Easy Clouds in Watercolor for Beginners - Simple Techniques for Better Clouds and Landscapes

Good morning everyone. Today we're focusing mainly on clouds in the landscape but I'm including lots of helpful tips as well as a hot air balloon. Now if you're a beginner feel free to leave the hot air balloon out and just paint the landscape and the sky and the clouds. You can download the outline page and get the free tutorial at watsonwatercolor.com. You can use a lot of different colors for your cloud shadows but I'm trying to keep it simple in this video so I'm just mixing cobalt blue with burnt sienna and I'm using enough of both colors to make a puddle that's a bluish gray. Cobalt blue or ultramarine blue both make good grays but whatever you use once you have a good blue gray wet down the paper to the horizon line going around the balloon if you have one. Now viewers have told me that they can't see where I'm wetting the paper when I use clean water so one way to get around that is just to tint the water with a tiny bit of your blue so you can see where you're working. For large washes, large areas, use a large wash brush for the best results. If you have trouble with your paper buckling you can also wet the back of the paper. If the paper gets wet it stretches and if it can stretch evenly it will lay flat. Use plenty of water and if you tilt your board you want the paper wet enough that it forms a bead of water at the bottom. If nothing moves on the surface and it doesn't form a bead you need to add more water just keep wetting it. When your paper is evenly wet it's time to apply some cloud shading with a smaller brush. My gray doesn't look very blue it looks more brown so I add a little more blue. To apply the color I'm using the side of my brush and I'm just washing on some of that color leaving some areas open. This looks dark but it will dry a lot lighter. Don't try to control your wash into a perfect cloud shape just get some color down and then evaluate it. If your color spreads way too far you can lift some back up with a damp brush called a thirsty brush. I wouldn't use a paper towel because it's going to leave a dry spot in your sky. If you think your gray is too light put on more paint. As long as the paper is evenly damp you can do some adjusting but don't fiddle with it too much. Once you start to dry leave it alone. And remember that whatever that does by itself on the paper is probably better than it's going to look if you overwork it. Dry this well. Next we're going to paint the blue sky behind the clouds and the balloon. Mix a big puddle of a rich blue. You can use cobalt or ultramarine or cerulean whatever color you like. If you look at the sky it's darkest at the top and it gets gradually lighter as they approach the horizon line where they may be almost white. Since I want a smooth wash for the sky I'm going to work wet on wet. I'm starting with the tinted water and I'm wetting the top sky area. Now I'm leaving the top of the clouds dry. Once again big area big brush. Then load your brush well. Don't just dip the point in. Dip the whole brush in your puddle. Get a big brush full of color and lay on your concentrated blue color. If you can get it darker at the top going lighter at the bottom it's nice but it can be difficult. My color isn't cooperating as well as I'd like and my sky isn't as smooth as I'd like either but I don't try to fix it with my brush. I tilt the paper back and forth and let gravity smooth it out. Before this dries completely I'm going to paint the bottom with a little bit lighter blue like cerulean. I'm not painting the bottom sky exactly around the edge of the shading but I'm leaving some white clouds between the gray shading and the blue sky. Do you see how this is called negative painting when you paint around something to form a shape? We're painting the sky around the white clouds and where we paint the blue forms the white of the clouds. Looking at mine the difference between the dark blue at the top and the light blue at the bottom looks like two different skies. So while the bottom is still wet I'm going to add some of that dark blue with a small brush. For the trees in the distance you want a light bluish gray for the farthest away trees and some dark green for the accent trees. I mix my light green with cerulean blue and yellow and I paint the light trees and dry that well. For the dark trees you can use hooker's green, perylene green, you can mix your green with black. The accent trees are darkest next to the barn or at the bottom of the tree area and then dry these well. The field at the bottom is green. To make it look realistic you want it well saturated with a pure green especially at the very bottom edge which would be the front. You want it lighter in the front and the right side and a little darker next to the barn. Since this area is larger I'm switching back to my larger brush. Note I'm laying on the color with a well loaded brush so that the wash is wet enough that the colors blend on the paper by themselves. But I use a smaller brush to add a touch of dark green because I don't want it flooding into the wash. Time to evaluate. Clouds generally are soft and wispy. An easy way to create that effect is to use a damp toothbrush and rub the top of the cloud to soften that line. Hard toothbrushes work better than soft and you want to go in a circular motion not back and forth. Just rub it gently and dab up any reactivated paint with a paper towel. You will need to re-wet your toothbrush as you work across. You can soften the top edges, you can soften the bottom edges, if you want you can re-wet some blue and lift out another cloud. Toothbrushes work great for creating clouds. Wispy clouds without any shading will look farther away. Now for my balloon. Balloons need shading too. The gray you used for the cloud could work very well to shade the balloon. Just wet the balloon with clean water, add shading to the left side with a small brush. The large barn is going to have a little bit of reddish color but because it's so far in the distance you don't want a really bright red. You can tone your red down with gray or black or brown or even a little green. It can be reddish but you don't want a super bright red. The two small barns I'm just leaving them kind of white. If they stand out too much give them a touch of your gray. Balloons come in an amazing array of colors and patterns. I'm trying to make mine striped with red yellow and orange but it's still looking kind of flat. I think after this video I'm going to add more color, soften the color and just keep playing with the balloon until I like the way it looks. You can also add another balloon or just an outline of a balloon to look like a balloon farther away. Are you going to add more than one balloon? No balloons? This is your work and don't hesitate to make it unique. Your painting does not need to look like mine to be a success. Thank you for watching and if you need more painting inspiration with tutorials you can have fun with visit watsonwatercolor.com. Happy painting!