How to Paint a bluebell Woods In Watercolor

So I've wet the whole of the sky area down to the horizon and I am using my size 8 brush and painting the yellow wet in wet and where I haven't wet the paper that little circle there representing the sun the paint doesn't bleed onto it. I'm now painting the quinacridone gold loading it with my size 8 brush you can use a larger brush it is quite a large area and I'm just painting this around the outside edge of the yellow. I'm now applying some green paint and that was the phthalo blue with the areolin yellow and I'm painting this at the edge and I've swapped to a bigger brush here size 12 round brush and I'm painting this wet into wet and I'm tilting my painting now to blend the colours together using a bullseye technique invented by the great watercolour artist Nita Engle and I have actually published a tutorial all about Nita Engle's techniques you can find a link for that in the description below. So I'm going to sprinkle some salt now onto the damp surface so you don't want the paint to be too wet or too dry and you need to allow the salt to dry naturally and what it will do it'll absorb the paint to create light textures and it looks so effective for foliage and flowers. So while the salt is soaking up the paint I am mixing up ultramarine and burnt sienna with lots of water so it's quite a pale sort of blue-grey wash I'm taking the excess off on a paper towel so the is not too wet I'm just painting some pale distant trees damp into damp so the paper is damp it's not too wet but there is still a sheen and the paint isn't too wet because I've taken the excess off on a paper towel as you can see my salt is beginning to work and as you can see the salt's worked really well and I'm just brushing off the salt now with a paper towel once the paper is thoroughly dry I'm mixing up a bluebell color I'm using ultramarine with a little bit of opera rose but you could use permanent rose or even alizarin crimson a pink and a blue I'm also mixing up here phthalo blue with the areolin yellow paint a sort of a mid green here and I've also added a pinch of the quinacridone gold just to warm it up make it look a little bit more natural and earthy looking I'm also mixing up the quinacridone gold with the ultramarine blue I do love that color combination I'm mixing up some of the yellow here with a little pinch of the phthalo blue I've wet the middle and foreground area and I am painting wet into wet with my size 8 brush now because there is a yellow underpainting it's kind of grayed down that violet color which is a good thing because it looks more distant because it's not as vibrant vibrant colors come forward so this sort of grayed down sort of violet color becomes more distant looking because it's not as bright but as we come into the foreground and I'm still painting wet in I'm just painting that pink and blue mix together I'm tilting here as well if you notice my marks in the foreground are bigger and bigger shapes also come forward the shapes in the distance and the marks in the distance are smaller and that creates depth because things further away look smaller in scale it's an illusion so I'm just painting a little bit more wet and wet on the horizon line there and now I'm going into the ultramarine mix here with the quinacridone gold painting wet into wet and you can see there you get some lovely fuzzy edges and the paint moves when you paint wet in wet and that's what I want because you get these lovely natural edges especially at the top I'm actually going in with a little bit of that violet now that's the blue and the pink into that sort of green color and dropping in the phthalo blue with the yellow now so you've got some lots of yummy colors there and I'm tilting my watercolor block here towards the top end so the paint runs up so I'm really controlling the paint and now I'm tilting it at almost a 90 degree angle there just to get that paint moving so it looks like sort of bushes in the distance there and I've mixed up a slightly thicker ultramarine and opera rose and painting damp into wet some darker bluebells in the foreground so I'm going in with the quinacridone gold and ultramarine mix here it's a kind of a mid green and I'm painting wet into wet in the gaps where I've painted the bluebells I'm going to let that green sort of naturally blend into the bluebell color I'm not going to mix it because you'll end up with a muddy color so I'm painting in those gaps there I'm painting a little bit more green in the sort of middle ground going into the distance here using my size eight round brush so just take your time and have fun with this don't even worry about back runs and cauliflowers because that will just create some more textures so I'm painting that sort of mid to dark green here the phthalo blue with the yellow the areolin and I'm painting this wet into wet on top of that sort of mid green there just here and there the marks as they go into the background get a little bit smaller but I'm having fun with this remember I'm not working from a photograph I'm just working from my imagination so you can afford to sort of break some of the rules as well make it your own painting so I'm tilting at a 90 degree angle here and still painting so I just want the paint to move and it creates some lovely edges because I'm working wet in wet so it just looks more natural and that's the wonderful thing about watercolor painting it does all these magical things because it's a very wet medium yes it's tricky to control but it also creates these wonderful effects that no other medium quite like it does this so I love it and that's why I love painting in watercolor and I've decided to add a little bit of salt now to my bluebells and grasses sprinkling it on to the wet surface and I'm spattering some bluebell color here and there with my size eight brush I'm going to turn my painting upside down now and I'm going to paint sort of light to mid tone tree trunks and branches I've mixed up the ultramarine and the burnt sienna and there's a pinch of the opera rose in there I am painting wet on dry with my size eight brush and what I'm doing is I'm sort of leaving gaps where the salt has created a really nice effect so I don't want to lose some of that yummy texture from the salt so I'm starting off in that damp area of the bushes and then painting wet on dry with my size eight round brush painting around those lovely textured salt effects still using the ultramarine burnt sienna with a pinch of pink I'm painting some branches here as well rinsing my brush there and I'm just sort of using a sort of clean wet brush just to soften the hard edges as they go into that textured salt area so the foliage looks like it's coming forward and the and the tree trunk is going up and behind that foliage it just creates that illusion of depth there with the tree and you may want to take the excess water off your brush with a paper towel to control your damp brush as you're softening that edge do make sure you keep cleaning your brush otherwise you'll just create a continuous tree trunk and it will go over that sort of salt textured area but it's fun to do and if you do happen to have a dirty mark going over the salt textured area just lift off in that area with a paper towel you'll still get a nice soft edge so I'm going to continue on now painting the tree trunks and branches in this sort of light to mid-tone color so that it comes forward away from those lighter tree trunks that I painted previously and I'm building up depth in my painting so you can sort of imagine my next stage my tree trunks and branches will get darker I'll be painting more of those creating more depth so it's like a real forest with all these gorgeous bluebells in the foreground so just be patient with this stage take your time as you can see I'm leaving those gaps where the salt is and then softening the gaps with a clean damp brush and some of the sort of tree trunks and branches I'm painting are paler especially in the middle of the painting where the sun is it's sort of bleaching out some of those tree trunks and branches and I'm painting some of them quicker as well not going into too much detail especially the lighter ones you don't really need to soften some of those edges there I'm mixing up a puddle of quinacridone gold here I'm going to add some yellow too and a pinch of that green I'm using a scourer household scourer cut up or ripped up actually so you get some nice sort of natural textured edges and I've actually run it under the tap and wrung all the water out so it's damp then I dip it into my paint and I tap very gently on to the pretty much the dry surface if you're at all worried about that just allow your painting to dry and I'm actually trying to leave as much of the salt texture as I can but I'm also tapping up near to it as well just to create some textures and I'm actually using my spritzer bottle to soften some of those marks and you might find that helpful especially if it looks a little bit artificial and I'm also using a spattering technique to spatter as well onto the sort of dry surface but also the wet surface here and there if you're worried about any spatter getting onto your sun cover it up with a sort of piece of torn paper towel so you get some nice natural edges so I'm just spattering here spatting a little bit of green yellow mixed with the phthalo blue and then spritzing and softening with my spritzer bottle going back in with my scourer tapping in a sort of light to mid green here so you can mix up the yellow with some phthalo blue or even ultramarine and tapping around the sun as well pretty much a lot of the surface now is damp but there are some dry areas as well which is quite nice tap very gently so you get some lovely effects and try to change the angle of the sponge so you don't get a pattern that repeats itself so this is the third stage of painting the tree so I've had that very light stage painting damp into damp and then I had the next stage the mid-tone stage painting that mid-tone wash sort of wet on dry and now I'm painting wet on dry using ultramarine and burnt sienna it's about 50 50 so it's a lot stronger in tonal value so the paint is thicker and darker and the trees are bigger and more detailed I'm using my size 2 round brush to paint the smaller branches and this is all wet on dry I'm actually turning the painting around sideways to paint some more branches going into the painting sort of pressing down to begin with at the beginning of the branch and then lifting up a little as I go towards the end of the branch so I'm using the tip of my brush to create a thinner branch as it goes thinner as it goes out towards the end of the branch and using the tip of the brush to paint those smaller twigs at the end of the branches take your time with this and have fun with this and the twigs you might find are a little bit lighter so you might want to lighten them up a little bit with a touch more water so I'm turning it the right way again and adding yet another branch to the side here and it's fun to do again this is working from my imagination and just building up these branches and they're painting over the top of the background so they're slightly darker and they come forward so you're sort of building up these layers with using darker tonal values and it's it creates that magical illusion of depth so I'm going to continue on now sort of varying the sort of tree trunks and branches even though they're darker I may sort of make some a little bit smaller as I'm doing here so it's pushed back a little bit so I'm just going to sort of put them at different sort of spaces in the grasses so it creates again depth in your painting I thought it'd be quite nice to create some texture on the tree so I'm lifting off some of the paint with my plastic card do this when the paint is damp so it's not too wet and it hasn't dried off too much and it just creates a little bit of light a little bit of texture here and there and if you go overboard a little bit don't worry because I do a touch I do go a touch overboard I do add some paint back and that's what I love about trees you can have a bit of fun with them because they're quite dark you can sort of hide a lot of little issues that you might have so this tree had dried off a little bit too much so I'm just wetting it again I'm going to allow the water to soak into the paint and I'll lift off later there so if you have missed your opportunity to lift off you can re-wet those areas so I'm adding as I said some more paint back in where I didn't like the effect of it but it almost gives the illusion of wood and texture on the trees which I love so I'm just sort of darkening up this tree here to the right hand side still using the ultramarine and the burnt sienna but what I love here already there's a magical sort of atmospheric effect created mainly by the light that bullseye effect because the light sort of generates from the middle and then you're building up these very pale mid and then darker tonal value trees which creates depth and as you can see I'm always sort of changing the angle of my painting to make it easier for me to paint these sort of trees especially something long and thin it is quite tricky so these are ways around it if you notice I actually lifted off some grasses at the bottom of the trees as well and as you can see on that tree that I re-wet again it was easier for me to lift off with the plastic card it'll be quite nice to actually paint in some paler trees again I felt there was a bit of an empty space here or they paled too much so I'm just using some of the quinacridone gold with a pinch of the burnt sienna very watered down so it's quite a golden brown colour and I'm just sort of painting across the sun as well wet on dry just using my size 2 brush use a small brush that you're comfortable with and I'm bringing that down into the grasses and it's just a nice way of again creating depth in your painting where you've got a few gaps it sort of really builds that gap so I'm sort of painting sort of pale branches here and there what I'm doing now is I'm mixing up some phthalo blue with quinacridone gold and a few leftover puddles of paint as well and I'm using a natural sponge you can carry on using your scour if you like but if you've got a natural sponge you may want to use it and as you can see I'm tapping so gently this sort of mid green wet on dry on to the sort of foliage area of the trees remember less is more I am mixing up some burnt sienna with the phthalo blue with a pinch of Payne's grey to make a very dark green I'm tapping my sponge now loaded with that dark green very gently on to the surface here I'm just tapping away building up that sort of darks and textures here and there and I am spattering some of that yellow on its own and I've also mixed up some ultramarine with white no pink added because you actually get a lovely sort of almost lavender colour mixing white gouache with ultramarine and I'm spattering it in the foreground area here and there just having lots of fun with it and it creates wonderful lights and textures especially on those bluebells to finish off my painting I'm removing the washi tape to reveal a really nice white border so looking at the finished painting the white border helps me to see if I need to do any more and what I'm doing is I'm just lifting off some of the paint around the sun to create more light and atmosphere in my painting I'm just using my paper towel to remove any excess paint as well if you like this tutorial and you'd like to support the tutorials that I publish and create here on YouTube why not think about joining my Patreon membership details about the membership can be found in the description below but you'll get access to exclusive weekly tutorials extended tutorials ad-free and you can get access to line drawings as well if you'd like any more information about the membership please see the description below