Fishing Boat Watercolor Sunset {REAL TIME painting tutorial} Video Lecture

Hi there! Lindsay here, the Frugal Crafter.
Today we're gonna paint this watercolor
using three tubes of paint. I'm going to
show you how to get that really soft
atmospheric glow, and also the
silhouetted fishing-boat, it's going to
be really easy and really fun. This image
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Now let's go to the table and paint that
painting. I'm gonna start off by putting
a horizon line about a quarter of the
way up my paper, a quarter to a third, I'm
choosing a ruler because I have one
handy but you can of course freehand
that, and then I'm just going to draw the
boat kind of a little bit more to the to
the left side of my paper, now of course
if you weren't comfortable with the
drawing you could always trace it that's
absolutely fine. I think that especially
for adults you can learn a lot by
tracing, now we're gonna have a little
bit of a shadow in the water, but I just
want to indicate it. I don't really want
to have any hard lines in the water and
I'm just going to put a couple masts up
here and there's like a little cross bar that goes across, and you might be able
to just see it a little bit of like up
the, I don't know if it's a pontoon it's
just that kind of like little extra
little part that kind of sticks out the
side, I think it gives the boat balance I
don't know because I'm not a fisher
person, fisherman. I want to be
politically correct and really that's
all I'm in a sketch on there. What I
really love about this composition is
the beautiful huge sky, so we're going to
begin by wetting the paper and you can
do that with either a brush or if you
prefer you can use a
bottle of water, a spray bottle of water.
I recommend that even if you use the
water to wet the paper, that you go ahead
and spread it out with your
watercolor brush. I'm working on 140
pound Cottman cold pressed paper, cotton
by Windsor Newton, it's a more
affordable brand of watercolor paper,
it's not the cheapest, it's not the most
expensive, but it's a nice reliable paper
and I have the edges taped down with
painters tape since I've got
this paper really really wet it
should be really shiny, when you're
looking at it your paper should shine
and don't mind those little black
fuzzies. I'm wearing this sweater,
it's 80 outside but it's chilly in my
basement studio, so it's a little cold.
I'm gonna use some cobalt blue and I'm
gonna get my colors I plan on using. I
want to use a little lemon yellow, so I'm
going ahead and just making these
puddles on my paper here, and I think I
actually want a little cadmium red
because I don't want to
have super super purple. I'm gonna go
with a little cad red deep I think for
this, hopefully it won't be too gray
when I mix it with my blue, let
me just test it out here, oh this is
perfect just a little bit of purple
that's what I want. I don't want it super bright, this is a
very very soft color, now I want to show
you here I always clean my brush in one
side, and then I get fresh water in the
other, or I'll have to separate buckets,
that way it will keep my mixes nice and
fresh looking someone take a little bit
of this light color, see it's just a very
very soft purple and I'm going to add it
to the top of my paper and I am going to
mix it up a little bit darker on my
palette, because as you know, with
watercolors it dries much lighter, a
little bit of that cad red deep, cad red
medium might be a little too orange for
that and it might just make it a little
bit too gray - too dull, alright we
add that up in the corner there, and it's
going to dry a little bit lighter, so
don't worry, I'm going to go in a little
bit of the blue now, drag that down now,
you will want to have a paper towel
handy, because we're going to do a little
but a lifting. I'm going to pull out our
clouds with lifting and we'll go back in
with with more layers of clouds, and I
want a little bit of yellow down towards
the bottom and the other reason that
that I wanted to not have super bright
colors, I didn't want to have green in my
sky. I wanted to be able to control that
quite a bit, and if you look at my pallette
I think you can see I wanted to do this
also like a vertical picture, so you can
kind of see my palette as I was working,
because I often get questions
about what I'm using my palette,
how I'm mixing, I know it's all kind of a
little bit of a problem some beginners
have, trying to figure out exactly what
to do, alright so now I think I'm going
to lift out some clouds, regular paper
towel works great for this. I just want
to kind of get this and if you look at
the photo I'll put a direct link to that
photo, so that you can find it easily. I
wanted to get these really bright lit up
clouds, they're pulled out of the sky,
this is going to be much softer
painting then you're probably used to
seeing me paint, and the clouds are
getting skinnier as they get down near
their horizon,
because when you're painting and when
you're looking and realize the things
that are that are highest and lowest and
your field of vision are going to be
closer to you. and then the things that
are more towards the middle, more towards
the horizon, are going to be smaller so
if it's closer to that horizon line, it's
going to get smaller, and that's kind of
how you can kind of fake
a little bit of depth in your paintings,
you know how to do it, you can fake it so
I'm going to do here, I'm going to add
the same colors in the water. You can see
how I've already got some blending there.
I'm going to go back in start with my
purple down here towards the bottom, work
it up. I can go right over where I have
the boat because that's going to be
silhouetted, it's going to be darker,
we're still going to use these same
colors. I really believe in a limited
color palette, and I'm not saying don't
go buy all those colors that you want
and that you love, but I'm just saying
don't use all of them in the same
painting, you know? Even when I'm using
color pencils or markers I still won't
use the whole box. I'll use the ones that
will improve my
picture and keep mixing from those.
Now you may be noticing where I really
wet the paper that there's some little
speckles, they'll go away when it dries,
don't worry about that, all right so now
I'm going to pause the video and I am
going to dry this with my hairdryer. All
right nice and flat, I'm actually using
this dry brush, just to brush off any of
those sweater fuzzies that have floated
down, it's also a great way to remove
brush hair if your brush tends to shed,
alright and it's nice and flat again, now
that it's dry. Okay so now we're going to
work on the clouds and I'm going to pick
up some of that purple that we mixed, and
it has set on my palate and dried up a
little bit, plus the paper's dry so it's
going to be darker, and I'm going to be
careful not to go below my horizon line,
now if you look at the picture on the
computer there's actually a boat in the
horizon line, but that's alright, I'm
going to omit that, because I really
don't think it adds to this particular
scene. I'm painting straight across just
so I can preserve the horizon line but
then I am just going to kind of tap up
and use the round part of my brush to
kind of give me some nice cloud shapes,
just kind of misty misty back there and
generally you want your clouds to be a
little bit flatter on the bottom, this
brush I'm using it's a Princeton Neptune.
I really enjoy it, it's synthetic so I
don't have to worry about
any animals being being harmed in the creation of
the brush, but by golly it works awfully
nice, it's a great brush so you can kind
of see how we're starting to build up,
you see those those clouds back there. I
really think this is a fun
exercise even if you didn't feel
comfortable doing the boat and you just
wanted to play with the clouds. You
totally can do that, now as an
illustrator, you know I do
children's books occasionally, you know
sometimes you're just like "geez, I need a
picture of this. I need a picture
something I've never taken a picture of.
I need something to look at".
Because I have nothing, no base of
reference for something I'm trying to
draw, if you get something too dark just
but with the paper towel, so that's where
Graphic Stock can come in really handy,
it can be really hard to hunt the web
and try to find commercial-use,
royalty-free graphics, and you kind of
need that if you're doing something in a
book or you know, you're working on a
commercial project, not just for
your own practice and enjoyment,
so you know it's really an important
service. I just wanted to let you guys
know about that and let's see, I think I
might add a little bit of water to my
paint so it gets a little bit lighter as
I go up, and I'm just going to kind of
tap on over some of the areas where I
have put where. I have lifted off some
clouds just wanting to kind of dab in a
little bit of this, not a ton, just a
little bit. Clouds are kind of funny, you
don't want to overdo them, you're
probably always better to under do than
overdo with a cloud. I also like this
brush, because I can get right on the tip
and just put little bits of paint down,
or I can I can put more, I could press
down more and get really thick strokes,
not like how I can turn it and get
random shapes because you don't want all
your shapes to be the same when you're
doing clouds and water, that down a
little bit more for these really light
ones up here the corner, you
got it kind of get a little bit of sky
poking through, but you've also got some
dark clouds, you also get the sun setting
so it's like lighting up some of the
clouds, so it's it can be very tricky
and a lot of times I'll use whatever
I've done, however my paint
happened to fall, I'll try to use that to
my advantage, so if I have a dark spot
where it wasn't exactly intending on one,
it'll be like, you know what I think,
that's a nice cloud, we're going to cloud
there, there are no mistakes, Bob Ross
used to say "there's no mistakes in painting, just happy
little accidents" and I tend to agree. I
wanted to add a little bit of a golden
rim along that, so I'm going to do a
little bit of red and a little bit of
yellow, so I get kind of like a golden
color there, see that golden? I'm not
using a lot of paint, that's the key here,
it's such a soft painting you don't want
to overdo it with too much paint, go over
it along the edge. I probably need a
little bit more than that, that's a
little too bright, there we go, get that
little golden rim,
if it looks too much like lemon, you just
bring a little more that red and
sometimes it's really kind of scary when
you put that color down you,
when it's the first time you
put that color down, like when I first
put that purple, when I'm putting this
gold, it's like oh, I don't have anything
else like that, this is looking really
out of place, and it will until you get
more there, so have faith. It is a
little bit of a leap of faith but you
know what? It's only a piece of paper, and
you're learning stuff, and even if it
doesn't come out exactly the way you
planned, you've learned something, okay?So
you know that's another reason if you're
too worried
working on expensive paper, get cheaper
paper, you know, it may
not turn out as nice as it would have on
the expensive paper, but if you're not
going to use the paper because you're
afraid of ruining it, then you're way
better off to have cheaper paper and
actually paint. That's what I think.
Anyway, I know a lot of instructors are like
"get the best you can afford, get the best
you can afford", but if it's going to make
you afraid to pick up a brush and to use
it, then get the cheapest you can feel
comfortable using. That's my opinion.
Just keep on adding until you feel like
you have done all you wanted to do here,
some clouds will be pretty much total
light. You can soften it anywhere just
with just plain clear
water on your brush, you can soften
anything, and pretty much we have all
those colors in the sea already. I'm not
going to worry about those. Alright so
for painting the boat, you could stick with
this, but you may want to switch over to
a brush that's not going to hold so much
water, okay, because we need a dark color,
and if you get too much water in there
then the color's not going to be very
dark, so I'm going to choose a around
synthetic, because that is not going to
hold that much water even though it's a
big one. I like a big brush, but it's
still going to be a lot better, so I want
to stick with those same colors. I'm
going to most mix up a super super dark
purple, notice how I'm keeping it away
from my other
wet colors. Go in with that
cadmium red and get mostly paint,
very little water here, because I'm
mixing up a dark, see it's almost pasty,
I'm going to see what I can get in there,
I'll go back in with a wet brush and
clean that out, but I want to try to get
use as little water as possible to do
that, but it's not going to give us a
super bright purple, because
we're using colors that are not that close to
each other in the color wheel. All right
I think that's pretty good, and I'm going to
go ahead and paint my little boat here,
and it's a silhouette, which I think
silhouette paintings are like probably
the best ones to start off with for a
beginner, because you don't have to worry
about as many colors, it's very forgiving,
and if you ended up with too many brush
like pencil marks, like I tend to be very
sketchy when I draw, I can go in if any
are sticking out, I can go in with
an eraser, I like the soft
plastic ones and I can go in and I can
erase that
a little, and if you work on
your brush straight up and down, so
90-degree angle from the paper, I know what
makes my hand get in the way, and I
apologize, but you can get a really
fine line, and you can even let your
lines be broken a little bit,
as if it like kind of getting a glint
off the sun, that's fine. I'm not sure
what this is I don't like to paint
something if I'm not sure what it is, but
I'm just gonna fake it. I'm just gonna
put it in there anyway, alright I want to
eat this little like kind of pontoon
thing on the side, maybe just leave a
little bit of highlight in there just to
show what it is. It's really hard to tell with the silhouette and I
probably wouldn't have known what it was,
except I went through Graphic Stock and
looked at some other fishing boats just
to get a little point of reference, so I
would know in my brain a little bit more
about what was I was seeing in this
picture, and then I want to get my
reflections. I actually, if you notice
what I'm doing, I'm kind of hovering over
and then I'm letting the
brush hit, like drop once
I feel like I'm in the right place.. I
want that motion of the water.
All right and I'm just gonna tap in the masts.
It's a fairly calm sea. Is that good
for fishing? Is calm seas better for
fishing than rough seas? I'm not sure I'm
not a fisher person and I'm a vegetarian,
so I don't fish. All right and there you
have it. It's a quick and easy painting
that you can try. I do hope you try, and
let me know how you get on. One great
thing I like about using painters
tape, this is just some hardware store,
painters tape nothing expensive, I'm
using this to tape down my paper, is
that when I pull up the tape
when I'm done, is I have like an instant
mat, and it makes it look very
finished, so you can kind of visualize
how it's going to look when you frame it.
Please let me know if you have any
questions in the comments below. I want
to thank our sponsor, Graphic Stock for
bringing us this video today, letting me
use their images, you can find them
online at graphicstock.com, and I will
have a link in the video description, so
you can check that out as well. Thank you
so much for watching! Until next time,
happy crafting.