Beginner Watercolor Landscape Tutorial

In today's tutorial, I am so excited to take you step by step through the process of creating this muted, beginner-friendly landscape. All right, now if you have seen my other landscape tutorial, then this will be review for you, but just bear with me. Now, first we're going to do the horizon line. The horizon line is the line where the sky and the ground meet each other, and you never want it to be in the exact middle. Well, I shouldn't say never. You don't usually want it to be in the exact middle. If you are putting it in the exact middle of your paper, it's just going to be more difficult, and it's going to be more obvious if you're a little crooked or if you're not quite there. So you want it to be either a little higher or a little lower. So this one that I just finished, if you want to see me really struggle through a tutorial, ask me to see this one because this one was rough. The horizon line is here, which is slightly above the center of the paper. This time around, and something I think is a little bit more beginner-friendly, I'm actually going to go a little bit below. So we're going to focus on the sky here, and one easy way to make sure your line is nice and straight is to hold your pencil and kind of find out where you want it to be. And using your pinky, see how I'm kind of anchoring this on the side? I'm just going to drag this down. It kind of creates a nice straight line. You do not want to work as dark as I am working right now. So you can probably barely see that. I'm going to darken it a little bit for you. But you don't want to be able to see your pencil lines. You want it to be just enough so that it can act as a guide. So now I am going to add a little bit of like a... Let's do a hill on this side. I feel like I did a hill on the other side last time. Like this. And you can still have stuff kind of in the background. I'm just having like this miscellaneous hill in the background. I'm gonna let that scoop down a little. Do I have an eraser handy? I do. So this is just a white eraser. I'll have linked in the supplies down below. So I have my horizon line that I am manipulating a little bit just to have a little bit more fun. So it's not perfectly straight. It's just a little... There's a little bit of a squiggle there. And then I have this very light hill in the background. So if I'm going to have some definition here, let's have it here as well. So I'm just going to kind of lightly sketch some squiggles here where I want to have some shrubs or some foliage of some sort. I'm just going to kind of allow it to be on both sides. And then maybe have something in the foreground a little bit. So I just have a couple of lines here. There we go. Not a lot going on. I've got my horizon line that I've kind of manipulated a little bit. A slight hill here and just some squiggles to say like, I want to have some shrubs or foliage of some sort in here. I just like having with watercolor, because you have to work so quickly, it's nice to have a little bit of a plan. I'm going to have something else here as well. Let's pull this in a little more. So one thing I don't want to do just as a personal preference. So see how I had this section squiggled and it stops about here. Well, originally I had this one stopping very close to the same spot. So I extended this section out so that they're not like stopping almost on a line on, you know, like a plane with each other. You want there to be. It just looks a little bit more organic and natural if you have a little bit of that variety. All right. So you would if you were not doing this as a tutorial, take a kneaded eraser and just roll it along your paper. And that would lighten it so that you won't get any pencil lines in your painting. All right, let's start painting. OK, I'm just going to take some water and pull our indigo. Now I want kind of a moody. That's a lot. I forgot indigo is so pigmented. I want kind of a moody landscape. So this super bright blue is not going to cut it for me. So I'm going to take some of our praline green and I'm going to pull some of this together. Now that is much closer to what I want. I want it to be a little bit more gray. Let's see. Let's take a little bit of our red just a touch. I don't want to overpower and get like a purple tone, but just to desaturate it a little bit more. So desaturating meaning so this is very bright and the opposite of bright would be something that is desaturated or muted. So I'm kind of going for almost a gray sky, but I want there to have that little bit of blue undertone. Even though I'm going for something that's a little bit more muted, I still want it. I don't know. I don't want it to be boring. So I'm pulling in this blue, but I want it to be nice and desaturated. Okay, I like what we've got going there. What I'm going to do now is I'm going to pull it across. Now you see how that's skipping right here. That means my brush is too dry. So I did that intentionally because I wanted to show you kind of what happens. I get asked a lot. How do you know if you have too much water or too little? Well, if you start making a puddle, I'm just pulling in clean water. If you start making a puddle, then your brush is too wet. If you start skipping like that, then your brush is far too dry. Okay, and I'm pulling it down even past so that first hill that I have intentionally I am pulling it down there and I'm kind of running it along the edge of where the foliage that I kind of sketched out is going to be. I want there to be a little bit of an overlap. Really, I'm going down to my horizon line and just a touch over. Now the sky, if you've taken my last landscape tutorial, then you will know that the sky is much darker towards the top. And then as it approaches the horizon line, it gets lighter and lighter. And also another thing I like to do is pull the dark value in just a little bit down the side because it kind of frames it in a little bit of a vignette. You want to do it a lot. You don't want to look like you put a bad Instagram filter on it. But just that little bit can help to kind of draw the eye of the viewer in and kind of keep them there. So now while this is still wet, let me change the view so you can kind of see a little bit. See how shiny that is? But it's not a puddle. There isn't like water sitting on it, but it's definitely wet. That's kind of what you're going for. All right, I'm going to go a little more subtle with the clouds than I have in the past. If you want a more detailed tutorial about how to do clouds, how to get like some dramatic fluffy white clouds, I will have that linked down below. But I'm just going to have just something so that there is some interest in here, but not too much. And I'm just dabbing, picking up some of this pigmentation. Let's see. Let's go in here a little bit. Oops, sorry if that was focusing on my hand. For a moment there. All right, it almost disappears, which is kind of what I want this time around. I don't want it to be too bold. I am going to take a little bit of the pigment and bring it down just a little bit to where the base of our cloud is, just so it doesn't completely disappear. A little bit more water. See how there's hardly any pigment on that brush? Bring that in. Take the same bath tissue. So going pretty minimal, getting a little fussy now, but really don't want to do too much on the clouds this time. Might add a little something. Just let that be. Nice and soft. Making sure I'm only adding pigment to the part that's already wet. All right, I'm going to stop there. She said as she's grabbing more paint. I'm just going to... This is just water, and I'm cleaning my brush off on the rag here, or wiping it off so it's not too wet. I'm just running this along the edge. I don't love how this ended up, so I'm just going to soften it. Okay, so while that is still wet, I'm going to start working on our ground here. So we're going to pull in our Praline Green. So this is, again, just a dark green. If you have like a beginner style palette, you can grab a green or mix a green that leans a little bit more cool tone, so it has a little bit more blue in it, rather than having kind of equal parts yellow and equal parts blue. And if you add a little bit of black to it, you get pretty close to Praline. And I'm going to add some yellow to it to warm it up. And I'm going to add just the tiniest little baby touch of our Quinacridone Red, just to desaturate it. It gives it a little bit more of like an olive tone, which is just a touch moodier. And we're going to do the same thing. So I'm going to take my brush. It's very wet, and it's loaded with pigment. And we are going to... Oops. It's wet, and it's loaded with pigment, and we are going to just brush that along. Now, see how that bled a little bit there? I don't quite want it to bleed that much. It's okay, but it's not what I'm going for. And then we're just going to mix it together. And it's skipping, so I'm adding more water. And unlike the sky, which as it gets closer to... As it goes down, it gets darker. It's actually kind of the opposite with the ground, because actually this is closer to the viewer. This is closer to the viewer, and everything on the horizon line is farther away. So I'm just going to dab in more pigment kind of at the very perimeter, just so that it's a little bit darker. And then I'm going to take a clean brush, and I'm going to just... I'm dabbing off any of the excess so it's just damp. And I'm going to pull and wipe. Pull and wipe. I'm pulling very gently so as not to, A, disturb the paper. I don't want to scar the paper. Found out this paper scars very easily in the last tutorial. And I don't want to pick up too much. I'm just picking up some of the pigment, wiping it off. Picking it up, wiping it off. And I'm just going to kind of blend it in. Now, if you've watched one of my tutorials before, you know I kind of like to add a little bit of red in. So I'm going to take some of our red, mix it with the green, and that will naturally mute it. And I'm going to just kind of gently pull it in here a little bit. I don't have a particular reason why I like to add red in. It's just something that I started doing, and I really loved it. I really love to do it with raw sienna, or more of like an orange tone. This time around, I'm just going to be using what we have on our palette. I could mix a little bit of our yellow in, and that would be beautiful. This time around, I'm just... There we go. Okay, so while that is drying, I'm actually going to make sure that it's dry kind of on this line here. So normally, I would have done this background hill before I started this foreground, but I found that with this paper, it blends together kind of funny. So I'm actually going to work on that now. I'm going to combine our sky and our foreground, like our grass color, because having more blue, a cooler tone, more blue in our pigment will make it kind of naturally fall back. So cooler colors or a green that has more blue in it will naturally fall into the background, where something that is warmer, or a green that has more yellow in it will naturally come closer to the viewer. So if I'm trying to convince the viewer, or the viewer is the person, whoever's looking at my painting, that this is something that's in the background, the best way that I can do that is to make it look just a little bit cooler in tone and have it be a little lighter. So I'm putting this in, and I'm going to need to, for sure, lighten it a little bit. So I'll show you how I'm going to do that in just a second. I'm going to take a clean piece of this bath tissue, careful not to get on my green, and I'm going to just tap along. You can see how it's picking it up already. And then, whoop, see how that nicely, that kind of faded into the background? So you've got this nice background shape. I just took a damp brush along the edge just to soften it. This paper likes to kind of, I don't know, it has kind of a hairy look with some of the shapes that it wants to make, the way that it bleeds a little bit, which isn't my favorite. Adding a little bit more green so this one will look like it's a little bit closer. And I'm pretty happy with where that's at right now. I like how everything is really soft. But let's add a little bit more interest to this. All right, zoomed in for you just a touch. So hopefully this is just a different angle. You can see a little bit more of what's going on and what I'm doing. So I'm taking some of the praline green that we used before. I'm allowing it to mix with some of this red that's on here because that will automatically desaturate it a little bit. And I am going to warm it up with our transparent yellow. All of these supplies I will have linked down below, by the way. We've got our nice deep green. I'm really mixing a very similar value to what I used, or a very similar hue or color to what I used for this grass. But I want it to be deeper. And so I want it to be nice thick pigment instead of being quite so watered down. So it's nice and green. And then I'm going to start. Let's see. Is this wet? This doesn't feel very wet. Looks like everything's pretty dry. So I'm going to start taking my brush and start working on some of this foliage. And I'm really just going to wiggle this around. So it looks really dark now. It will dry lighter. Look at the grass that we have now. It will dry a little lighter. I do want it to be dark and we'll continue to kind of work with it and manipulate it. And I'm just wiggling it around. So this is kind of a moody, looser, very painterly style. A little bit of water, dabbing that off. So no extra pigment. I'm just moving around the pigment that I already have on. Continuing to kind of manipulate it and allowing that to fade off. And then we're going to add some down here. This one, because it's closer to the viewer. Oops, sorry. Because it's a little closer to the viewer or more in the foreground. I'm going to be adding more detail to this as we go. All right. While this is still wet, I'm cleaning my brush off, removing any excess water, taking some fresh pigment. I'm just going to tap in some of this. And this is going to create the shape. So I'm finding out where the shadows are going to be. Spoiler, they're going to be towards the bottom. And I'm just tapping some of that in. I'm going to add a little bit more of our red. Because again, I like to have red kind of mixed in throughout. This will also help with kind of creating those shadows. A little bit of water, dabbing off my brush. Oops, not quite enough. See how red that is or how dark that is? Although this paper, I should probably be working a little bit darker. This paper eats the pigment so much. It just gets so light. Look at this foreground. We'll definitely need another wash of pigment. But I'll show you how to do that. Your paper, unless you're using very similar paper, probably won't need quite as much attention as mine needs today. I won't need to go over it so many times. All right, I'm going to add some here as well. And I'm just wiggling my brush around. This is just going to be smaller to add a little bit of variety in here. So we've got like a bigger structure and a smaller one. Water, a cleaner brush, dabbed off, tapping off any excess. It's still damp and I'm just going to smooth that out. Adding a little bit of our red in here. Which not only helps to create kind of the look of a shadow, but it adds just some visual interest. I'm going to take some more of it and dab it around in here. So I've totally lost what we had going on in here before, which that's OK. We'll build it back up. But it is a little frustrating. Just adding smaller sections so it doesn't totally kind of come and go. Looks a little bit more natural. If you kind of have that little bit of visual interest in here. I don't love this one or this one, really. So we'll try again in a minute. Soften this, got a barely damp brush. So I'm just kind of running it along the edge. And then take a little bit more of the praline. Just to deepen everything a little bit. And now that it's starting to dry, everything's starting to dry. Just a touch. I'm going to tap this in the very bottom. Cleaning my brush off. I think I'm actually going to pick some of this up. So I've got a damp brush with no pigment. I'm just going to pick up some of what we put down. I'm going to work in sections. I'm going to kind of pick up and then skip around and pick up again. Almost like I'm picking out certain branches. Or specific sections of these shrubs to highlight. So I'm going to skip this section, allow that to be a little darker. And then pick up some of the pigment here, which will create kind of a natural highlight. Putting some of it back over here. I'm rinsing my brush off, nice and dry. Or not super wet. Picking up, dabbing off. And then we're going to pick up a little bit on this side as well. And as I was picking it up, I tried to stay a little bit more on the right of each clump that I was kind of visualizing. And that just helps it to keep it a little bit more realistic and a little more like natural shadows or natural highlights, avoiding shadows and stuff like that. I'm a little happier with where that's going. Okay, I'm going to let that dry. And then let's add, let's go back in with this foreground and add, you know, kind of add that interest back in. So I'm going to mix our foreground color. Again, we had that little bit of red. We had plenty of this yellow. And we had some of our praline green, which is my favorite green right now. Let's see, that might have been a little too much red. So I'm going to add back in the yellow. I don't want it to be too desaturated, especially because this paper does love to eat that pigment. And this will be a light layer. So what we're going to do is we're going to add a glaze. A glaze is a light layer of pigment that doesn't disturb whatever is underneath. And it can just, it just kind of provides a tint or a shadow. So I've got my color mixed. And I'm tapping off any of the excess water because I don't want to reactivate the paint that's underneath. And I'm just going to add that pigment to the top. And I'm going to try and work quickly because I don't want to have any dry, any sections dry before I'm done with the next one. Or else that's when you get like a lot of the funny lines. Being careful around these guys. So that will just help to brighten it just a little bit. You can keep it desaturated if you want, but it was a little too desaturated for my taste. And then we lost a little bit of that red that we had going on. So I'm going to add it back in very carefully. We lost some of our interest. And then deep in this corner and this foreground. And you could here, while the paper is still wet, add a little bit of salt, and that would help to create a little bit of visual texture. I did that in a previous tutorial, so I'm not going to do it this time around. But it is kind of a fun option if you're interested in doing that. I did that and I don't know why I did. So let's pick it back up. Clean part of our bath tissue. And get rid of that. Okay, maybe a touch of the yellow. I might regret this. Go towards the front just to kind of... Nah, let's add some of that pigment back in. A little bit more of the praline just to deepen it a little. All right, now I'm going to kind of finish this little shrub out front. And I think we're going to be good. So I'm just going to add another layer. I didn't add... I didn't pull from it like I did up here the way I probably should have. But we can still have a similar effect by just adding another layer of kind of this deeper value. And adding that little bit of visual interest. Also going to add just a little bit to this section. I'm trying to show that this is... These are like two... Oops, sorry, out of focus. These are two different masses that are forming. Masses of foliage kind of branching out. I'm just going to tap. All right, and I think we're going to call that good. So obviously it is still drying a little bit, but I love a landscape like this that is just so simple and easy. It's very soothing, kind of oddly satisfying, if you will. And it's just very simple. By allowing the sky to take over 50% of the attention, but also just being simple and beautiful with our very simple clouds in here. But they're there. You can be a little bit more dramatic if you want. Again, I have a tutorial like that in my archives, so you can check that out. I'll have it linked down below. But I just love the simplicity. I love the muted color palette. I love how calming and relaxing it is. I hope that you enjoyed this tutorial, that you found it helpful. If you have any questions, I do my best to answer within 24 hours. So leave those in the comment section down below. Or I'm sure somebody else has the answer to your question. You know, I think I'm going to... Looks like I forgot to add any shadows in here. So I'm going to add that. One thing that I often do that I haven't really talked about here is that I often like to wait till something dries and come back the next day. And then just see what else I need to add. Because sometimes having that fresh, you know, that little bit of rush and that rest and that fresh perspective, you'll see, oh, I totally didn't notice that before. Let me deepen this or brighten this a little bit or add a shadow that you totally forgot to add on this little clump of shrubs. But anyway, I hope that you found this tutorial helpful and that you enjoyed it. If you give it a shot, give me a tag on Instagram. You can tag me at katrinacrouch.art or you can send it to me via email, which I will have linked down below. I hope that you are having a wonderful, wonderful day. And until next time, happy painting.