Realistic Abstract Watercolour Painting

A member on Patreon sent me a photograph of a tree and a lane. Relatively usual kind of subject matter but she was asking how could she go about painting it in a more abstract loose kind of manner. So I'm going to use just the two colours cadmium yellow and Payne's grey and I'm going to really try and give this quite a lot of impact laying in some very wet paint allowing it to mix together but still maintaining an element of realism so it's still going to read as a tree and a landscape but really have quite a lot of impact hopefully anyway really strong contrast and just treat everything as a series of joined together abstract shapes. I'm going to use this large size 16 sable brush and I've wet the paper quite a lot with the mist bottle I'm going to try and get some of this paint running around so let's pick up some of that Payne's grey very dilute to start off with anyway and we'll lay some of that into the sky knock back some of the white of the paper so just laying that in at this stage just to cover up some of that white get a little bit of colour up there not looking for anything in the sky as such the large shapes of the tree and the land is going to do most of the work in this one anyway so don't need anything too strong in the sky so very lightly bringing that down and I'm going to lay some of that paint in to the land as well maybe suggest a little bit of distance but all of these shapes hopefully are going to run together anyway so it's just about getting something down on the paper so clean the brush off now and I think I'll turn the board upside down got my board at a little bit of an angle probably about 20 degrees or so just so that paint runs around and now cadmium yellow very strong very bright colour and so pick some of that up just neat straight out of the tube and lay that on and see if we can get some of that to run around so just give it a little bit of a mist now I don't really have to worry too much about following my pencil lines doesn't matter if the paint runs over so very strong bright yellow paint again give it a little bit of a mist try and encourage some of those runs another quick spray with the bottle and that's really starting to move around so I can pick the board up tilt it from side to side and now can start going in with some stronger Payne's grey I'm going to start picking out this tree shape and some of those bushes but I'm not really thinking about painting a tree I'm blurring my eyes when I look at the reference photo and just trying to pick out some of those overall shapes it's the the actual idea of painting painting a tree can really hold you back sometimes so if you just look at the shape and concentrate on that it makes life a lot easier so it's a very thick paint there and I can drag that around using the side of the brush and I think when kind of working in this style it's best to really try and find a an interesting shape rather than trying to paint every single leaf or every single branch it's you can have fun with it and just allow the paint to move around let's touch some of that Payne's grey into this yellow as well turn it back upside down give it another little spray now I can allow that to sit for a little second get some of those runs happening some quite interesting shapes starting to emerge on the paper just by allowing gravity to do its thing it's quite a nice way to work as well it's like a spontaneous way of painting allowing watercolor to do its own thing again tilt it from side to side make sure I don't knock the camera over and then back the other way and so allowing the paint to move around watercolor loves to flow with gravity especially if you get a lot of water on there and some magic things can happen occasionally when you do this kind of thing just clean the brush off and pick up a rigger brush now and I'm laying very thick paint in it's essentially straight out of the tube so it's very thick and I can lay that over quite wet paint underneath and it doesn't move around too much it will hold its own to a degree so again I'm squinting when I look at the reference and picking out some of those dark shapes there's a little track that runs up there and all of those bushes on the right hand side can be laid in with some very thick paint but just picking out the shapes and if you're going to try this kind of thing yourself it's I always think it's best to try and stick to maybe a couple of colors and quite often pretty much anything will work if you use either a black or a Payne's gray with it so this would work quite nicely with red or blue as well you don't have to use cadmium yellow but to keep your palette relatively simple and if you're going to use more than one color make sure they're complementary and then you can't really go too far wrong so now I'm just connecting all these darks together and I can start picking out a few little areas of detail in the tree now so the trunks and a few branches and again I'm using very thick paint so it can lay over the top of the wet underneath and I haven't dried this at all this is still essentially the first wash I'm using a size five rigger so it's quite large and I can lay on some areas of dark quite easily with the brush and also get little areas of detail at the same time and now things are starting to dry a tiny little bit up there especially towards the top I could just flick that brush around and get a few slightly harder edges and I think that's about as much detail in inverted commas as I'm gonna get really just dragging the brush around for those few tiny little hard edges and I think that's going to be enough actually to create a little bit of a focal point out that area of that tree and lay on some more dark here and there and I'm just trying to pull out the composition now okay I've dried the painting off a little bit only for a few minutes so it's still not completely dry and I'm going to touch some neat cadmium yellow in over the top now again it's very thick paint and I'm laying it into slightly damp paper and I'm just looking where I need to maybe break up a tiny little bit of a dark shape with a little touch of cadmium yellow and it's semi-opaque so I can lay that in over the top of a bit of dark and it will still hold its own now let's grab a little bit of water in the brush and tap that against my hand and I'm going to get a few little areas of spatter just water and that should create a few little areas of texture okay it's completely dry and I'm not too happy with the sky I think it needs a little bit of darkening so I'm going to bring in a little bit of a glaze across the sky mainly in the top right there it's a little bit too flat at the moment and I think a tiny little bit of Payne's grey wrapped around that tree hopefully give it a little bit more impact so back to the large sable brush a bit of water misted up into that sky and then drag on some quite dilute paint clean the brush off a little bit and then just drag that down soften all the edges now you have to make sure that the painting is completely dry if you're going to do this stage if there's any sort of hint of moisture in that paper it will probably cause a few little problems so make sure it's completely dry if you're going to bring in any glaze over the top so a bit more water in the brush soften any of those hard edges and then bring that down and that's created a nice little frame around the shape of that tree and brought a little bit more balance I think to the overall painting it's just very lightly now tease that down make sure I haven't got any hard edges forming and I think a little bit more dark right down in the foreground as well again and that'll have the same sort of impact to create a little bit of a frame around and almost like a vignette in a way and push the eye more into the middle so laying in a little bit of that dark clean the brush off a bit slightly more dilute paint over the top and soften some of the edges as I go then a little bit of clean water in the brush and then just modify a few of those little edges there and make sure I don't cover up all of that yellow but that's the painting finished and working from a member's photograph to create a relatively abstract final painting and she asked if I could paint something very loose and with a more abstract feel and I think that's fulfilled the brief anyway I hope you like the outcome of that and I hope that's giving you some ideas of how you could apply that to your own work but anyway very simple demo for you this week if you like that please give the video a thumbs up and all that kind of stuff and send me a comment and let me know what you think and you can check me out over on Patreon as well got an exclusive video there every week and also a little group on Facebook where we have challenges and you can post your versions of my tutorials and your own original work as well if that's what you want to do so do go and find that but anyway that's the demo done for this week so as always thanks for watching and hope you all have a great week