Watercolor Landscapes: Easy Lavender Field Painting

1. Introduction: Want to paint a lavender field in a super simple and easy way? Then you've come to the right place. Hi, my name is Devika and welcome to my Skillshare class. I'm an artist, illustrator and surface pattern designer from India. I've been painting my whole life and a few years ago I decided to commercialise my artwork and started the brand The Artsychoke In addition to selling original paintings, I also license my art on print on demand websites like Society6, Redbubble, and Teepublic. My art portfolio covers a variety of themes like architectural drawings, abstract acrylics, botanical illustrations like these floral patterns and watercolor landscapes. In this class, I will teach you how to sketch and paint a lavender field in watercolors. The painting composition itself is very minimal. We just have three main elements, the lavender bushes, some distant mountains, and the sky. We will start the class by talking about the list of supplies you'll need. Then I will teach you a little bit about one-point perspective and how to sketch objects in one-point perspective. Then we will move on to make our final lavender field sketch. I will also show you how to paint the individual elements like the sky and the lavender field bushes before we move on to make our final painting. This is a beginner level class, but it's suitable for all levels. Whether you're an established artist or a hobbyist looking for a quick weekend project, or someone who's just starting to explode watercolors and need a quick and easy project. By the end of this class, you will have a fairly good understanding of how to sketch a landscape in one-point perspective, and super pretty lavender field painting. So let's get started. I'll meet you in the next video to talk about your class project. 2. Class Project: Your project for this class is to sketch and paint a lavender field in one-point perspective. You can definitely paint along with me through the class. Or if you'd like to change things up and experiment a little, here's an idea: change the location of the vanishing point on the horizon line and you will get a much more interesting perspective. And when you're finished painting, click a picture and upload it in the student projects gallery. You can do this by clicking the Create Project button. I'm really looking forward to seeing your lavender fields. So happy painting. 3. Art Supplies: We will be using some pretty basic art supplies for this class. We will of course need paper. The ideal paper for this painting is 300 GSM watercolor paper. Gsm stands for grams per square meter, and it indicates the thickness of the paper. The higher the GSM number, the thicker, and heavier the paper will be. This is great for watercolors and especially paintings like this one which require water washes for the sky. If the paper is too thin, it will buckle when we apply a lot of paint or water. So I'm using 300 GSM cold press watercolor paper from my favorite Indian brand called Brustro. Then we will need watercolors. I'm not usually very particular on the brand of the paint, as long as they're artists grade in quality. And for this painting, we will just need three colors. Cobalt blue, a light violet or mauve shade and sap green. Now, violet or mauve is not a color that typically comes with many watercolor sets. So if you don't have this color with you, don't worry. You can just mix cobalt blue and crimson lake or any blue and red shades you have to get this shade. You'll need a palette to mix your paint. And if you don't have one, just use an old plate or a shallow dish. Pencil comes next on the list, I use a 3H pencil, which has a harder graphite tip, and hence smudges less on the paper. But more than avoiding the smudges, the real reason I prefer to use a 3H pencil is because I have this habit of doing the same stroke over and over again on a sketch. And my sketch always ends up being too dark. With a 3H pencil it does not happen unless I really press it down hard on the paper. But really, you can use any grade you have available to you. Even the most common HB would do. You'll need an eraser as well. Let's talk about brushes. I will be using three brushes for this painting. A regular round brush in size eight for the lavender bushes and the distant mountains. A one-inch flat brush to give a wash of water on the sky area and a mop brush in size four, for painting the sky. You don't have to use these specific brush types or sizes of course. If you don't have a one inch flat brush or a mop brush, just use the largest one you have. It's good to have a ruler handy to draw the borders and also the horizon line. Next on the list is artist tape, also called masking tape. You're going to have to tape our paper onto a hard flat surface before we start painting. This is necessary because when we do the sky we're going to glaze the paper with water. And no matter how thick the paper is it will tend to bend a little when it absorbs all that water. So best to have our paper stretched out flat and stuck on all sides with a tape. We will also need a roll of clean tissue paper or paper napkin. You could also use a clean cotton cloth. And last on our list of supplies is a jar or cup for water. So we've covered the supplies that we'll need. Now, let's move on to the next video where I will teach you a little bit about one-point perspective. 4. Sketching in 1 -Point Perspective: Let's talk about perspective. If this is a new term for you let me give you a quick definition. Perspective is a technique that uses a set of rules to create an illusion of depth. Simply put, it is a way of representing three-dimensional objects on a two-dimensional surface in a realistic way. Say for example, we want to draw a box. The box is a three-dimensional object. And to draw that on a flat paper surface which is two-dimensional in a realistic way, we use rules of perspective. Now, every perspective drawing or image has three major elements. The first one is the horizon line. This is the viewer's eye level in the drawing or picture. The second one is the vanishing point. This is a particular point in the picture where all the things seem to disappear. Vanishing point is always on the horizon line. The third element is converging lines. These are imaginary lines that are projected from the sides of an object back towards the vanishing point. All of these imaginary lines appear to come together or converge at the vanishing point. So now we've covered the three elements of perspective, let's talk a little bit about the types of perspective. There are mainly three types of perspectives. One-point perspective, two-point perspective, and three-point perspective. In this class, we will focus just on one-point perspective. So basically an image is in one-point perspective if it has only one vanishing point on the horizon line. If you look at our lavender field painting, everything appears to converge at this one point on the horizon line. Hence, our painting is in one-point perspective. Now how do you draw something in one-point perspective? Let me show you here on a paper. I'm going to draw inside this frame. And the first thing I draw is a horizontal line across the frame. I'm drawing this line a little below the middle of the frame, but it can be drawn anywhere. Now this horizontal line is the horizon line for this drawing. Next, I will mark a small point here on the horizon line, and that is my vanishing point. Now, I want to draw a square box in one-point perspective. For that, I will first draw the facing side of the box, which is of course a square. Then I will draw these very light lines joining every corner of the square to the vanishing point. Feel free to use a ruler for these lines. Now, these lines are the converging lines. So now we have the horizon line, the vanishing point, and the converging lines for the box. Next, to complete the box, all I need to do is project the sides of the square on the converging lines. So I'm drawing a vertical line parallel to this side and a horizontal line parallel to this side. And then I'm darkening these lines that connect the first side with the second. So there we have a box in one-point perspective. Now two things to note here. Where you draw these parallel lines will determine the depth of the box or anything that you draw. You can draw them further away from initial edges or closer to the initial edges. The second point is that you can actually draw or project all the edges. I just drew two here because we are drawing an opaque box and those further edges would not be visible. But if the box were transparent, then I would project all of the edges, even the ones at the back so as to give the impression of transparency. Now let's draw another box on this side. I'm making it a tall vertical box. So I'll draw a vertical rectangle. Now let's repeat the same process. I'm drawing lines connecting the corners of the rectangle to the vanishing point. And then I'm drawing lines parallel to the sides of the rectangle on the converging lines. One line parallel to this side, another one parallel to this side, third to this side, and the last line parallel to this side. And there I have my vertical box. Now I want to draw a row of these boxes which repeat towards the vanishing point. For that, all I have to do is repeat these parallel lines on the converging line, like this. I'm drawing another one here. So I repeat one more set of lines. And we have three boxes in a row drawn in one-point perspective. So this is how you draw something in one-point perspective. Now, let's apply what we've learned in this lesson and draw our lavender field. For that I will meet you in the next video. 5. Lavender Field Sketch: Let's start with our sketch. I'm drawing on an A4 size watercolor paper. And I'm using my 3H pencil. And like always, the first thing I do is draw a border with a ruler. This is more of a habitual process and it's not a necessary step. it's just something that I always do when I start a new painting. Plus this border will also help me mark where to stick the masking tape. Alright, my border is done. Now I'm starting my sketch by drawing the horizon line. And I'm using a ruler here because I want a neat straight line, but if you prefer to do it free hand, go ahead and do it. Next step is to mark the vanishing point. And I'm marking it here, somewhere close to the middle of the horizon line. But you don't have to place the vanishing point in the middle of the horizon line. You can place it anywhere. It just has to be on the horizon line. Now I'm just drawing a very light vertical line down from the vanishing point just to sort of project it to the bottom. I just want to mark where to place the center of the first lavender bush. So this is where I'm sketching the first lavender bush. Now the shape of the lavender bush is kind of a vague semicircle. So I lightly sketch that. And I'm sketching more bushes on either side of this one. And they don't have to be perfect shapes by the way. Alright! Time to draw the converging lines And you might be wondering where to draw them from because a semicircle doesn't have any corners. What we'll do here is take the two end points and the top mid point on the curve and draw lines from these towards the vanishing point, like this. I'm not actually connecting them to the point, I'm ending the lines very close to the point on either side of it. This is because I want to give some width to the bushes. And like that, I'm drawing the converging lines for all the bushes. Now, for these bushes on the sides, it makes more sense to start the converging lines from the end points of that portion of the bushes, which will be visible rather than both the corners. So I'm just drawing lines from one corner and the top of the curve here. All these lines will look like little tunnels at the end of the sketch. So I've drawn the lines for all the rows of bushes that are visible. Now for the ones that aren't visible and are further away from the central bush, or in technical terms, further away from the center of vision, the rows will appear to get thinner and closer to each other. So that's how I'll draw the converging lines as well. Imagine the tunnels getting thinner and thinner. And as I get further away, I'm just drawing single lines just to mark the position of the rows. Now I'm doing the same thing on the right side as well. Alright, we have our converging lines. Next step is to draw the bushes. And just like we drew the row of boxes in our previous lesson, we just have to project the outline of the bushes, that is, the semi-circles. I will start with the central row and just keep drawing semi-circles. And these semi-circles don't have to be perfect or strictly stay within the converging lines. We're just sketching them to get a very rough idea of the shape of the lavender bushes to paint over them. In fact, the lavender bush itself does not have a very rigid form, so don't stress about getting your semicircles perfect. They can also go a little in or out of the converging lines. Remember the converging lines that also imaginary. So just relax and do easy light strokes. And I want to emphasize on that light strokes. Make sure to give very light pencil strokes because watercolors are transparent when dry. And if the sketch is too dark, it will see through the paint and the pencil marks can not be erased off either. I'm making my strokes darker here so that you can see them properly. But when you do it, make sure you get them very light. Now another thing to note here, in addition to appearing smaller, the lavender bushes also appear to be closer to each other, nearer to the horizon line. So we have to decrease the gap between the outlines. This really gives a feeling of depth to the whole painting. Now these faraway bushes will be so small and vague I'm not going to sketch them at all. I plan to fill them in with paint directly. So you only need to sketch the bushes that are big and appear close. Alright, so my lavender bushes are done. Now onto the distant mountains. You just have to sketch these very fluid curvy lines like this. I'm sketching taller mountains on either side and make them kind of shorter and softer in the center. And that's it. Our lavender field sketch is done. 6. Colouring Basics: Before we paint our main sketch, I will show you some coloring basics like how to paint the sky and lavender bushes, so you get some practice or preparation. In this video, I will show you how to paint the sky and then a lavender bush. It's always a good idea to try out your paints or do a practice session on a piece of paper before you paint your main sketch. And preferably a piece of the same type of paper. In addition to warming up, it will also help you get a better understanding of your colors and how they will merge into each other and behave on paper. For our painting, we will need three colors, cobalt blue, sap green, and violet or mauve. And like I mentioned earlier, if you don't have mauve color with you, you can just mix cobalt blue, and crimson lake to get the similar shade. So here I'm mixing a little bit of crimson lake and cobalt blue on my palette. And I get a violet shade that's very similar to the mauve. Keep trying different proportions of both the colors till you get a violet that's close enough to the one you want. And this one is pretty close enough. Now, let's see how to paint the sky. I'm painting on this small piece of the same 300 GSM watercolor paper. And we will use two colors for the sky - cobalt blue and mauve. I already have the colors on my palette. So the first step for painting the sky is water wash. I'm using my one-inch flat brush for this. And make sure it's washed and clean before I dip it in clean water and just give a light coat of water all over the sky area. Be careful not to use too much or too little water. It should be kind of a glaze over the paper. The paper should be just wet enough to look shiny. You can see how my paper is already bending a little with all that water. And this is why we need to tape it down when we do the painting. Now, I take my number four mop brush, take a little bit of cobalt blue mixed with a lot of water and give a light, easy slightly curvy stroke from this corner towards the middle of the horizon line, or where we placed the vanishing point in our sketch. I'm giving a couple of strokes there to sort of make a thick band. And I repeat the same from the other corner. These bands don't have to be the same width. In fact, make them different to make it look more organic. And I also make sure I leave plenty of paper white and don't fill up the whole sky. Next, I take mauve on my brush and give the same brush strokes in between the blue bands. And like the cobalt blue, mauve also has to be very light. It's okay if they touch the blue bands and mix and in fact, that's what we want. Note that I'm not giving these strokes all the way till the vanishing point. Now the next step is very interesting. What I'll do is take a tissue paper, scrunch it up, and lightly dab it in the central area where my brushstrokes end. I'm doing this to take off the paint from there and make white patches, and these white patches are going to look like clouds. Now, don't overdo it. Just give a few dabs here and there. Concentrate on the central area and give a few ones scattered here and there, outside to give the whole patch and more organic and cloud-like form. Something else to keep in mind here is that you have to work fast while painting the sky, especially the tissue dabbing step. This is because if the paint is dry, then they won't come onto the tissue paper and you won't be able to get those white patches. And that's all you have to do for the sky! Just a water wash, a few brush strokes, and some dabbing. All right. Let's move on to the lavender bushes. Now I'm going to show you how to paint a single lavender sprig. We don't really need this for our painting, but I thought it's an interesting add-on. For the lavender sprig, we will use all three colors, sap green, cobalt blue and mauve Now if you take a close look at the lavender sprig, you'll be able to see the blue tints more towards the inside and the mauve tints on the outer edges of the flower. So let's try painting that. I'm using my size eight round brush for this. And I'm loading it with some sap green and then I lightly draw a thin stem like this. To get this thin a line with the size eight brush, you just have to touch the tip of the brush on paper with very light pressure as you move it. Then I take cobalt blue on my brush and give small little strokes like this to make a cluster. Then I give another cluster above that and a couple more along the length of the stem till the top. And I make these clusters smaller as I move up. Now I take mauve on my brush and give tiny little strokes again, above the blue strokes. I give them sort of on the outer edges of the blue strokes, just about touching them so that the two colors do touch and merge here and there. Again, these clusters also gets smaller as I move up the stem. And that's it. You have a lavender sprig. Now let's paint a whole lavender bush. Very similar to the single sprig, we paint the bush also in three steps. I first take the sap green in my brush and paint a bunch of stems on the inside like this. Just give short, easy strokes. Then I load my brush with cobalt blue and give these in and out strokes around the green. Don't restrict your strokes to a rigid semicircle. Give a few shorter or longer than the others. Basically quick, easy strokes. You can move your brush up- down or down- up. There is no rule here. And as I mentioned earlier, don't worry about the colors mixing. Now I take mauve on my brush and do the same thing above the blue strokes. I'm giving these strokes mostly around the blue paint, but I'm also giving some on top of the blue as well, because I don't want a definite boundary between the two colors. You can see that the blue and mauve are mixing together, and that's exactly what I'm going for. So that is all, we have painted a lavender bush. 7. Final Painting: So we've got a fairly good understanding of how to paint the sky and the lavender bushes. And now it's time to paint the main sketch. I have my sketch here and the first step is to tape it down on all sides with masking tape. I'm sticking the tape till the borders. You saw how our practice paper bent when we were painting the sky. The paints won't spread on paper in the way we want it to if the paper is bent and that is why this step is important. It wasn't a concern while doing a rough practice session, but when we do the main painting, it's best to take precautions to make sure everything turns out well. So the paper is securely stuck on the board below. Now we can start painting And the first part we will paint is the sky. Now you know how to do this. I take my flat brush, make sure again that it's clean, dip it in clean water and give a light water wash. I try to work quickly because this step needs to be completed before the paper dries up. Now I'm taking my mop brush and mixing very diluted cobalt blue and giving those curvy strokes from the corner towards the vanishing point, just like I did in the previous lesson. This might be obvious to you by now, but we kind of apply the rules of perspective while painting the sky as well. These brushstrokes are to be directed towards the vanishing point on the horizon line. Basically give them like how you would draw the converging lines. So if your vanishing point is not in the center of the horizon line, the brushstrokes have to be painted towards wherever the vanishing point is. Now I'm giving strokes with mauve. And I try to make the bands over the whole sky asymmetrical so that it looks more natural and interesting. All right, now time to do some dabbing to make our clouds. Some quick little dabs with a clean tissue paper. And try to get a cloud-like form with the dabbing. I'm re- applying some paint there again, because I'm not very happy with the cloud shape and I want to redo it. Some more quick dabbing. And the sky is ready. Next, let's paint the lavender field. I'm mixing sap green on my size eight brush. And starting with the central row. I'm giving quick short strokes inside the semicircle for the stems. Cobalt blue strokes come around the stem after that. And then finally, mauve on the outside. Remember, don't stick to a rigid semi circular form for the bush. Makes sure your strokes go a little in and out of the semicircle. All right, the first lavender bush is done. Now I'm starting with the one behind it. And I don't really worry about the colors of the first and this bush mixing because I kind of like that effect. and like that, I'm painting the whole row of bushes. Now we only need to paint the stem for the first four or five bushes in all rows because they won't really be seen on the bushes further beyond that. So as I get to these bushes, I directly start with cobalt blue and then give mauve. To make my job a little easier I'm giving the cobalt blue on all the bushes first and then going back and giving mauve on all of them. I just make sure to work fast enough to apply the mauve before the blue dries up because I want both the colors to merge. You can do this if you feel you can work fast. But if you'd like to take your time and paint slowly then I recommend finishing the bushes one at a time. And as we move further away, we don't need to give so much definition to the bushes. My strokes get smaller and smaller. And as I get closer to the horizon line, I'm just dabbing the paints with my brush tip. I'm finishing up the rows on the right first just because it's convenient for me. There is no such rule as you should do one side first before the other. The only thing to keep in mind, whichever direction you work towards is to make sure you don't touch the wet area with your hand and end up smudging the paint. Now I'm doing the bushes that are very far away and just like the bushes right at the back of the first row we don't need to give defined shape for them. I'm just dabbing the colors there. and as we get further away, these rows get thinner and thinner so I'm just dabbing my brush over the whole line instead of defining individual bushes. For the rows even further away, it's easier to draw light lines first with a brush and then go in and give them more thickness by dabbing in the paints. I'm applying little blobs of cobalt blue on the line and then giving mauve it. Don't make them rigid, straight lines, make them sort of bumpy and uneven. And like that, I'm just finishing the other lines behind as well. And now I'm painting the bushes on the left side. And because I work from left to right, I'm starting with those far away rows of bushes and then moving on towards the central row. All right. The lavender field is painted. Now, I like to leave these gaps in-between the bushes white because I like the idea of this painting using a small color palette. And I don't want to bring in another color here. But more than that, I feel this gives a stronger emphasis to the three important elements in the composition. The sky, the lavender field and the mountains. Now just one last bit left to be painted - the mountains. So I'm painting the mountains green using the same brush. I'm mixing up some sap green and just filling in the whole mountain area. And just to give a little bit of depth to them, I'm giving a darker shade on top of that. For this I've mixed a little bit of blue to the sap green. I want it to look even darker so I'm painting with a darker shade. And there- the mountains are done as well. And with that, our lavender field painting is complete. So just to recap, in this lesson, we painted the sky first after giving a water wash. Then we painted the lavender bushes, and then the distant mountains. We use different brush strokes for all three - relaxed, long, curvy strokes for the sky, quick, short strokes for the lavender bushes and some dabbing for the smaller bushes and a regular brush fill for the distant mountains. All right, now that we've finished up painting, I will meet you in the next video to wrap up this class. 8. Conclusion: Congratulations on finishing the class. We learned a little bit about perspective and how to sketch in one-point perspective. You can use this technique, to sketch any landscape in this perspective, it doesn't just have to be lavender field. We also learned how to paint the individual elements like the lavender bushes and the sky, and to put everything together to make our final watercolor painting. I hope you enjoyed the class and had fun through the lessons. Feel free to ask me anything by posting a comment in the discussion panel and below. I am so excited to see your paintings, so please upload them to the student project gallery once you're done. And if you decide to share it on Instagram, don't forget to tag me @the_artsychoke so I can re-share it and show off your work. And of course, don't forget to tag Skillshare @skillshare. And I would really appreciate it if you can take a moment to leave a review. Your feedback is extremely important and will help me make better classes for you. Follow me here on Skillshare so you get a notification every time I release a new class or make an announcement. And if you would like to try out some architectural illustrations or botanical patterns, check out my previous classes. Thank you for taking this class and I really look forward to seeing your paintings. Take care and see you next time. 9. Quick Update!: Hi again. I just wanted to update you guys on a new development. I am now offering 1-on-1 sessions. 1-on-1 sessions are great because they let you have a more focused, responsive and personalized learning experience. Pre-recorded classes are great, but sometimes they lack that personalized touch which can make all the difference in your learning journey. In a 1-on-1 one session, the focus is entirely on you, your strengths, your goals, and your areas of improvement. Every minute of the session is dedicated to your unique needs, and I'll be able to give you immediate guidance and feedback as and when required. I offer two different sessions. One is a 15 minute feedback session for any of my classes on Skillshare. So if you enjoyed this class and need a personalized feedback or need a little bit more help somewhere along the class, you can book a 1-on-1 session with me. You can show me your progress or ask me questions regarding the class and I'll help you out. The second session is a 30 minute session on finding inspiration for drawing botanicals. Over the 30 minutes, I will list and explain eight places to look for inspiration while drawing botanicals for your illustrations or patterns. Unlike pre- recorded classes or other online courses which follow a one size fits all approach, 1-on-1 sessions can be personalized to your specific needs and learning pace. To book a 1-on-1 session with me, just go to my Skillshare profile page. It's really an investment in your creative journey and I hope I can help you and guide you through that.