A watercolor snowy wonderland , the easiest beginners technique to a sonwy pine tree

Hi friends, today I'm playing with, I've been trying to find an easy way to create some of these fun pine trees that look like they might have snow on them and I've been playing a lot with using water and so forth to try and create that in an easy way so I I think I have a way that I'm going to share with you and this is kind of the look so to me it's I'm not using any white paint or white gouache although or gouache although I you could but I'm trying to do it with just leaving water actually I'm picking up a little bit of white gouache and just see what it looks like so see I you could certainly after you do this process go on here and maybe add some of that white paint this isn't gouache but it's white paint so you could certainly do that as well and that might be pretty I might do that at the end of this tutorial but I I really like being able to use the paper to look like maybe some snow on the branches so this is wet and wet today I am using as you know my very favorite artisto pads this has become my kind of autumn or fall journal and as you know I love these I think they're great for beginners because you could even date them and progressively keep using another one and then it's always fun to go back in your older ones and kind of see the progress you've made so I like these ring binders the paper is excellent I've tried a lot of paper and this one has a really great great feel to it it's very thick and the other thing I appreciate is it takes a lot of water and it doesn't warp and such and that's a big one for me and the texture so these are great like I said I label all mine and I keep them in order and then I can go back and refer to them at any time so let's get started that is my artisto pads that I'm using I'm going to use my number 8 Princeton brush it's a round and just kind of my go-to all the time you can certainly if you know being a beginner and you don't want to make that investment you can go ahead and invest in this Degato set which I've loved and it's about less than half of the price for the whole set and I really like those the points have held up nicely and they're a great beginner set I will be using my MyLang paints today as you know I love those I can't afford to paint in Windsor Newton's every day and these are very creamy and vibrant and I just love them and of course I've got my two wells of water using this beautiful these meat and ceramic dishes I've been using for quite some time and really enjoying those okay so what I'm gonna do taking my number 8 brush I'm gonna go ahead and let's do this kind of quickly find and I always suggest when you're doing your paintings create a little bit of a color palette so of course this one is mostly greens but play with those values because that's going to be really important in this painting we have all these different values dark mid value and a very light value which we're going to use to express some snow on our trees so kind of disregard that and the green I'm using in MyLang it's called tree green in Windsor Newton it's called sap green and it's really a very holiday ish beautiful green I also love my little bit browner deeper olive green so I'm getting that in my palette as well a little bit more sap green there we go and then I'll just at the end add in a tiny bit of some type of brown Van Dyke brown is the brown that's in the MyLang palette in your Windsor Newton you could use a burnt umber burnt sienna whatever palette color you really want to use so those are the three basic colors so let's start off with our values and we want to make sure we incorporate all three values so here is your dark value which is mostly pigment so rather dark now I'm gonna go in and I'm just going to rinse my brush one swipe through the water and then lightly scrape it off a few times and there's my mid value now I'm going to do that again scrape it off and now I've got my light value which should be more to show that snow to show the lightness so I want to make sure that I'm aware of using these three values today I'm also going to be using the tip of my brush a lot to get these squiggles and these little branch lines so for that you want to hold your brush more on the vertical very light pressure resting your palm of your hand on your paper and just practicing those thin lines just drawing across your sheet we're also going to have some coming down some dabs so something like this for those hanging parts of the tree I forget what they call that tree Douglas fir maybe so practicing some of those before you go into your painting so you've kind of got a feel that muscle memory is being activated and of course I've got my tissue here there we go to blot my brush all right I'm going to start with the dark value so getting some of that paint on my brush tapping off just a tiny bit and let's just start dabbing in this tree shape so using that tip I'm just going in and now I'll start creating branches coming out like this some more I don't want to get too ahead here because I want to go back in and start adding water to this while it's wet so I'm going to do one more layer maybe I'll pick up some of that tree green or sap green and I'm using a darker value because we're going to go in and water that down so we can start out with darker okay so before this gets too dry wash and rinse my brush and pat it off so I don't want my brush to be too wet I want to maybe have it saturated about 30% and then I'm going to go in and start touching in to some of these areas and dabbing off my brush a lot because it's picking up that paint and I want it to look kind of light colored so I'm just lightening that lifting and look already that looks a little bit like snow doesn't it so not too much water here and cleaning off my brush lifting like this doesn't that look like snow I love it this was the easiest way I came up with to kind of get that feeling of snow so there you go and then we'll go back in and add in some darker colors but let's keep moving down our branch here and again you want this to be a little darker value meaning just more paint versus water because we're lightening it so it can be a little bit I'm just really doing these squiggles using the tip of my brush I might even add a little brown there to some of these I just keep moving down my tree but I don't want to get too far ahead because we want this to be somewhat wet so now wash and rinse my brush tap it off and go in and just start touching in to those top branches and then pat off my brush and pick some of that up I really like this I'm not going to touch that and look how fun that is pick up some little areas in here very easy and now so if you just wet it it's not enough you need to lift some of that off so it gives that illusion of that white space like that and little piles and tufts of snow so let's keep working down adding some of that brown for our our stem and then wash and dry my brush again pat it off we don't want it too wet lifting some of that color out because that's what really creates that snow feeling now before I get too far down I'm going to go in with that same dark and just touch in because underneath is where the snow obviously isn't so we want to have maybe some pieces hanging down and maybe areas where it's showing through the snow choosing the tip of my brush look at that, isn't that fun? and letting your brush really dance around your painting and that dark green just showing through here and there and it really gives that illusion to me of snow sitting on those branches so that one has a little bit too much definition now what I'll do here is just go in use the side of my brush maybe create a little bit of that dry brush effect there you go adding a little bit of that brown here and there to look like the ground kind of peeking through like that and we could even do a tree in the background so we're going to use a really light value because it's in the background so it's not going to be quite as crisp and defined creating our branches coming out so for this light value I'm just using more water than pigment there we go and then touching in, picking up some of that and we'll go in and add some darker colors to make some of the leaves and stem not leaves I guess, pine needles maybe and just touch in here and there but we don't want it too defined because this is in the distance so we want to keep it kind of in the background but yet put a tiny bit of definition in there so there you go so I hope you give this a try it's a fun little experiment you can always add in more don't get too picky though just kind of softening some of those maybe adding in a tiny bit more brown to the trunk I love when brown and green mixes like that I think it's really pretty and I think I'll just stop at that I think that's beautiful so play with this you can add these into your landscapes I'm not a huge landscape person unless it's a field of flowers or something like that and there you go we could have created some little mountains in the background first a wash maybe all right, well I hope you have fun with this I will link all my supplies and by the way, this little palette is awesome, awesome, awesome love it I can hold it in my hand but it's heavy and that's why I'm really enjoying these Median products they're quite heavy and I really appreciate them and then make sure you have your little scrap pieces just to test out your values and make sure you kind of know how much pigment to put in each so you get your dark to your light and for most of this I was using the tip or the toe of my brush folding down near the ferrule so I have more control and vertical when I went in with a little bit of water to create that snow I was using more the side of my brush so I could use the belly of my brush and then taking the paint off and lifting with that dry brush to get some of that those values and pick up some of that color to look like the snow okay everybody, have so much fun and thank you for being here with me as always you guys are so awesome you keep me going every day and I will talk to you soon alright, bye bye