Learn How to Draw and Paint with Acrylics WATERFALL BRIDGE-Easy Beginner Lesson-Paint & Sip at Home

hi there I'm Michelle the painter and this is Paint and Sip at home [Music] all right so today I'm going to be painting waterfall bridge and I'm sipping on some Earl Gray tea and if you enjoy this process I do hope that you like and subscribe to my channel and that you also check out my patreon page where you're going to find additional painting perks such as this one so this painting that I did today is inspired by a beautiful photo that was submitted by one of my patreon members by the name of Cheryl Kittle it's of a national landmark in Ohio or in Oregon um and it's just this spectacular beautiful waterfall and I have this benefit for my patreon members whereby they get to submit photos every now and again and I'll turn some of them into YouTube video tutorials and then I said thank you I will send her this original painting so I hope she enjoys it I enjoyed her photo so I hope she enjoys my painting and if you'd like to learn how you two could submit your photo or to get more information on the patreon membership program I have all all of that information Down Below in the video description so let's get painting and let's get seven alright so for my materials today I'm going to be using a stretched and primed 16 by 20 inch canvas if you're painting along with me you can certainly switch up the size but that's what I'll be using I'm using acrylic paint today my colors are titanium white green oxide Chrome yellow Mars black burnt umber which I like to call Brown and fire red and of course you can switch up those colors if you'd like for my tools today I have a standard number two pencil that I'm going to be using for some drawing and then I have three brushes from my personal brush line which is Michelle the painter brushes I have a three-quarter inch wide flat bristle brush I have a quarter inch wide flat bristle brush and I have a number one round synthetic brush and I will most likely refer to these as small medium and large or I'll call them out by their name so those you can switch up as well if you're painting along with me you're probably going to want to have a cup of water for washing your brushes as well as a paper towel for drying your brushes and down below this video in the video description I do provide you with a few additional resources that can help you throughout your painting process one of them is a link to my shop where you can purchase the same exact paint kit that I'm using for this painting from the same size and type of canvas to the paints and brushes and all the good stuff in between you can also purchase from my shop things individually like my brushes from my brushline so that's there there's also a link where you can download a free image of the final painting so you can print that and use it as visual reference as you go through the painting process and there's also written step-by-step instructions down there for you as well and that's all we're going to need today all right so what we're going to do for the first step is we're going to be drawing an outline for the landscape I'm going to be using my pencil you can certainly use any drawing utensil that is comfortable to you I'm going to guide you through a series of markers so we can section off the canvas in some big basic shapes so the first line that I'm going to give you is way down at the bottom of the canvas so I'm going to come down into the bottom left hand corner of my canvas and I'm going to come up maybe about a quarter to a half of an inch give myself a little bit of a marker in through there then I'm going to go over onto the right hand side at the bottom and come up maybe about an inch inch and a half make myself a marker I'm going to connect these two markers with a very kind of Carefree organic type of a line I just kind of dip it down and through here and then maybe just give it a little bumpiness in through there it doesn't have to be anything perfect then what I'm going to do is I'm going to come up from here maybe about an inch to an inch and a quarter somewhere in through here and then over on the left hand side if this is let's see maybe it's even the same height here we've got this this height and on this side it's just about at the at the same height somewhere oh actually maybe it's a little bit it's a little bit higher I got it somewhere in three here we'll just we'll just measure it like this see if it's at the same height in through here yeah the left hand side is a little bit higher than the right hand side and then I'm just going to connect these with just a long a little bit of an arcing line so I went up just a little bit in that middle and came back down this is going to separate our water from our bottom foreground land and then what I'm going to do is I'm going to find myself the center of my canvas so for me that's somewhere in this vicinity top to bottom left to right wherever that Center is what I'm going to do from here is I'm going to go up about two inches give myself a little bit of a marker and then I'm going to go to the left and to the right about an inch and a half each it doesn't have to be perfect mine might even be a little bit more to the right so this is about three inches wide now what I'm going to do is I'm going to come straight down from this marker to my water line and go to the left just a little bit just a little smudge in through there and then on this one I'm going to come straight down to my waterline somewhere in through here and go almost an inch or maybe about three quarters of an inch to the left of that so what I just did was I created markers that are going to put our main waterfall in place and it kind of steers a little bit down towards the left so I'm going to take this and just give myself a really kind of messy line to there another messy line to there and then I'm just going to give myself a horizontal line right to here now what I'm going to do is I'm going to come up to the top right hand corner of my canvas and I'm going to come in I would say about two two and a half inches I'm going to connect here to this corner here with just a long kind of roly-poly kind of bumpy line and then in the left hand corner I'm coming down about an inch inch and a quarter somewhere in through here and now I can connect here to here with again just a long kind of organic bumpy type of a line and that's all I'm going to be doing for my outline I'm going to be using my large bristle brush for the next step so you can put your pencil away take out a large brush and get ready for the next step all right so what we're going to do for the next step is we're going to paint the base coat on the entire canvas so this will be for the back where the waterfall is back into here it's going to be the forest area that's got Ledges and trees and stuff it'll be for the waterfall it'll be for the water and so we're doing a base coat for all of these sections I'm going to use my large bristle brush to paint but I'm going to use my small bristle brush to make a couple of custom colors so I'm going to be making a custom gray color for the background in through here which to me looks like there's lots of Ledges rock ledges in through it and it's it in the distance so we're going to have a soft muted gray as our base coat we'll have a dark green for these sections we'll be using black our dark green down here and then we're going to use black and white as our base for this portion of the waterfall so I'm going to pre-mix my colors first so that way I have them as I go through the painting process so this is my custom gray color right here how I got to this is black and white and then I added a touch of red to it because I wanted it to have almost like a plummy not Plum that's not the right word um like a soft I don't want to call it pink either but it definitely I mean I'm using red in it so it's got some warmth to it but the black and the white and the the red in it is gonna make it almost look like a soft lavender type of a color which is what I'm using a photo reference for this painting and that's what I was detecting as a dominant color in that background ledge so I'm going to be using it as my base color and then I'll add my you know additional details to it later so that's going to give it some good atmospheric Dimension and push it back farther into the canvas than what we see um in the foreground so I just washed and dried my brush I didn't wash it very good but that's okay wash and dry my brush and now I'm going to make myself a custom dark green color which is right here how I got to this is a lot of yellow a lot of green and just a touch of black so if I was just to go black and green my green turns a little bit on the duller side so I wanted it to be a rich for screen so that's why I added more of the Chrome yellow into it and this is going to turn it into a nice rich uh forest green type of a color that I'll be able to use as the dominant color everywhere that I have my Greenery involved and I'll also be using it later for the reflection in the water so that's looking good to me and those are the only two custom colors that I'm going to be making so once you've got those done what I'm going to do is I'm going to pick up some of my custom gray color and I'm just going to paint this entire back section with this custom color I don't need to worry about any fancy brush stroke you could even swirl it around just to give it you know if if you didn't have great opacity and wanted there to look like there's some you know softness to it it for you utilizing the lightness of the canvas underneath you could certainly do that but my paint with the black and the white makes it have fantastic opacity so you're not going to be able to really see my canvas underneath unless I missed a spot or unless I used that scrubbing technique to make it super thin so I'm just going to paint it on in a solid coat and we will be adding all of the little dimensional elements to it later so once I have that what I'm going to do is I'm going to wash and dry my brush and it doesn't matter if it's super duper clean or not and then I'm going to paint in my green areas so that's going to be or the these two green areas we'll tackle this one after we do that um this is going to be this area and this area and again no special brush stroke because I'm going to be using this just as a base coat I don't I all I needed as is the base coat I'm not going for any detail right now um my paint will show streakiness because I didn't use any white in my um color combination so there is gonna you'll be able to detect some streakiness on these particular sections which I'm totally okay with because again I've got so much work to go on this this is just providing me with somewhere to start and when I'm doing these type of things these type of paintings were what I did uh to start this was I looked at my photograph and I picked out basic large shapes of areas within the painting that I could detect a very dominant um main color for those particular sections so we have these big rock ledge areas in the in the foreground that have tons of trees and foliage all on them we I can detect some of the rock underneath the foliage and stuff but as I was looking at the photo the main color I was seeing was this dark this dark forest green so this is the color that I'm opting to start with because it'll help kind of expedite my my painting process so I don't have to worry about all the little fine-tuned detail especially when I'm just applying this base coat but this will speak to the entire area I'm now going to um well I'm gonna do this bottom section I I don't think it really matters if I do one before the other so I'm going to do this bottom section as well this is actually going to be foreground foliage and stuff that's going to overlap our water area but for again this Main section or this just coloring it in purposes we can just paint it like that now I'm going to wash and dry my brush and I'm going to pick up black paint and I'm going to paint in my water with a base coat of black the water is will later be reflecting some of the waterfall as well as it's got some looks like some shallow spots within the water it might have reflections of the foliage there's all kinds of colors that I'm seeing in the water but for me again the dominant color is really dark so I'm just starting with this base coat of black and then we'll elevate it after that with all of the other information now I'm going to put my base coat of my waterfall what I'm going to do I'm just going to add white to my dirty brush so white is going on my dirty brush and this is going to create this on the Fly kind of gray color but I don't necessarily need to or want to blend it all in so I'm just going to kind of go right up to the top of my waterfall in through here and then just kind of pull it down again I don't need it to be perfect right now I'm just starting my process so just gonna you can even overlap it into that green a little bit so you don't have have any gap between those two and you can bump it right into that water section so something like this and you'll see I'm not blending it in so we're going to have these varying tones just organically within that water and then I'm going to be using this same brush for the next step so once you've got this done you can wash and dry this large brush and get ready for the next step all right so we're gonna do for the next step is we're gonna do uh the the first step to this background land so I'm going to be using my large bristle brush the colors I'm going to use are that gray black brown my dark green and white and if I use any other colors I'll let you know I might tap a little bit into the brown as well but what I'm looking to do right now is give myself the basic color pattern of all of the detailed areas that I see back here so what I mean by that is when I'm looking at the reference I see that there's some dark area down by the waterfall the the upper waterfall is going to come down in through here and then the land which is the whatever rock formation is back here kind of gets darker as it goes down towards this ledge of the waterfall so I want to make sure that I've got that back area going dark down here I also want to put in place where my waterfall is going to go so we started this one with a gray type of color I want to do something similar back here but it's got to look like it's farther off in the distance so I'll be doing it with my custom gray plus maybe a little bit of black or brown to get that area in there with a little bit of white as well and then I see some Greenery in that background so I'm going to be using some of that custom green plus maybe a little bit of white to tap in or to start the idea or the impression that there's some trees maybe along the ledge of that piece of land I'm not going to be using a lot of paint on my brush I will be using my large Russell brush I do recommend that your canvas is dry before you start this step and I'm going to always be using very little bit of paint on my brush so as I go through this process I'll be wiping my brush off a lot on my paper towel and it's okay if you bump into these two pieces of land because we're going to finish this before we go on to here and then these will overlap that so I'm going to start with a tiny bit of my custom gray plus a little bit of black and when I say a little bit I just have a teeny tiny dot on the bot on the tip of my um brush and then I'm going to start down in this area down in through here because I see that there's a bunch of Darkness down in this area of the photograph so that's what I'm going to try and emulate and then I can just kind of um swirl it or dry brush it going up into the the rest of that area I feel that there's a little bit of Darkness on the sides of my waterfall so I'm just going to use the remnants that are on my brush to get a little bit darker area in through there my waterfall is going to come down in through here and kind of hide right behind here and spray out a little bit over here so just a little bit of Darkness on those sides maybe a little bit more I'm feeling feeling I want to go just a little bit more I just picked up a little bit more of that gray custom gray plus a touch of black and I'm just very cautious with that black on my brush I don't want it to overpower and make my whole area black so that's why I'm just using a little tiny bit of it plus that custom gray so that's looking pretty good now what I'm going to do is I'm gonna look for any of the greenish areas that uh well actually let me put the waterfall part in first so I'm gonna pick up some of my custom gray and a touch of my white on my dirty brush so if there's a teeny bit of black still on there that's okay when I say a little bit of white I'm talking just dots on my on the corner of my brush and I just want this area to be a little bit lighter and start the process of my waterfall coming I can I'm just giving it some really soft edges to it to make it look like it's spraying out so just little little bits here and there and we will be making this look more energetic and effervescent in a little bit but right now I just kind of wanted to put this on here it looks very spray e it's not good so it's a word that makes sense in my head I think this waterfall I was looking at other photographs of this waterfall the actual fall itself is way super high up so I think as it's coming in this area here it is very um uh Misty that's a good word Misty so that will start that off now what I'm gonna do I'm not even gonna wash my brush I'm just going to pick up some of my custom dark green again just an itty bitty bit and I'm just going to start painting little splotches of that here and there wherever I see them in this um in this back area again don't want to overdo it I just see teeny tiny bits of it if I feel it's going too dark on me I'll pick up a little bit of white but right now I'm thinking um that this is this is working out just fine for me it's given me enough of this color that's making me happy there's a little bit in through here I'm gonna now pick up a little bit of brown and white on my dirty brush so a tiny bit of brown and just to 80 again I can't stress the um little bitty bit amount that I am using so just an itty bitty bit on my brush just to put a little bit of a different tone in maybe these upper Corners so a tiny bit of brown and white just to give myself some underlying different tones back in through there and maybe just a little bit over on this side and then once I've got this done or once I've got to this point what I'm going to do is I'm just going to look around and see if I'm if there's any spots that are not painted like I see a couple of little bald spots in through here so I'm just going to pick up a tiny bit of my gray my custom gray and just make sure I've got everywhere painted in because the next step that I'm going to be doing on this background or on this area is going to be the final step with all the little details so I just want to make sure I just put a tiny bit of water on my brush I just want to make sure that when I go to do those tiny little details I'm not concerned about unpainted areas I want to just tackle my details and not have to worry about um any you know um kind of fundamental things which would be making sure you have the entire canvas can painted so that's looking pretty good to me I got my darkness where I want maybe a little bit more Darkness up and through here I'm going to pick up a tiny bit more Brown I feel like there's some more Darkness up and through here so just a little bit more Brown on my brush the brown will to give you a nice Darkness without it going too dark so if you're working through this and you're saying I just want to amp it just a little bit darker but I don't want to use the black I'm a little nervous to use the black just pick up a little bit of the brown and that'll help you do it and then once you've got this done we're going to use our small bristle brush for the next step so I'm going to put this large bristle brush away take out the small one and get ready for the next step all right so what we're going to do for the next step is we're going to finish this back land including that piece of the um waterfall I'm using my small bristle brush the colors I'm going to use are Brown red yellow white and maybe my custom gray and my dark green so all of my colors except for green oxide which I might tap into that I might not so what I'm gonna do is I just want to give some final details to all of this little stuff again it's off in the distance out of focus it's not my main land in through here but I do want to give it the essence of that stuff back there is similar to here but it's off in the distance so that's where this grayish tone came into place it's throwing it back into the distance and I need to finish the white um uh frothy stuff on the um waterfall so I'm using a smaller brush I'm going to go in for my details um and I'm going to do my waterfall last so I'm just going to go in and do my side stuff so over I'm gonna maybe just start over on this left hand side I see in the picture that there's maybe a couple of little Ledges so I'm going to pick up a touch of brown and white just a little bit of both and I see you know maybe there's a couple of little in the distance these little marks that are going to imply that there's some little Ledges off in the disc you know little peaks of Ledges popping through those green areas I don't see any really on this right side maybe maybe just the hint of um some rocks kind of coming down in through here the faces of the Rocks so what all I'm doing right now is looking for maybe little um areas that I can use directional brush Strokes or the implication of whatever's back there it a lot of this is going to be hidden by overhanging branches so I don't need to do a ton I'm just kind of looking for spots that are a little bit um more evident with their details so I'm kind of seeing some stuff in through here that might work out this is all going to be covered with overhanging stuff but I do want to put some little darker details in through here because I feel like this might be some trees in through here and then there's like branches and stuff underneath them so I'm picking up a tiny bit of black paint and I'm just going to kind of almost like well I'm going to put a little bit of water on my brush too kind of just um dot squiggle some little bits of black in through here as if maybe this is um some little branches and stuff I feel like there's some in through here as well again I'm just I have a tiny bit of black on my brush I'm just kind of wiggling my brush a little bit this is going to allow for it to appear as if there's more details in the background than there than you know that the viewer can't really discern exactly what they are I feel like there's a little bit of this these Branch things or something up in through here so I'm just again using a little bit of watered down black on my brush to kind of get some of these little darker details in through here my bridge is going to come way up in through here so I'm feeling like there's some little dark stuff over here and maybe up in through here that's looking pretty good so now I want to incorporate a little bit more of the greenery so I'm gonna go for my um dark green light green I mean excuse me dark green yellow and just a tiny Touch of white so itty bitty bit on my dirty brush and I can sense that there's maybe just a little hint of some lightness at the top that was probably too light so I'm picking up a little bit more of my dark green um just the ever so faint illusion of um maybe just a couple of little tree toppers somewhere in through there I just didn't want it a flat green color so that works for me and through there and now I feel like I want to incorporate some of there's going to be some orange and yellow leaves throughout the foreground so I really want to incorporate a little bit of that the hint of that in the background so I'm going to wash and dry my brush and I'm going to create a custom orange which we will use later so I have it on my palette here how I arrived at this is yellow red and just a teeny tiny Touch of white paint just a tiny Touch of white paint to help with the opacity so this just gives me a nice orange color and I don't want it to be too bright back here so what I'm going to do when I use it I'm going to also use it with a touch of my gray so I have the orange plus a touch of my gray and again I'm just looking for little little pops of this color to just authenticate the um the foliage that I will be putting on later so just little tiny pops here and there you can use it as space fillers you can you know put it where if you dig it you can even put it more but again just teeny little pieces to just kind of um make the viewer understand that the background is a version of whatever we're seeing in the front so that looks pretty good to me so now what I'm going to do is I'm going to finish my waterfall back here I'm going to wash and dry my brush I'm going to go predominantly white unless I need to tap into to something else but up my my my mission is to just not use a lot of paint on my brush I want to make sure I got all that yellow or that orange off of my brush there we go that works so I'm going to start with just a tiny bit of white just a little bit on my brush and I can um kind of make the the center of this the brightest just kind of using it in a swirling type of of manner and then I can get it to kind of come out and dissipate as it's going over all of this darker colors that we had put my um my bridge is going to be somewhere in through here and it looks like there's a little bit of foamy stuff kind of coming up here the these bristle brushes are fabulous for this type of effect because you can just keep swirling around that paint um you can until it dries and you can keep layering it until you have that white as bright as you want it you may not necessarily want to go all the way white because or just in a couple spots because you're going to have white at the top of here too and that's really where you want the whitest of the white so just as you're going through this just a try to make it a little bit transparent which means scrubbing it a little bit harder so you can see through it that's what's going to give it a nice natural look you can even put a tiny bit of water on your brush and that'll help you get it to thin out a little bit more so you can have almost these additional kind of areas that spray out a little bit more and add to that that frothiness of the um of the waterfall and I'm going to add more up in through here and again this doesn't to me in the image look like it's shooting straight down it really feels like it's almost or appears to me as it's almost like um Misty for lack of a better word kind of curls out like this and then just but soft edges you know Misty but you know maybe it's a little bit thicker in that middle and just kind of allowing for it to dissipate on these edges So Soft edges as it's entering into those darker sides and I always especially when doing something like this will let it dry for a little while before I cast judgment on whether I need to or want to add more but as you're going through this process if you did something you're like wow that was too much just pick up your white with a touch of your gray and that will help you to get like a mid-tone within that um within that water coming down and that will allow it to blend in much better with that background or with the with the land next to it so again if you've if you've made it too bright or too white in some areas just come back with a little bit of that gray intermingled with it and or you could use more white you could really use different combinations in order to get it as bright as you want but I'm gonna I'm gonna let mine dry for a minute because sometimes I put these layers on too fast and if it's not dry enough I I feel like it might dry a little bit darker so I'm going to let it dry and if I feel I want to amp it up any I certainly will and I'll most likely just do that with some white paint and then we're going to be using our large brush for the next step so once you've got this done and get it pretty light as it's hitting this land in through here because this is a you know it's pretty powerful down here and then I guess it must land in the water and then come and push this down here so you can get it pretty light as it's hitting this piece of land enter here and then you can put this brush away take out the large bristle brush and get ready for the next step all right so we're gonna do for the next step is the first stepped The Ledges I it's really the Second Step because we did the base coat but I'm gonna consider the base coat of the canvas just the base coat with canvas and then this is the first real step to these big Ledges that are going to be holding up our bridge and cascading our waterfall through them I'm going to use my large bristle brush to paint but I am going to make one more custom color and I'll use my small round to create that color which I'm going to call Tan so the colors that I'm going to use in this step are black dark green brown yellow and white and oh and we're going to do the the first step to the water too because it's just going to be some carrying some of these colors into the water I think that's it I might use some of my some of that orange color as well but when I get to it I'll let you know so the I I have pre-mixed my tan color on my palette here this is it right here how I got to this is brown yellow and white so a good amount of brown and a good amount of white and just a little bit of yellow so my brown and white is going to turn really dull and I want it to be a nice kind of golden almost yellowy kind of tan so that's where the yellow comes into place and it you just spin it together and this is about the color I'm going for you could be lighter or darker you could have a little bit more yellow in it a little bit more Brown whatever works for you just something that's nice and neutral that will be able to utilize for some details so now that I've got that what I'm going to do is I'm approaching these two sections very similarly to how I did that top section which is in my photo reference I am going to be looking for dark areas and I'm going to be putting those in with a lot of black and brown and then I'm gonna go first some lighter areas which is going to be a lot of the green areas and there's also some bits of rocks and stuff that I feel are pretty evident so that's where that tan color is going to come in place and we're going to put some varying brush Strokes to create a little bit of texture and the and the um color patterns that I'm seeing and then we'll come back on a future step and put some details the water is going to be reflecting stuff from here so as I go through this process I'm gonna prob I'm just gonna dabble in a little bit of the colors that I'm using up top so what I'm first going to do is I'm going to start with a little bit of black on my brush because I actually I'm going to go black and brown because I I see a lot of dark areas in these formations and that's going to help to get the dimension in it so I have black and brown on my brush I'm going to start down here at the bottom I don't want to lose the information where my water is going to meet my ledge so I'm going to just make sure I leave a little of that evidence and I'm also leaving a little bit of the green popping through so I'm just using the the kind of the tip of my brush to almost go left to right I guess I might be doing a little diagonal I don't think that really matters much and then I'm going to go up the side of my waterfall I'm even going to bump into my waterfall a little bit because I want that to really um feel like they are one with each other and I'm I see a little bit of this Darkness right up at the top in through here there's a little bit of a dark line that kind of goes in through here so I'm gonna um I see it so I'm gonna put it in somewhere in through here I do feel that there's some Darkness back here but it feels a little bit more like there's more dark green in it so I have the black brown and now I have a touch of dark green so I'm just gonna make this a little bit darker in through here and again I'm just kind of looking for those dark areas this looks like it's going to have a lot of um greens and some of that tan color that I was uh referring to so we'll leave that for a little bit later I'm going to pick up more black and brown I feel like we've got um some more Darkness up here but I've got some super Darkness down here so that's where I'm going to start since I just reloaded my brush and again I'm going to start down in through here leaving the evidence of where I want that water to kind of meet this dark area so it's really pretty dark down in through here you could almost get away is going black and then coming up this side of the waterfall in through here and again I'm leaving some of that green I I want to be able to see especially along the sides of these of the waterfall because I can detect that in the photo I can detect some Greenery if you by chance cover up all that green don't worry we can we you certainly have the opportunity to add it later and I guess the trick here is just not any firm lines so no clean heavy thick lines just using that brush to give you this softness I'm seeing that directly from here there's a big dark spot over in through here so I'm going to put this big dark spot and it kind of comes over in through here it looks like there's a a ledge or some some rocks and stuff over here so I'm just going to put that we've got a little bit of Darkness down in through here as well just kind of giving myself some dark spots to play with later on I'm picking up more black and brown and I see quite a bit up in through here so I'm just going to kind of give myself some Darkness up and through here and again I'm leaving some of that green because this is how I'm going to get lots of dimension in my in my landscape you could have started with all black and built your way to the light which I do quite frequently I was just seeing a ton of this green and I really wanted to make sure that I was able to get some nice depth in it I'm using my dirty bra or the remnants on my brush right now to get just a little little extra Darkness over in through here leaving some of that green there's going to be some trees popping up over in through here so that looks pretty good so now what I'm going to do is I'm feeling like that's working out just great so now what I'm going to do I'm actually going to on my dirty brush pick up some of my dark green and I'm going to put a little bit of the reflection in the water so I have the dark green and I'm just gonna go left to right and put a little bit of this dark green in the water so this way as I'm building that water I've got the hints of the dark green again don't need to do a whole heck of a lot just itty bitty bit on top of that black it once I have a little bristle that's going to drive me crazy there we go just a little bit on top of that black is gonna start that reflective surface it's going to go uh pretty light in through here so I don't really need to do a whole heck of a lot in through here just kind of dabbling in that green that looks good to me so now what I'm going to do I'm going to wash my brush because I want to start putting in um those lighter areas and I know that I have the black on my brush and that's gonna make everything darker than I want so just wash it and dry my brush I'm going to now find um some of those tan spots and start to incorporate that color pattern so I'm picking up some Tan on the tip of my brush there's a lot over in through here I'm dabbing my brush off on my paper towel because this is it what I'm seeing is kind of these um like little polka dot kind of marks and this looks like it's going to be a little bit too light for me so I'm going to pick up uh with I'm going to pick that tan up with a little bit of brown on my brush as well and again we do have a final step that we'll be doing um later to accomplish the the more fine-tuned detail on this I also feel like um I feel like I want a little bit more Darkness up in through here so I'm picking up a touch of black on my brush I know I just washed my brush but that's the nature of my game I feel like there's more black that connects to This Little Rock in through here whatever it is that I'm seeing this for all I could tell maybe that's a bush or something but we're just gonna do that and that'll satisfy my painterly eye now I'm picking up some more of that tan color I see some more of that over in through here so again just tapping my brush off on my paper towel I'm just going to give myself some of this lighter um coloring in through here just picked up a little bit more Brown the again the trick is to just not overdo it if you're seeing just little speckly polka dots in the photo that's all you need to do just allowing for those color variations to really um play off of one another there's rows of green there's rows of black I see you know tons of this tan color and I I allow myself to just put it in the painting because I might not know exactly what it is that I'm looking at in the photograph but I can certainly um I can see colors so I can see over in through here that there's some more of like little Ledges or something so I'm just going to kind of Pop down some little marks in through here and if I don't get them all exactly as they are in the in the photo I'm okay with that I just I'm just looking in for something that's going to give me something representational of this photo you can certainly go all in and make every single little Mark and make it look hyper photo realistic that's that'll be your decision how far you want to take it thinking that's pretty good for the Rocks there's a couple more in through here so I'm using this brownish tan color in order to represent where I want those um those lighter areas to go I feel like I want a little bit more Darkness here before I start working into where I want all the green stuff so at the top of here I feel like this should be a little bit darker and have a little bit more oomph to it so we're doing that and you know there'll be another step to finalize all of this so if you you know don't get it all exactly where you want it right now that's okay so now what I'm going to do is all these other spots that I haven't put a second coat on I want to put a second coat on so I'm going to wash and dry my brush and I and I'm going to decide what color to do it's going to be predominantly my dark green but I might tap into a little bit of yellow and or orange to set those um the textural tones my bridge is going to go across here which I think we're going to have to put in place soon or at least the base coat of it because there's going to be overlapping branches which I'll want to put as my final details to the bridge but right now I'm going to try and put um again the color pattern darker tones where I see these kind of batches of leaves and stuff so I'm going to start with a bit of my dark green uh and give myself at least a second coat on a lot of these areas where I'm seeing the really dark uh darker versions of the leaves so somewhere in through there I've got lots of Darkness up in through here so again I'm right now I'm just kind of tapping a second layer of this dark green in between um the black marks we'll call them oh that I've that I've just done um or in areas where I feel like there is a lot of the dark green and I'm going to put the orange on in a minute but again I just want a second coat so this is allowing for me to put a second coat everywhere uh in these sections and it allows me to make sure like I did up in the um background that everything is painted so you just don't want to miss areas to and and keep it or making it look unfinished so I know that that's one of the things that I definitely struggled with initially coming out of the gate was making it all look you know really finished and Polished and by doing it in these layers and forcing myself to make sure that everything is painted in these early stages I don't have to worry about it later so I can attend to my details as opposed to worrying if I have this big you know streak of paint in through here that didn't get covered properly so that's looking pretty good for uh the green areas now what I'm going to do is I'm going to start incorporating some of those orange tones and then that might be it for this step so I didn't wash my brush I just picked up some of the orange I do see a little bit down in through here there's going to be some yellow too which will be incorporating but right now just let's say this was kind of here somewhere in through here I'm just kind of tapping in this color in order to again just give me kind of a road map as to where I want um certain not colors to dominate so to speak but definitely to be represented and because I didn't wash my brush these all of these colors are just going to start to overlap one another talk to each other the green is talking to the orange right now the the you know black is talking to the green but I'm not going to put this orange everywhere I'm just going to really try and concentrate on areas that I'm seeing it the most so there's little bits up in through here and then there's some yellow up in through here which I can start with this orange there's going to be some overlapping up in through here and there's lots of teeny little tiny dots of my of that orange everywhere um we're gonna have some soft overlapping kind of trees and stuff up and through here which I'll put later over on this right hand side I've got I don't have as much orange over on this side but I definitely have something right let's see a little bit below here somewhere in this area I've got a bunch of orange in through here and tapping over there and again I'm just kind of taking my brush and just tapping it in these areas I'll most likely be adding more darkness and lightness to give them a little bit more Dimension but right now I'm just saying okay I see some leaves I see some orange yellowy kind of leaves in through here so let me let me just start that process let me get these these colors to start to represent and to to um give me my my jumping off point for these particular colors and sections and things of that nature so this is looking pretty good up here I might put some more Darkness up in through here later as well actually I'm gonna this is super light up here I'm gonna pick up a tiny bit of yellow and white also on my dirty brush with that orange so I have yellow white and orange on my brush right now just to kind of amp up this one little section um that was a mistake because now I'm going to want to put it everywhere a little bit here too okay I'm not gonna do any more of that except for these dots right here all right um I need a tiny bit of this down in the water so all I'm going to do is I'm going to take my brush I'm going to squeeze it out in my paper towel and I'm going to use that remnants and just kind of pop a little bit of lightness onto here I just didn't I didn't do hardly anything just itty bitty bit whatever remnants are on my brush I'm using as Reflections in my water and then I'm going to use um I'm going to use I'm going to use my small bristle brush for the next step so you can put this one away take out your small bristle brush and get ready for the next step all right so we're going to do for the next step is we're going to finish the waterfall and the pool of water below it I'm using my small bristle brush the dominant colors I'm going to be using are black and white but when I get down into the pool I might use some of my green um and if I'm feeling like I need more mistiness I might go into that custom gray color that we use for the background as well but right now in my head I'm thinking mostly black and white so what I'm gonna first do is I'm going to put um the flow in the waterfall first and then we'll we'll add the little details on top of it so I don't want to start with white I only want to use white white at the very end so what I'm going to do is I'm going to right now have both white and black on my brush at the same time probably more white than black and you don't want it too dark but you definitely want it to have some Darkness to it as I'm looking at the photo there is a dark spot kind of coming down the middle there's some darkness in through here and then it almost looks like as the water falls it is hitting some rocks on the sides and there's like these little sprays that come in through here so what I'm going to attempt to do first is just put some dark areas in and then as we build so the lightness we'll be building those trajectories of the water flowing off and it's going to have lots of movement at the top so if this is kind of the the center of my waterfall I'm a little bit to the left of that I'm going to put the see that's not dark enough I'm going to pick up a little bit more black it needs to be darker than what you've done so I'm just gotta make I just keep picking up there we go now we've got a little bit darker so I'm going to just kind of tap my brush down in through here I don't need to color over all of that gray that I did this is just putting in these darker marks in order to help with the um with the direction of the water so there's some dark darkness over in through here so again this is my white with a little bit of black on my brush and I just kind of keep picking up just a little bit more black in order to get it as dark as I as I feel it needs to go so a combination of white and black down on this side I definitely have little bits of Darkness over on this Edge in through here and again just kind of keep picking up as much black as I need to to get these little dark areas to to emerge so we we started with a nice gray base and I did kind of have a directional brush soap kind of going down this way but as I'm more looking at the the photo it does come out this way but there's lots of movement um coming down into the fall itself um kind of in these odd directions so this is coming down in through here like almost popping off of a rock enter here and then there's some darkness in through here kind of almost as if it's seeing the darkness behind it so this is all waterfalls when they get down towards that bottom there's almost like a not necessarily always but there's got to be some kind of um divot in the Rocks below it in order for that water to come flowing on top of it so that's down at the bottom of waterfalls you might end up seeing these dark areas because it's the water's thinner you might be seeing some of that Darkness from whatever the mass of land is behind it and again I just kind of keep picking up a little bit of black on my dirty brush to get these darker areas I've got some darkness in through here and I'm just working off of the photo where I'm seeing these dark spots this is dark enter here and then we've got some Darkness up in through here so now that I've got a lot of good dark areas let me just make sure this um tiny area over here blends with this side there we go something like that that looks pretty good now I can um put a little bit of this grayish tone in the water so I'm not going to wash my brush I'm just going to kind of see what I have on it and this is a nice kind of dark soft gray that I can pull out on these sides and maybe even put a little bit in this water coming in through here the water is not only a reflection of what's of the waterfall but it's also the movement of the waterfall so you can add ripples you can add a firm reflection I'm going for a real soft transition into the water and then we'll we'll put um some bright stuff in a minute so that's looking pretty good let me just get a little layer in through here maybe with a little bit more white in the center area and through here and these two are going to definitely merge together somewhere in this vicinity and then once I've got that on there I'm going to start um adding the brightness to to the waterfall so that looks pretty good I've got my dark end through here um I might want oh maybe not a little bit maybe not more dark but just maybe a little bit more just softness coming down into your hair I'm just using the remnants on my brush and just kind of swirling it around so I don't have too much um streaky streakiness this waterfall looks like it's kind of pulsing as it's coming down so just getting rid of some of those super streaks there we go that looks good now I'm going to not wash my brush I'm going to pick up a tiny bit of white paint so a little bit of white paint on my dirty brush and I'm going to start putting in the lighter areas but because I'm using a dirty brush I am going to have the opportunity to make these areas go even lighter but right now just kind of um getting them in place so this is definitely up towards the top where it's going to be the brightest and maybe even splash a little bit it looks like there's a little couple of splashes up in through there and then I'm just going to keep loading my brush with white even though I have dirty remnants on it with um the the gray or the black that I was using before and again this waterfall doesn't appear to be just shooting straight down it looks like there's it's kind of like pulsing so I'm gonna just kind of use this dabbing type of brush stroke to get my lighter areas to emerge in a direction that I feel is representational of the photo so it's covering up a little bit of that darkness in through there in through here it's a little bit lighter up in through here and then down on these sides this is where I'm going to start seeing the actual trajectory coming off of some of these rocks so over here and I'm going to put a tiny bit of water on my brush too so I can get a little bit more of a pull kind of thing so just little little bits kind of coming down in through here that's looking pretty good and again my dirty brush that's that's my key here it looks like there's almost three um areas where it kind of comes off in through here we got one there one little one here and where they pop off the Rocks that's where they're going to be the brightest so I just kind of put that little bright spot and then just let it pop off like that there's a little one let's see this one is kind of in between these two guys so somewhere over here there's a couple little spots that are coming off these little rocks here and if you want to do a um waterfall out of your head and not copying a photograph you could certainly Bend this and make it into whatever type of waterfall you want I just thought that this one was pretty neat because it's got such energy coming down into um the water and it's a super tall waterfall like we're not even seeing I think half of it it's a lot taller than this this is um one of the UNESCO National Heritage site so there's it it's just a spectacularly beautiful sight um I think it's in Oregon or something like that and having us being able to paint just a piece of it is really neat I think it the perspective of this photo was was really cool so I thought it would be neat to to get this energetic um waterfall on canvas so we've got this in through here really really white in through here so I just kind of keep tapping to make sure that I've got that the brightest where I want it to be and if you're struggling with making it as bright as you want sometimes you can add a little bit of a a different Hue I'm using um just black and white right now but if I was struggling with getting this white to pop as much as I wanted to I could certainly use a little bit of a touch of yellow or a touch of blue to allow for more color diversity in the um in the value shifts and that will sometimes allow your white to look even brighter than um than it is kind of on the Fly naturally like this so I'm seeing this is a little bit thicker in through here kind of merging into here and you know I'm really kind of um attempting to make this look pretty representational of this particular waterfall but again you don't need to go as detail-oriented as I'm going even though again I'm not going a hundred percent full-on photo realistic here I am still trying to get a very similar trajectory I definitely want to put a lot of um white in the water in through here so this is going to be the splash plus a reflection so I definitely want a lot of energy coming in through here it almost just like morphs with the water as it's coming down and then it's got this really kind of almost a clean um a little way about it coming over here so I'm just going to kind of pull that out a little bit and then down in through here this is where we're going to see more of those bright Pops in the water I got a lot in through here and then it looks like it's gonna dissipate as it comes to the left um over in through here and you could certainly switch to a different brush too I love my bristle brushes um I like I'm um I'm actually picking up some of a little bit of black right now because I don't want this to be all white over here um I love my bristle brushes because I can really get lots of texture happening um when I use them but you could certainly in this step you could be using um a small Bright brush or even a small round brush would be fine I'm now I'm using the black and white because I don't want these uh I want to have a kind of a A variation in the colors of the water right now so that's why I did that a little bit in through there maybe just a couple of little um ripples out in through here and then I'm going to start picking up white again and just making sure I've got my pops as white as I want them that probably shouldn't be as white as up here but maybe we'll add a little bit of gray down below so this is looking pretty good to me um I might fiddle with it a little bit more but I'm digging the way that it's looking this this area doesn't have as much spray um as up there did so I'm feeling like I don't need to add too much more I'm digging the way that it looks but maybe just a little I actually I think I am going to use a little bit of brown and white so a touch of brown and white I feel like I want a little bit more dimension in the color um so I'm going to wash and dry my brush I'm going to use because I feel like in through here I want there to be more um more I just just bent my brush sometimes I'm a little violent with my um drying of my brush so I just picked up a little bit of brown and white I feel like I I want there to be um a little bit more dimension in the water but I don't want to go more white and I don't want to go more brown or black so I'm adding this kind of a a light brown to these sides um and that's going to help to make my water down the middle look a little bit brighter as well so this was just a little bit of brown and white to help with just a little tonal shift in that in that color variation I'll make that Center stuff look a little bit brighter and then I can pick up a little bit more white and this will get these guys in here to look even brighter so those are just the little little tricks that as you're as you're going through and you're saying oh mine it's just not it's not popping enough it's not you know I want there to be more brightness to it I want there to be more definition to it it's usually because you just need more color contrast and for me I was feeling that that's what was happening I was too black and white and I needed to have a little bit more color contrast in order to get this Center area to really shine as the part that that's closest to the viewer um so I just added those little um that little bit of of brown in order to get those sides to sit back a little bit further and then I would just let it dry keep fiddling with it as much as I want to in order to get it into the brightness that I want but I'm thinking that it's looking pretty pretty good in my opinion right now um but I might like I said fiddle with it just a little bit more maybe just a little bit more on these guys and through here and then we're going to be using um we're going to use our small brush for the next step so once you've got this done fiddle with it as much as you want you can um put this brush away take out a small round and get ready for the next step all right so what I'm going to do for the next step is I'm going to be painting the base coat for my bridge I'm using my small brush the color I'm going to be using is that tan color that we pre-mixed what I'm going to be doing is I'm going to be guiding you through a series of markers and we're just going to paint our branch hopefully we'll have something that doesn't look like it's going to fall down by the time we're done so I'm just using my tan I'm going to um on the left my bridge is going to be about halfway between my waterfall and the top of my canvas um so that's where I'm gonna start my Mark I'm just gonna give myself a mark I'm going to say I'm about three inches from the top of my canvas so somewhere in through here it looks like it might be a little bit higher than um you know a little bit more towards the top than the bottom of here so around the middle spot about three inches from the top then what I'm going to do is I'm going to take my brush or something that you can use to measure I'm going to take it I'm going to say okay I did this one this high so I'm going to go over until I feel like it's disappearing between behind my trees give myself another marker and then I'm going to do the same thing over on the left hand side so I'm just going to say okay this is about how high it is I'm going to come over where it's starting to disappear behind the trees and give myself another marker now I'm going to connect these with a long line so I have watered down I I've used a little bit of water on my brush with my paint and all of this is dry and I will be resting my hand on my canvas and this will help guide me into a straighter line we will be doing highlights and shadows and details and all that good stuff so it's not perfectly straight don't worry and you could also draw yours out if you wanted to just kind of connect your dots keep your eye on the prize which is the next marker so if I start here I'm going to just kind of watch for my next marker and that wasn't totally straight but we're okay with that and then just do the same thing here you could make many more than um three markers you can see mine is not totally straight but again I'm okay with that because I know what's going to happen next so I'll have ample opportunity to correct it then what I'm going to do is I'm going to come down about a quarter of an inch below that and make another line so you could um just go for it and just kind of make it just a little bit lower or again or you could mark off if you wanted to that'll be totally up to you I'm just gonna make a second line like that then what I'm going to do there's gonna there's two um on this bridge there's two wide pillars so one of them is right about here I'm just gonna put a kind of a wide pillar in through here it goes up just a little bit above the top railing and I'm gonna do the same thing I think the other one is somewhere in this area and through here so I'm going to do another one I say wide but that's relatively speaking they're really tiny so something like that and then I'm gonna make a whole bunch of little uh vertical lines between here here here here and here just a whole bunch of them they are probably um I would say maybe an eighth of an inch apart from each other they're just super tiny so just little vertical lines if you can equally space them great but they're so tiny and they're so close together I don't think that if you are off a little bit that it's going to matter and I think the biggest trick is just to keep them vertical so I know for me when I'm doing these kind of small repetitive Mark making like this I have a tendency to tip them one way or the other especially if I don't move my body right behind it so if you're finding you going halfway through and it starts to tip you might need to shift your chair that you're sitting in um or just kind of somehow give yourself a couple of straight markers you know you could go between here and here and say okay well there's there's a straight one or ish and you'll have that visual to kind of keep you on track because if you if you lose the visual and your body starts going crooked you're so too is your um your paint stroke so if you wanted to look vertical and you're not having success it could be a variety of of reasons that are um making it not go vertical and I'm painting from way over here on the side so I'm not even sure like those look a little slanted to me so I will I will um either Rectify that right now or not worry about it so it's again how how much is important to you do you care if your lines aren't perfectly straight so now we're going to put a curve down underneath it once I've got this on here I'm gonna um come down I would say well go kind of to the center of your bridge and come down maybe about another um quarter to a half of an inch somewhere in through here and then I'm just going to do a long curved line into my land so for me on this side it's going to land right about in through here so I'm going to take from here I'm going to put some more water on my brush so I have fluidity to this I'm going to take it from here and then just give myself a long curve like that and I'm going to do the same thing on the other side um I think this one kind of disappears a little bit higher on the landscape somewhere around here I think you could probably detect we see less of this here than we do here so I think we're seeing um the bridge from a little bit of an angle so this one looks like it's going to be a little bit higher on the right side so I'm just um adjusting for that something like this that works for me and then there's um this whole piece kind of we're going to be doing a shadow on it later but I'm going to just paint it in a solid color right now so I'm going to take from here I'm just making myself a marker right kind of in the middle there and I'm going to come up from here just a little bit like in through here I'm going to connect here to here with a similar Arc is what I just did so it's a little bit more narrow here than it is here so that'll give you a little a little extra Q in through there I'm going to be painting in this whole area so I don't really care if my line was super perfect and then over on this side it is a little bit uh wider too maybe somewhere in through there and then just kind of giving myself this connector nine like this the top side can be clean the inside or the bottom side I'm going to color in right now so I'm just taking my tan and coloring in this whole section right here again we'll put more dimension on it in a future step but this is just giving us our base coat and it's going to hide behind a whole bunch of trees and stuff over on the side so don't worry terribly what happens over on the sides we can hide anything with foliage and then I'm just going to finish out this side I might have to adjust this a little bit looks a little wonky to me but we'll see how it plays out and now there's I'm going to make a couple of curved lines so there's like these pillars I'm gonna take it and I'm gonna first just make a vertical line like that one there one there these are a little bit wider than the rails up here I'm going to take one here make it pretty I'm kind of just pushing my brush as hard as I can and that will give me a a similar width from each of these I'm going to do the same thing on the other side I think I'm going to put my first one here and then I've got one here and then I've got one hiding behind these trees enter here and then there's a little kind of Arc at the top of them just a a little bit like this we're going to color in this little inside part in a second I'm just going to take this give myself a little Arc and then one more over in through here uh there probably is one there but I don't think I really see it too much so I'm not going to do it and then I'm going to do a similar arcs over here and again don't worry if there's exactly symmetrical from one side to the other but if they can be similar that's great and any little space that you have from this bottom edge of the rail to the arc just color in with the um with the tan color so this whole little inter mingling section right in through here you can just color it in so I just gave you those lines so we had an easy way to draw and paint at the same time um but now we're just going to color in this whole area and then once we've got this on and you can certainly if if you felt it um would behoove you to put a second coat on um the bridge color you could certainly do that like I know that I used thinned out paint um for some of it because that gives me a better shot at um getting I think I have a little spot right here too that might see the arc but we're just going to color it in like the other side um if you felt you wanted to do a second coat feel free to do so we're going to do this same or use this same brush for the next step so once you've got this base coat for the bridge you can wash and dry this small brush and get ready for the next step all right so we're gonna do for the next step is we're going to finish our bridge I'm using my small number one round brush the colors that I'm going to use are tan black white and that might be it if I use any other colors I'll let you know so what I'm going to do is I'm going to add lots of shadowy stuff underneath the bridge there's um I want there's part of the bridge that we actually see underneath these little arches so I'm going to put that in place and then we'll put some itty bitty tiny detail on these rails and stuff so I'm going to start underneath here I'm gonna be using uh my tan plus black on my brush at the same time I'm going to be giving this dark side underneath here but I'm going to leave a little light Rim up at the top as if that's the exterior Edge that we are seeing as the as The Spectator of sorts so I'm just bringing this all the way down to um where it meets the the edge of the forest or the ledge whatever you want to call so again I'm using my tan plus a little black on my brush this one's going to come up pretty close to here so let me just kind of Mark this off so I have an idea of how wide I want it to go that looks good and through there and then again just keep reloading my brush and I'm working in such a tiny area using a little bit of water on my brush is again going to help me get these nice clean little lines and it looks like the underside of the bridge appears to me to be a little bit darker on this left hand side so I might after I get this on here I might go back to that left hand side and make it even darker with a little bit of black but right now just getting this dark area in here and I I actually I'm definitely going to go darker and the reason being even if um it's not as dark as I'm gonna go in my picture I needed to have some contrast against this background and through here so I definitely need a little bit more black because it's not showing it's because it's the same tone I'm painting it as a very similar tonal value so if you're losing the bottom of your Bridge because it's no darker or no lighter than the area behind it means you need more contrast so for me I'm I'm making it a little bit darker so I'm adding a little bit more black to the equation so it can pop out in front of that background so those are just little little tricks again if if you're going about this and you're saying wow why isn't mine popping why can't I see the bottom of that bridge against that background those that's primarily the reason why so I'm just keep amping up my darkness so I can make sure that I've got it as dark as I want and that I'm coloring in all the areas that need to be colored in so that looks pretty good now I'm going to tackle the dark under side of it so what I'm going to do is I'm going to just take it from this little pillar here and I'm just going to draw a line to the left so I'm going to take it from here I'm going to skip that pillar and draw this horizontal line like this and then I'm going to color in these sections with black paint and when I'm doing these type of really you know small detail kind of things you have to decide how much detail do you as the artist really want to put into it especially when you're emulating a photograph where you can really easily just get lost in all those little fine-tuned details so as I'm developing the process to to paint this for you guys I have to make decisions as to what I'm going to eliminate what I'm going to keep am I going to keep everything and in this particular painting I opted for some pretty good detail in the bridge but I'm going to um eliminate some of the detail in the in the foliage because I felt like this was pretty um pretty firm with the detail before I finish that thought so I'm just going to come straight across here and this whole section is pretty much black and then I can just take this line and go across like this and this disappears behind there and then I'll color these and enter here so I could have made this bridge very kind of loose and interpretive but it looked pretty clean to me for um the details on it that I think we could accomplish them with some simple Line work I did eliminate there was people all over the bridge so I got rid of the people but and left this bridge as its own beautiful bridge and so you make those decisions now what I've got to do is I'm going to kind of make a line of a little bit kind of almost right at the top of these arcs I'm still just using watered down black at this point this is going to separate the top of the bridge from these overhang or these um Underside things so I'm going to just take a little bit of my watered down paint and kind of give myself a skinny little line just coming right across like this and if you wobble a little like I just did don't worry about it I'm running out of paint now so just reloading and coming across like this kind of hitting the top of those Arc archways there's a little Shadow I'm seeing from this pillar right here we can actually see the side of this pillar so I'm actually going to bring just a little bit of a line down here uh there's one here too because of the angle of the bridge I can see a little bit of the side of these uh pillars that looks pretty good I can't see that on this side so now I'm going to take that thin you know watered down black paint I'm going to put a shadow underneath this upper rail so just a tiny bit of black paint and um and a very light touch and only one eye that's the only way I can see it so I'm gonna holy cow this is so tiny I really uh in the past week or two have been testing my eyesight with these little tiny detail paintings I'm skipping this um but actually let me put a little one up top here there's a little one there that one's a little higher and uh right down in through here so I'm hardly touching my canvas I've got watered-down black paint to create oops that was a little wonky a little one up here and then over here and again you know do as much detail as you want I most likely gonna um when I get to the little pillars I might make them a little bit more simplified but that looks pretty good like that um I think that there's a little bit of a kind of a shadow on the sides of these guys and through here something like that and then maybe just a tiny touch I'm just hardly touching my canvas to get like a little dirty Edge and through here a little watered down black that looks good all right so that looks pretty good now what I'm going to do is I want to just kind of add little bits of highlights um on the on the remaining parts uh that looks pretty good I think I need a little bit more of a shadow right underneath these guys this right here this looks like it needs a little bit more there we go all right so I'm going to wash and dry my brush I'm going to pick up some tan and white so tan and white is going on my brush right now I'm going to put a pretty big highlight in through here I need a little bit more tan than that so it doesn't go all the way white on me and you don't need to make this a solid color going across this is just something that's going to Accent the concrete if you will of these particular pieces so and get them to pop out a little bit more so just a little bit in through there and then I'm going to do the same thing up on the upper pieces So Tan plus white I feel that a lot of these Center ones kind of have um a little bit more brightness to them so you could do the whole thing you could make them I feel like I want mine a little bit wider so I'm just using my tan Plus White in order to give myself a little bit more um with on these and a little bit more but you don't want them to go too wide that one was too wide you don't want it to uh take away from the um the background look of your Bridge so this is looking pretty good maybe a little bit looks like there's a little um detail kind of stuff at the top I'm going to just kind of pull a little bit in through here like that and then I'm going to put a little bit on these guys and through here maybe a little bit more white and then once I've got it kind of on to the best of my ability or as much as I want to I can sit and Fiddle with it so if I felt that the top of this wasn't popping enough I could you know pick up a little bit of white with my with my tan and get this top to be a little bit brighter so those are the decisions that once you've got everything in place you can make as to whether or not you need something to be brighter or darker or allow it to stand out a little bit more I'm thinking that um I might want a little bit of this tan and white on these couple of pillars right in through here they look like they've got a little bit of lightness to them and then once you've got it done we're gonna switch to our um I think I'm going to be using both of my bristle brushes for the next step so once you've got this done you can get your bristle brushes out and ready and there we go and get ready for the next step all right so what we're going to do for the next step is we're going to do the second step to our ledges and the first step to this foreground area I'm predominantly going to be using my large bristle brush but I might tap into my small bristle brush if I feel the need so I'm going to be using black brown dark green orange White um and that might be it am I I'm not that might be it I'll call out the colors as I use them so on my Ledges there's just so much dimension on them and I want to make sure that I capture that I feel that I need more Browns and stuff deep colors especially up in through here um in through here I still feel like I need some more like deeper brownish green kind of colors and same thing with up here I also now that the bridge is in place I can start overlapping these the foliage that's going to be kind of um hanging in front of it and there's also a couple of trees and stuff up in through here that I want to um put their leaves and stuff in place and then down in through here I want to get the colors to start to emerge with their own Dimension there's a bunch of leaves that are going to be overhanging this whole area so I want to make sure that I start those and I also need to I have some unpainted area down at the bottom of my Ledges that I want to take care of a future step will come back and do some branches and some fine-tuned detail on leaves and some sticks and stuff but right now we're gonna we're gonna get the majority of that dimensional stuff in place so I am going to start with a touch of black and brown on my brush at the same time because again I feel like there's some areas that need more Darkness to them so this little rocky thing in through here I feel I need more more black little dots in it in order for it to look like it's got as much Dimension as I want it to and I will come back and put some little highlights and stuff on it in a little bit but I'm I really just want to make sure that I have enough Darkness where I feel it's it's necessary I need this down here to be closed off so just whatever dark color I have on my brush I can take care of that this looks pretty good in through here I'm pretty happy with that except for this one little spot so just making sure that that is accomplished we've got some dark in through here again just kind of making sure that I've got as much Darkness as I want it's always for me seems to be easier to build more Dimension if I have those deeper tones underneath so as I go through this these processes I just picked up some more Brown um and if I'm developing it and I'm saying ah it's just not I'm not feeling that I have enough shadows I'm not feeling that it's dark enough so I will come back in a step like this and make sure that I have that stuff Incorporated so I don't struggle with adding that on top it's you know Shadows to me are underneath things so it's easier for me to just kind of come through in a step like this and you know add this extra bit of darkness and or like I'm putting some more Brown on my brush right now and getting these to um to read as more earthy tones a little bit more black is coming on because I feel lots of Darkness up in through here and again the green is still evident I still have the green showing it's just I I needed those those deeper tones in order to make it feel Lush and have that depth into it so in through here this is where it's gonna um start to emerge uh and pop out from the um from the hillside or the ledge side so I just picked up a tiny bit of my dark green just to give myself a little pop out in through here make sure that I've got it um overlapping my bridge where I feel it should be and I'm thinking that that's pretty good again I'll put some light color on it in a little bit but this is just kind of again just kind of getting me started that works in through there I feel like I've got some good Browns in there now that looks good maybe a little bit more Brown in through here and you can see I I don't wash my brush much because this just helps me get all of these things to um work with each other I'm putting some brown on top of the green on top of the black and the brown I know is transparent so it will take on some of those colors underneath and that helps build that information so again I'm going to pick up more black and brown and do the same kind of thing over here because I feel I need a little bit more um depth in this area in through here so I'm just stippling right now just taking my brush and dotting it except for in through here where I feel I need to rub it a little bit to get into the little crevices of the canvas because those are unpainted spots right now so just making sure that I get those tackled there we go that that took care of them and you can have little bits of green that's going to make it look like there's little Moss or whatever on that bottom side of the cliff or the overhang whatever you want to refer to this as I do feel I want a little bit more black in through here so again this is where I just make sure that I've got that as dark as I want it so I will be adding all those little bits of highlights this is pretty light in through here um with the greenery and foliage that's going to be happening but there's a little bit more depth in these guys up and through here year so again just kind of tapping in a little bit more of that Darkness I'm going to pick up a little bit more Brown as I'm going up into this area up in through here because I feel like this is going to take on more of the earthy green tones maybe a little bit more black I love I love my black when it comes to getting these depth the depth into this these textural elements that looks good I'm going to cross over my bridge right now just getting um kind of hide in the edge of that there's going to be little sticks coming up in through here there's some good a little dark spots along the edge of there little dark spots around here and then we've got this guy coming up here I'm going to now pick up some of my dark green and get some of this to um just kind of tap that off on my paper towel there we go that works and get some of this to overlap in through here we're going to have a couple of trees popping out in through here but I still want to have the evidence of that background behind there so I'm not going to overdo this I just want to kind of diffuse the edge of this Hillside so it's not a solid color that looks good now I'm going to come down into my foreground I am going to um I'm not gonna wash my brush I'm going to just use the dirty stuff on there because I feel like there's a little bit of of Darkness right in this area in through here so I'm just gonna kind of uh get that a little bit darker and I'm gonna really need to do much just making sure that I don't have a gap between my water and my land um I'm gonna pick up some of my what am I going to pick up now I'm gonna pick up some of my dark green and orange I see a lot of little Speckles on the ground so I just picked up some dark green and orange and I'm just going to kind of dot this in through here it looks like some of this land kind of overlaps into the water a little bit I'm not quite sure if I'm seeing leaves floating in the water here or if we're seeing little sprigs of um uh pieces of grass or something so I'm just gonna go intuitively here and just kind of tap in where I'm seeing some of these orange spots that looks pretty good I'm gonna wash my brush now because I feel like it's a little overloaded with paint over on this right hand side I'm going to pick up some of my uh my um I'm gonna go dark green uh to start and I'm gonna I'm gonna tap in a couple of pieces kind of coming up here the there's the leaves that are overhanging in this area but I don't want to overdo it so I'm going to be very cautious uh in through here so this is just the dark green to uh kind of get this Edge started now I'm going to pick up a little bit of my orange and I'm gonna just kind of lightly tap in where I want these to um have a presence but I'm not over doing it right now I just want to I'll be putting a little bit more detail on them when I come back and do my final details but this is just going to kind of set my stage as to where I want them I want to kind of show a little bit of this black in through here so that so it looks like we have these little peekaboo spots between the um the leaves and the and the water so this is just gonna give me this fun little Carefree display of these leaves and then we can add some fun detail on top of it so that looks pretty good looks like there's a little batch of them in through here and in through here and that's looking pretty good to me so I didn't use my medium brush um I think um thinking that looks pretty good I think I I think that's all I'm going to do for this step I'm going to use my um my small bristle and my small round for the next step so you can just get ready all right so what we're going to do for the next step is we're going to finish our Ledges or Cliffs I'm not quite sure what I keep calling them but these two areas right here I'm going to be using a combination of my quarter inch bristle and my number two or my number one round um and I'm going to be using a bunch of colors I'm definitely going to be using my dark green yellow white orange and red and I might use some green oxide too but as always I'll just call them out as I use them so I want to add a couple of sticks and trees and stuff there's a couple of trees up here and I see some branches kind of leaning down I see some branches and um I kind of want to bring this tree out a little bit further maybe to it comes out maybe maybe out into here so I want to add those little branches and the rest of the highlighted type of leaves so I'm going to be elevating my my light spots and making some um some more textural type of marks I want to put more brightness on these areas down in through here where I think it's like um very textured kind of rocks down in through here and then bright bright leaves throughout so I'm going I'm starting with my bristle brush and I think I'm just going to kind of start at the bottom work my way up for the textural stuff that I can do with this brush and then I'll switch to my small round to do my branches and my tree trunks and stuff so I'm going to start down in through here with my tan color I'm also going to pick up a tiny bit of my orange and brown so I don't know if I said those colors but tan orange brown red yellow white dark green light green I think that's it so right now on my brush I have tan Brown and orange in order to give myself some little highlighted speckle marks on this uh piece of a rock in through here and I will use this color combination for all the little areas that I feel have this similar type of tone to it and I'm just speckling so this is allowing for me to have all the colors that I had put underneath to still show through so tan a little bit of orange and a little bit of brown I've got a couple little pieces of it down in through here because I'm using multiple colors on my brush at the same time it's allowing for um diversity in these little marks that I'm making so it provides me with um spots that might be shown a little bit more a little bit shinier from the Sun or have a little bit more texture on them or have a little bit different color to the Rocks because rocks have lots of different colors to them so that will help to accomplish that kind of look it looks like it's pretty uh dense and light down at the bottom and then gets pretty dispersed up at the top so I'm just trying to give myself a similar type of color pattern and that looks pretty good in through there I'm going to go elsewhere where I see this color so tan uh orange and brown I I've got this stuff happening over here as well so there's a there's a light spot in through there there's a couple little rocks there there's a couple little marks there we've got some down in through here and you can see I'm just I'm just saying okay well where do I see this color and and what type of area am I seeing am I seeing little tiny dots am I seeing a bigger area that looks like there's me you know I don't even know what this is if it's a rock or if it's a little uh flowers I don't think it's flowers I just think it's part of the rock there's part in through there then it kind of uh dabbles over in through here that looks fine to me so tan orange and brown where else do I see this it's here um I think there's well we got these areas up in through here so let me just kind of pop over here with these just little tiny spots of highlights are going on there and again that's what my mission is right now is just to kind of give little bits of highlights here and there onto all of this all of these pieces I think that's good but maybe just a little tiny bit in through here something like that and maybe a little bit enter here that looks good so that's good for those areas and now I'm gonna um I wanna just make sure I've got my branches and stuff as big as I want them so I just wipe my brush off on my paper towel I'm going to pick up some orange um with a little bit of my I'm going orange and green oxide because I want this to be a little bit lighter than that dark green so this is orange and green oxide and I'm just pulling it out over this bridge a little bit orange and green oxide and same up and through here this Branch to me seems like it comes out about this far so I'm gonna I'm gonna pull that out just a little bit more so we've got that color represented and I I like this orange and green so I'm just kind of putting it along this Edge in through here that's making that pop out a little bit more and I'm digging it so I'm Gonna Keep on that Quest so this is orange and my uh green oxide I see uh it feels good to be putting it in through here I can put it along this Cliff side in through here that's a great combination orange and my green oxide I want to pull out these um little branches out in through here that was too much orange but that's okay we'll just wipe our brush off and pick up some more green outside and just give a little bit more definition in through here I do need to put my um my tree trunk and some branches but right now just kind of getting some life with this additional tone on the edges of these rocks something like this or this interior Edge that looks pretty good up and through there I'm going to pick up a little bit more orange um I'm gonna go orange with a touch of white on my dirty brush I want this to be brighter up in through here before I start adding my final details to it so but while I'm here and I'm thinking about it I just want to add this little bit of additional brightness in through here that looks good um and then I'm gonna tackle that same thought process that I just did there I want to add those light pops of leaves um throughout the the rest of it but there's dark areas that I don't want to overwhelm so like in through here super dark so I only need little bits of Pops of color so I'm just going to wipe my brush off and I really liked that green oxide and orange combination so I'm going to go for that right now green oxide and orange and I'm going to start I'm going to just pop in tap in my brush I might pick up a little bit of yellow too um just so this is not all to one note in through here so I'm going to pick up a um a little bit of yellow and white so I have orange yellow white and green oxide off my brush right now just give myself these little extra pops of color in through here I will add some red also in a little bit but I'm just going for where I see these really light tones and I'm alternating I'm going to alternate between my orange my green oxide my yellow and my white and this is going to allow me to just say okay well I see a little extra yellow and white up in through here so let me let me put that up in through there I see you know little pops of these orange dots so let me put those over in through here I see little teeny tiny ones all up and through here just little itty bitty ones up and through here but I don't want to overwhelm it so maybe I put a little bit more orange on my brush so it's not all the same light color I think that's the um the trickiest part about it this is going to be somewhere down in through here and you can alternate those light and dark colors this is going to be more of like a reddish or Rusty color in through there so I don't want to go too too light which I feel I am right now so I'm I'm heading back to my green oxide and I'm going to put a tiny bit of red on my brush too so I have green oxide and a little bit of red that didn't work because I have white on my brush too so I just made some pink we don't need to do that I'm washing dry my brush I'm gonna put um a little bit of red and my green oxide I like kind of mixing these colors here because it's going to give me these little different kind of Pops of leaves throughout the this area I'm not sure if this is like an early spring um uh landscape or if it's an early fall or a late spring maybe because I know around where I live we have a lot of our branches our leaves as they are Awakening for the spring they look yellow so I don't know an orange so I don't know if this is spring or fall but whatever it is it's super pretty um I just picked up more of my orange so I can get a little bit more orange up in through here I've got lots of little dots up in through here so I'm just kind of working around with these um areas I've got a lot of lightness in through here so I'm gonna just play with a little bit more lightness in through here and then I will um switch to my small brush once I've got a good assembly of these light areas I have a light yellow on my palette that I just put made with a little bit of yellow and white so you can do that as well just kind of dabbing in where I'm seeing some real light looks like there's a couple of branches that are overhanging here and here I'm picking up a little bit of green oxide so as I float around I'm watching my picture and I'm saying okay well I've landed in this area over here and I'm seeing a like a real light green color so that's where I said okay well I've got a little bit of my orange on my brush but I bet you if I picked up a little bit of green oxide to counteract this with maybe a little light yellow it'll give me something similar to what I'm seeing in the photograph and you can of course you know modify those colors I'm picking up a little bit more orange I see a couple orange Pops in through here these branches in through here I feel like they need to go a little bit lighter so I just wipe my brush off I'm going to pick up a little bit of green oxide and yellow no no white unless there's something on my brush and then just kind of pick a couple of lighter areas in through here where that are already pretty light and just kind of dab in a little extra brightness to them so this is green oxide and a little bit of yellow and this will help me to um get maybe some extra little branches just kind of popping out you can I'm I'm doing a little bit of a directional brush stroke right now I'm kind of pulling them down towards the left which is kind of what I'm seeing in the photo just looks like there might be a little bit of direction to those ones um I'm feeling that's pretty dark and through there we've got a little bit more in through here maybe with a little bit more yellow and orange on my brush to just warm it up but keep it light so that orange helps to do that so the orange will help to kind of keep that tone warm but I because I had the yellow and white that that allowed it to brighten up that looks pretty now I just want to amp them up just a little bit more let me just first put this little Pop there's this little bright pop over here which I think is fascinating I don't know where it's coming from but so that looks pretty good maybe uh in through here maybe some more of that green oxide and yellow just similar to what I did and through here just kind of pop in a couple of real bright ones in here just because I'm feeling like I'm seeing some extra green stuff just like in this little area in through here and maybe intermingled with these bright ones that we're going to put up and through here the colorful ones there's some sections with some colorful ones so that looks good I'm going to switch to my small brush now and I'm going to put those tree trunks on and then we'll come back and put some fun um little final details on the branches or on the leaves so black and brown I'm going to put a couple of trees up in this little corner up in through here and I'm going to bring them to you can scoot them behind some of the um some of the leaves if you want or in a minute when I put my final details on the leaves you can put the leaves on top of it so whatever you're feeling whatever you're comfortable with I'm going to kind of put them I think kind of behind there and then maybe make them re-emerge under this little guy in through there and again I'm using black brown and now I put in a little bit of water on my brush there's a little branch that comes somewhere out in through here and again there's no need to make every single Branch exactly as this photo is unless you're you're doing a photo that has you know an iconic branch that you know everybody is familiar with and and it's always you know it's a big huge hearty branch and and it's it has a purpose and you know the story of that tree can't be told without that one branch just have fun with branches they don't they don't need to be exactly as the photo has them you can really enjoy the process and and make your own Wiggly branches and make make them have character to them I am um using a lot of thinned out uh black paint on my brush in order to just get a couple of these real skinny branches I'll put leaves on top of them in a minute but this will get that started I'm gonna do some faint ones over in through here so again black brown and a little bit of water and you can pull these on top of your lighter leaves so that's going to give you that added Dimension within that area so if you're missing some Dimension and you want to add the illusion of something like that we'll do the same thing down at the bottom with some branches um on those leaves but now I'm gonna wash dry my brush and just put some pops of bright little marks everywhere so I'm gonna pick up some orange red and my light yellow which was just yellow and white and I'm really at this point just going to make these tiny little polka dots um I don't want it all to be the same color but I definitely want there to be some little pops of brightness oh I could have used some branches in here too but maybe I'll tackle those later but if it's turning to yellow or too orange or you want a little different of a color of a mixture don't use the same color all the time but you can certainly take whatever is on your brush and say oh I want some little red pops over here or I want a couple of little red pops over here or I want some down at the bottom in through here I'm really just polka dotting at this point um and I can carry that color that's on my brush to many locations that will tie it all together I don't think that there's many on this side with that kind of color combination but definitely I see maybe a couple in through here but not not a whole heck of a lot and then I change my color combination so maybe now I'm just picking up my orange I do need some additional stuff in through here to overlap so I'm picking up a little bit of my orange I'm just going to kind of overlap little bits of stuff in through here I'm going to put some little bits up in through here and again I'm at this point kind of freestyling with my colors as I as I'm enjoying them but you could certainly make yours more or less or you know have lots more of the orange or lots more of the red if you're feeling those colors just really roll with it and and have that enjoyment out of it I like this the um the pops of the orange over in through here and again little tiny polka dots that's all I'm doing right now where I feel that I want to incorporate those those colors um definitely in through here I feel like there's lots of extra bits of this Orange in through here and again I'm working with the orange right now so I'm carrying that orange everywhere that I'm seeing it and then um I can come through this one's got a little line of it in through here so little pops of the orange and through there it's got some up in through here and then I see a couple little Pops in through here and I'm just Mark making so again I found this color in one area of the painting and then I'm saying where else do I see it and I am incorporating it in those areas so I feel that there's some in through here and then I definitely need some light yellow in a minute here and I want to before I go any further I'm going to put some more branches up here so I just picked up some watered down black paint I want to just kind of incorporate some little branches up in through here this was not necessary but you know again for me as I'm going through these ice you know if I see stuff that I that I'm intrigued by like this little Branch underneath the bridge I wanna I wanna incorporate it it's just one of those things that it you know feeds my painterly eye makes me feel like I've accomplished something I was able to see this little tiny thing and and get it to you know be incorporated in my painting it might not be necessary but it it feeds me as my as the painter that I am now I want to pop in some pretty bright yellow stuff so I'm I have this light yellow over here but I want it more yellow so I just added a bit more yellow to it and I just I'm feeling some bright pops of yellow in a whole bunch of places and that's what I'm gonna do I'm gonna put a couple in through here a couple tiny ones over in through here maybe a couple over here and again try not to overdo it just um I'm gonna pick up some orange too so I've got light yellow and orange um just wherever you feel it it would be who of you I I might re-pick up my um my small bristle brush too because I feel like I want um bigger marks in some places but you know it could easily um take you you know 100 Years of what every single leaf on so you just gotta know when you're where your limit is and how much you want to to put in the painting um but I'm thinking I'm almost at my limit and I'm gonna put I'm gonna put some more up in through here some things I have patience for some things I do not tiny details and million little leaves I love the effect of them but once I get to a certain point I'm like okay I have enough leaves in my painting so you might come to that point too um but the more you do the the more beautiful it comes out so I just keep painting until I'm like yeah that's that's where where my visual um excitement is at and this light yellow is totally doing it for me it's bringing these these little leaves at the edges it's just bringing them to that that to that place that is exciting me to look at so that's you know another another thing that I go for if I am I as the as the painter am I excited to look at it because if I'm excited I can certainly um kind of sell that excitement to the viewer just by you know my fun paint Strokes or you know the energy that I've that I've put into it as I'm as I'm painting I feel like I'm really going impressionistic on these little um leaves up here which is fun I'm enjoying it and then I think and that's pretty good so I will let mine dry and if I do want to add any more little leaves to it I certainly will but I'm feeling like I've got it to a place where my painterly eye is saying that's very exciting and pretty right now so you could probably just stop so I think that's where I'm gonna go um I am going to be using my medium and my small brush for the next step so you can just get ready all right so we're gonna do for the next step is we're gonna finish the foreground all I really need to do is pop a couple of little leaves and and texture down at the bottom and I'm gonna do a couple of more in Focus leaves over here and we'll put some little sticks or stems and we'll be all done so I'm going to be using my quarter inch bristle and my number one round I'm going to be using all the colors that are used in the leaves up top plus black so my light yellow which I didn't even show you how to mix that it was just yellow and white um that I used in the last step Orange uh white and black and my green oxide and yellow maybe I use any other colors I'll let you know so I'm going to start with my bristle brush just get my bigger things in place and then I'll do some little details over in through here so I'm going to pick up some green oxide yellow and a little bit of white and I'm just gonna pop in some extra little bright pieces on the ground in through here I think there's some little bits in through here you can have this representing as um uh like a little Branch or something that's sticking up from the ground or you can have it going right into the water so however you're seeing it um I'm kind of seeing it both ways I'm kind of seeing it as uh rocks and then stuff sticking up but you might be seeing it some other way I'm picking up some more green yellow and white and just popping in a couple of light areas back in through here so these will be just like little pops of leaves back behind the big leaves that I'm going to be putting on in a second and then I'm gonna just wipe my brush off I'm gonna pick up a little bit of orange and red on my dirty brush so I can get a couple of little um dark leaves or little Pebbles and stuff down right by that water's edge in through here that looks good maybe a little bit in through here as well and then I've got I'm going to pick up a little bit more of that orange and red there's a couple of bigger leaves I feel like I want to put put some reddish color in this guy in through here and then maybe a couple little spots of darker red stuff in through here and then up in these um little pieces up in through here so this is orange and red I'm using on my dirty brush so there could be some of the light yellow or some some other color on there this just giving me a couple of dark little marks within um this assembly of uh leaves that I'm going to be putting in through there or that I am putting into there as as we speak um this is good I feel like there should be some Darkness down in this bottom corner so I'm wiping my brush off I'm gonna I didn't say I was gonna use black but I'm picking up just a teeny tiny bit of black with my dark green and just kind of getting this a little bit darker down in through here so black and dark green which I did not say I was using in the beginning of this step just making this a little bit darker down in through here that looks good and now I'm going to looks pretty good I'm gonna wash my brush and I'm going to put some of that um light yellow on my brush with a little bit of orange so light yellow plus a touch of orange and this is just going to pop in a couple of more vibrant tones throughout this area and this I will take and I will um kind of manipulate these corners of these marks to make it look like these are little leaves but you can just kind of dab it in there and then I'll show you how to just take your small brush and create a leaf type of shape um once you've got these uh just varying marks throughout it so again this is just my light yellow and a little bit of orange and again just kind of putting in some bright marks and then I'll take my small brush in a minute and make some of these look more realistic so again just little tricks on how to create the illusion without having to painstakingly go through every single piece on you know every single area on your mark on your painting with a fine-tooth comb this these little tricks can help you to establish oh details without um without laboring over them too much you know just getting that impression of of what it is with the color and these are bigger marks than the ones up in here these were dotting this is kind of I'm kind of giving it a larger area so it looks like it's closer to the viewer and that will allow it to allow the viewer to understand that this is something that is closer because I've got these bigger marks in through here and in a second I'll put a little bit more detail on them so they'll know what that thing is over here maybe these are a little bit smaller maybe this is our closest area and over here is just a little bit smaller so I'm going back to my little dotting more so than um making shapes now I'm going to switch brushes to my small brush if I can find it it's ready to go all right um here it is that was I almost didn't know where my brush was so I've got my small brush I'm going to put um some light areas on here I'm going to start with my light yellow and this is where I can take each one of these guys and say okay I could have the like this little Edge to this one and I could shape it just with like these little points um on it and it's now gonna make it look like it's a a leaf that's that's closer to the viewer that maybe we're seeing the you know all those little edges to the leaf you could you know take this one and just put little points on the edges of that you could take you know this one in through here and put just little the little illusion of some some edges on there and again this is just this one right in through here I can kind of detect that there's a little leaf in through here so I could take my light color and just kind of tap in some little points to that leaf and now I've got something that resembles uh the edge of a leaf even down in through here and it doesn't just have to be light yellow you can use all light orange and and yellow just something that's going to allow you to have um the opacity where you can um see or cover the paint underneath so just taking this and you know just using the initial shape that I had created and now I'm just kind of enhancing it I can just take those little edges and just kind of pull them out if I wanted to put more red I can pick up a little bit of red and have more more red than that I have a little kind of edge the ones that were a little bit red I can just add a little bit more brightness to them and pop out those little corners and that'll make it look like it's got a little bit more substance to it and then if you want you can wash and dry your brush and put a couple little stems of your um of your leaves so I just picked up a little bit of black um watered down black and I can just kind of throughout here just put a couple of little stems nothing too invasive uh the photo definitely has them more invasive than I'm willing to put them but you can you know put one here you can put one over here you could even put a little leaf at the end of it if you wanted a little little leaf at the end of it you can have as much fun creating those you could have it coming from one of your leaves if you wanted to and if you did it and you're like oh I don't like those at all you could certainly just dull them down just you know pick pick up a little bit of white or or any other color to just kind of um dull them down even your light yellow would would do it for you so whatever whatever you need to do to make it into the way that is visually appealing to you feel free to do so and then once you've got this done we're going to use this same small brush for the next step so you can just wash it and dry it and get ready foreign so we are on to the final step this is the final step of every painting which is to sign it so I typically sign mine in the bottom left or the bottom right I'm using my small round brush I'm going to sign mine in the bottom left using dark green paint I like to sign mine with my initials but you could of course sign yours with your first name you could sign it with a fun symbol you could sign it on the back you can really identify your paintings whatever way you want because it's your painting and you get to mark it as you want as you wish and that's going to conclude this painting I hope you enjoyed the process I hope you painted yourself a beautiful waterfall scenery and I look forward to painting and sipping with you again sometime [Music]

Channel: Michelle the Painter

Views: 51,540

Keywords: how to paint, acrylic, painting, tutorial, lesson, beginner, simple, easy, artist, painter, class, step by step, tips, learn to, how to, paint, sky, landscape, realistic, beautiful, best, autumn, fall, top, morning, mist, leaves, falling, forest, water, river, brook, silhouette, bright, vibrant, colors, bridge, park, iron, wood, pretty, stream, two, fog, walking, wooden, enchanted, canvas, wall, art, free, online, virtual, zoom, course, school, artistic, sunrise, sunset, nature, scenery, image, bob ross, waterfall, Mulnomah Falls, cascade, flowing

Id: AXONmjX2KbU

Length: 129min 25sec (7765 seconds)

Published: Sat Jul 01 2023