Painting a Beautiful Garden Landscape - Watercolor Tips and Techniques

Hi everyone, Joellen here, and welcome to Washington Watercolor. May is one of my favorite months because I love just how colorful the landscape is, and this garden is no exception. Today's video is full of watercolor tips and techniques, from painting a background to layering, masking in the foreground, and of course painting these magnificent flowers. So here we go. I'll start off with a drawing of this landscape. I want to simplify the shapes and keep my lines nice and clean. I love the little birdhouse tucked in the shadows on the left-hand side, so I want to be sure that I include that. I'll be sure to draw the flowers in the foreground nice and large. That way we'll have this great sense of perspective. There are a great variety of flowers in this garden. The pink peonies have these beautiful petals, and the giant poppies are shaped like a cup. The shaster daisies have more of an elliptical shape. As the flowers move back in space, they will get smaller. Once I'm happy with my drawing, I'll use a color shaper to apply my PBO masking fluid. This will help me to retain all of the lighter areas. It's way more masking than I wanted to apply, but honestly it really helps to free up my hand when I'm painting later on. My go-to brushes include a Princeton Neptune Quill, a Rosemary Series 402 Pointed Round, size 12, a Black Velvet, and that's a size 10, a Princeton Script Brush, and a Princeton Quarter-Inch Flat for softening edges. The colors I'll be using for this painting include Winsor Lemon, Cadmium Yellow Medium, Winsor Orange, Red Shade, Winsor Red, Corn Acridone Magenta, Perylene Maroon, Winsor Violet, Winsor Blue Green Shade, Cobalt Turquoise Light, Sap Green, and Perylene Green. I'll begin by wetting the entire paper with clean water and then I want to paint the sky. So I'll pick up some Winsor Blue Green Shade and kind of drop that in and to that I'll add just a little bit of purple on the right hand side and next I'll get some Winsor Lemon and just drop that into the foreground into the very bottom. I'll add some Cadmium Yellow Medium and then I'll just like playfully add some Sap Green and some Perylene Green in places and the thought is I really want to keep the sky fairly clear and everything kind of moving down but I just want some softness and a little bit of darker values in the foreground and in other areas of this landscape. I'm happy with how this looks. I will dry my painting. On top of the color or paint in the foreground I'll actually add some more masking. I want to get some of the leaves and leafy shapes and some of the stems put in and I want to have a baseline color down already and this will really kind of be a really cool effect and free up my hand again for when I'm painting the dark areas of the foreground. Once the masking has dried I'll then pick up some of my Winsor Lemon and add it to that mixture with a little bit of Perylene Green and I want to get the tree in the far background and I want to do this by just kind of dotting in all the leaves. It's really important that I don't really fill it in too much. I want to leave all these little peaky holes kind of between the leaves showing bits of sky and as the leaves or tree moves down it will get darker as it touches the the other tree so to that mixture I can just add a little bit more of my Perylene Green and just kind of keep this nice and airy and hopefully it will sit nicely in the background. If it gets a little bit too dark on me I can always use a little bit of a paper towel and just stamp out some of the color or value. Once I'm happy with that tree I'll move over to the left side and using some Perylene Green I'll start to paint in the arborvitaes. With that I'm kind of just dotting in the edge again. I don't want the edges to get too tight or too much of a straight line. They would just look awkward so just kind of dotting them in with my brush. Now I'm working really fast and this paint is still a little wet so that allows me to then come back in and connect the bottoms and just kind of push everything down into a very pretty wash. To that wash I've added a little bit of my Cobalt Turquoise and I just start to add a variety of colors and I'll just kind of keep this wash moving down and moving over towards the right. There's such a great variety of colors in this landscape and as you can see this tree in the background it kind of picks up some purple and some Perylene Maroon. I want to make sure that I don't make any of this overly bright because I feel like it will really take away from the foreground flowers and I really want to enhance the dark especially around the birdhouse. So here I'm adding a little bit more of my Perylene Green to just really darken and deepen that bottom area. I'm really satisfied with how this looks so now I'll paint the tree over at the right hand side and to that Perylene Green mixture I'll put in a little bit of my Cobalt Turquoise and the shapes that are here in this tree are really interesting because the branches are all kind of or the leaves are all kind of tight and flat so I'm trying to mimic that pattern with my brush but I do want to make sure that I don't overdo it or put in too much texture because I don't want it to take away again from the from the foreground. I have some nice dark paint mixed up I'll just add a little bit to the foreground there are those areas that really sink in and down and remember we did a couple layers of masking here so I really want to take advantage of that and try to get some of these really deep dark values. While that area is drying up I'll use my Rubber Cement Pickup to remove the masking from the bush on the left hand side and then with a little bit of my Lemon Yellow along with some of my Orange I'll start by just filling in the little edges on the top. I'll add a little bit of my Windsor Red and some Perylene Red as well and then a little bit more of my Perylene Green and I want the top edges to be lighter but then as it moves down it gets very dark and I think what's really pretty with this landscape with overhead lighting is that you have this whole series of layering of lights and darks and lights and darks and we really can capture the light by getting what's above it or next to it a little darker. This little bush here is kind of an awkward shape you know I've painted this and you know it kind of reminds me of a teepee it's a little hard to read but I'm just trying to do my best to be true to the landscape and I see yellow on the top or really on the left hand side and again thinking about having the base be very dark and then pushing the paint around with my brush to get some nice softer transitions. Next I'll just paint this really nice strip here and start with some Lemon Yellow and then I'll add in some Sap Green and at the bottom a little bit of my Perylene Green and just kind of work it back and forth and then for the cooler shadow I'll add some of my Winter Blue Green shade and you can see really it it makes it look like a nice cast shadow. I don't know I think it looks really good and then I'll work on that little bit of grass right in the foreground making it ever so dark as it's near the bottom or nearer to me. I'm really happy with how this is progressing so once everything is fully dry I'll remove all of my masking. Once all my masking is off I'll then use my Princeton quarter inch brush to soften the leaves and the little areas on the right hand side. I'll also soften some of the areas in the background as well. Using my little script brush I'll fill in the birdhouse with a purplish mixture. Finally to the flowers so for the peonies I'll use mostly a mixture of Quinacridone Magenta along with some of my Windsor Violet and I'll work the peonies that are in the back first and then just slowly work my way forward. While everything is still wet I'll add little touches of Windsor Violet at the bottom. Switch to a larger brush and start to fill in all of the peonies that are in the foreground. They are so pretty peonies I have to say are my favorite flower and where I want it to be a little lighter I'll just go in with a bit of a paper towel and just kind of stamp some of the color out on the upper edges. Windsor Orange Redshade is the perfect color for the poppies and I'll just go in and fill in a few of these and at the bottom I'll add touches of Windsor Red while the flower is still wet. Finally I'll add little dots of a greenish blue mixture to the center of each Shasta Daisy. I really love the month of May and I love how this came out with all the beautiful bright flowers that are in the foreground. Anyway I hope you enjoyed watching this and I hope maybe you painted along. Thanks again and have a great day!