Snow Study in Watercolor Painting Process

Hello everyone and welcome to another study video. My name is Noelle and I'll be practicing my snow painting skills in watercolor. I plan on talking about my process and what I learned from each piece. I began the study with probably my most difficult and poorly planned piece. I knew what I wanted to do for the trees in the sky, which was to paint a gray wash for the lightest values on the ground, representing the snow in the shade, and painting around that shape for the sky. To do this more efficiently, I would apply masking fluid to mask the trees and paint the sky first so that I could focus on the sky more without worrying about painting over the wrong area. The trees themselves were a battle because I wasn't quite sure how to paint them yet and I just jumped into it. I did my best to study my reference photo and tried out a few techniques like flicking my brush and dry brushing. Ultimately, I learned that less is more and I should take it easy on the dark paint. The sky looked funny to me so I decided to add more paint to fix it. Whether I fixed it or not is up to you, but I do apologize for the glare from my lamp. For the last finishing touches, I thought to play around with the shadows and make a couple areas darker. I started this study by adding a layer of clear water and adding paint little by little while the surface was wet. There are a few clouds in the sky so I paint around those shapes for that soft and wispy cloud look. Near the horizon, the sky faded into a light gray color. The snow in the foreground and a few patches in the background are in the shade and because of this, the snow is reflecting light from the sky making it appear blue. I then grab a muddy yellow-green color and dry brush some details in the background representing trees in the sunshine and then use a blue-black color to dry brush the trees in the shade. I move on to painting the trees by roughly painting the blue snow color first and adding the black details on top. In my reference photo, the trees did not have a lot of snow on them, so if you're wondering why they don't have snow, that's why. Overall, I like how this piece turned out and if I were to do this differently, I would be more careful painting the trees since it got a bit messy for my liking, but then again there's nothing wrong with being looser. For this next study, I started with a quick pencil sketch of a couple of trees. I then painted the blue sky with a mix of phthalo blue green shade and ultramarine blue and the gray clouds with a mix of pyrrole red, phthalo blue green shade, and Payne's gray, which is also the same mixture I used for black throughout the study. The shadows on the tree were painted around all the highlights representing snow in the sunshine. There's always going to be small cracks between the branches that allow light to shine through and I feel like it adds a lot to this piece if you leave the small details in. One of the main parts I loved most about this piece was the glowing snow and the harsh contrast between that and the dark uncovered tree. Unlike the rest of my studies, I was able to focus on painting the trees and be mindful of my brush strokes instead of rushing it. The last phase of my painting was just making the clouds in some parts of my trees darker. Masking fluid would be a helpful tool in this piece as well if you don't want to paint around the trees like I did. For this fourth piece, I painted the ground first with a light wash of dark blue and quickly jumped into painting the sky. This scene is taking place at sunset so the sky is getting darker and there are some pretty pink clouds near the horizon. The rest of the clouds are purpley and I continued to add purple paint onto the wet paper to make everything appear nice and soft. The paint lightened a bit after it dried and I forgot to take that into account when I was doing this step. The details on the mountain in the background were done by dry brushing and I dry brushed by wiping excess water onto a paper towel and leaving just enough water to make a mark. Next, I painted the trees in the foreground with a darker color and keeping my strokes small. For the finishing touches, I add some more details to the trees and darken the sky a little bit. In this study, I began painting the sky using quinacridone gold and the same mix I used for the sky in my third study. Now that I'm thinking about it, this video features a lot of clouds for a snow study so consider this an extension of my cloud study video. Anyway, I then painted my first layer for the trees and was careful to leave a portion of this lighter because I planned to make it look like the sun shining through the trees. It started out good but as I was working on this piece I thought it looked strange so I painted over it. I tried to take what I learned from my third piece and apply that knowledge to this one. I like how the top of the first tree turned out but still I think I overworked some of the other trees. And finally, for this last study, I painted the cute birdhouse hanging on a dead tree in my backyard. This reference photo was taken in the evening while the sun was going down so there was not any direct sunlight creating harsh shadows. This study started by painting a base color on each section of this piece and slowly building the details. Out of all of the studies, this one took the most time to complete because of the layers. I painted the tree and birdhouse mostly with sepia and raw umber. I also dry brushed a bit in this piece too for easy texture. I usually prefer my paintings to be softer and I found this one turned out to be quite rugged compared. My reference photo didn't have as dark of browns but I guess it still worked in this piece. Once the main tree was finished, I was thinking this piece still looked bare so since the sky was light enough I decided it might look neat to add a couple more trees in the background similar to my reference. I was able to use what I learned earlier in this study to paint these trees and I'd like to say I can already see my improvement. I did my best to keep them simple and now it's easier on the eyes because of it. I hope this video was helpful for you. I know I learned from it. If you are curious, all of my art supplies are listed in the description below. Feel free to comment below and share what questions or comments you have. Is there a study you like the most? Do you have any art tips for me or others? 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