Real time snowy watercolor PINE BRANCHES tutorial » How to paint a winter landscape with a cardinal

Hello everybody, welcome back to another watercolor tutorial. We are going to be painting a beautiful winter scene. This can also be used as a Christmas card, whatever you prefer. But we're going to start out with our watercolor piece of paper in portrait position and we're going to start off with just painting the top half. This is going to be the sky. And so you can begin by painting, it can be straight or you can kind of make it wavy, it's up to you. I'm going to make mine wavy. This is our horizon line. You can see I have a bit of green on my brush, which actually was not the color I wanted. We are going to be adding some green into this, but we do want the the main color to be blue because, you know, skies are usually kind of blue. But we also want there to be a contrast with the green that we are going to paint and I'll tell you why in a second. So we are going to be painting pine branches that are going to be overlapping the sky. And as I've said in some previous paintings, if you have watched previous tutorials, it's a lot easier to paint fine details when you have a background color already established. And that's what we want to do by adding the green highlights to the blue sky. So I am just first establishing my sky by painting it blue. I'm trying to get rid of this green. Okay, and I'm going to have it looking like a mean blue sky in some sections over here. And that should hopefully naturally spread out, kind of blend in. And while that is still wet, and that's important, we're going to grab green and we're going to just kind of blotch it on in the sections that we think we're going to have our pine branches. So you can kind of think of it as this this circle over here is going to be our our pine branch area. So I think I'm happy with the way that that is. We're going to let that just dry on its own. But luckily, we don't have to wait because we can now start working on the bottom half. The bottom half is going to be our snowy area. So what I'm going to do now is I want to pick up some gray or you can just use very watered down black, that works too. And I'm going to mix it with just like this tiny little tint of blue. And I'm going to water it down a lot. And we're going to cover this portion with that but I'm actually debating whether I should paint the fence first. So I'm going to let this completely dry before we move on to the next step. Okay, so I think this is mostly dry. I say that all the time and then I regret it. But we're gonna paint our fence now. So the easiest way to paint your fence is to establish a the point where the fence ends or I guess disappears. So for me, that's going to be here, somewhere around here. I'm just holding a regular pencil by the way, because I'm going to use that to help me just very lightly sketch out my fence to make it easier to paint. So once we've established our point where our fence fades away, you can, one thing you can do is, is basically draw a light line like this. And then another one that goes like this. And this will help you basically paint your fence posts perfectly. But what the way that I like to think of the perspective is the top of every single fence post is going to be on the same height. The only thing that's going to differ is the bottom where it ends and the general size of it. It's going to be smaller, skinnier, and shorter. And that's what's going to make the bottom of each fence post vary. So if this is where my fence post ends, I'm going to paint my first fence post here. Let's say it's going to look something like, I don't want to draw it too dark because I don't want it to show through my watercolor. So maybe I'll just close up just so you can see what I'm doing. So my next fence, like you almost won't even see these fence posts. So there's going to be one here. And by the way, as you paint them towards the horizon, the fence posts become closer and closer together. So these ones are super far apart. Like you'll see, I'm going to paint the next or draw the next one here. Again, I'm keeping it on this roughly the same height. I'm just making it a tiny bit smaller, skinnier, and shorter. And this is on the bottom is where it's going to vary. And so my next one is a little bit closer, a little bit skinnier, and then they just become like almost non-existent. So yeah, you can you can almost draw yourself a very faint line like this as a guide. So that's the top and that's your bottom of the fence post. You don't have to follow it to a T, but that's how your perspective will make the most sense if it follows that shape. So this, this, this, this, and then it just becomes like a blob. Okay, so my fence posts are going to be like a grayish brown. Typically they're brown, but I want it to look very snowed in almost. So I'm going to make my brown very gray. And I'm going to add black to it because, uh, why? Why am I adding black? Because I want to darken it, that's why. And we can begin painting our fence posts. So the ones in the front are going to be just like they're the biggest, tallest, thickest. They're also going to be the darkest, so keep that in mind when you're painting. And because our fence posts are wooden, they, it's okay if they all kind of look a little bit beat up. So I'm adding a tiny bit of water just so that my next one is a little bit lighter. That's not very much lighter, but that's okay. Okay, and our next one, you can see it's much closer in distance to this one than these two are. If I didn't already paint it on, I actually would have, uh, made this one further away. But that's hindsight, right? Now I really want to water them down. And these ones, they don't even have to be very defined. In fact, the more, like, obscure they are, the more realistic it'll look. So boom, you can see the fence just fades away, fades into the distance somewhere. There we go. I'm gonna go back just so you can see the bigger picture here. I'm going to add black just on one side of the fence post to make it look like there's light coming from the left and there's a bit of a shadow on the back. Perfect. And now what we can do is connect these beautiful fence posts with some, uh, wooden cross beams. So now you can either do, you could do two, you could do three, you could do, like, these ones where they're actually crosses. But I think that it's a lot easier to mess up the perspective by doing the crosses. So I'm just gonna stick to, uh, like, beams that go right across. Totally up to you what you want to do. So I'm gonna have, and again, you can pencil these in for yourself if you would like, like, if it makes it easier. Like this, like this. And it's okay if they're not all even, you know what I mean? Like, they can start at different positions. If it ends here, this one can start down here, because we want to make this look very rustic. And that's why I'm not even touching up these imperfections here, because it kind of looks like weathered wood. And obviously we can't forget this one over here. Perfect. That looks great, in my opinion. And what we're gonna do is add some shadows. So see, this is what I was contemplating earlier when I wasn't sure whether to do all those, like, snowy highlights before I painted the fence. Um, but I'm glad that I waited. Just erasing that earlier pencil line that I penciled in. Okay. So, uh, yeah. So we're gonna add those nice snowy highlights. And again, we are using a nice grayish tinted blue that is very, very, very, very, very watered down. So I'm gonna have, um, my fence posts are going to, this can be, these can be shadows, it can be snow, um, it's up to you. But just like we did with the fence posts, you want to make your shadows bigger the closer that they are to the viewer, and smaller and shorter the further away that they are from the viewer. And I'm going to just try and blend this out. And I am going to add a tiny bit of black just to the, uh, part of the shadows that are closest to the fence post. Like so. So that's great. Okay. Oh my gosh, I don't know what happened here. Did I do that with my finger at some point? Hopefully we can cover that up. We'll try and cover that up with pine trees. I'm not sure what happened here. At what point I messed that up, but, because I can see the blue here, so I must have done something. Um, okay. We're gonna let this completely dry before we move on to the next step. So once your background is completely dry, it's so important this time that it's completely dry. Otherwise you're going to ruin all of your hard work, and we don't want to do that. We don't want to ruin all the work that we put into that. And so now I'm just mixing a bunch of black into my green, because I want a nice dark, dark green color. And we're going to start painting on our pine branches. So remember when we painted those green blotches here? I could have painted them even darker. It would have been better if I painted them darker. Um, so I'm just trying to figure out how I'm going to start here. So you want to pick a point. So let's say here's my blotch. I'm going to do a close-up here. Here's my, one of my blotches. I want to start on this side of the blotch, and I'm going to start whispering out my, my pine branches. So I don't know if you guys have ever looked at a pine tree. I mean there's so many different types of pine trees, conifers, right? So it depends on which ones you look at. But the ones with the really, really long pine branches that kind of come from a single point, um, that's attached to a larger branch, that's the pine tree that we're going for here. So you just want to flick out a bunch of these pines from a singular point, and you can, you know, vary, vary up the, uh, direction and the size like that. We're gonna attach these to a branch in a moment. And then you want to move on to your next, next one and do the same thing. Perfect. Move on to the next one, do the same thing. And you can see that on this one I kind of started curving them and making this beautiful sloping thing, but that's not what pines look like. Uh, we don't want to do that. You want to kind of draw them as straight as possible, and coming in all different directions, even overlapping other ones. It's totally fine like that. Sorry, I don't know if that was on camera. Sometimes I just twist my paper in all directions. And then I have another blotch over here, so I'm going to do the same thing. And see how that green is lightly showing through that we painted earlier? I should have painted it on even darker, um, but at least we have that. So if you guys are kind of watching this for the first time and then you're going to go later on and, and redo it, then learn from my mistakes. So I've just added on, uh, like the branch portion of the pine so that I could add some more, uh, pines coming from it. And again, I'm doing the same thing. So I'm picking a singular point on this branch where all, not all, but all the pines from that section are coming from. And then you want to pick another point, whoops, another point, so here I guess, and do the same thing and just keep going. That looks very nice. Holy moly, I surprise myself sometimes. In a previous video, gosh, what was, oh, it was the video where I'm, uh, the tutorial where I messed up, like horribly, and then I showed you how I messed up and I erased it, or I tried to erase it in the way that you erase watercolor, and then I redid it. And I had some comments in that video that were saying, oh, I'm so happy, like, that you show your mistakes, um, and that, so that we can learn from them. Like, guys, I make so many mistakes. I, I butcher so many paintings, uh, and a lot of them you don't, you don't get to see because, you know, I have to maintain some level of, um, consistency and whatnot on this channel. But it's, if a painting can be salvaged, like, I always try to finish the painting. I always try my best to fix it and get to the end. And if it, if it's salvageable, like, if it, if it ends up looking really nice in the end, then you guys always see that tutorial. Um, because I, I love to show the process of how I got somewhere, even if it's a messy process and I really messed up the painting. It's, it's still part of the process and it's still a learning experience. I definitely still put those tutorials up. However, when it ends up looking horrible, where I cannot, you know, upload a nice thumbnail because nobody's going to click on this butchered tutorial, then obviously I'm not, I'm not going to upload that. I'm going to paint another one that's sort of coming from here. I know we didn't do a green blotch there earlier, but I mean, I couldn't really foresee that. So we've got our pines established. The other thing you can add is pinecones, actually, if you're daring enough. I'm kind of scared to do it because pinecones are something that I really have to look at a reference to paint. And I know I filmed two pinecone painting tutorials, which those pinecones look beautiful. They did. I haven't, I need to watch my own tutorial to get a refresher on how to paint those. We're going to attempt to paint a very abstract one here. So I'm going to have the tip and then it's kind of going to go like this. I'll do a close-up so you can see what I'm doing. So I'm just, the edges are really what matter the most. There we go. And then you can add some black high, uh, not highlights. Someone pointed that out to me. That looks, oh, that, see, I surprised myself. That looks nice. I like that. I'm going to do another one, uh, beside it that's facing kind of the other direction. Like this. Yeah, so if you guys want a refresher on how to paint a pinecone, please watch the two tutorials that I released last year around Christmas time, uh, or in the winter time. They, they look really great and they're not as hard as they look. Like they look very complex, but they're easy to paint. Please look at those. Um, if you're not comfortable with free handing it like I just did because I surprised myself, honestly, I did not think that it was going to turn out looking at night as nice as it did. Uh, so that's, that's good there. You know what? No, I'm going to add another little guy coming out here. See what happens is I get cocky and then I end up ruining a painting because I just added way too much. So let's hope that is not the case here. I really like that. That's so nice. So what we're going to do now is add something that is really going to make this entire thing come together. And you're going to need either white acrylic paint or, um, white, gouache, I think it's called. Just something opaque and white. You can try watercolor, but I mean, it's watercolor, it's transparent. Um, so grab some of that. Okay, so I've got some white acrylic paint and I'm going to start just adding it in these little splotches to the tops of my fence posts. And there isn't really any specific, you know, technique to this. You just put it on wherever you'd like. Just don't cover the whole thing because you don't want to blend it in with the, with the, um, white background. It'll kind of defeat the purpose. And I do want to add a little bit to the top of this, of each railing of the fence post. I'm going to pretend there's a blanket of snow that is just freshly laid down, just a beautiful blanket over the landscape. And it's also going to be at the bottom here. See how much, that's adding a lot to it already. So what I'm going to do before I can, we're going to add more, you know, really nice details, but I am going to do what I love doing. And I'm going to sprinkle, I'm going to make it snow. So I've picked up some white acrylic paint with a tad bit of water. And I'm just going to tap another brush against it, like, like this. And this is going to make it like these little tiny white dots are going to come from the paintbrush. And it's going to hopefully make it look like it's snowing. Now, I think I need to pick up a little bit more because I want big snowflakes, big splotchy snowflakes, even more apparently. Dip it in water. You can also add these manually, like, or without tapping it, you can just dab it on. But I think that this splatted technique looks beautiful. I am going to add some big, bigger snowflakes. Now I'm taking a thinner brush. This is my quadruple zero, but it is not the same one that I use for watercolor. I used to use this for watercolor, and then I destroyed it by using it for acrylic paint as I'm doing now. And so I just kept it as my acrylic paint brush. So what I want to do here is not on all of them, because that would take too long and be way too tedious and a little bit unrealistic. But I'm going over some of the pines that I painted with a layer of snow. I do want my pine cones to have quite a bit more snow on them. So I am going to just put more snow on them, put more white acrylic paint. And I'm just painting it on in these U shapes. I don't want to ruin it, that might be a bit too much. I'm using my finger and just picking it back up. And it already looks so much more wintry. Like this, having that snow at the base of these pillars, of these fence posts, just brings out that that Christmas feel, for me at least. It makes it very, very festive. I'm adding just a bit more because the white acrylic paint I have is, believe it or not, not very opaque. So I sometimes have to do two layers to get the opacity that I desire on my paintings. So you can either stop there, and that looks so beautiful. Alternatively, you can paint a red bird, a cardinal, to add a pop of color, or a blue jay, that would work too. So we are going to put our little guy here. He's going to sit in maybe here. Here or here? Here. He's going to sit on this fence post. So I'm going to, just with a pencil, draw a very rough circle. I'm going to have another circle on top like this. I'm going to attach this like this, have his tail, have his wings coming out like this. And he's just going to be standing there. It's going to be my little birdie. And he's going to be red. I'm going to erase that though, so it's a bit lighter. We don't want pencil marks to show through. So I'm grabbing my red watercolor, and we're going to paint our bird. So cardinals have this beautiful black area around their face, like around their beak. So I am going to paint that first with my quadruple zero here. I'm going to go in. I don't want it to get blurry if I go super close up. There we go. And the beak is going to be a nice orange, I would say. Now his wing is sort of non-existent there. So we're going to go back with our black and just add the shading of a wing, just like that. And because it's a very small bird, it doesn't matter too much. Nobody's going to look at that and be like, where's the wing? You do want to attach the legs. That's pretty important. So this bird is not just like hovering there. Okay, so when we go back. Oh, you know what? Oh my gosh, I can't believe I almost missed this. The cardinal has that beautiful mohawk thing going on. That's what makes it look like a cardinal. Goodness me. I'm just gonna add that. Look at that. Now it's a cardinal. Beautiful little mohawk guy. Perfect. Okay. I'm thinking what else we could add to this, but I think it's pretty okay the way that it is. I hope you guys enjoyed this tutorial. If you did, please let me know if you're going to just paint this for fun or if you're using this as a Christmas card. I would love to know. So please let me know in the comments. Thanks again for watching. Subscribe, hit like, and I will see you in the next one.