hello I'm Wilson Vicar thanks for joining me today I wanted to give you a little free art lesson tips and techniques here on how to portray submerged rocks in your water to make the actual rocks look like they're underwater now I've got a little bit of a background started here just to give you an idea so we could put it within the context of a painting so you know how to fit this in and what it would actually look like on my palette I have Van Dyck Brown burnt sienna and titanium white these are all sharpened brand paints I'm gonna be using a two-inch primer brush and I haven't put any dirt in I want this to look like it's coming into shallows where you're seeing dirt through the water and some submerged rocks so I'm gonna put in the base dirt color underneath I'm gonna take some titanium white a little bit of the Van Dyck Brown and a little touch of the burnt sienna just something in my mind that makes a sandy dirt color and I want to go a little bit on the darker side of things because I'm gonna ultimately want the rocks to be a little bit lighter so I'm just gonna mix a flavor that I like here that in my mind looks like dirt or sand depending on how you feel about it and I'm gonna cover this bottom portion of the canvas we have to put the base tone in first underneath and then the rocks on top and then I'll show you that it's all in the blending how we actually pushed those underwater so I'm gonna bring this up and I'm gonna softly blend this into the water so I'm gonna use a little bit of a criss cross stroke just enough not much pressure if need be I can actually wipe the brush off if there's too much paint on there to do the blending you can actually either pick up a clean brush or wash this one out or simply wipe it off I'm pretty sure wiping it will be adequate enough but I want to melt the edge between the blue and the brown so they just softly kind of melt together needs to be a gradual transition like the water is coming in there's there's still gonna be water over the dirt but it's gonna be transparent you're gonna be looking through the water into the dirt and the stones so I want to blend those together fairly smoothly like that now this is gonna look totally awful for the first few minutes I need to put all the rocks in the magic doesn't happen I blend I'm gonna take my number 8 flat sable brush and again the brush isn't an important get a brush that works for you I could use a round brush at this point this is one that's just not a really stiff stiff bristle and I want to mix up a lighter color I'm mixing it right next to the dirt color because I want to achieve a lighter brighter value and I'm going to load the brush up like this to a chisel edge and I'm gonna come in and just simply paint in some basic rock shapes notice I'm just twisting my wrist you don't have to get too technical with these because we're gonna simply come in and blur them which pushes them under water and like I said they're gonna look very harsh it's first to start out with they're not gonna look like they're under water at all what's gonna happen is I'm gonna give them a light blending and see I'm just kind of randomly putting them in there don't get too repetitive put them all in a row like ducks swimming in a row basically what it amounts to is the less you think about it the better that way you don't get in the rut of making anything too precise and the same needs it needs randomness so I'm just filling it up make it look like a really stony bottom leave dark notice there's dark in between each and every rock though don't clutter it up so they're all touching you want some space in between as I go higher on the canvas I'm gonna do the shapes a little smaller and you'll see I don't reload quite as often and by using less paint on the brush they're getting a little fainter and I'm making them smaller so that's adhering to both art principles that you've always heard about the two perspectives aerial perspective and linear perspective aerial perspectives means they're getting softer and lighter as they go away and linear perspective means they're looking a little smaller as they're going farther either these are getting out into the deeper water or you actually start losing sight of them I'm gonna come back one final little touch here I'm gonna take a little more white into that and a little more Sienna and just get a little bit lighter value even something a little lighter and brighter and on some of these I'm just gonna make them a little lighter because each stone is going to be facing the light source which is the Sun obviously but it's gonna be facing the light source at a different angle some will be getting a little more light some will be getting a little less so I like to break it up and usually if I put lighter ones I put them towards the middle of the canvas because that's where we want the viewer to be drawn as toward more towards the middle of the painting so I just put a few of these in like that the key is not using too much paint there's not a lot it's not a real thick application to pay night touch the brush down like swish it turn it and there's just a little bit of a enough paint there to do the job I'm gonna go back to this large brush or you could use a fan brush just a boar bristle fan brush like this just something you can get a light touch with I'm actually gonna use this dirty brush just wipe it off a little bit the key is just a very light grazing stroke and I'll just do this one half watch how hard this edge is and then watch how this one kind of blurs out a focus see how it pushes them underwater all you're doing is just taking the edge off those rocks and softening making them a little bit blurry it's easy to overdo it and blend it to death and then you end up with just no rocks at all you want to use just a very light touch see how that blurred those out of focus push them under to further enhance that I'm gonna take my pallet knife which I've got this creative mark s59 which is typical for the wet-on-wet type of painting method that you're probably familiar with I'm gonna pull out a little bit of white I'm gonna cut off just a little sliver on that blade and where I've got some wave lines and sparkles in the distance I'm gonna continue these down over the top and you'll see that as they put these over the top of the rocks it tends to push those under because we're actually putting a surface on the top of the water now and it makes it feel like you've got a surface on top of the water and the rocks are underneath so it kind of just enhances that illusion that we're trying to create now is that pretty cool or what that's a great technique to know about people look at that and they scratch their head and say how in the world did you make those rocks look like they're submerged it's that easy it's all in the blurring and the blending of them but go easy on that try that out I think you'll enjoy it thanks for tuning in catch you next time