How to Paint a Loose Watercolor Meadow Landscape

1. How to Paint a Loose Watercolor Meadow Landscape: Hi, my name is Madeline. I am a self-taught watercolor artist. I started painting during the pandemic. A lot of people and slowly fell in love with painting these loose landscapes. I am not the best when it comes to painting realistically or perspective. Even so, I enjoy painting loose landscapes because it gives me a little bit more freedom to play around and I like creating these simple landscape scenes. In this class, I will be going over how I paint loose meadow landscapes. Little areas of greenery with flowers and bushes or trees. This is going to be the piece that we'll be working on today. I will be talking about what I do to create the texture here on the foreground that sort of look like flowers and how to create the soft blended feel. I hope you enjoyed this class and thank you for being here. 2. Supplies: I am going to go over the supplies for this class. I will be painting in my edger perfect sketch book. It is made with a 100% cotton paper. And I really loved this sketch book for a lot of my loose, quick watercolor sketches. I will be using my paint palette here, and I will go over which colors I will be using during the class. And I will also include in the resources section a list of all the colors that I use in today's piece. I will be using four brushes here. Two of them are silver brush limited Renaissance brushes, around six and around ten. I use around ten to do the initial wash because it's bigger. And then I use the round six to do some of the smaller details. I will also be using to silver brush limited black velvet brushes around two and a script liner size one. And I have my clean cup of water here. And I also really like Dr. Ph. Martin's bleed proof white paint for my white highlights. 3. First Layer: We will be starting our loose watercolor landscape meadow. I have my supplies here and my brushes and my paints have all been pretty moisten, so they're ready to go. I am going to start off by grabbing my round ten brush. We are going to start this piece off by working on the sky. I'm going to take some clean water. And I want to make a loose sky with a little bit of whitespace to give the effect of clouds. So what I'm gonna do is instead of wetting the entire top portion evenly, I'm just kinda use water instead of paint to highlight where I want the sky to be. And you can't see where I have the water right now, but once I start adding pay, you'll be able to see it. So I'm going to grab some yellow ocher and put some right here, the bottom. And then I'm gonna grab some road tonight genuine and drop some pink right here. You want to drop the paint where the paper is wet so that these colors bleed and blend together. This is a little dark pickup, some color. Then I'm going to grab some cobalt blue and mix in a little bit of Horizon Blue to get this nice soft blue for the upper portion of this guy. I feel like by leaving some pockets of white, it creates this whimsical feel. For our sky. One of the key tips I have for achieving a very soft feel with watercolor is not using colors too dark in value. So I tried to paint with either muted colors or soft pastel light colors. The best way to get soft colors is using the right mixture of paints. So choosing lighter paints as opposed to darker Payne's, as well as having the right amount of water to paint ratio. Generally, the less water or more paint you have, the darker the brushstrokes will be. I do recommend swatching the colors you'd like to use before you start painting so that you aren't trying to guess how to mix that color as you're working. And another good tip is to use the wet on wet technique like I did with the sky that sometimes can help diffuse some of the color. And if there are parts that feel too dark, you can always lift some of that paint with a clean brush afterwards. Next, I'm going to grab some terre verte. I think that's how you pronounce it in a little bit of sap green to get this light green to paint the grassy part of the Meadow. This is wet on dry, so there's no water on the paper here. And I'm just going to make some large sweeping brushstrokes. Now, I'm going to take a little bit of cascade green and I'm going to paint some bushes right here. I like how that accidentally bled together right there. We'll put a little over here too. And I'm going to make the foreground here just a little bit darker. Just going to blend this out a little. I'm going to take some amethyst genuine and mix it with some lavender to get this creamy purple. And I am going to drop some little purple flower blooms while this green part is still wet. I'm going to do the same with some running. A genuine this wet on wet creates these nice soft little blooms that I feel like look like flowers. Which I find really pretty. Put one worry here. Alright, so you can let this dry or if you have a hot air tool like me, you can speed up the drying process. And this is going to be our first layer, our first wash. 4. Second Layer: Now that our first layer has dried, we will be moving on to our second layer. I am going to use my Renaissance round six brush to paint more of the details. It's more narrow than the round ten that we were using earlier for the background. So I am going to grab some perylene green and redefine some of these bushes right here or tree, whatever you wanna call them. I knew this one too. We're going to move on to making some splatters. Actually, before we do that, I am going to take my hot air tool and dry these really quickly. By the way, I love this hot air tool. I cannot live without mine. It just speeds everything up. So so much better. It takes away so much downtime. Okay, So these are dry and I'm going to cover the sky because I only want the splatters on the lower half. So I have this. If you are painting in a sketch book like me, don't forget to cover the other side. Otherwise the paint splatters will get all over that side too. And that is not fun. Covered the sky. And I'm going to grab a good amount of lavender and make splatters by hitting my brush along another brush like this. Next I'm going to grab this Dr. Ph Martin's bleed proof white. I absolutely love this brand of white watercolor. You can also use white gouache. And I have used that in the past too, but I personally like this way, way more. It's a lot thicker and it's perfect for splattering. If you want a really thick consistently consistency, you can go at the center of the jar or you can grab some water and rub your brush along the sides of the jar to get thinner consistency. And we're just going to splatter some white. I am also going to grab some protonate genuine and mix it with some of this bleed proof white to get this nice soft pastel pink. So there we have our loose flowers. I am going to close this and wipe this off. Okay, now I'm gonna take my black velvet round two brush and I'm going to paint more distinct looking flowers. I'm going to grab some yellow paint, some petals. These aren't really flowers. They're like yellow blob brush strokes that look like flowers. I cannot paint flowers for the life of me. This is my makeshift version of flowers. I'm going to grab some amethyst genuine and paint a little bit more. Here and there. Now I'm going to grab some cascade green. I'm going to paint some blades of grass. The grass and the front is going to be taller than the grass that is further away from us. Like right here. I'm going to take a little bit more white. Make a little bit more white flowers. I'm going to take a little bit more cascade green and some sap green. And I'm going to darken the front area right here. Alright, I think I like that. I'm gonna see if I want any other colors. Like I said, you can use any, any colors for your slaughtering in the front right here. Maybe I'll get a little bit of orange. And just wanted to remind you in the resources section, I will list out all the different paints that I used in this piece. Okay, so the last part of this layer is going to be painting some birds. I'm gonna get my black velvet liner brush. And I'm going to grab some Payne's gray. I like adding birds. Painting birds to me are just like making little v's. Upright, be upside down V. There we go. This is our loose watercolor metal landscape. And like I said, you can play around with the colors however you like. If you want, you could do all blue for the sky. I, I personally like when this guy has a few different colors, but that is it for our second layer. 5. Class Project: For the class project, you will be painting a loose metal landscape, just like I went over here. And actually as I was filming this class, I actually painted this a few times. This one is actually my fourth attempt. This was my third attempt and it was a little bit darker than I wanted it to be. And here is another version than I had painted before. They all have similar loose feel and I hope this class helps you get a better feel for how I paint these loose meadow landscapes. I would love to see your version. You can paint the clouds like I did right here with these loose brush strokes for this sky, leaving little pockets of whitespace. If you'd like. You can have a mixture of colors like how I did, or you could paint it all blue. Or you can even wet the entire sky portion and have a full wash like how I did right there. They both look very soft and loose. You can use whatever colors you'd like for your flowers, bladders. And I'd really love to see your work. So please upload it to the Class Projects tab. If you're on Instagram, feel free to tag me in your work. My handle is Madeline carry, and I would love to share it to my stories. If you enjoyed this class, it would be amazing if you left me a review. And if you want to get in contact with me, I am very active on Instagram. If you find me there, I'm want to DM me. I try really hard to answer all of my DMs. I'm always happy to chat or answer any questions. I really hope you enjoyed this class and thank you for being here.