Icy stream winter landscape in blue Video Lecture - Master the Art of Watercolour

Hi there! Lindsay here, the Frugal
Crafter. Today we're gonna paint this
snowy landscape using only three colors
of watercolor paint. It's super easy and
I think you're gonna enjoy it. Lately
I've had the chance to take quite a few
courses over on our sponsor, Curious.com,
and if you've resolved to be more
creative this year, I encourage you to
check them out, they have a great
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walks you through many watercolor
painting techniques. The step-by-step
lessons are great for beginners who may
need a little more help getting started,
but the techniques are advanced enough
that even a seasoned crafter or painter
will learn something new, and even better,
if you feel inspired after today's
painting and decide to buy the
mixed-media watercolor 101 class from
Curious.com, they'll give you a $5
credit towards future learning. See
details below in the video description
and for links to the course. Now let's go
to the table and paint. Today I'm working
on a 9 by 12 block of watercolor paper.
I've got some phthalo blue and you can
use Prussian blue or turquoise, any sort
of green bias blue you want, and making a
puddle on my palette, now I'm taking
clear water and I'm simply painting a
stream just in clear water, because when
you're using watercolor paints, your
paint's going to want to flow wherever
your water is so if you can see that, how
the paint is just kind of flowing in
that stream shape, it's just because I
wet the paper there first, so I'm just
going in and kind of letting the paint
go where it wants to go and I'm going to
mix in a little bit of Indian red which
is kind of like burnt sienna, you can use
burnt sienna if that's what you have, and
that's going to give me some nice
shadows here, now if I want really dark
shadows, I can add a little bit of
alizarin crimson in there. It will give
me a little bit about purpley hue too
and a little more gray hue, and that's it
for colors! That's all we're going to use
throughout this entire painting. I'm
using a photo reference from the website
paint my photo.ning dot com and I will put
a link to this photo by robin Lovelock
in the video description, so you can
check that out to go by if you want,
now I've wet the top third of the paper
and just added some more of that phthalo
blue right along the top and let it
float down. I like to have my sky a
little granular like that now, because I
don't want backwash in my sky, what I've
done is
is I've just wiped my brush off and
picked up that bead of water that formed
at the bottom and there you can see it's
dry and it smoothes out quite a bit, to
add some more dimension into my stream,
I'm simply going in with that dark blue
mix it's the blue and the crimson and
going along the edge of the stream Bank
and that's just kind of just making it a
little bit richer. Now I want to put some
faraway trees, so I'm just using this
juicy synthetic brush and what it is
it's the Princeton Neptune, and it mimics
a natural brush, but it's all
synthetic and it really holds a lot of
water, so I'm just kind of tapping in
some of those trees using mixtures of my
blue, purple, and brown, and just kind of
layer it, let the colors blend, don't
really worry about it too much
and then I just blotted out a few snowy
trees. Now I'm taking a piece of cut-up
credit card, which is my favorite
painting tool, and I'm scratching in some
branches. Remember, this stuff is far away,
you really wouldn't see too much detail,
this just adds a little texture and
interest and makes it look like trees
far off in the distance, don't think
about it too much. Now go in with some
more darker color and this is great on
damp paper, and I'm just kind of wiggling
my color in there and it's grabbing some
of those marks that I scraped in with a
credit card and making darker branches.
I'm also kind of making some pointy
evergreen trees far in the distance, so
it just helps to add a little
more texture in my painting, now I'm
going to paint another little stand of
trees that's a little bit closer to us.
That's why they appear taller. I'm just
using that phthalo blue a little bit of
that Indian red. that kind of brownish
color we talked about. and I am also
extending the stream out to the
left-hand side a little bit. That's going
to just give us a little more interest,
and I'm adding some more of that phthalo blue at the bottom. I'm tapping in
some phthalo blue, and
not really branches, it's just kind of
that like hazy look you get when you see
a bunch of trees, bare trees next to
each other, and I'm dabbing in some more
of the browns. I'm just kind of filling
in this area but keeping it very watery,
because really this is a snowy scene. I'm
using the back end of one of my
watercolor brushes for two purposes, for
scraping some paint away, and for
scribing in some darker lines, and there
you can see when it's dry the
a technique that I got, and now since my
stream looked a little wonky there, I am
going in with a small number five round
and I am just kind of flattening out the
back of the stream so it doesn't look
like it's rolling uphill or anything,
I'm also redefining my bank since I did
widen out the stream up there around
that stand of trees, and it's just going
to give me a little bit more definition where the snow and the water meet.
Now I'm going to put another little
stand of trees here, these are going to
be more defined and darker and more
crisp because they're closer to us,
closer still, so as you paint things
closer to you, they're going to get more
in focus, more sharp, sometimes more warm
in color, so this might have a little
more brown in it, than that indian
red which I'm calling brown sometimes,
than the other colors I'm just flicking
up some little branches you'll notice if
you use your brush straight up and down
at like a 90 degree angle to the paper
you'll get a really nice fine line it
just helps with control so don't be
afraid to hold that brush different ways
there's no right or wrong way to hold
the brush I'm just taking that same
color and adding some reflections in the
water and I'm just kind of doing it a
little choppy with back and forth
strokes just so I don't have to be very
precise with my painting to be really
honest with you I'm just kind of lazy
here and I'm just kind of wiggling it in
there I'm defining some of the tree
branches in that stand of trees there
was a little bit further back now when I
have different parts of my paper at
different stages of being you know damp
and dry I kind of skip around a little
bit and that way while I'm waiting for
one thing to dry I can work on another
portion of the picture so that's why I'm
skipping around a bit just so I can have
something to do while the paint's drying,
and now I need
something on that snow. I'm adding really
really watered-down Indian red and I'm
just pulling some of the colors from the
water, like literally pulling that
pigment over, just because it's just too
stark and white back there I wanted to
have this branch that's kind of
like a fallen tree, it's just kind of
like leaning over, it looks like it's had
enough of winter, this picture really is
kind of like what, if you're not from a
snowy area, it's what winter looks like
on its last hurrah,
like right before spring the trees are
tired and there bent over, but there's not a lot of snow on
them because most of the snow has
dropped to the ground, the waters
opened up, and it's it's starting to melt,
so that's kind of what it looks like at
the end of winter in Maine anyway, I
don't know about other parts of the
world. In the juicy paint I'm just
kind of scraping out some little
branches there. I like to have the fine
lines for my brush. but I can get even
finer lines when I go in with that
credit card and scrape up those little
almost little hairlike branches. now
I like having a different levels of
trees because it really adds a lot of
depth.
Now here I'm tapping on some watery blue,
any of those colors I've used I can use
here. I just want to keep them more in
the blue and purple range and I'm just
dabbing it and these are the shadows
from those closer trees that branch it's
kind of like falling a little bit, and
tired tree, the tired tree shadows are
right there and that just kinda helps it
from being way too stark, so the
river bank has some rocks like on the
edge and actually in the photo I'm
working from, there are some geese in the
water but I didn't paint those. I wanted
to keep this a beginner painting
tutorial, so I decided to just go with
the rocks, and leave the geese out, so
this is all I'm doing here. I mixed all
three colors together so I got a really
nice almost black dark, and I am painting
in some rocks a couple little little
branches, they're just a little a little
bush that's trying to make a go of it
here, waiting for spring oh so patiently,
and I'm just scraping up some tiny
little branches because that's how I
like to get my detail. It's really easy
and it works for me, and the thing I
think I like doing for a nature
pictures is that you can't be too
precise, and it gives you a really
natural look, and here I'm going to do
the same thing, I'm just scraping up some
little little grasses, kind of trying to
poke through the snow there. It's just a
technique I really find works well for
me, so you can keep on putting in rocks
wherever you think you need them. If you
feel like you've made a mistake, that's a
great place for a rock, you know, put a
rock on it. Nobody will ever know. That's
my theory anyway,
and I am adding just some more depth
into the water adding small reflections
where ever I see a tree that would be
close enough to the water to leave a
reflection, and I'm just deepening up the
areas right
around the banks, so you can add any
touches you want to at this
time of the painting. I like to stop and
look at it make sure it is looking the
way I want to. Sometimes I'll take a
little bit of time and evaluate it. I
decided that branch on the ground had
kind of blurred out when I added my
shadows, so I'm redefining that and
notice how I'm using more of the Indian
red which is that brown color. It's
warmer, it's going to come forward more,
so that's why I really want to have it
on that tree in front, because I want
that to help my depth of field, my
perspective, so if this stands out it's
going to make it look like
that tree is much closer to the viewer
than those more bluey ones that are
further away, so you really want to put
your time in your detail in those
foreground objects and your foreground
objects will be the ones that are closer
to the bottom of your picture. Now I'm
just flicking on some of the dirty paint
on my palette just to give it a little
bit of that misty snowy look, and I think
that's pretty much going to do it for me
today. I want to thank Curious.com
for sponsoring today's video. Be sure to
check out the mixed-media watercolour
101 class, or one of the 10,000 other
classes that will make keeping your New
Year's resolutions so much easier. While
you're there, be sure to sign up for
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for stopping by!
Until next time, happy crafting.