6 lessons

States and atmosphere

Sky, clouds, fog, sunset and night. Sessions on how to pull the state out of a landscape instead of copying a photo. All digital.

Lessons in this category come with the Basic plan — $12 a month. Choose a plan

subscribers only2:35:49

Week 7. Extra practice. Drawing different states of nature

In this lesson we’ll practice studies of different natural states and times of day. Sunset, daylight, fog, rain and the rest. Finish matters less than catching the state. We’ll also work on graphic and compositional devices in landscape. It’s going to be fun!

States and atmosphere

subscribers only1:14:10

Marathon week 7: "States of nature and atmospheric effects"

This week we’ll study color through the states of nature. We’ll come to understand how the color of day differs from the color of evening. The state of rain from the state of fog. We’ll learn how light works on a clear, fine day, and what kind of atmosphere fog creates. Come to the stream, it’ll be interesting and instructive!

States and atmosphere

subscribers only1:58:05

How to draw clouds

In landscape painting the emphasis often falls not on the ground but on the sky. And the main characters in the sky are the clouds. When they work with clouds, beginner artists quite often forget that clouds have volume, lighting and an inner form of their own. And when it comes to difficulty of proportion, the only thing clouds lose out to is a crumpled piece of paper (which is also a super cool exercise for proportions). Anyway, enjoy the watch!

Light and shade, volumeDigital portraitStates and atmosphere

subscribers only1:34:23

Digital landscape. Nature at night

Painting landscapes isn’t that hard. You just have to paint them regularly, experiment, and bring the logic of color into it. Let me tell you what helps me: I try to push the color in the composition a little. Our job isn’t to copy the photo, our job is to make an interesting painting! Where we see a warm green, a cool pinkish shade will look interesting next to it. If there’s violet somewhere, it’ll be great to see ocher beside it. And so on, around the color wheel and the theory of complementary colors. I go into more detail in the lesson. Enjoy the watch!

Light and shade, volumeDigital portraitStates and atmosphere

subscribers only2:33:02

How to paint a digital landscape

The main sticking point for most artists who run into digital plein air is that they can’t get to the next stage. They’ve roughed the image in, more or less, and then they have no idea what to do next. To paint a landscape it’s important to remember that any piece has to be broken down into masses of different value and color. First you roughly distribute the masses inside the composition, getting the value and the color right, and then you gradually work them up. Once you’ve drawn the tree line, you dig your way down to the groups of trees, and then to the individual trees, making them more specific. I go through the whole process in detail in this lesson. Reference and brushes attached. Have a productive watch!

States and atmosphere

subscribers only3:00:20

Live stream recording. "Value and Rendering" marathon. Week 5: Natural forms

Hi! Yesterday we spent three hours with the crew drawing trees and musing about organic plasticity, supermutants, and the old masters. I love our cozy, productive meetups ✨ If you didn’t catch the broadcast, watch the recording! 🙂

Light and shade, volumeStates and atmosphere

About “States and atmosphere”

How to draw clouds so that they hold their volume, and how to take a landscape past the stage of “the shapes are blocked in” — that is what the six classes in this section are about. About thirteen hours together: two detailed lessons on the digital landscape, a separate lesson on clouds, a practice session of studies on different states of nature, a marathon stream on the color of the time of day and a three-hour stream on natural forms and trees.

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Mood is taken apart here through value and color, not through subject matter. In the week seven class, day is compared with evening and rain with fog, and it becomes visible that the difference is set not by the objects but by the depth of air between you and the far plane. In “Night landscape” the same device is pushed to the limit: the color is deliberately forced, a cool pink is set beside a warm green and ocher beside violet, because the task is not to repeat the reference but to build a painterly statement.

People trip up in two places, as a rule. Clouds get drawn as flat white blobs, forgetting that they have volume, a form shadow and an internal structure; for sheer capriciousness of proportion a cloud is second only to a crumpled sheet of paper, which, by the way, is an excellent exercise on the same subject. The second sticking point comes in the digital plein air, when the image is roughed in and what to do next is unclear. In the lessons that transition is shown explicitly: first coarse shapes of value and color across the whole composition, then the overall line of the trees, then the groups inside it, and only at the end a single tree that starts to look like itself.

The first one to watch is “How to paint a digital landscape”: a full cycle from the first shape to the finish, with a reference and brushes attached. The cloud lesson second, the night landscape third, where complex lighting is added on top of the mood. The stream on natural forms is long and about something slightly different: three hours on how a tree is built, the organic structure of a branch and how the old masters solved the same problem.

The section is small, and calling it a landscape course would be a lie. Everything is shown in Procreate: if you were looking for landscape in pencil, there is no graphite work here, only the logic of value and construction carries over. Architecture, city perspective, water and mountains are not covered as separate topics either, and there is no work from life outdoors. Six classes answer the question of how to paint a sky and hold the mood of a landscape in a drawing; a complex multi-plane view they touch only in passing.

FAQ

Will this work if I draw in pencil rather than on a tablet?

Partly. The analysis of mood, the value relationships and the sequence from shape to detail carry over to graphite completely. The specific brushwork and color moves in Procreate cannot be repeated on paper, so half the value will pass you by.

Where do I start if I have never drawn a landscape at all?

With the lesson “How to paint a digital landscape”. It is long, 153 minutes, and it shows the whole path of the work rather than a fragment. After it, the clouds and the night landscape land on a foundation you understand.

How is this different from the Light and Shade section?

Light and Shade has 45 classes on the instrument itself: value keys, the core shadow, lighting, still life. Here the same apparatus is applied to one task, the mood of nature. Three lessons are listed in both sections, so there is some overlap.

Are six lessons enough to paint landscapes on my own?

Enough to get started and to stop getting stuck at the second stage, yes. To build confidence you need studies of your own, and short ones are better: sunset, fog, rain, twenty minutes each. That is exactly what the week seven practice session does, with no finishing, purely for the mood.

Do I need the references and brushes?

The lessons on landscape and clouds come with both a reference and the artist’s own brush. You can download them from the lesson page once you have subscribed. You can also work from your own material, the sequence does not change because of that.