Lessons
Day 1
1Class Overview
1:05:57 2Q&A
47:19Day 2
3Paint Properties
25:46 4Understanding Color
11:06 5The Color Wheel
22:18 6Other Color Terms
21:35Mixing Colors
10:27 8Light & Shadow
13:11 9Q&A
21:36Day 3
10Paper & Brushes - Introduction
05:12 11Papers & Manufacturers
41:35 12Watercolor Brushes
45:21 13Putting it All Together
14:13 14Q&A
23:24Day 4
15Drawing & Compostion - Introduction
04:09 16Drawing for Painting
50:40 17Proportion and Perspective
29:47 18Supplies for Next Week
48:09Day 5
19Additional Fundamentals (The Fun Stuff!) - Intro
05:00 20Creating Textures
11:57 21Reserving Whites & Lifting
29:11 22Wax Resist
07:00 23Other Techniques
25:37 24Things to Remember
10:57Lesson Info
Mixing Colors
okay so now we're moving on to mixing colors what you need to know you need your color wheel basics that we talked about previously and start playing around with mixing various shades and intensities intensive color you need to know how to paint colors that glow now glowing color is where you stay with transparent sor semi transparent and you try not to mix more than two primaries together so if you want this is where jean dobie is just an amazing painter because all of her colors glow because she is his only trance parents and very few at at one time how to avoid over mixing one of the ways to do that is to let your colors mix on wet paper which is a really nice way to do it but like I said before if you need an area that has a flat color to it flat wash uh you'll need to probably mix on your palate um and making sure that you stay with you know the right colors for the right mix how to make neutrals and grace I when I make grace what I try to do is make grace out of the colors that I...
'm using in the painting so in other words if I'm using lots of blues and bright orange or something like that then I'll make the grace out of those blues and oranges rather than other blues and oranges on my palate it it just makes the greys blend in better and don't forget paint's dry lighter a lot lighter okay now this is just an exercise I did with are opaque ce I took our red or yellow and are blue here's our indian red yellow poker and cerulean blue so this color is a little bit of yellow poker mixed in with the indian red this is a little more yellow ogre and this is a lot of yellow okker mixed in with the indian rid this color is a little bit of cerulean blue mixed in with the yellow good poker and then more and more as you graduate down this color is a little bit of red mixed in with their more red more rid I didn't get the intensity of the colors perfectly but the's air the opaque primaries and you can see how when you use thes opaque ce they make earthy colors these would be what I would term earth earth tone colors this is with our three warm primaries on ly I mixed it up a little bit I put in a cool blue and the french ultra marine so these air very vibrant colors and this is that same sort of siri's of mixtures with those colors mixed together but between the previous side slide in this side just these three six colors you get a very wide variety of colors and this is not all I mean you know this is just the way I mixed him you khun makes him completely differently so you know what we're going to do here we're only going to do one set of mouse ears were only going to do the cools okay this is an exercise so take your mouse years paper fill in your three circles with pure clean water and make sure they're completely wet and then fill in a wet channel between the top two circles and the one underneath and then what you're going to do is you're gonna load your brush with the colors and let them flow down into the circle underneath through the wet channel so I would use your number twelve round for this probably and wet one circle you don't want to get a lot of water I mean it can't it you don't want it to be overflowing and one one thing this thing that I use here I'm going to teach you all how to make that it's not a sponge it's one of those waffle cloths that you can buy and in the grocery store and paper towel in between I saw somebody posted this online as a great soak up tool and believe me it is it works absolutely great and it's so inexpensive than when it gets you know disgusting beyond repair you just throw it out and make another one okay so we're going to do are cool primary so that's our oriol and pick up good amount of oriole in on your brush and drop that into your first circle and see that sort of has already run down into then we go with our lizard crimson couldn't drop that in now pick up your paper and left the paints run down in the channel if you got an extra beat of paint down there you can move it all around you khun let them blend together when you let the red blend over the yellow sea how that's doing in the circle and then you tilted in the opposite direction and get a very interesting effect on how this is what would happen if you let your colors blend on the paper tilting back and forth makes a difference if you don't tilt it all then they'll they'll just this will just sort of run on this side and this will run on that side but one of the biggest things you do in painting in watercolors this learn how to tilt your paper okay so let's go on to our other circles like I say we're only going to do this one row everybody can finish that up at home okay so this is our eliza in crimson and our ultra marine pick up a good amount of a lizard crimson put it in when it flow down on your altar marine yes okay can you see that very cool yeah looks like I didn't get quite enough eliza and let's put a little another touch of a lizard in there and let that run down and don't forget if you get a beat down at the bottom just soak it up with the thirsty brush that's beautiful to me absolutely beautiful the way those things mixed together and mixing on the paper is just really great okay so now we're going to go to our ultra marine and oriole in to make our green don't forget to make your channel between the two and see we're just having no problem painting over these little circles I mean you know this is just a neck sir size class I probably you know but you know I've thought about I've thought about doing a drawing and screening the drawing way back and then printing it out on sheets of watercolor over and over and over so you can paint the same painting several times and figure out what you can learn from doing that okay there's your ultra marine and we're going to go to our ori ellen one of the properties of yellow and it almost doesn't make any difference which yellow you're talking about is it we'll have a tendency to push other colors or out of the way and I mentioned this last week I'm sorry there's so much crossover but there are new people every week so it's important that I repeat that's another thing you know just repeat repeat repeat thats how you pick it up and that's how you learn it I think okay there we go very fun it's a very fun exercise and do it with your other two sets of primaries between I'm giving lots of homework of course you're going to do what you feel like doing but I'm just making suggestions if you if you really are serious about learning paints and learning the qualities of the painting howto work with him you might as well go ahead and do him look at this one in the middle look at that it doesn't do it justice on the camera but it is so beautiful what has happened to those colors in that circle it's just gorgeous this is the one I did originally the one that's up on the screen I like this one better
Class Materials
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Ratings and Reviews
Susan Mueller
Absolutely loved this class! I've been fiddling with watercolor for the last year, but have never really taken any art classes. This was the perfect intro level class in so many ways, covering basic principles of color, composition, etc. - and always in a warm, encouraging atmosphere. I learned so much about watercolor as a medium, and I would recommend this to anyone interested in getting involved with it. Would love to take a class with Molly again!
a Creativelive Student
I absolutely love this medium and have owned the material for about 5 or so years now, afraid to waste them. I've bought books but realizing I am both a visual and audio learner, this is the format for me. It is so important for me to be able to replay and review the information that taking a local course is just not as convenient as this has been for me. Molly is a delight to watch and listen to, she is such a wealth of knowledge. Thank you Molly and thank you CreativeLive!!! I am in love with this site.
Linda Berg
Molly is captivating! Her soothing voice exudes her love of watercolour painting! She is very organized and knows how to paint with watercolours and how to teach it as well. Not all painters can teach... I was drawn into her 'teachings', loved listening to her wealth of knowledge, and signed up for her course. Oh, I recommend it totally!
Student Work
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