This DETAIL Will CHANGE How You Watercolor Paint!

It's the kind of detail that fascinates and your favorite watercolor artists are probably adding it to their paintings without you even noticing. I found out about how powerful this is with one of these happy incidents that are so notorious in watercolor painting. I was teaching my weekly class and we were practicing wet and wet with a galaxy painting. Everyone had their colors mixed up and they were adding them on wet paper so the paint could flow and the colors could mix with each other seamlessly. I was standing behind one of my beginner students when out of nowhere she picks up the wrong blue from her palette and just adds it to the painting. And it actually turned out beautiful and that's when after years of watercolor painting I got to learn again from a beginner about how color can dramatically impact a watercolor painting even when the process is exactly the same. And I'm not talking about making the perfect palette or harmonious colors. No, instead you can make your painting stand out but for it to happen you'll have to add something special to each painting and be strategic about it. You'll see it's simple and this will also work with all mediums but it's even more important with watercolors because they have these transparency and luminosity properties we want to leverage to make them shine and that's where a harmonious palette isn't enough. And I'm going to use this reference photo to show you exactly what this looks like. As a beginner, naturally, we would want to get a painting to look as accurate as possible and that's why for this first version I'm going to paint I went and dug out the Schmincke Desert watercolor set that I think has the best colors to match the reference. I was also inspired to use granulating watercolors that look warm, muted and earthy so at first glance that seems perfect. My choice is the desert orange, desert green and desert gray but since I'm clearly lacking a brighter green I'll go for what looks like the most accurate one next to my photo and this Daniel Smith green appetite genuine color looks great. So we're all set with great colors now so let's see what they actually look like on paper. In my base layer, look at how beautiful the Schmincke colors are looking. I also love how well the textured paper shows through underneath. My desert gray watercolor seems ideal to start shaping the background trees on wet because I want them to look blurry and it's really like the reference photo so far. I take advantage of a second layer to add the trees that are located in the middle ground and the foreground and notice I try and add a little bit of green into the trunks because we can see these mossy parts on the reference. A trick I love to use with forests is to wet the whole painting again and start adding foliage. It really helps tie in both the foliage and the trees together and at the same time it's a good way to add color vibrancy and depth to the painting. I keep adding more trees on dry and branches to finish the painting. I also add splatters and a tiny bit of white gouache for the visible highlights and if you can't see yet what my point is with color that is only because I haven't shown you the simple tweak that we can make to keep this painting to look like the reference but also to make it look a lot more alive and eye-catching than this already very beautiful and peaceful painting. And before we get started on this much improved version of the forest I am excited to share that this video is sponsored by Skillshare. Skillshare is a supportive online learning community and whether you're looking for ways to uplevel a new career or explore a new skill, Skillshare has a class for you. Social media, productivity, illustration, fine art and more. And you hear me talk about Skillshare pretty frequently here because it's been such a huge part of my art journey since the start. I learned watercolor painting on Skillshare back in 2018 and it helped me grow my skills and confidence so much that I decided to become a teacher a couple of years later. I have over 20 realistic painting classes in watercolor, watercolor pencils and even oil pastels, white life, still life, portrait and landscapes like today's forest and other inspiring seasonal paintings with my latest class focusing on watercolor essential techniques for beginners. On Skillshare after completing a class, members can choose to share their class projects directly with the teacher and the community and for me the best is that we're able to give each other feedback in a safe and encouraging way. It's really a great place for creatives wherever they're at in their journey. I never run out of classes to take, my favorite one recently being this Pinterest class by Omar Nguyen. If you'd like to join us there, the first 500 people to use the link in the description of this video will get access to one of Skillshare's best offers yet. 30 days free and 40% off your first year of Skillshare membership. So thank you so much Skillshare for sponsoring this video. Let's get back into our forest painting. A few changes in the colors can have a huge impact on the outcome even with an identical process. For example here, I'm going to exaggerate the intensity of my greens with this phthalo green color. I think this crinodinone gold will also add a lot more life and autumn charm to the painting over the muted desert orange that I used earlier. And not to say that we need any fancy complicated colors because a simple orange watercolor would do the trick here as well and it's the same for green. Anything brighter than the original tone that you see in the reference photo will do and that's why it's important to not just pre-plan your colors but also up the intensity a bit. Something else that I really want to focus on in this version is to preserve the whites in the paper a little bit better. For luminosity, nothing beats that. That's why I'm tapping the brush on paper to add color while avoiding to paint certain areas. And if I've kept my dark and muted desert green and gray colors, it's only because they're not only beautiful, they will also tone down those bright orange and green colors a bit wherever we need that. And at the same time, they will help preserve the deeper autumn atmosphere from the photo and the first painted version. So you can see already how much color balance matters in watercolor. It goes with the trees as well and that's why I'm adding both dark and bright colors in the trunk. And look how gorgeous this is, how much of a difference this makes already at this early stage, even though I'm not changing my painting process at all. With an additional layer on wet, I'm adding vibrancy and I'm really thankful for these gorgeous green adrenaline gold and green colors because they really help in that. I'm still trying to preserve some of the white spots in the background for a very natural glow to show through. I'm finishing the closest trees with the same technique I used before. And remember about the concept of balancing colors. These dark colors have a role to play as well, not just the bright and joyful ones. That's why I'm painting those front trees darker to render better depth and make them pop against the previous layers better, to make this forest come alive and hopefully inspire you to take a walk in the forest or maybe paint the forest. I've found over my years of painting that foliage needs to stand out even more than the rest and that's where this new color palette is again very useful. Look at the intensity and life the splatters are adding. The darker tones are helping with contrast and depth once more and actually a dark brown mixed to a bright orange and green turns into a darker tone. That's another excellent reason to pick both bright and dark colors for a painting because when you mix them up you'll create mid tones that will help link your chosen colors together with nice gradients and a more natural look overall and that's really essential in preserving the realism. It gives you way more leverage to stick to the photo if that's what you enjoy while making sure that the painting doesn't end up looking either unnaturally bright or just plain dull. And it's the same with highlights. In the previous version I added just a little bit of white gouache and while we might not want to overdo the gouache, at this point it can be a good idea to step back and decide where to add crisp white touches of paint. I like to add a little bit to the foliage while the paint is still wet because here too colors are going to mix right on paper and give us these new light pastel tones to play with now. Sometimes when the tree trunks are dark it can be a bit boring so I also add white gouache there and with added water I'm able to create a transparent layer that makes those forests look even more magical. Of course this is all about taste and again a balance between realism and your creative interpretation that is going to make a watercolor painting look accurate but also light, fresh and full of life. That's what I tried to do with this dark sky painting as well. The Schmincke sets are some of my favorite ones so that's not to say that a painting will look dull and boring with them. In fact if you want to see how I painted a huge version of the Hogwarts castle using just three Schmincke granulating paints while preserving vibrancy and luminosity all over the painting you can watch this video right here. And first remember to redeem your free Skillshare trial from the link in the description of my video to learn even more about my painting process and strategies. Thank you so much for watching and see you next time!