Paint A Loose Natural Landscape In Watercolor

1. Introduction: Welcome. In this class we'll be painting a loose country scene in watercolor. Natural landscapes are simple and beautiful, providing the perfect subject for a beginner watercolor artist. Adding a manmade object such as a hut or barn can create an interesting contrast and help to tell the story. Learning how to capture a landscape in a quick, fun, and loose manner is an essential skill that every artist should learn to master. Watercolor is the perfect medium that allows you to produce spontaneous and expressive paintings. On the go, planning is crucial. I'll show you how to simplify shapes and sketch in large ones, such as foliage, trees, grass, and land. Getting those large components in accurate beforehand is essential for your painting. To make sense, you learn the essentials of wet and wet and wet and dry painting in order to create a perfect blend of hard and soft edges. I'm excited to get started. Join me in this class in painting this beautiful natural landscape in no time at all. 2. Materials Required: All right, before we get started, I want to talk a bit about materials that you're going to need for this class. Let's talk a bit about the paper that I'm using first. Now I'm using 100% cotton watercolor paper. Now the paper has a texture on it. I'm using cold pressed to medium textured paper. This allows the colors to blend together a lot more seamlessly. You get areas that dry consistently as well, just due to the texture of the paper I find when you're using hot press paper, you just get areas of water that pool in spots, dries inconsistently. And for landscape paintings, any type of natural landscape paintings like these, I just find the colors blend and look a lot better when you're using paper with some texture, 100% cotton is preferred. If you do have non cotton watercolor paper, as long as it's got texture, you're going to be fine. But do keep in mind if it's not 100% cotton paper, that previous layer is probably going to lift up. If you go in and fiddle around too much. I always recommend not to go into the paper with the brush. Too often, go in there and paint an object or a subject with as few brush tricks as possible. It's always going to look a lot cleaner and you're going to make sure that you don't lift off those previous layers. So some of the brushes that I'm using here, you can see I've got these mop brushes and these ones have a large belly. They pick up a lot of water. They're great for things like the sky large areas. And in the first wash, especially when we're getting in just the basic colors, yellow there, I'm just dropping in a lot of that yellow, very watery mix. Blending that in, you know, with the blue at the top, bit of green and yellow down here makes it very easy to get in those large shapes. I've got three different sizes. I probably think I've used mostly just these two in the painting just to make sure that I can still cut around bits and pieces. That's a great thing about mop brushes as well. They also come with a very fine tip allowing you to cut around different objects, which is super important. So that thing just doesn't blend together and there's no borders. So here is a little brush, this is a synthetic round brush. And I use this at times to create small details. Like for example, this shadow on the right hand side of the tree running across the ground. Maybe a bit of this stuff here, the side of the side of the building. I've also got this brush which is a flat brush, exactly the same thing, it's just a different shape. I actually tend to go to the flat brush these days, I'm not sure why. But you can, again, get in nice sharp minimal brush strokes with the tip of that brush. But also be able to get in sharper shadow shapes there for the side of that building a little bit underneath as well. It's really up to you. As long as you have a small synthetic brush, you're going to be absolutely fine with those bits and pieces. I've also got this little brush here, this is a rigger brush. And rigger brushes are great for getting in small details. If you want to put in longer trees at the back or little branches and things like that, really good because it just specializes in getting in little thin lines. This is a fan brush. You can see fan brush as has these little splayed bristles. I use that here to get in some impressions of the palm trees and leaves and things like that. Makes it a little bit more messy and more abstract. Okay. You've noticed as well, in areas I'm actually used a bit of the scratching out technique. It's tricky to see, but here, near the bottom of the building, just these little lines. Okay? I wait for the paper to dry slightly, and then I'll go in and scratch it out with a bit of a pocket knife. And that just creates some contrast and brings back some of the light into the scene. Another thing I should mention as well is I do use a bottle of Gush and Guash is a finishing touch thing. I'll put that in at the end to create some tiny contrasts here. A bit of light, maybe on the left side of the tree, the rooftops bit in here, just to even it out. So it just brings out those final highlights. Okay, In terms of the actual colors, I'm using a lot of greens in here. I've got a color called undersea green, which is granulating green. If you've got a Hookers green, olive green, or if you've got your own green that you've mixed up, maybe for a bit of Hansa yellow and also a bit of Cerulean, Absolutely fine. Okay, one thing to remember, if you put more blue into the blue and yellow mix, you're going to get a darker green and you want to have a combination of different greens. You don't want it to be the same color, the same type of green. You don't want it to also be the same value as well. So you want some light green, dark greens and just some overall even cooler greens in some aspects like here where it's, you know, starting to get very, very dark. Okay. What else do I have in here? I've got yellow ochre. So this color here, it's like a muted down yellow bit of cornacridone yellow, which I've dropped in there as well, just to increase the saturation in some areas of the painting. Okay, I've got a bit of cerulean blue here for the sky. Also use a bit of this stuff here, which is called neutral tint. Neutral tint is just a pre mixed gray. Okay? And I use that to darken off areas of the painting a little bit of this lunar black as well. Just to get in these really dark shadows there. Okay? If you don't have any of these colors, you can always mix your in gray. Just mix in your three primaries, red, blue, and yellow, and you're going to be able to get something of that color. Okay? That's pretty much it for the materials and let's get started. 3. Drawing and First Wash: Let's get started with the drawing now, there's a whole bunch of huts here, and this one is right in the center. I think what I'm going to do is actually just start placing this hut first. Okay. Roughly around the center of the scene, really is right in the middle. Almost center to the left. Okay, I'm going to put in the rooftop of it like that. Okay. We've also got, it goes out to the left a bit like that. There's all this thatching, leafy material as you can see. I'm going to just indicate that a bit like that. Can see it come down and you don't have to get in too much detail for that. The main thing is just the structure of this T the front of it like this, okay? And it's like a square shape or whatever like that. Probably goes down a bit further. Actually, let me just redo this quickly. I think I should make this slightly wider line here. We'll just connect that up. Very important to get these manmade objects in fairly accurately. There's actually a shrub or a bush or something there as well. I'll just move this over to the right hand side like that right hand side of that hut. There's bits and pieces. You see the wooden I don't know what they are, like a wooden fence or something in front there. But behind that wooden fence, we've got the actual buildings. And these buildings are on these little stilts as you can see there. Logs or stilts switch is, you've got this nice shadow directly underneath it. Just a little bit like that. There's area here, just the entrance of the hut at the back there. What else do we have in here? We've also got this tree to the left just going up like a palm tree or something. They just getting a few of these bits and pieces of the tree. Okay, That you can see even trees off in the background behind the hut. Outline that a bit better here. Here. That's another hut closer in the foreground. And of course you've got some stilts underneath as well, like that bit of darkness there here in the front, you've got all shrubs and all kinds of things here. I do want to actually get some shadow for this tree as well here. I think this would be nice just to carry that across to the foreground to see if I can extend this out further. Increase the size of this actually. Something like that. Okay, tree here. There's another, these little leaves that just pop out. Okay? A lot of details and things here which I'll have to simplify down. Okay? Posts and little tree line behind the tree line behind all the heights as well is important. There's bits and pieces here we can indicate, let's get started. And I'm going to pick up a little round brush closely and work in yellow ochre. Lit bit of yellow ochre just to the roof top of this roof top. Like that, very light, 10% paint on. Okay, bit more yellow. I can pick up a bit of golden colored, yellow, Nacridone, yellow dropping a bit there like that. All I want to do is just get in a little indication of the hut colors of the hut. This one here to the left is important too. Just pop in a bit of this yellow och here. That's nice. A bit of yellow Oka granulating color as well. Then see just where it connects. On the top of this heart is actually not dark. I was putting a tiny bit of yellow in here and maybe a bit of this other color which is buff titanium. Just to dull it down a touch, something like that. Do the trick. Okay, let's have a look. Moving over to the rest of the scene, I've got a bit of green, a bit of this green. I got different types of greens as well. I've got a bit of hookers green. What you can do is mix it down with a bit of the yellow. Before I do that though, let's put in some yellow and warmer areas near the front of the scene. Okay? Because I want to make sure we've got in most of the yellows and first, so that we don't accidentally mix green into those areas if possible. Because we can get in green very easily afterwards. But to get in the yellows will be tricky because it will all mixed together if you're not careful. Okay, there we go, can leave a bit of white there, that's no problem at all. A bit more yellow back there often, even if you go up there and you put in some yellow off in the background, it's no big deal because we're using green. Putting green in there anyhow. Okay, fantastic, let's get a bit of that green and drop some of this in. I also like to use a small brush like this, tiny little flat brush. I can use this to mix up a bit of lighter green, put in the indications of trees, the shrubs here, trying to replicate the leaves a bit, but it's not a big deal. Just get in the green like that, merge it onto the yellows, keep it light, 10% paint, 90% water. And look at how it's just merging onto that yellow. And we're creating these soft details which is really important important, putting a bit more yellow here on the edges. Okay, some more green. Let's mix up a bit more of this green bit of Hookers green and a bit of yellow. Doesn't matter what yellow I'm using, Ronacrodone yellow, that we've got a bit more of a go, golden green running through here. See near to the hut as well, there are some greens and shrubs here. I'm going to just paint a bit that, that even here in the foreground there's actually bits and pieces, the background as well to wet the sky touch. Okay. We're not trying to get in details, we're trying to get in some of these lighter colors. Okay? Of course, we've got some white space in areas, but it doesn't matter. Just leave them peeking through every now and then. Okay. What you want is a nice mixing of these lighter greens. Softer and lighter greens. We'll go through afterwards and actually get in some darker bits and pieces. Here's another bit of the tree just coming over like that. This tree up here. All right, simple, quick little brush strokes. You're mixing a bit of Hansa yellow as well. And you can get in more of a vibrant green color as well, like this. Depending on how vibrant you want your green to be, Pick a yellow that's more saturated or even less saturated if you just want to more subdued green like this one to the right. Okay. So yeah, here I'm just putting in some lighter colors for the foliage in the background. Okay. Near the hut. Trying not to get it too close to the hut as well just to make sure that it is separation. Okay. And also here we've got just a bit more green in the background. You can leave a little unpainted edge like that to separate out some of these huts. That works fairly well. Okay. Some more. Here. Here, get out. Just blends nicely together without much work at all. Okay, here while I'm at it, let's put in the sky, I'm going to pick up cerulean blue. Just drop that into the sky like this. A nice light wash of blue. Okay, I want it to be quite smooth as well. Try not to go over an area again if I don't need to. A lot of water in this as well. You'll see how I just get it to blend downwards into some of this foliage and stuff as well. Doesn't matter. You just want it to indicate that there's a sky, nice, lighter blue sky in there. And that's all you need to do. Okay? Something like that. Here, a bit to the left the there. Just dry that off a touch and put a, I might put a bit more darker blue at the top. This is a touch of ultramarine just to create extra darkness at the top of the scene. It helps to imply a sense of depth. Touch there like that whenever we work on some of these bottom bits, spray down some parts of the bottom here just to touch. Let's do a bit of feathering in work. Fan brush and a bit of green. Okay, also some of this yellow ocher, we can pick up and fan some of it in sparingly like this. Okay? It's like a thicker yellow color, but it creates some additional details which I think are important in the bottom here. We're going to put some more green and stuff in there anyhow, but just an extra bit of darkness down the bottom. That bit of green as well, just mix in a bit of green in. Okay. Got quite a bit of darkness here, actually some of these shrubs here on the right. 4. Second Wash: Get onto the shadows. A little flat brush, I'm going to pick up some of this black on the palette. I've also got some purple, black and purple. These are great colors or shadows. The darkest point really is here. I'm going to pick up the fan brush and see if I can get myself in a bit of feathering in here. Some of these. The edge, anyway of this, that just a bit more of a edge. Okay, I'll just go in afterwards straight with this one. It's in here just trying to vary this purple bit there. The light just catches on the left hand side, so we want to leave that. It's something like that. Okay bit here as well. Underneath this part of the hut. Maybe a bit of yellow mixed in it, just to warm up that color of touch there, There we go, touch and here. Okay, so I'm going to work on these buildings, not the buildings, but the trees out in the back. Just a little bit of green to bring out the shape of this hut off the top like that. Just look at that, just a little line there and suddenly you've got this nice top part of the hut exposed. Looks a bit more in the sunlight from this. Have to shape it a bit more like this. Okay, good. Put in a few little brush strokes and things around there. The palm trees and these trees to the left, which I'll cut around here. That, okay, let's have a look down here bit. Cutting around this tree as well. Leave a little light there and work my way into the background of this scene. Okay. Like that darkening it a touch. Okay? And I'm just going to cut around some of these shrubs. This large tree here here at the foreground, leaving some bits of it exposed in the sunlight. Okay. The rest of it's just like bits of this coming through like that, could be trees in the background. Nay, that that's better. You can get a glimpse of the sunlight hitting this tree again. It's just an indication of it. I don't want to spend too much time on it. That maybe I'll get a bit bit of this darker brown and green mixed together. If I can get myself some of these make the stem that runs through it here, just to increase the detail. Just put in a few of these sort of almost like off branches glutch. Good work. A bit on the bottom of this building. And cut around some of the bits and pieces here as well. Lots of water and purple and black mixed together. Bit of brown maybe here as well. Just to warm up, touch put in little details of the bottom part of this building. It's in areas, but the important thing is to try to connect it to the building. A touch this here, darker that section there is the, these little bits of twigs and things here like the fence, which I will indicate just cutting around again using this darker paint. Okay. That see if I can work back into the roof as well. Put some more indications of this Sharper brush strokes anyway, for the thatching that of the roof rooftop. Okay? Darker that there is a tree or something going up in the background there. You can just sort of see it up in the distance. Okay. But this is the shadow that the building is casting over to the right before it's cut out by the tree over here. I want to indicate extra darkness there though. Merge it on that there and maybe bring it downwards like that. Okay, it looks better when things are just joined. Merged that these shadows anyway. I find they look better that way. Okay, let's have a look. What have we got here? There's like a fence in the distance and I can just go ahead and indicate that fence. The fence brings out the house a little bit as well. Brings out the house. Not only that, there's this tree or whatever it is there. Just just going to dab a bit of that paint in there. Okay, there we go. That fence, let's get the other side of it. And it does go further that I want to make it too obvious, something like this. There's actually a bit of shadow here as well behind which I'll use to, again shape the house to touch light shadow like that. This tree has a bit of extra darkness in it running down the right hand side, perhaps like that. I'll do the rest of it later, but you've got a bit of that running down there. I can actually put in shadow, pull this tree here as well. Running across the scene, across the ground like that. Probably get a bit of these bits to the sides as that Spray it down. Spray quickly, get shadow for the leaves at the top branches, that thing. The rest of it I want sharp, let's work on this little t to the left. We've got darkness underneath mainly but there's little spokes or whatever they are to the roof sticking out. Okay. I'll just try to indicate some of that, Not in the most detailed way but something like this, pretty dark. Okay. There we are even a part of the roof that goes towards the right hand side there, like the house to the right. In the shade, you can see a wooden area as well here, which I will try to imply a bit of hitting the sun. These little bits of wood the house is leaning on. It could be a fence as well here at the front, underneath it. Just darkness this. Okay? Maybe a bit of shadow. Why not? Let's put in a bit of this shadow there running towards the right. Okay. A bit of darkness here. There's a entrance to the hut that I just want to draw attention to better. And even here, there's, it's, there need to be darkened, just like pure black paint that I'm picking up for this. Okay. There's even some trees or whatever here in the distance. And I can just imply, I don't know, there's like one tree here. Anyway, some branches like that or simplified anyhow, Rigger brush, I can do some of these as well. Just little branches, green paint here. Just a little bit more of this, an extra layer of foliage here. I'm just picking up some extra green. I've found on the palette that to make these a bit more varied as well, leaving in as well the green from the background. I'm thinking this little pattern here creates these textures in the leaves, makes it look like these larger leaves, leaves. I can just do this with the fan brush, get in some effect like that. Okay, let's see if I can get in a few little scratches of marks and stuff on the rooftop. Just quick little, whatever you call it, bits of yellow that I can just drop quickly in the roof top here so that it doesn't look all the same. Noting that there is like a little shadow here on the roof that I can just blend that onto here. Um, here. Here, yeah, like that. Okay. I put in some of these little green shrubs and things here. I'm just going to drop in with a little flat brush. Some green in here. Light green. Okay. That's just, bring it down just to touch, I reckon. I'll darken this a little bit. Yeah. With the previous layer sort of showing through. Okay. But you can create these nice effects and maybe scratch out some grass and things as well. Here, there we go. Just some bits of high lights running through the scene. Just a little pocket knife I'm using for this scratching away, and this creates tiny highlights to indicate things like bits of grass running through. This section does help. You've got to only do it while the paper is just about dried. When you've got a dampness in the paper and look at that, bring out these little highlights to make them bigger in the foreground. These bits of grass, okay? Really should be a larger bush or tree here in the center. But it doesn't matter. I'm happy to go without a huge amount of detail there. Then there's these errors here. Like I might have lost, for example, bit of light from there. Or here I can just scratch out the touch of that tree and put in some details for that part of the tree. Okay. Can do this while while the paper is still damp, scratch out sometimes a little, it's too late here, but sometimes a lighter tree in the distance. Okay. Done it with this one like that. Okay, Got it. There really just depends on the wetness of the paper, whether you can get away with it or not. See here, I can do it just there. And it creates a sense of detail. Makes it look like there's trees and things off in the background. Really, there's not. If you miss this stage, don't worry because we've still got time to put in some extra ones while the paint is still drying, okay. And also at the end of the painting where we can use some guash, some little fan brush strokes would be good. I think for some of these trees like that, just to simplify them down. Yeah, looks a bit more texture now. These large leaves and branches, even here in the background bit of texture here, could do us some good. Just make it look like it's the shrubs and things off in the distance as flicking in a bit of paint on top here can be helpful. Okay, some of these black See if I can. That's some extra extra contrasts in here. Hey, extra contrast. Yeah. It's also darkness and shadows in between these trees, which I am trying to just indicate. Quickly. Spray that down a bit. Okay, just in the distance, in the background here, just to indicate the shadows of it. And I'm finding bits and pieces in between to darken, okay. And a bit more color to this bit of darkness. To this one and to the right side of this tree that hey, bits and pieces here in the background as well. Just feather in a touch of darkness and parts. Hey, I'm trying to make a little bit more contrast down the back end of these trees behind the huts especially, I can just draw out some extra shrubs and things growing behind and that will bring out the details, the lights of the rooftops as well by darkening some areas behind. Okay, it's a quick little trick shot there. We're almost there. I think the last thing I want to do is just add in some final highlights and bits. A lot of this stuff is done wet on to wet so that it's not too harsh. Looks more like foliage this way. This shadow has disappeared in here. Where I put it, should be going here like that green something in here. Okay, good. Okay, I'm going to play around with a bit of gush and a bit of yellow to bring out just some final highlights of this bit of white, quash, Hansa yellow. I'd say a bit of Hansa yellow for some really bright contrasts. Okay, let's have a look around. Dry this off first, okay? And a little bit here on the rooftop and little bit of this sorting or whatever coming downwards. So if you got, where is it? My little fan brush, it's probably easier to work with this, that work just like this coming downwards like that. Kind of caught by the sun, the sunlight and uh, yeah, that black. Just bring that get back in there again. Just a feather, a bit into the background as well. Like this. A bit of a smoky feel to it. A bit over here, Uh, maybe a bit here. A bit of that white wash. And just feather it in some areas. Tree, you're white there. And the fence even just bring back a little bit of sparkle to that fence. Oh, there's another tree here that could probably do with a little highlight. It's of white highlights.