⛅ Easy Mini Watercolor Painting Tutorial // Summer Fields

Hi everyone, I hope you're doing well. Today we have a mini watercolor painting tutorial with these two very simple summery field paintings. I haven't painted with watercolors in forever and to be honest I was feeling extremely rusty, so much so that I had to start this video over because I wasn't happy with the first painting I did. But I'm much happier with these two little paintings after I started over and they are both very fast and easy to paint, only using a few colors, so I'd encourage you to give them a go even if you're new to watercolors or haven't just painted in a while like me. But anyway we'll start with this more landscapy painting on the left side. I didn't do any pencil sketches today, I just drew these two loose rectangles to keep the two paintings roughly the same size. However if the blank page freaks you out, go ahead and draw any guidelines or separate sketches that you think would help you to feel more comfortable. We'll start here with a flat brush and we are first adding a layer of water to this whole rectangle so that we get a very smooth blended look to these first colors. Then we'll start with this bright sky blue shade and I started to sweep it across the top part and also added some small taps of it here and there to create some color variation. You could add another color here if you want, for example a light pink, purple or orange to create a sunrise or sunset vibe, but I was trying to keep the colors to the minimum here to not make things muddy and messy, which is something I tend to do often. So all I did was adding just a hair of this darker grayish blue, which you can barely even see. Then while the background is still wet, we'll also go ahead and start adding this bright yellow ochre and green mixture to the bottom and slowly work upwards to meet the sky color. I added a little bit of yellow to the center of this field part, which will brighten up the colors and otherwise we'll avoid adding any other color to the center part, just to keep pretty highlighted effect in the final image. Again, I was really trying to limit the colors here and go for these yellowish greens at this point and also keep the colors darkest towards the bottom edge. So here the background is still slightly wet, so next we'll add these first far away tree or forest shapes along the horizon line. I used the same two blue shades and also mixed whatever green was left in the palette and I focused most of these colors toward the edges and left the middle a little bit lighter. But after doing that, I felt like the bottom of the field was not dark enough and I wanted some of the colors to still blend with the background colors, so I chose to go over these drying parts with some darker green shades. You can see that this caused a bit of separating or pooling, whatever you want to call this here in the middle. I was trying to create these almost diagonal shadows to the field, but these darker green shades were not really blending with the lighter colors anymore. So after adding some of these darker tones and freaking out a little bit, I decided to take a risk and sweep water over the whole field part again with the flat brush and that actually helped a lot to blend these darker shades with the rest and also allowed some extra time to add any shadows here and there with a darker green and blue gray mixture. I'd love to pretend that I know what I'm doing here and that all these strokes and colors are intentional, but the truth is that I rarely feel like that when painting with watercolors. There's always this element of surprise with them and something might end up looking very different than what you intended when the colors just keep traveling on the page and blend with each other. But this is definitely something that gets better with time and practice, so just keep trying and you'll slowly learn the ways your paints and papers work. Anyway, at this point I let the painting dry and then we'll start the final detailing or polishing phase, which is gonna be fairly simple. So first I thought we could add a few of these darker trees along the horizon again and I used these dark grayish green shades towards the edges and then blended a little bit of the same brighter yellow ochre shade towards the trees in the middle, kind of to add some sort of sunlight effect. I switched to a smaller detailing brush so that I was able to create a little bit sharper shapes for the trees. I wasn't going for any particular tree shapes here, so pretty much any smudgy shapes will work. And then I continued taking these green shades also to the field to add any final shadows or grass strokes here and there. Again, I wanted to give this painting very simple so that any experienced levels can try this out without being too overwhelmed. So here you could add more or less details, like you could even go for some animals or birds in the sky, or you could definitely just leave the painting like this and call it a day. But if you happen to own a white gouache paint or white marker of some sort, you could add a few white dots around the field to resemble some white flowers. So this is what I did and I think it added such a pretty and delicate final touch to this painting. I tried to keep the dots as small as possible and almost create these small groups of them rather than just adding singular dots here and there. I think doing it this way just resembled flowers a little bit more, but I think both options would still totally work. But after that, we have finished the first painting and now it's time to jump to the second one, which I think will be even easier than this first one. I'm always so stressed when I start the second painting in these videos, because if it doesn't work out, I have to start all over again. So that's also one reason why I chose this very loose and fun flower field painting next. We'll start the exact same way by first applying a layer of water to this whole rectangle and then we'll start adding some different colours here. I started from some of these lighter colours that I added towards the top part. I wanted there to be some blue and yellow ochre peeking from under the other shades and then we'll move on to some darker greens and greys when we move to the lower parts. You don't need to be super careful here or anything, but I did try to leave some dots and stripes that would show in the final image, so that the whole bottom part wouldn't be too blended or smooth to the point that it would remove all of the texture and colour variation. You might really need to dig into your colours to get this dark intensity out of them, especially if you're going with only one layer, but when you're happy with the colours, we'll let the background fully dry and then all we have left is to paint all the flowers on top. I used the same white gouache paint here and started to paint these very simple flower shapes. Most of my flowers have four petals, but I think I painted three or five to some of them. It doesn't really matter. I often painted the front petal slightly smaller than the rest, which will help to give an angle to the flower and I also tried to change the sizes and directions overall. I also tried to leave the centers of the flowers blank for now because it helps with the flower shapes, but I also wanted to add a different colour there later. So when you're happy with the amount of flowers, we'll finish things off by adding some dots all over this painting. I used this method that I always use to create stars for a night sky, which is dipping a small brush into the white paint and then hitting it with a pen or another brush over the painting. This creates very fine dots that fly all over the painting, so you might want to cover the first painting or anything else around your desk and then you can always add bigger dots here and there with the same brush if there are any areas that still need it. Then lastly, as a completely optional step again, I took out my new foil paints and added this gold shade in the centers of the white flowers and all over the painting as well. You could definitely use a yellow or orange shade if you don't own a gold foil paint and I think this added just a bit more interest and colour to this otherwise very simple painting. I also added a few light lines with the detailing brush to maybe resemble some sharper stems, but that is also not necessary. I mean, you can barely see what I did here and then when you're finally happy with the amount of white dots and flowers, we can put down the brush and announce these two paintings ready. I really hope you enjoyed watching this simple tutorial and that it encourages you to take out your watercolors. If this was your first time around here and you'd like to stay tuned for more, definitely consider subscribing and I think that's all for today. Thank you so much for watching, I hope you're having an amazing day or night wherever you are and I'll see you in my next one. Bye bye!