Learn to Paint Golden Light in Watercolor on a Late Autumn Walk

And now I'm going to go into the Q Gold. I'm going to stand up when I do this so I can get a nice swath here. I'm dipping it in water just to dilute it just a little. I just left a little passage of light here. Now I'm going to go into the Burnt Sienna. I'm not going to make these birch trees, so I'm not going to worry about masking. Now I'm going to mix a little of the Ultramarine with Burnt Sienna. And that gives you a neutral and not real wet. And I'm just going to go in here and darken our foreground. So you can see that the brush is not real wet. It's a stiff mix. There's a lot going on in the photograph that I'm just kind of ignoring and I'll deal with later. I'm not going to worry about protecting things and isolating things or painting around things. I'm just going in here and dropping in these colors. We can lift, leaving a little light here on the road. Okay, now I'm going to go back to the Burnt Sienna. And now I'm going to mix Cugold with Burnt Sienna for some foliage in here. And then Browner down here. Okay, now I'm going to lift out some areas. I use a 10 and squeeze it and have a tissue handy. And I'm just looking at the road, just looking to see where I'm going to want some passages of light. See how well it lifts? This is the end of the road where it just turns and there's just a little light right there. I'm going to drop salt here and it may be late just here in the foreground. All right, so now I'm going to add the foliage with the sponge. So we're going to start with Cugold. We'll be building it up and I'll keep turning my sponge so I'm not getting the same pattern repeated. I'm going to turn my hand too. I can kind of twist my wet sponge and blur the color that I already had underneath. Okay, now I will ramp that up a little bit with some stronger Cugold and now I'm going into the Burnt Sienna with the Cugold but leave it light here. This is just Burnt Sienna. I'll bring some of this texture down here and now I'm going to put a little Ultramarine and Burnt Sienna on my sponge. So there's a darker foliage more silhouetted. I'm going to mix the Cugold and Ultramarine, see what we get. Well, it's a very warm picture. This is Cugold with the Ultramarine again and I'm going to come down in here. I'm looking at the photo now, see where I need more texture and color and foliage. I'm just going to look at my picture here and do a little lifting where I think I need it and then I'm going to dry it. All right, so now I'm going to put in the tree trunks. I'll use my number 10. I'm going to work with Burnt Sienna and the Ultramarine when I do something dark like this. I don't like it to be dark dark. I'd rather paint it and then drop in more pigment. I'm also going to play peekaboo with the foliage that I have here. I'm going to start right here. I did draw lines to suggest where the trees are and they're not going to be real fat trees. I'm going to have another brush handy just to ground it so at the bottom so it kind of disappears into some foliage. Pressing down on the fatter tree here. I'm going to combine these trees here and so I'll take some more pigment. And you know I may take my spritzer and just just kind of spritz up here. I'm going to suggest the hills back here which I probably should have done first. I'm going to give an edge to the hill in the background. All right so now I have to let that dry before I can put any more tree trunks in there. I think I'm going to have the tree start here and go right off the top of the page. Now these trees are kind of in the foreground so they're going to be in front of this foliage. So I'll just use this wet paint at the bottom to kind of give an edge to this shrub that's here. So this tree that I made here it's not a black black tree. I can always make it darker. So I'm holding my brush like this because I want to describe some of the grasses that are growing along the edge here. This is dry. This is dry now. I could add those trees back there and as the trees become more distant I'll be leaving them more dilute. And these are real skinny trees. We have some darker trees here and I'm going to do a little negative painting here against this foreground tree. With a smaller brush I'm going to drag some of this paint. This smaller brush just has water on it but it's dragging the wet paint from here. I'm just putting this big shrub in. This is where the road turns so this is the focal point. Actually I think I won't make this too contrasty because I might want to put some people there. So I will just lift what I just did. I think I'll take the salt off. Okay so I'm going to work on this area. It's very amorphic and what I'm going to do a little negative painting for some lighter trunks. So I want to create a little ridge here with the real darks back here setting off some trees. So with the tip of my brush I'm describing the top of the grasses and with the side of the brush I'm describing a tree. So you see the tree right there. I think there'll be another tree right here. Negative painting. So with the side of my brush I'm moving like this. On this side I'll move like this. So all of a sudden there's a tree here. So you see the tree is lighter and then I'll I think I'll spritz it first. I'm going to get out this big brush again. It's mixing up everything that's in my tray. I'll take my sponge now and a little texture here. Maybe I'll take my number 10 and take some really dark darks and then with my sponge I'll just kind of soften it. I'm going to take my spritzer. I'm just going to hit this with a just a one little spray. All right now I'm going to take my rigger brush and I did all that sponging. Now I'm just going to do a different way of doing the foliage. So I've got a lot of Q-gold on here now. A little spatter. So it's a real wet. This Q-gold is very wet on my rigger brush. A little mix of these colors and just kind of bounce my brush a little. I think I'll put some people in and before I do anything else take this little number six. Go into the same colors. Neutral. So eye level. I think the head's going to be here. Oops remember small head smaller than you think it should be. I gave him a big head right from the get-go. Okay now I can put these darks in at the end of the road. I'm lifting out some bottoms of the trees over here and it lifts really easily. I'm just putting some dappled light into the Soften it more. So this is very light struck. These some of these grasses so I'll lift here. Now I'm really rubbing with my synthetic brush going against the grain. All right now for the last touch is I'm going to spatter some Q-gold mixed with white and I'm going to spatter it in the foreground and maybe up here too. Maybe all over. Oh I didn't do the sun yet. Okay the sun is going to be right here. I'm going to take my stencil brush. See if this works. I need clean water. Tissue. Stencil brush. If you don't have a stencil brush you could use a magic eraser. I'm going to take my darks where the trees got lost here. I think I'll just leave it. Won't fuss with it anymore. Let me just lift a little foliage over here.