'm just kind of pushing him down again. Double checking. Making sure there's no little hairs or fuzz is, er who knows what gets in there? It looks good. So now I'm just gonna flip it over, and I'm going to push down the little tabs. Now, this hurt your fingers. What I've done before is got myself a little butter knife. Or you can use, um, a flathead screwdriver just to help push those down. Then again, I'm checking to make sure everything's clean in there, and it looks good. So now we're going to start with our, um, our backing. And this is just a linen acid free backing. You can get these usually at any stores and craft stores or art supply stores. Then they usually coming rules. And again, we're going to use our double sided sticky tape here, and I'm just gonna put the double sided sticky tape down on the back of the frame. And I'm trying to give myself a little quarter inch away from the edges. And this is for when I actually do the trimming or the cutting, and you'll see that coming up here. We're gonna put that tape down on all four sides, get a little overhang there. But we can trim that up in a few minutes in the last one here. And make sure those air pushed down nice and tight on their You don't want that toe come loose on you. And there's a little tab. I'm gonna just kind of trim these off here. We'll pair of scissors and snip those a couple other little ones on the corners. Here. You can get those. All right, on, DNA. Now, we're gonna pull off the tape once again here. One more from that one up, Andi. Just making sure those air down nice and tight and I'm gonna peel that layer of the of the tape off once again. Began there. Sometimes a little hard toe to get going. But once you get your a little male under there, you can kind of pull it out. You're just gonna pull off each one of these again, making sure that you don't pull up the tape as you're pealing off that the top layer. Right? When I grab this last little piece here, pull that off and then I'm gonna take, um, my rule of dust cover paper, and we're very careful here. I don't want to touch the tape yet. I'm just gonna kind of pull this on over over the top here without touching it, being very careful. And then I'm gonna lay that down on top here and very carefully make sure it's nice and smooth. Kind of pull that little tight, and then I'm just gonna push down on this tape on all four corners here, make sure we got that on there. Really good. And then I'm just gonna take increase all four edges here, and this will make it easier when we go toe to do our charming with our cutter. Did you have a nice, sharp, clean edge here and then we're gonna just take off this excess here with some scissors? Just cut the cut. The top of this right off. All right, so we're not gonna throw that away when say that piece for a minute, and I'm just gonna once again, Just kind of tighten up these edges, make sure that they're nice. And Scharping and clean. This will make it a lot easier with her cutting tool. So ready her cutting tool and these can be again purchased anywhere. I got this one. I think, on on Amazon. It's got a little blade on it. And you just had to be very careful in you. Line it up here. You're just going to kind of push down on that bleed. Watch up for your fingers. Dangerous with these things. It is going to give it a little light pressure and look hot rate through that. And you're gonna do this on all four sides. Say, I skipped a couple spots here, but you just kind of go back and kind of clean that up again, right back over it. Just make sure that that's down again nice and tight on the tape and just pull it all the way down. It's our last cuts and I were just gonna peel it off. It should come up very easy for you. The tape shouldn't be underneath where that is. If you put it close enough to the inside edge like is a nice clean look. So once again, I'm just double check in and making sure looks good. Make sure that tape is all their role while nice and tape down. And we're gonna move on to our little hooks. Andi, we're gonna It's wrong way. Flipper. L Nerio were just the's in about about two inches or so. I was gonna kind of lineup eyeball, and I think they look good there. So I'm gonna get my little ruler here and come down two inches and just make myself a mark right here with a pencil, Do the same thing on the other side, down two inches and make myself a little circle. And this is where and a little islets hold are gonna line up for me. So I can my screws in there on both sides of nature that they're nice, and even I have Ah, well, little screws that come with it. And when I grab my drill here makes it much easier. You can use a screwdriver, but, um, I highly recommend it. A power tool. Just get that in there, and we're just gonna drill those down in there. A little pressure. It's not getting in there real well, sometimes some of the woods for the frames a little harder than others. And I'm just gonna just this down just a little bit that moved on me. And then we're gonna go ahead and do the same thing for the other side here, Only justice again and keep moving on me. Yeah, we'll get this one screwed in there too. You can get it, Aereo. Okay, so those air both in there nice and tight, it was kind of pulling and make sure they're good, and that will be ready to with some, um, hanging wire on here. And I'm just using a This is a soft strand, which has, like, a plastic plastic coating around it. So you prick your fingers. What? You're trying to do these? I'm just gonna measure up just enough on each side. So I have a little extras, will be able to wrap these around, and I'm gonna cut this using a, um, a wire cutter. These things are great. It's a Leatherman that have been borrowing from my husband. It works so much better than what I have been using before. So we're just gonna slide these through on both ends, and I'm gonna tighten it up. Try to get it is even as I came on both sides. Pull it nice and taut and we're ready from here. It's start with one side and we're gonna make a loop entire little not in here on pull tight. And then we're just gonna wrap this around and keep going all the way around here trying getting it as tight as I can. Looping it doesn't want to stay in here and keep going around air. Just take this all the way up. If you have fun, you have too much, uh, wire hanging out the end. You can always shorten this a little bit if you need to. I think we've got a pretty good amount here. Other side I want to stay in. So we're just gonna work with blowing out here, just kind of tighten it up around and push it down in, and then we're gonna do the other side here. So again, slide it through and you're gonna tighten it, and you're gonna make a little not here. And this is a very light frame, so you could always double that will not at the other end as well. But this isn't a real heavy frame, so this this will this will be fine. We're just gonna again wrap the stainless wire around all the way going with it, and again feel free. If you need to trim some office, give yourself enough loops around here so that it has strength to it. He's gonna continue to wrap that right around you Could you'll find that with some of the bigger frames. If you want to leave yourself a little extra wire, you can do that because these could be adjusted if they need to. May. If you have, um, have it to higher to lower, going to adjust for your nail. You could do that. So I also have some stickers here and these air stickers I had printed up my local printer and I'm just gonna put those on there and then also with that extra piece of, um, backing that we have is gonna cut a little square up here and we'll rectangle and this just makes a nice presentation. If you're giving this away as a gift to someone, you could have a little nail on a little hangar to it. And that way, when they get home with it, they can just pop it right into the wall and hang it right up. So I just put those in the middle and I just kind of wrap it up a couple of times, make like a little envelope shaped for it on. We're gonna just take this and we're gonna just wrap it around the wire, and then I'll take some masking tape and I'll just attach it right to the backing wire. Here, just pull this over. Grab will grab some tape. That way it won't fall off. It's taped us up around here. Andi, they are ready to go. Hang it on. One last little final touch would be have these little little rubber silicone, self sticking self adhesive. And I'll just pop those on the bottom corners. Each one of these And this just helps. If you have something against leans against the wall, it won't scratch Your wallet gives it a nice little soft surface. And they have little felt ones of these as well and push down hard on those. And there you have it professionally framed. Well Ah! You ready to hang on the wall