Let's try a little sponge work now. Of course sponges work best when they're wet. So we put a little bit of the sponge into the water, let it soak for a minute and then x Bell the water quite a bit. We don't want the sponge really wet. We just wanted absorbent, but not super absorbent. So now I have a little piece of sponge, I could even rip a little spot off.

I'll just use the whole thing of what I'm going to do is dry just a bit more. And I'm going to get a little texture on the rock. Now how do we do that? Well just get some dirty paint. We call it dirty paint which just means mixing a few colors with the sponges if you're cleaning your paint, so this is blue, and I'll just check it on a little piece of paper. See what it looks like.

That's blue. And I want to adjust that with a little bit of warmth. So I'll take my brush and add a little bit of orange to it. A little orange in here. And definitely not orange yet. There we go.

And I might say, Hmm, I think I need a little more blue in that to get it a little less. There we are. There's a rocky sort of blue. And I'll just tap my brush. Now my brush me tap a sponge in there. Check it out.

Hey, ready to go. I will now tap the sponge, get even cut the sponge. Notice this is a little bit round. And I'll just tap it into the Rock and I'll get some texture on that rock. There we go. Some rock texture doesn't hurt to turn your paper a little bit.

Hey, I'm getting some nice texture. Also in the grass. Watch this. See? I'm getting now a little bolder with my sponge. And how about if I swipe the sponge excellent Look at that.

That's great. I love that fine here and get some texture on my water. Oh look at that. Got it. Oh, it looks like this is behind now see you a little bold doesn't hurt. Again nice straight line.

Pull it across. Nothing ventured, nothing gained. I like it. sponge. You know what? I'm going to get to leave a little bolder and do some work on the birch bark with the sponge.

So I'm going to take my it's not too wet. It's just a cylinder. Take a little more wetness to it. And now I've got some dark purple in here. Always check it first to check it on here and see what happens to my drawing. I like that.

Now I know birch trees because we use them for firewood. I've cut many down when they're just at the end of their life, and we've used them for years on our property. So here we go. Gotta tap a few even over that little white section is gonna tap a little bit of texture onto my tree. See, because I'm using just the edge of the sponge I can control exactly where this texture is going. I like that.

I can even go back to my rock and add some dark texture on there. Oh, look at that. Like it like it may be a couple down here. Yeah, a couple right up here. Don't be afraid to use credit cards. Don't use them at the store, use them in your studio.

They work a lot better. I think I'll try a drag on here with the edge of the sponge. Look at that. It's almost like painting. While this painting, we're just reusing a sponge and one more good dark right here. Now I can use the very tip of the sponge to make little textures on the tree.

There we go. And the rock I could probably control it a little more. Tap, Tap, tap into that texture, great texture on the rocks. Could do green, all kinds of different colors using your sponge to create texture, staying away from here. Just a couple coming over. right up into the trees there.

I can have little flowers on there. Very nice. So if you're tired of using a brush all the time, get a sponge going. Mix up a little light purple and just because it's wet now I can get some hard edges back. The sponge does create a soft edge, but it can create a hard edge also. So I'm coming across here with some little ships on my rock.

Always keep your rocks lighter on the top because the sky is hitting the Top of the Rock. Now this is dry. Let me just put a little wet, warm wash over this rock. I really like this rock I'm gonna start a little bit down here. Just touch it with a bitter rag and then just tap up and spread that red don't touch the white on the tree. Look at the tree is now the rock is behind the tree.

Good level little bit of that yellow showing. I like that rock and This is a little dark, so I'm going to pull that down a bit, soften the edge. If they're near a lake, they could be soft edged rocks like river rocks, or if their field rocks just popping out of the ground. Then they're referred, but we want to lose the rock into the ground. And of course now I see that this probably should be a little darker and the paper slightly wet, put a little bit on a soft edge here. I like a soft edge there.

And you know, this is starting to really move along. There we go. Okay, so what I'm going to do is bring it right over like this. So once again, the small brush you can regain some control Roll with your small brush and just fade it up into the dry paper. And let me take a look at that. Yeah, I like that better.

I like that better. I might even just fade it up a little more. So what we're going to do now is darken the ends and spots on the branches of the birch tree and I'm using my small brush. Notice how I'm holding it. I'm just using little dots strokes. And the reason I'm doing that, or I'm just pulling a few strokes here and there, turning my paper so that I can get a great control.

And I've got my palm race. my palm is resting on my table so that I can get a good strong pole on My brush and it's okay with painting to turn your picture around simply because you don't want to have your hand all over your picture. Now you see this branch is a little darker so I put it dark at the end, but a couple little dark spots on the bark. And like I say the ends of birch trees are darker than the trunk, the trunk is the white part. Once you get up to the branches up high, they start to get darker. So you can see I'm just filling in a few of the branches with nice control strokes.

I'm going with a very dark purple here, right down in the shadows of the rock adding some deep dark accents into the shadows. That's where the darkest darks are in the shadows in the shade. So you can add a few little, pop a few marks on to your rocks if you want. And you can mix up a good strong green with fellow and as I'm nearing the end of a session, I start mixing the paints all over the place. And I'm going to show you how to get some grass strokes. You're that sound.

That's the sound of boldness, the brush is just hanging over the paper. And then what I do is just lower the brush and just concentrate on that hand moving. I don't worry about if it's going to look good. I just worry about nothing and just adding the grass texture Using my whole arm and holding the brush up straight and grass grows up, water runs downhill. So don't draw your grass with down strokes, make all your strokes go up. And that's my first layer.

Now I can bury the rock with some grass strokes and I'm on to feeling confident because I've got this stroke moving different directions. And now I'm going to darken it, I want some darker greens. And away we go. Just twisting the grass one way and another up over the rock in here and I can spend a little bit of time taking my time putting in the grass strokes. But we do have some orange grass to read grasses. Let's add some little seed pods, orange seed pods on the ends of the grasses.

Let's add some strong Alizarin Crimson pods on the end of the grass. So you're adding texture, different things in nature all over the place. And what I'm going to do is I'm going to bring it across from here and I'm going to tilt my paper because I want a uniform color over my mountain. I wanted to be seen as a complete shape so it doesn't take away from my tree We'll pick out these little flowers later. Now you see my puddle is happening here. Can you see the puddle.

Okay, so now I have to turn it this way because I'm going to have to hop over. But water does run downhill so it's okay. There's that little white spot on my tree. If you have a little pasty area, have that with ultra ops with ultra Marine, this little fellow wash is great because it will sort of thin thin down the ultra marine and make it a little more transparent. There we go, coming right across this wash going around my little limb there. And now because it's getting to be a smaller section, I'll put that brush down.

I'll take my cleaner brush, and I'll take a little bit of the greatest Blue and start bringing it across. That makes that stand out a little bit more. And then as I get over here, it will turn that lovely yellow brown into the right tone. There we go. And as you can see it's a little bit too strong here. So I drop it in.

And now I'm adjusting so that I get a graded wash from here right across. And that's looking better. Just Just here is not quite right for my liking. I'm going to take a little stronger Halo and pop it right in there. And I'm going to create not a shadow but I'm going to create a bit of a formation on the hill to give it more depth height. See, so I'll just pop in a little bit here.

Might even just prop this a little bit to get it a little bit lighter and rub it on my paper towel and lift off some of the ultramarine using the failover mixture. See that because I'm trying to get a good transition between both sides. There I think that looks great. If that's it, dropping a little more there, see other paints puddling it's okay to have a little bit of a puddle. And now the next part is just going to go across with a little bit of this. You hop over a bit of the grass and just add a little bit more on the water in washes, so little dark here and clean it off.

Now papers Dry, the paint is wet. And I can get a little gradient wash right there. Put a little bit in here of the yellow. I'm going to go over that with a little bit of this. Maybe the yellows a little bit too strident. It's a little cadmium.

It'll switch a cadmium. see what that does. Oh, I like that better. Now remember, we're gonna let it dry. So if it's a little bit too red, we'll take our brush. bigger brush, clean it off.

Just pull it right over the whole thing. See the whole thing and shadow what's up