Jonathan Edwards - True Saints, When Absent From the Body, Are Present With the Lord (6 of 7)

Now I've got another little exercise for you now that I'd like you to try. Trees, we're doing trees. These are the trees that, or the effects that the trees have when the sun's just gone down below the horizon and you get a little bit of glow, a little bit of laughter glow that sort of touches some of the autumn foliage or the autumn leaves that are left at the top. So I'm going to be using, once again, some stretched paper. I'm going to use my favourite Winsor Blue green shade. I'm going to set it out in layers and I'm going to make certain the first layers are absolutely dry before I put the trees on. So let's start with some clean water. This little area, once again, has got the tape on and make sure I've got some nice covering of water on the paper here. Okay. Using my favourite blue, I think it is my favourite blue, this lovely Winsor Blue green shade. And I'm going to come in from the left-hand side of the painting and I'd like it to be relatively strong on this side and slightly paler here. It's as if this is, the sun's gone down somewhere over here, or is going down, so we've got it slightly darker here. So let's just drop this in. There we go. We need to soften it as it goes to that edge. So let's just do this. I'll soften it along here. We've still got a nice darkish edge there, which I am going to increase slightly. Not too strong, don't forget it's a staining blue and it's quite a demanding blue. It likes to get its own way. If we end up with a sort of effect of a little bit of a cloud or something there on that side, that's fine. I'm not too worried by that because, hey, there's going to be some trees in the way, so I'm not going to lose any sleep about that. There we are. We're getting there, just building it up slowly. There's no rush. That's fine, I'm quite happy with that. Now I'm going to let that dry because I'm going to put a wash of Permanent Rose over past it so you get that little bit of purple, that lovely purple you get sometimes just after the sun has dipped below the horizon. So let's wait for a moment. Wait until it dries and we'll put some more colour on. Okay, I'm ready now to put the next colour on and I'm going to use a little bit of Permanent Rose. I just want to warm that sky slightly. That lovely sort of purply red that you get at the end of the day. So making sure that I've got enough mixed up, kitchen roll, and let's see what we get. I'm not wetting the paper this time. Soften out that edge there. Let's take it down a little bit behind where the trees are going to go. Now it might seem odd to do all this painting behind where the trees are going but this helps with the effect of the glow coming through. So let's just put a little bit of red here. We might end up losing most of it but it doesn't matter because there might be little bits just left between the branches of the trunks that show that colour through. Now we'll just put a little bit of blue I think, Winsor Blue that I've been using earlier, just up here. I'll just strengthen it slightly. Get that nice purply dark there. Oh that's nice. Quite subtle but beautiful. Now I've noticed I've got a little bit of paint creeping under that little bit of masking tape that I put on earlier. So this is a little tip. At this stage what we can do is to take the masking tape very carefully off. Not all the way around, just a little bit where we're going to be or where we've just painted. And that stops the paint going under the masking tape. So I'll just lift that slightly and get the end right. This end here. That means it won't creep along and it won't creep under. I'll just sort of stick it like that. And I can still work on this part here. So what I'm going to do now I think it's actually going to allow me to do this. I'm going to dampen below here and I'm going to put a little bit of Conacodone Gold on. I'm imagining that we've got some larger trees this side and some slightly smaller shrubs and bushes here. So let's get some colour there. Remember it's only an exercise. It's only coloured water. So let's put some marks in here. Look at the way it sort of blooms up into the sky. And that lovely glow that trees kind of pick up at the end of the day. Going into that blue, give it a little bit of colour there. Put it on quite thick if you want to. Because we're going into that damp area. There you go. There's a tree forming already. And this was the edge of a field near to a farm that I often walk around and paint. So we need to put a bit of a field in there. So I'm going to use some Green Gold. Let's just drop some of that in here. A bit of action. Sliding the colours across there. Very similar colours but really useful. Trees there, bushes there. Yes, I'm happy with that. So, I'm not going to rush into it because the next layer that we put on is very important because that's our twigs and our branches and our trunks, and they have to retain their shape. If I put them on now of course the paper's damp and they would spread to nothing. But of course that's something you've practised already I'm sure. So let's let this dry and then we go into it with the rest of our trees. Okay, I'm happy with the way that's dried. I've got a little bit of a bloom here which is really nice because it gives me the effect of some clouds. I don't know if you can see on camera, I'm sure you can, there's a little bit of pink edge there, almost as if the edge of the clouds have been kissed by the sun before it's dipped below the horizon. So I'm now going to start to put the trees in, but I'm going to start with the field here, a nice dark field, bring up some branches and then spend quite a bit of time doing these trees. So I'm going to use a little bit of the Burnt Sienna and a mix with the French Ultramarine. I want something really quite dark. There we are. Because in the fields you do get some really dark colours as you're looking towards where the sun has gone. Just adding that touch of Burnt Sienna to it really gives it a little bit of warmth. I'm going to leave a little gap in the field as if the last rays of the sun have just hit and are just falling across the field itself. So quite a charged brush, that could be a little bit stronger, a little bit darker. That's better. And I'm just going to do a little bit of a gap in the field. Just do a bit of a gap in the field like this. There we are. Now within this I can drop some more darks in. So it can be quite dark. It will be quite dark. In this we'll start to pull out some of the trunks of the trees. So I'm going to change my brush. I'm going to use a rigger and let's just start to pull out some branches and some trunks of the trees. Don't worry if they look crude at this stage, this is the start of quite a few stages. Let's just get something coming up here like that. I'm pulling the colour out from the field colour that we put on. And of course you're going to get some bits of hedgerow there. We'll do a few more coming up. We can add a little bit of Burnt Sienna to it I think just over here. And we'll pull a few up here. A few twists to the side. There we go. I'm going to use the side of my brush now. The side of my number 10. I'm just going to fold this. I want to use a kind of a dry brush mark. Not completely dry but I will just wipe off the excess on our friend the kitchen roll. And let's just stroke the side of the brush against some of these here. Look and you get a sort of feathery texture. And we can pull some of those out. There we are. Touching the edge of the brush really very, very lightly. Just touching it. This is something that is really good to practice. I'm just putting it over that Connecrian Gold that we used earlier. I think we'll use a few here because we won't have exactly the same size bushes all the way through will we? Of course not. There we are, a nice edge there. I'm going to use an old fashioned dip pen now for actually putting in a little bit more detail of the twigs and the branches and the trunks. They can be notoriously difficult I find. If I use them directly onto the watercolour paper sometimes they splatter. Look, I'm not going to get into the well itself. I'm going to add the paint with my brush. Now I thought I'd better put that there. Watch what happens. If I just go below here you might find that it splatters. Once I've got something running I can use this to go into the picture itself. Look, but I'm going from the base so to speak of the trees or the hedgerows because if I do get a little splatter it's better if it was down here rather than up in the trees. I use this quite a bit, this pen to get some really nice fine tracery into some of the trees. If you end up with a splatter half way up a tree trunk turn it into some ivy. Lovely branches here. You'll notice that I'm not waiting for this section to dry below. I'm just going straight into it which sometimes means you get a blooming from the pen itself and just gives you another effect of foliage. I think I need to vary some of the tones and the strength through here because it's likely to be thicker foliage where the hedgerow is at the bottom of the run of trees or the hedgerow there. These are looking a little bit too methodical, a bit too much rhythm with these lights here so to speak coming through so I'm just going to vary some of those that's better, that's much better. Now a little bit of ivy. Let's drag that ivy up a little. Now for the final stage I'm going to let this dry because I'm going to add a little bit of burnt sienna just to some of the tops of the trees here just as if they've been kissed by the sun before it goes to bed for the night. So just let this dry and then we come back to it. Okay and now I'm ready to put the final touches in this little painting. A little bit of burnt sienna just on the tops of those trees there. Now I've already squeezed some burnt sienna out but it's got mixed with the blue so let's just put it up here so it's nice and clean. A dry feathery brush technique again. So I've got a nice big number 10 sable just take some of that out, I'm going to put a little bit on that kitchen roll. Ooh that's lovely, beautiful rich colour. So let's have a look at what we've got. Let's just go to the sides here. Just a little bit of colour there, there it is, just to warm that edge. A little bit more over here, just to warm the tops of those trees. And of course if we want to make it more pronounced, in a moment we'll add a little bit of water to it, a little bit of clean water. Side of the brush again, look it's just increasing the richness of the red. If you do it too much of course you end up just a hard area of red and I don't really want that, I want this softness. There we are, that's better, I think we'll have some over here. Just a little touch of this burnt sienna, just in there, just caught something there in the light, there we are, that's nice. It's an exercise you can't get it wrong, you can only learn from it. Let's take this tape off and see what we've done. It so reminds me of an autumn walk just after the sun's dipped. I'm really like you'd have a go at this. Simple broad washes at the top, a nice wash below, a little bit of colour behind, brushwork, using our old friend, if you haven't used it before great fun, the dip pen to drag out and create some branches. Side of the brush with some dry brush mark, nice and feathery, a little bit of burnt sienna just to kiss the tops of the trees. This is one you really must have a go at.