Paint Under Blue Skies - an Autumn Scene in Watercolor

I taught something similar yesterday. It had this tree over here. I thought, well, that gives it a little weight. So I stuck a tree here and I can just play with the leaves. I just wanted some kind of frame for the view that we're looking at. And so this tree and this foreground will be dark and this tree will be light. I usually like to start with the sky. I think I'll make the branches dark where the sky is behind it. I'll do negative painting when I do the foliage down here because that will be easier to control. If I tried to paint blue sky around this tree without masking it, I wouldn't get an even blue sky. Now, if you're doing the blue sky and it just starts to go south on you, then just imagine some clouds. This is a three quarter inch oval. I think I'm going to come right down to the water's edge, maybe to here above these weeds. And then when I put the sky in, I'm going to let it drift down. I'm not going to add any blue down here. I'm just going to let it fade. All right. So now my paper is very glossy. My paper's a little warped because it is a block and that happens when you really wet the paper. My paper's only tilted a little bit because I don't want it to come down too far. I'm going to let it fade. Actually I'm going to take another brush that's kind of dry just to feather it out. So I'm going to try to avoid blooms. Now I already see a little white up here. So any impulse I have to fix something in my sky, I am going to resist because I just make any problem worse if I tried to go into it. I'm squeezing out my brush to make a thirsty brush. I'm just going to pick up a little excess paint that's along the edges of my tape. I mixed my colors. This is Q gold. This is Q gold with Q rose. So we've got two Qs. And then the cobalt for the sky. And this green is Windsor blue, hookers, and some burnt sienna. So I wanted an evergreen color here. So I'm going to have another brush handy. Okay, let's break the ice here and start with some Q gold. I can go right over everything with this Q gold. This is the pinker color. So I'm pushing down with my brush and I go right along here. There's my shoreline. I'm just dipping this into the green. I'm going to go right in here, drop some of this green in, but everything's going to be nice and fluffy. I'm going to leave a little there and come down to the shore. Now whatever's up here is going to go down here. It's going to be primarily this Q gold and this pinky Q gold. I have to get into this blue right away. Make horizontal strokes. So I'm putting this in and it's going to merge a little bit with the colors I've already painted here. I'll just leave a little passage of white dry paper here. And while this is wet, I'm going to go in with an almost dry brush with stronger cobalt up here. So you want to make sure you don't have excess water and then it's lighter down here. And so while I'm working with this blue, I'm going to wet this part. This is clean water. And this is going to be a more dilute blue. I'm just going to go across like this. I'm going to actually drag this all the way over onto where there'll be reflections. Okay, so now I want something a little browner. So this is the two Qs. Maybe I'll add a little cobalt to that. So maybe I'll go into a little burnt sienna, but with a little pink in there. Just going to wet this with my clean brush. And yeah, that's a perfect color. So I'm wetting this. So this patch of marsh grass would be nice and fuzzy up here. This is more yellow here. So that's back with the Q gold. I'm re-wetting the paper because I want everything to be nice and fuzzy in the reflection. I'm dipping it into my green mix here for this reflection because it's reflecting some evergreens that I'm going to put in up there. I left a little bit of dry paper between the reflection and the weeds here. I'm going to start with this Q gold as a kind of a base color. And that can go under everything. I'm sketching out the evergreens with very dilute Q gold. And that's very wet there, so I won't drop the green into that while that's so wet. I am going to shift to this pinky mix. And I can come down to here because that's going to be dark. And this will dry lighter. Now back to the Q gold. OK, so now the base of this, these trees that I photoshopped in, I am going to do negative painting around there. I'm going to have the branches be dark up above where it's over the sky and then white down below. All right, now I'm going to go back to these evergreens. I think I'm going to use my rigger brush. I think what I'll do is, might be a little tricky, just going to spritz in a very controlled way. I'm holding this brush way back here. And the first thing for an evergreen, the first thing I do is I'm going to draw where I imagine the trunk is and then work off that. I'm just going to let this dance around and I can go back and go in a zigzag fashion. And then where I need to, I can lay the brush down, get a wider stroke. And I also want to keep in mind that this evergreen is going to be setting off this bright tree. Now here I'm going to soften this edge here on the top of the weeds. I'm turning my brush every which way and drop in color so if it blends and blurs all the better. I'm going to add just a touch of cobalt for the distant trees so they stay back. I'm dropping other colors into this evergreen color. Now I'm going into this mineral violet. I'm going to wet the top of these grasses and I'm going to put the mineral violet in so that I get a soft edge and I'll use this mineral violet to do the shadows under these trees. Yeah, I'm definitely going to use mineral violet elsewhere. Now I'm working on the reflection. Usually with the reflections, less is more. I'm going to do this tree over on this side. I think I'll mix a lot of colors that are already in my palette. So I'm putting it on very wet. I'm going to drop some other color into it. So I'm going to drop in colors that are already in the picture. Now I'm going to go right into leaves and branches. I think I'll switch to my rigger brush.