An Essential Lesson in Watercolor Landscapes

My painting is going to be a very loose landscape. Just to help you free up, let's get started. This is a photograph I took last June on my watercolor retreat to Scotland. I took so many photographs because there were so many beautiful landscapes to paint. We were located near Loch Lomond. This was not far from the venue and they've got these lovely stone walls, beautiful atmospheric skies. And just to let you know, there may still be spaces on my watercolor retreat to Scotland this year, this July, and I'll put details about that in the description below. So I'm going to put some masking fluid on my little house. It protects the house while you're painting. First things first, I'm going to paint the sky, literally half the painting. Let's get going with that. Of course, I'm going to use some ultramarine, but if you don't have ultramarine, you could use cobalt blue, phthalo blue, any blue will do. And actually, it's quite a Payne's gray sky, so you could actually use Payne's gray. So I'm going to use some cerulean here as well. And to make my blue more of a stormy color, I've added some red to it. And I'm also going to mix up burnt umber, really make lots and lots of paint. And I might put a very pale wash of raw sienna in the bottom part of the sky. You want it really dilute and just wet that sky. If you're having difficulty with skies, keep them simple. Don't overthink them. Any sort of big brush will do. Really load the brush and then just paint it, swish it into that sky, wet into wet. And then I'm going to use a little bit, just because I saw a bit of cerulean, it's just me really, just tilt and swish, maybe a little bit more cerulean there. And just let it sort of go using the tip of the brush there. And I'm going to load my brush with that ultramarine now, pulling it at the top. Look at that gorgeous color there, beautiful color. And just tilt that, tilt, tilt, tilt. And then a little bit of the ultramarine and the burnt sienna. Let that run. It almost looks like the sun's trying to peek through those clouds. What I'm going to do now is paint the middle distance. I'm putting on pale washes. I'm putting in a middle distant wash here. And I'm just using a dilute sap green. So I'm just putting the dilute sap green and I'm just making these sweeping brush strokes here on to the watercolor paper. This is wet on dry. I'm going to add a little bit of cerulean to that sap green there, painting around those rocks. I'm going to use a little bit thicker sap green and just paint wet into wet here. Some trees, painting around my rock area here. Nice big brush, really load that brush. And I'm just going to go back in with my size 10 brush. I'm going to try and keep this as simple as possible. A little bit of ultramarine with that sap green and just put some of these trees in here. Damp into wet. Big trees just in the foreground area there. I'm just going to go in with my burnt umber and the ultramarine. And I'm going to use more ultramarine and less burnt umber. So one is 70% burnt umber, 30% the ultramarine. And the other one is 70% ultramarine, 30% burnt umber. And I will put a raw sienna base on those rocks there. And just paint that raw sienna as an under painting. And then go in with my burnt umber and the light's coming from the right. So I'm putting that on the left-hand side of those rocks there. And do the same, get the ultramarine and burnt umber in there as well. You can always add to this later. I'm just going to lift this off here because there was the grasses there. So just lifting that off, I'll put my grasses in there. There we are. And what I'm going to do is use my size 6 brush and use a little bit of that ultramarine with the red. And just paint some distant trees. I'm adding a little bit of green to it, this violet colour, the ultramarine and red. And then just work my way down here, painting in some details. This is all damp into wet or damp into damp. Just adding a few more little markings here and there. Maybe just go back and make that a touch darker here on the hilltop there. You might want to put small trees in the distance there. You can put some more trees here as well. So I'm going to use my plastic card now and I'm going to do some swiping. So it's like this is the noise that you'll hear when I'm swiping. So it's a quick swipe, not a drag. It's a swipe, swipe. And I'll put a link in the description below of a tutorial I published all about using the plastic card. So let's get swiping. I'm going to work from left to right here. So I'm just going to swipe just once, just once just to get those, really the light actually of some of those rocks there. Let's get some of those lighter areas there. It just creates the texture of some of those rocks. So you end up, you might end up with a few more rocks than you bargained for, but it's quite nice. And I might put some smaller rocks down here as well. So I'm going to go back with my ultramarine and the sap green and I'm just going to paint around this little focal point here, the house, because I really want to bring the house out. It's my focal point. So I'm pretty much painting damp into damp now. A few little trees. Remember, you don't have to put all the trees in. You just have to put a few in just to give the impression of distant trees. There's a little bit more dark just here. So you can do a little bit, almost dry brush here. So you're scraping the belly of the brush against the paper and just creating some textures there. I'm just putting a few more little trees in around here. You can put a little bit more texture in there. Touch more texture here as well. I might lift off some grasses just here using the corner of the card like so. Just adds a little bit of something. And you can do that while the paint is damp and not wet. I thought it'd be quite nice just to spatter a little bit of heather colour. So I'm using ultramarine and pink. This pink is opera rose, but you could use permanent rose, quinacridone rose. And I'm just going to spatter in just in the foreground there. So my painting has dried and I'm just going to build up a little bit more detail using a bit of shadow colour. So I'm going to use my size 10 round brush and I'm going to use a blue violet and just add some shadows to some of the trees here. And it's almost like glazing it on these shadow colours here. So you're just glazing it on to create some of these shadows just here and there in the trees using a large brush, large area, large brush. Just adding a few shadows to those trees there, but also leaving some of the lighter areas as well. Just want to give you a sneak peek at some of the tutorials available on my Patreon membership. Let's take a look. So here I have over 180 exclusive tutorials. Just scrolling here, you can see a variety of subjects, different styles and also different techniques as well to get you started in watercolour. As you can see, there are a variety of subject matters. I specialise in landscape, seascapes and flower painting, and I'm also known to paint abstracts and cityscapes, etc. So there's lots for you to choose from. On many of the videos, you can get access to a downloadable outline sketch for you to keep and it will help you with your drawing. You will also have the opportunity to join my private Facebook group to share your work. You can also share your work on the Patreon app as well. It's a great sort of growing community of budding watercolour artists and very, very supportive of one another. And it's a great way of sort of learning and seeing how others are developing their work as well. You will also get access to over 150 watercolour beginner tutorials. And if you want to progress further, I have another tier available on my Patreon membership where you can get access to over 500 tutorials and over 180 of them are exclusively available on the membership. Many of the tutorials have downloadable PDF documents with progress photographs and step-by-step instructions to help you with your learning. Here is an example of one of my PDFs. You've got the finished paintings, a list of materials and colours, etc. And then the step-by-step photographs with instructions to take you through the process of painting the picture along with the step-by-step video as well. So you can download this, print it and keep it for future use. So I really hope that tempts you to join my membership. Bring those rocks forward as well by adding some of this darker colour. I'm just really painting around some of these rocks here. And do the same here using this large size 10 brush. You can add a few darks in here as well. Darken up some of these areas just here and there. And I might just do a little bit of glazing just here in that foreground. Going to my size 6 brush and just painting some darker grasses in that foreground, just to break that up a little. I turn my painting around this way just to put a little bit of shading just under here, just to give it a little bit more depth. You could use the ultramarine and burnt umber or the red and ultramarine. It brings this area forward and keeps the distance really misty as well. And I'm just going to lift out some lighter areas here. So it looks like grasses or something coming above the rocks. My painting has dried. I'm just going to remove the masking fluid here on the little white house. Just going to paint a red rooftop on to the little house. So this is the burnt sienna and the red. I'm painting wet on dry with my size 6 brush. I'm going to put a touch of shadow on the right hand side of the house here, because the light was coming from the right. And just put a little bit of detail or something in front of the little house as well to ground it, so it doesn't look like it's floating. And I'm going to put some windows in as well. So I'm going to use the ultramarine and burnt umber to do that. Again, 70% blue and 30% brown and just pop a few windows through there. I'm going to use Dr. Ph. Martin's bleed proof white to create some details in the foreground. I'm just going to use some of the colors that I've already got in my palette and I've just added white to it. A little bit more white there, a bit of pink to that. Print with the plastic card and create some lighter marks here and there. I'm just using some green and white paint here on a piece of watercolor paper and just printing some of that on to the painting. The dry painting is wet on dry, so you can sort of curve a card so you can get some more natural looking marks. So it's quite nice. So just using that here as well. We can give a little spatter here in the foreground. Lots of textures really brings this forward and we can spatter some of the pink as well. Pink and white, maybe a heather color. So maybe a little bit of a ultramarine in there as well. So just spattering that here and there, just in the foreground. You can also use a darker green to print with as well onto your foreground area. So you're just building up these details and there are sort of taller foliage there. So we can just pop that in here and there. I'm going to paint the shadows underneath the eaves now of the little house. Just using my size 6 brush, it really makes it look a bit more 3D. And we'll put a bit more shadow on the side as well. And a few more little detail grasses just in front of the white house just to really bring it out. So I'm just putting in some tree trunks and branches just here, just to give these trees some structure using the burnt umber and the ultramarine. Just adding a touch more detail around the house here. More little trees just behind the house as well. So I'm just adding a little bit more of the burnt umber and ultramarine there, just to really shape that house. So it really looks like it's part of the landscape. And I might just put some of these little pink flowers there using my size 2 brush with a mix of the white and the permanent rose. Add a bit more of the blue to the side as well. Add a little bit more white just on the edge, just with literally white straight from the tube. I've no idea what those flowers are! So I'm going to remove the tape now to reveal a lovely white border. And it really does show your work off, especially if you're not going to frame it. Here is the finished painting. I'm really pleased with the atmospheric sky, the distance, the middle distance, and then you've got that foreground as well with the swiping of the card, the spattering, the printing with the card as well. And of course, I masked out the house to create a focal point. So I really hope you found this tutorial helpful. If you have any questions, please put them in the comments section below. And if you want any more details about my upcoming retreat to Scotland, please see the description below. Thank you so much for watching. Happy painting. Bye for now.