How to Paint a Whimsical Fall Landscape with Foxes, Owl and Rabbit - Beginners Watercolor Tutorial

Hi everyone and welcome. I'm Diane and my passion is painting and creating nature-inspired watercolours in my studio which are easy for you to do too. I share all my paintings with you on YouTube and on our website dianeanton.com you can find free downloadable sketches for all the videos to help you make the most of your painting journey. And if you'd like a little bit more we also have channel memberships with loads of perks for you So welcome on board, click subscribe and turn on notifications and let's learn to paint watercolour. Well autumn is now well and truly upon us and I assume everybody in the northern hemisphere is in the same boat. Lucky you in the southern hemisphere who have now got spring but I suppose autumn would eventually turn up down there too. Today I'm going to therefore draw and paint or at least paint a sort of autumn scene and I have in mind a fox and I realised a little while ago that I haven't ever done a tutorial of a fox although I have actually painted them in the past so I've been doing a lot of research today and I've been painting bits and all sorts of practice stuff. Oh dear it's such a hard life being a creator we suffer so much oh dear um yes anyway just joking not at all it's the best job in the world. So what I'm going to do now is talk about the paints which is the first thing to do and the paper I'm going to today I'm going to treat myself and use a piece of arches 140 pound cotton watercolour paper um the thing I normally don't use I don't know why I just feel like it today no idea shouldn't do really because arches is you know only meant for people who can really paint you know like certain other creators who are really really good um but I'm not like that anyway uh why am I saying this because I need to warm up it's cold um so that's it I'm going to use piece of arches but you can easily instead use other things and one thing I recommend is not to have your shelf fall on you recommend this in fact I might even use this why should I waste my good paper um Clairefontaine European company made in Europe I think they're mainly owned by a Scandinavian company now so they're ethical um don't chop down too many trees a lot of it I'm sure is totally recycled Clairefontaine big company they actually own arches actually should mention that been meaning to mention that for ages they own the arch arch factory now I should say arch since I live in France I should say arch shouldn't I um I do believe that is true and um so this is good paper it is good paper it is European and it's good and I use it a lot so maybe I will today break out a sheet of etival which is about 50 cents a sheet and um you can't really go far wrong with that can you or you could use etcher or bockingford here's bockingford this is good I like this Ron Ransom used to like this Ron Ransom who um has stimulated many people into painting with big brushes like this one the Ron Ransom hake everyone should have one I gave mine a haircut because it didn't seem to work didn't make it any better so eventually I bought a new one uh I use it occasionally I don't think I'll use it today though anyway going off to the track the other piece of um paper that you could use I should have got this all out before I started shouldn't I please forgive me etcher watercolor block this is how you spell block p-a-d it's a block because it's glued all the way around except in the corner here where you can insert should you wish to do so once you've your painting this is for serious painters this is cotton too I believe although I can't say who made it uh so anyway you slide your letter opener in there like that and then you go around just separate it like that just like that so I'm not going to use that today uh I'm going to use my Kuretake set and I have gone up a notch in how I'm using it now because I've started to get familiar with the paints as they come out of the little pots not pots pans not pans what would you call one of these uh container let's call it a container so what I have been doing up until now is I have been taking paint from there and like all good five-year-olds just putting it straight onto the paper and that's fine because there's so many different colors here you can just go along and vary it and and and you know this paper by the way is completely unsized and you can see that because where I've just painted you see all those little dots that's not granulation that's where the paint has gone straight into the paper and sunk in more in some parts than in others um because it has no it's old this is a piece of paper that's been hanging around in my studio probably about 30 years and the sizing has gone that does happen you know that does happen to paper so if you have use it or lose it I've got loads of sheets of paper here that I will never be able to use because just kept it too long I don't want to use it I don't want to break into that I say stupidly and then what happens you lose all the sizing and you can't lift that anymore if you're using a decent piece of paper you can go in and you can lift it by doing this but look see you could do that until the cows came home and nothing would ever lift so you can't paint on this but you can draw on it so it's okay for anyway so that's what I had been doing but then I decided it was time to elevate myself so I've got my nice white tray here used to be white and I put my pans on here and you could just take out the ones you were going to use and put them there and then you can pick up some paint and you can either put it down here and do what I normally do which is to just blend on plus so to speak like that and then you can pick up something else you make a nice gray and that's the way I'm going to do it today I think you can also if you don't have a butcher's tray you can use one of these little dewberries and you just you know collect some paint from your box bung it in there and then you can mix until you're to your heart's content you see hopefully I'm making it clear what I mean so then you just pick up a bit more of a different colour bung it in there a bit more of that blah blah blah so you know that's how you use these I kind of think of that as being the way I normally paint with my tube paints where I put the tube paints around the outside and I mix in the middle so this I'm going to do something similar the Kuretakis are there and I'll be mixing over here that's the idea I'm going to use a size 12 I think 11 or 12 draw well brush and if you want to buy Japanese brushes very inexpensively from a nice man in Japan direct cut out the middle man very inexpensive the information about how to go about doing that is in the description below this video and he also has these ones which have nice black handle and these called maestro and they're a little bit very little bit more expensive but significantly better quality these ones are really really good workhorses I use them all the time look quite a few in there I don't know why I think he keeps sending them to me for free but um that's okay they don't really wear out though if you're careful with them so the colours I'm going to use for this are going to be burnt sienna most of you will have burnt sienna in your set I'm going to use this colour beige for the moon you could use maple's yellow for that instead the rabbit is going to be done in grey you could use if you haven't got this kind of grey you could use Payne's grey or just dilute down some black I'm going to do the sky in indigo or you could use phthalo blue if you haven't got indigo in your set the owl is going to be done in a sort of beige that would be raw sienna or yellow ochre and he's going to have specks on him of a dark brown which would be something like burnt um burnt umber or burnt umber would be in most people's sets the leaves I'm going to do in orange this is the orange here and cadmium orange you could use cadmium orange too I'm sure that will be in most of your sets plus a few other odds and ends and bits and pieces and dips and drips and drabs and bits and bobs and doodles and so on as you go on and I'm just clearing up here a little bit to make space to put my paints there is that the paper I'm going to use yes I think so I decided in the end didn't I to use to use this now if you want to watch me drawing this you'll have to become a member and go over to Patreon and sign up you can pay two pounds a month and you'll get extra videos over there and this will be one of them I'm going to draw the design on here because this video otherwise would be way too long you can also join on YouTube if you don't want to go to Patreon so you just join here for I think it's $2.99 a month and you get these extra videos and other bits and pieces which you can explore to your heart's content if you just go and have a look at the information about membership that would be wonderful I would really appreciate your joining right I'll be back in a minute when I've drawn it okay so here I have my sketch which I've just done over on Patreon or on the membership section of the channel so if you're a member you'll have been able to take a look at that and now what I'm going to do is I'm going to start to paint the sky first I'm going to do the sky and then I'm going to have to let it dry because I just need a slightly smaller brush for a second what did I do with it there it is because otherwise we'll get too much running so that's not any good either let's try this one you need a brush that has a reasonably decent point I'm not succeeding and I'm going to just wet the sky around the moon reasonably carefully although we will be able to correct any missteps with a little bit of gouache otherwise known as thick paint and the leaves don't have to be super accurately done but we do want to paint around a little bit you could mask them out with masking fluid if you wanted to that's another thing you could do I'm not going to do that I don't like masking fluid very much because it usually rips the paper for me I think I'm just too cat candid okay so the indigo is which one is it it's the fifth one one two three four five one two three four five so it's this one I'm going to do what I said which is two three four five pick up some indigo and stick it down here so you can see it okay so a fair amount of that and then just that's my joy of the day dropping paint and this uh kuretake paint is very good at doing that and it spreads out beautifully and if you've already wetted your paper beforehand like I did it helps just helps spread it and the paint won't won't very readily go into the parts that aren't wet so if you had bothered really carefully to do this it would be much easier now you know purists would say oh you're going to get run backs and all sorts of things going on in the sky but has anyone looked at the sky lately well it's so full of satellites doesn't look what it used to it's full of full of full of stuff um anyway so it doesn't matter if you get a few run backs it just adds character doesn't it the pleasure of painting watercolor is in the process I think and if you get a lovely painting at the end of it which you often do you do I've seen some of them uh then so even better but it's not about perfection and it's not about panicking to get it right no that's my job okay so there we are we've gone around the moon we've gone around most of the little um leaves and I'll just shove in a bit more there make it a bit darker over this side there's a bit of variation okay and uh just make sure this is recording okay so then we want another shade of green blue something pretty let's not do anything too realistic because at night colors change don't they so we're just dropping some different shades of green and gray here why not whatever you think of first and then um we want to vary that a bit so but not too much um that's turquoise I didn't mention using that but you can I mean you can paint your fields brown if you want it doesn't matter so that lot needs to dry before I can do the house and the leaves and the owl uh so I'll let that sit and maybe we'll come down here and have a go at the fox and I'm going to try and find a slightly better brush that one's a little bit worn this is a size seven let me make myself some space now I'm going to pick up um for the fox he's going to be um this color which is burnt sienna yeah burnt sienna pick some up put it there and then as I said we'll paint the top half of his head in this brown and we paint his ears as well and then we'll come back though with some black for the tops of his ears and then we'll do this is nice paper to paint on this is it doesn't give you trauma and don't forget this is not this is not a realistic fox you will have noticed this is a whimsical fox whimsical so we paint his legs down like that about three quarters of the way and his back leg and we'll come back to those in a minute and then we're going to just flick with the brush up there like that leave the tip because the tip is usually white isn't it and then we'll just grab some black or even maybe just we won't grab it perhaps we'll just pick it up and finish off his feet because foxes tend to have feet that are on the blackish side and then put some dark color in here as well maybe a little bit around there and then don't forget his ears and just let that run and his nose of course so that's how we're going to do him and then I'm going to pick up some light grey for the tip of his tail just drop that in and when that's dry I'll drop in some some little shadowy bits we'll just do that as well there I don't want to touch it too much don't want it to run too much but it can run a little bit just soften that a little bit of shadow there smooth that out a bit and hopefully that won't be too irregular there let's give him a bit more texture in his tail when that's dry I'll probably do a glaze in orange just to give him more burning color okay so now we have his wife over here I'm going to start with her ears just do the same thing I think it's a it's a bit of a trick but it just gives that foxy look without worrying and panicking and oh my goodness it's you know I'm going to get this wrong I'm going to get this wrong just don't worry about it just do it like this and everyone knows it's a fox I mean while we're drying up the top yeah and she's got her legs here the back leg so put a little bit more brown in there and then she's got a nice tail too just give it a nice flicky thingy going on there and we want some gray for the tip and bunny is also going to be gray so we can carry on with that gray perhaps mix a little bit of brown in to give him a bit of variety or her keep that bit rough around his tail we can do that white later this is ears and we can put a nose in later if you want a nose and we mustn't forget paint her beige bit here and then when it's dry we'll put the features in but for now we can just pop in the nose I can pick up some black and her ears probably do her eye their eyes with a fine liner or something like that now is this dry yes it is so we can do the roof I'm inclined to think a reddish brownish color for the roof or something like this because slate I always think oh sorry sorry sorry foreigners thinking slate because I'm in France and of course in England too country cottages tend to have slate roofs so I could have done it red sometimes I do it red thinking of Canadian red tin roofed houses but anyway you have to take no notice of my ramblings which are nothing but ramblings of a lunatic so the building itself wants to be quite dark so I'm picking up some black maybe we'll mix that with a little bit of burnt sienna to make a dark brown building wants to be quite dark because we want the windows to be nice and light so we're just painting the house like that and we'll put yellow lights in the windows in a put a bush or something in here something I don't know I'm not going to do the next thing has to be the field that's closer so we really want a dark green like this and that was burnt sienna with the green which calls itself forest green now we have to paint around the sheep like I said don't worry about run backs and blotches because you know we're going to probably embellish this with some line work or something like that aren't we so it really doesn't matter you just go around those sheep and the sheep can be finished off with white gouache so that was that colour wasn't it yeah uh was it that one so I was just doing the background so what shall I talk about mixing a sludgy green with two shades burnt sienna and forest green I think it is just keep going I'm looking forward to the snow we can paint snow scenes where we don't have to actually do any background don't have to do a night time dark dark green grass that'll be nice won't it much easier to paint snow because you don't have to paint anything do you we might put some more sheep in on top of the grass you can always paint them in white gouache okay and then down here in the front in the foreground we're going to just put bright orange and we have orange cadmium orange this is a representation of autumn leaves and a bit more of the burnt sienna as well just splosh splosh splosh splosh splosh autumn leaves on the ground around my fox is take some cadmium yellow as well and just fill that all in have fun at this point we will see that your lady fox needs more information on her tail we'll just do that and then a little bit more black in her leg because the paint dries much lighter and don't lose faith I know it looks a bit messy at the moment but we will put it all together at the end I hope yellow leaves on the trees on the branch drop in some one color then drop in a bit more of another color and let it blend and we probably want to make the branch a little bit darker don't worry about details some more yellow here more brown just drop it in don't forget to make the branch go across the moon and we'll probably come in with some pen afterwards and question is are we going to make the moon do the moon first or are we going to do the owl I think we'll do the owl let's paint him in a sort of beige color I have to let that dry now and then we can put some details on there and while we're thinking about glowing colors let's put some light in the house we might want to darken the actual house itself to make that stand out more perhaps a black chimney stack there we are and let's yes let's make the moon a nice bright shiny color we could paint it gold I know I don't like that that looks like a dirty sludgy yellow I don't like that at all this time of year the moon seems very very big when it comes over the horizon harvest moon we tend to call it I think and I think that we'll need some white for the face of the owl pick up some of this white and for the body just give it a bit of contrast probably should rub out that line I might have to break into some really strong white gouache some of these white parts and for the sheep so I'm going to just stop for a second and find find my gouache so now I'm coming in with my fine liner this is a micron pigment micron 0.3 and we're just going to start adding features now so we've got lots of nice little flicky things on there and then some splashes on there and so we'll just go around the oak leaves I think and put the veins in if you're a better painter than me you don't need to do this if you can make things look realistic with just the colour but I think it's actually really hard so I've never been that confident in that myself so often I will come in and put line in to make it seem more finished perhaps we'll go around the outside edge of the moon as well because if you only do some of it some of your painting with line it might seem a little bit wrong I'm not sure if I've got the face of that quite right but I have to do for now okay so around the roof of the house with a pen you could put might want to put a little bit of extra shadow under the eaves maybe so just come in with a line of black depends how realistic you want it to look in my case not very a little bit more shadow on that side of the house perhaps you could put in some effect of some stone but the best thing I think is to draw around the windows and doors with a pen and have some sheep something about sheep is that their bodies come up really high on their heads so sort of it's hard to describe so their heads like that their ears and then it took me a long time to realize why my sheep didn't look right and it's because I was making the back down here it has to come up the top of the head and their eyes are very high in their heads too and some of them have got black heads and some of them have got white heads you could have black ears if you want to make them look obvious some of them have horns um okay so let's give the fox foxes their eyes and their mouth point up their ears a bit on fox and then rabbit and mrs fox might want a little white dot in there for the eye perhaps and her tail is down here isn't it so I'm going to grab some white this is uh bleed proof white I think this will probably work and just mix it up a little bit and kind of brighten up her end of her tail and mr fox as well some white in there a little bit more white under there there and here and we haven't actually even painted the sheep so just give them some color non-color you can often correct little mistakes with this stuff in fact you can do more than just correct mistakes you can actually put in details that you couldn't otherwise achieve oh I should have put in some smoke coming out of the chimney okay so I'm going to let that dry and see what I'm going to do next okay I'm just popping in a little bit of shadow underneath especially underneath her tail there just to show where the tail begins and ends maybe a little bit of shadow under the rabbit as well perhaps maybe under the sheep too because they cast shadows don't they and that sort of makes me think oh we should probably come in and just give a little bit more make it a little bit more convincing all sorts of things you could do you could carry on here forever I think a little bit like the um put some black and then we can put in the fence it's a little bit more perspective all sorts of things that you can do just to play with it we could um paint some flowers but I don't know I'm not going to because I think flowers are not not really autumn are they so we'll stick with the autumn theme and maybe what I'll do is perhaps bring in another branch here from the side and uh I mean you could um you could put a bird perhaps we'll put a bird brown bird put another one here I was going to put leaves but I decided to make them birds so we put a beak feet tail should know better than that yeah it's so easy to ruin those I could I don't know maybe I'll make them a darker color just a sec correction correction this is going to be a crow family of crows two crows because they're wintery aren't they so I think getting there um maybe a few bare stems with perhaps the odd dead leaf up there a little bit of grass grasses it's another bush with some not very healthy looking because it's winter autumn maybe just a little bit of life up there cheer it up a bit some nice orange orange actually looks quite good on the green doesn't it I think we're done I think I'm going to call that a day so hopefully you enjoyed that and I think it was quite a long one so hopefully you didn't get bored halfway through um if you did enjoy it give us a like and subscribe and turn on notifications and also consider joining our patreon or our youtube membership for extra goodies so I'll see you again soon with something else unexpected and uh yeah have a lovely weekend everybody bye for now bye