Hey, this is Eric from Cafe Watercolor.
Thank you for joining me in this new painting demo
today going to talk about a process
of this Misty Morning painting.
So I took this photo last year during the winter.
During the winter here in the Pacific Northwest
we got some heavy fog in the morning from time to time.
And those type of sceneries always wonderful to look at
because it just gives us so much depth.
And to me, watercolor is one of the most natural medium
to paint atmosphere.
And this particular scenery is not the easiest scene
to tackle because most of the things in this scenery
is covered in fog.
So whenever things are covered in fog
even like the brick building on the right,
the drawing that I'm doing right now,
the contrast is really not that big.
So a lot of the dark and light is a lot less contrasty
so we have to make the value shift a lot more subtle.
So we'll talk about that when I start painting,
right now I'm just doing some drawings.
So right off the bat, you see that I,
we recompose the image a little bit.
In the photo you see there's a lot of foreground there.
It's actually a little bit too much.
So we should crop the image a little bit
so that the building can look a little bit better.
So I did crop in just a little bit,
but I really like the yellow curb
and that yellow pole in the foreground.
So I decided to keep that.
So what I did is I rearranged the car a little bit
so you can see the car on the right
is a lot more closer to us.
So that shrinks the foreground just a little bit
so we have less awkward, empty space.
So the perspective in this drawing
is also a little bit tricky.
So I shrink the car down a little bit, the car on the left,
so it conveys a little bit more distance.
The road actually turned a little bit in the middle ground,
in the background.
So we, I actually need to kind of eyeball that.
So here comes the first wash.
The first wash is basically just the color of the line.
So in this case I am just painting the overall tone
of the mist.
The mist may look really bright, really light,
but it actually has a little bit of value in it.
So I also paint the street light
and I'm going to paint the car light wet onto wet
just so that I have this glow in it.
So as I move down, I change the color a little bit warmer
and also just a little bit darker.
And I paint around some highlight
but I try not to stay on those for too long
because I really want a nice clean wash.
So from top to bottom, I tilt my paper just a little bit
so it will have a nice, consistent wash throughout.
Since the paper is still quite moist
I paint some colors wet onto wet.
So the bright color of the street sign,
the red only, the tail line of the car,
and the headlight of the car.
So I re-wet the paper after it is completely dry
with just clean water
because I want to start to do some wet onto wet
with the distance stuff.
I can try to do that during the first wash
but I actually want a little bit more time.
So I just re-wet the surface
and now I start to paint the distant buildings,
distant elements that's within the fog.
So as you can see in the, way in the distance
everything is really pushed back and subtle.
So a lot of wet on wet shapes,
so they are soft and they don't have very defined edges.
And when you do wear on to wet just right,
this is what you are going to get.
So this is why I say water color
is one of the most natural medium to paint atmosphere
because it happens naturally and it happens within the water
and you don't have to blend like other medians by hand.
If you're a painting oil or acrylic,
you need to create the soft edges by hand
while in watercolor here it kind of forms naturally
when you do wet onto wet.
So painting some distant, dry trees
using the tip of the brush to get that control shape
and I just continue to wash down onto the road.
And while it is still wet, I can just add more paint.
I can keep adding more paint,
adding dryer paints as it gets dryer
so that the shape from a very misty background
and I start to pull them forward
into the mid ground.
So, like I said, in the other video before,
to react to the stages of wetness in your painting
work with watercolor, now try to control it.
So now I'm using a smaller brush to paint some branches.
And as you can see, I'm starting to get dry brush marks.
So that means that the paper is starting to dry
which means that I can start to work on the shapes
that I wanted to be a little bit more clear.
So the shapes, the object that I'm painting right now,
they are a little bit more clear.
They're not all the way into the fog anymore.
So when a paper is still very wet, I work on a background
because all the shapes are going to be very soft.
And as the paper is starting to dry,
I start to paint the shape that's going to be
a little bit more clear
and start to paint things in the middle ground
and eventually foreground.
And that's what's fun about watercolor,
it's really dynamic and almost kind of interactive in a way
because you are interacting with the property of watercolor.
You're interacting with the paint and the drying time.
So I mix a warm color
and start to paint that brick building.
And saying that I'm painting a brick building.
I'm not painting a single brick building
because it's really far away
and if you try to paint every single brick
that's just not going to work well.
And it's not really necessary for us to do that anyways.
But I paint around the window and the white sign
on the wall of the building
a little bit of wet onto wet.
This is somewhat of a big shape.
So we do need enough mixture and try to get it done
in one go.
The single shape is one wash.
Like I always said, one wash, one shape.
So we're finishing up the building
and I start to mix a little bit darker colors
and start painting those bushes and the tree
in front of the building wet onto wet.
If you look at the photo,
those trees because of the fog
they look kind of blurry too.
So in this misty scenery we do a lot of wet onto wet.
And if we want that kind of loss and found edges
we really need to utilize the wetness of the paper
as well as mixing the right mixture with it.
So the paper is a little bit moist
and you will mix a mixture that's a little bit dryer.
So it retain its shape when you paint it
but it also bleed out just enough to make it feel soft.
So here I'm starting to paint the ground
and also connect that with the bottom of the car.
And I just work my way down to the foreground.
Now the foreground is not dark enough
so I need to mix a little bit more mixture
and do some wet on to wet.
And also just add a little bit of the soft textures
on the street.
The street is not perfectly the same color
and the same value
so have a little bit of variation,
make it look a little bit dirty here and there,
that can make the painting feel more alive.
So now I am painting the yellow curb and that yellow pole.
Because the whole scenery is in the fog
and mostly pretty muted,
so if we have some saturated color popping out
is going to give us some visual interest
and some visual impacts.
And this will also help us to establish the depths.
We have something that's darker
and more saturated in the foreground.
That's going to really push the depths
especially against the more muted colored,
the softer background.
So here I'm adding some dark details
in the corner of the curb.
These are some dirt, some dead leaves
that's being swept and gathered in the corner of the curb.
So if we add that
that will just add a little bit more dimensionality
and some textures.
A little bit of detail goes a long way.
It just add more believability
and you don't need to go into painting too much detail.
You just need a little hints of that.
As long as the viewer acknowledged
that you see those details and you pay those attention
you can sale the effect very, very easily.
So I'm painting the building on the left,
which is also a brick building,
with this red only.
And again, the red is pretty muted
since it's behind the fog.
You don't want to paint a very saturated color
in the middle ground and the background all of a sudden.
So at this stage everything is pretty much in place.
So now's the time to start to add more dark values
on top of what we already have.
And again, I'm working with the dry time of the paper.
So places like in the building, in the middle ground
where most of the walls are dry,
I can start to paint some sharper shapes.
So like this restaurant sign
which is mostly just black
and I paint around the white text in the graphic.
Again, just a very, very quick hint of the detail.
And now I'm going to mix a dark value
for the side of the building.
We do have a light side and a dark side on the building.
So we need to paint the dark side in
just to show the form and the structure of the building.
So now we can read the building structure
and where is it facing?
And I connect dark to the car in the middle ground,
the bottom of the car.
Start to add just some more contrast on that.
So the bottom of the car,
the tire, the bottom of the pumper,
and then include the shadow on a bottom of the car.
That little bit of darkness
anchors the car down on the road.
So it feels like the car is on the surface.
Also pay attention to the shape of the car.
The ratio should be just right.
How much is the windshield?
How much is the body, the pumper of the car,
and the wheel and the tire?
Even though car is not the biggest part of the painting,
there's a lot of subtle shapes
that we really need to look into it.
A lot of time I try to look at a master's painting
and really study the shape that they paint,
how they paint cars, figures, and buildings
and things like that.
How did they interpret those
with their own visual language and shapes?
And that's what makes masters' painting look different.
Is the shape they are able to paint
very, very good looking shapes?
And that's something come with experience.
But as you paint,
I encourage you to really look at masters' painting,
how they paint a certain shape
and try to learn from those.
That's certainly how I learned to paint
and that's certainly what I'm trying
to get better at as well.
So I'm finishing up painting rapidly,
giving a layer of glaze over the foreground,
try to make the road just a little bit darker.
Again, watercolor dry lighter
so a lot of time when you put down a value
you think that's dark enough,
but when it's dry is going to dry a lot lighter
especially when you do wet onto wet.
The wetter your wash is the lighter it's going to dry.
So I need to constantly go back
and make things a little bit darker as needed.
And of course with enough practice
you can make the right judgment of value
the first time you paint.
So you will compensate how much lighter is going to get
after it's dry
but sometimes I still make the wrong judgment
and makes things a little bit too light.
So I will have to go back and darken certain scenes.
But when in doubt I will say,
it's safer to make things a little bit lighter
because you can always darken them later.
But if you make something a little bit too dark
in the very beginning,
is very hard to make them lighter.
So now I'm adding a little bit more dark
in some of the areas.
Adding some dark will make things a little bit more punchy
and make some stuff pops out a little bit more.
So in this case, we really need to be careful
not too darken too many things,
especially in the middle ground and the background.
I'm adding some whitewash to make some light
a little bit lighter.
So the tail light and the street light and the headlight.
And now after it's completely dry
I find the contrast still a little bit too much
so I decided to do an overall glaze.
So by doing a glaze,
I paint around some of the highlight area
like the headlight and the tail light
and start to darken some of the white areas.
So by darkening the overall paintings
and leave out the headlight and the tail light
in places like that,
the lights start to look much brighter
and those lights just pops.
And that's the effect that I'm looking for.
So I took a little bit of risk
and glaze over the whole painting,
but I think the risk is worse taken
because it really makes the whole painting
looks even more misty and looks like even brighter.
And here's the finished painting.
I really like how it turns out.
I like how quiet this misty morning scenery looks.
I hope you also enjoyed this painting
and the process that I shared with you.
If you enjoyed this video, please like and subscribe.
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Hope you have a wonderful day wherever you are.
I am Eric from Cafe Watercolor.
See you next time.