The beauty of watercolor lies in wet on to wet,
but in order to achieve wet on wet,
the paper needs to be moist.
And if you're like me, you probably feel frustrated sometime
because your wash dries too soon.
So what do we do?
Today I want to introduce you to my new best friend,
the spray bottle.
Hi, this is Eric from Cafe Watercolor.
Let's face it. Water color is not easy,
especially when you want to connect big shapes
while changing colors and add some wet on wet effects.
I shared a video about wet on wet before.
One of the tips I shared is to pre-mix your colors.
I still stand by that tip.
However, there are times that I ran out of the mixture.
So I have to mix colors on the fly,
think about what shape to paint while the wash is drying.
Not only you are racing against the drain time,
but you are also constantly making decisions
in your painting, that's very stressful.
There is one tool that can keep your painting moist.
So you get enjoy a wet on wet process a bit longer,
and that's a spray bottle.
I noticed doesn't seem that magical,
but I find myself using it more and more now
because it allows me to have more time to do wet on wet
so that I can get somewhere nice and clean soft shapes
without rushing the process.
Now, even though this is a simple tool,
there are a few tips on using the spray bottle
I want to share with you.
Number one, do it gently.
Don't just point it at the painting up close and spray it.
If you do that, you are going to put out too much water
in a small area, and that can ruin your wash.
Instead, you want to gently flow that mist
over your painting.
Is more about adding moisture and humidity to your painting
rather than making your painting wet.
What I do is I usually keep it around 10 inches away
from the painting and point the spray a little bit
to the side.
And as I spray, I move across the painting like these.
This will create a mist across the painting evenly.
And I usually do this two to three times
to make sure there is enough moisture.
Number two, spray as your paint.
Spray doesn't work if the wash dry past a certain point.
So don't spray too late.
I usually start add some mist after five minutes or so,
and spray again after another four minutes or so.
I cannot tell you exactly
what time you should start spraying
because this can affect by the paint you are using,
by a paper you're using, the temperature of the place
and the weather you are in.
But after some practice and experience,
you will develop a mental alarm to remind you
that it's time to spray a little bit of water
in your painting.
An number three, use what you already have.
I have my old spray bottle here but recently,
I got a new one here.
This used to be a hand sanitizer,
it produce a very fine mist, that's perfect for painting.
So I rinsed the bottle after we use up the sanitizer.
And now I use this as my spray bottle.
You might already have a spray bottle you can use.
Some people use makeup spray,
some people use fragrance spray,
as long as it's produced a fine mist,
not huge water droplets you are good to go.
I hope these tips are helpful for you.
Now, I'm going to share with you the process
of this painting.
I made some good use of my spray bottle
to give me more time to do wet on wet in this painting.
Before we start though, if you like my video and content,
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Let's get started.
So let's take a look at this painting.
So since we are painting a cloud scape,
I am not going to start with a drawing
since most of the shapes are going to be free shapes.
Which means that there is no manmade structures
or any hard surface.
So to avoid it becomes some sort of coloring book,
I decided not to do a drawing at least for the sky.
So I pre-wet the paper first with a natural sponge.
And while the paper is still pretty wet,
I start to mix the color that I need.
I re-wet the paper again,
because I do need plenty of wetness here.
I need to finish most of the sky in one go.
That will give me a lot of nice soft shapes and soft edges.
If it is dry, I'm going to start getting hard edges,
which is not something that I want for most of the cloud.
So I'm taking a medium size mop brush,
and just start to go for it.
And as you can see, I need to do it quite fast.
This part is not really speeding up
just to show you the speed I'm doing.
And here I am spraying for the first time
with my spray bottle.
And this is exactly around five minutes in.
And I already start to notice some part of a paper
are starting to dry.
So I need to spray before it starting to get any dryer.
And one thing you need to notice is that
when you do a spray bottle,
the mist will change the texture of the paint slightly.
You're going to get some little tiny speck
of water droplets on it.
Even if you spray with a very fine mist spray bottle.
But it doesn't really bothers me because the texture
is very, very subtle so it doesn't really matter for me.
So now, as you can see, I filled in the sky
and I start to increase the intensity of my mixture.
So the make sure it's actually starting
to become a little bit drier.
So when I paint on it, you can get a darker value
and as well as more controlled soft shapes.
Because you need to understand
that when we are using the spray bottle,
we are not keeping the same wetness there.
We're just prolonging the drying time.
So the painting is still going through the drying process.
It's just that with a spray bottle,
we have a little bit more time to work on it.
So I do need to increase my mixture intensity
if I need to paint darker shades, darker clouds.
So like I mentioned before,
you need to adjust the intensity of your mixture
according to the drying stage of your painting.
So work with water color is very important.
Students who struggle with water colors
often, they want watercolor to behave a certain way,
and that's just not the right medium for it.
Usually the more you're trying to control water color,
the more you are going to have it work against you.
And water color does try lighters,
so as you can see a lot of the color that I put down.
In the beginning, they look quite intense,
but as they dry, they start to fade back.
Especially the warmer colors.
So as you can see the hot spot around the sun,
it looks a lot paler.
So I need to also feel those warm color back in.
So I just add a little bit more dark
because I know they are going to become lighter later.
The real challenge here is that you need
to know when to stop,
and that's always the toughest thing in watercolor,
because a lot of time when you are just beginning
to do something that make it look good,
you want to do a little bit more.
And sometimes a little bit more start to ruin the painting.
It's really not easy to know when to stop.
My only suggestion is that when you starting
to like what you're seeing, is time to wrap it up.
So while it's still got a little bit of moisture,
I darken the blue sky on the top,
just so that it has a little bit more sense of depths.
Because the sky does a little bit higher up usually
is a little bit more intense, a little bit darker.
And as it approach the horizon more into the distant,
it got a little bit more haze.
So it become a little bit lighter.
So now I switch to a smaller brush
and I paint with the tip of the brush.
That way I will have a little bit more control
of the shape that I paint in.
And as the paper is starting to dry,
I now have opportunity to go in and start
to add just a little bit of a detail here and there.
But you need to be very careful
not to put details everywhere.
Sense of scale is really important especially when it comes
to a large cloud scape.
So you need to have bigger shapes
and a small amount of details to offset that.
So you can feel the overall sense of scale
while having some sophistication.
So at this stage, the overall big cloud shape,
I am very happy with.
So I stopped spraying
and so that I can work on smaller details,
and touch up things here and there.
So I am using a damp brush to lift off some of the paint
to reveal just a little bit of light.
Now I'm starting to add some more blue
because the blue sky fade back a little bit too much.
So I need to just add a little bit more intensity,
not as dark as the sky above,
but still just add a little bit more blue into it.
So from a wet, moist painting,
you get a lot of soft shapes
and now you're starting to get some dry brushstroke.
and that's a sign that you need to wrap things up.
So, I'm pretty much done with the sky here.
So I clean my palette so I can work on the bottom,
which is just bunch of trees.
But they are very nice looking
because part of it is lit by the sun.
So I actually do just a quick little indication
of where the tree shape is going to be.
And I actually, pre-wet some part of the areas
so that I can get some nice, soft, glowing light in this.
But I do need to mix the mixture quite intense though,
because these needs to be at least middle value,
we are not painting any light value here.
In order to establish the depths
and to keep the distance between the sky and the trees,
the trees needs to be darker.
So I'm painting a middle value right now,
but I'm going to add some dark values later.
So I took this photo right before Easter hailing.
So the kind of unpredictable weather in Seattle
is kind of what makes this interesting.
We got a lot of this dramatic clouds
and just that little last pockets of light
before the sunset, quite often around the spring
and the winter time.
I used to live in California for almost 19 years.
And after I moved to Seattle,
like I couldn't get enough of this beautiful,
epic looking cloud scape in the sky.
And people argued that Seattle rains a lot.
So they don't really like it.
And I can understand why for people who really enjoy sun
and want to go out dry,
it is something that people complains
when they're in Seattle,
because we do get quite a bit of rain.
But because of the rain, we got beautiful cloud scape,
and we got a lot of trees.
So there are some benefits when you got quite a bit
of rains throughout the year.
So especially during the winter and the spring time,
sometimes you get a little glimpse of sunlight
and that's sunlight just kind of breaks through the cloud
and you got this wonderful, beautiful cloud scape
that only lasts for maybe five to 10 minutes.
And I was lucky that I was there.
I'm on top of a parking structure.
So I got a pretty good view.
So I snap a photo and I didn't know if I wanna paint it
because it is such a beautiful scenery.
But I decided to give it a try.
And I'm happy that I did.
So even though it's very hard to compete with surreal scene,
but I'm still happy that I can somewhat capture the essence
of what I see during that time.
So as you can see after I paint the light,
you know, the middle value of the trees.
Now I am painting, adding the dark wet on to wet.
So you got this nice soft transition from light to dark.
And it's a forest of an evergreen tree.
So there are a lot of details,
but we are not painting trees.
This painting is not really about trees.
So I treat them as one single shape
and only around the silhouette area around the edges.
I give it a little bit of details.
But for the most part, I'm just keeping a one single shape
with some value and the color varieties.
I do spray a little bit of spray bottle here as well,
just so that I can have a little bit of texture
as well as I can add a little bit more soft shapes
within this.
So as you can see, you can still feel a little bit
of the light in this forest.
There shade in a distant,
where does sun is now blocking by the clouds.
So you can kind of see that clouds shadow roaming around
towards us and their distant lights,
lighting up the trees in the distance.
Keep adding darks because they do fade back.
And I do need this tree to be as dark as possible.
Not exactly like black rain.
You seem when they do need to be quite a bit darker
than most of the clouds
so that I can really pull them forward
to establish the depths.
Because there's no perspective,
so the only way I can establish depths
is through value and the scale.
So you can see the clouds way into the distance.
They are smaller, they are flatter,
and the trees that's in the foreground
it gets a little bit bigger and taller.
Show a little bit more parallax,
and I darken them so that they feel
they are a little bit closer to us.
So when you have sick enough paint on the paper
and they are starting to become dry,
they're around, I will say 70% drier.
So you can try to scratch it lightly
with a palette knife or your finger nail
so that you can scrape off a little bit
of the drying paint,
and to reveal a little bit of the high light.
So in this case, maybe some tree branches
and some tree trunks and so on.
That's a little bit of interesting effect
that you can pull it off just to have a little bit
of more texture.
Here is the finished painting.
I'm quite happy with how it turned out,
and I hope you enjoy the process.
And get to know a little bit about wet on to wet the timing,
and how to use the spray bottle with the painting.
Wow. Using a spray bottle is not a new trick.
It does make my painting experience easier.
So if you have been struggling with drying time
and find yourself frustrated
because you don't have enough time to do wet on wet,
give it a try.
That's it for today's video.
You can click here to learn more
about wet and wet techniques.
I hope you are having a wonderful day wherever you are.
I'm Eric from Cafe Watercolor.
See you next time.