Beginner Watercolor Landscape Tutorial | Soft Skies & Glowing Fields

Hello, beautiful friends. So I do a lot of hiking. We walk every morning, every night, and I quite often will paint the hills and the sunrises and the sunsets are just so pretty. Here are a few pictures from our hikes. I mean, look at this. Isn't that gorgeous? So I have several pictures here. I have so many, but that I gathered some, a little bit of inspiration. This is basically, I liked those sunrays. I thought that was really cool. And look at this one. Look at the beautiful colors. This is untouched. I did not do anything to these and the green emerald hills. I just love the colors. So here's my painting. I did, as you see here, actually, and I just wanted to share it with you. So I hope this will be fun. I'm going to break it down as much as I can. And what I first did is just tape this out because I love that clean border you can get. I think it's really impactful. And I've got my mylangs. I am using my tubes in here, but they're the same mylangs as your little light blue palette. So you can use that. Go ahead and just get those. Give them a little spritz so we get those activated. And then I'm using a, this is my eight round, you know, use whatever you have. I'm working on Medan and it's actually a block and this is 100% cotton. So I'm going to be using a lot of water. So I wanted to use cotton paper, 100% cotton. And I also wanted to use a block, which just means it's sealed on all edges. So it's not going to buckle and warp so much because I will be using a lot of water. So the first thing I want to do is we're going to create a wash here. Let me make sure my camera, I think I knocked it. Okay. So we're going to create a wash here and I'm going to exaggerate it just a little bit. So I want to start with purple near the top, as you see here. And then just like you saw in that picture, the yellows and the oranges are so beautiful. I just, I love that contrast and purple and green are opposites. So they always have this very beautiful contrasting dynamic to them that I like. So I've also got my wash and my rinse water here, really important, especially if you were to go to purple from purple to your green, you want to make sure all that purple is out because it could create kind of a muddy look. All right. So I've got my brush wet here and I'm going to go into my dark purple in my Medan pad. I mean, a Medan palette and I'll list whatever I use down below in the description. So there we go. I've got it about 50, 50, 50 pigment, 50 paint. And this is a great practice, by the way, for, um, washes and that water control, which is basically what I'm doing here, a one large wash for the background. And I'll probably, I very rarely will put my horizon line in the middle because it's just kind of boring. So wetting my brush with that purple tap, tap, tap. And I'm holding my paper up. So there's a tiny bit of a slant here. So just laying down that purple in the top. And then I'm going to wet my brush and start pulling it down just like that. Isn't that so pretty? This kind of stuff is like mesmerizing to me. So I just went in and grabbed a little bit more paint directly out of the palette. And then I'm going to go, let's go into our pink just a bit. Ooh, so pretty. There we go. A little bit more of that pink. The skies here are so gorgeous. And then some more of that purple. Look at that. So you're just kind of playing here. And then right here, I'm going to stop tilting my page, wash all of that purple out before you go to your yellow. I already had some yellow here, so I'm going to go ahead and use that. And actually, I think I'll bring just a little bit of the pink and yellow together. Let's do that in here to transition into that yellow. So I've got some of that yellow. I'm going to add some pink so it creates this beautiful kind of orangey color, just like that. Ooh, look how pretty. And I kid you not, the skies here look like this. They are so beautiful, especially in the winter. I'm going to grab just a bit more of that purple and just dotting in, maybe wiggle, wiggle, wiggle. Like that. Ooh, look at those colors. I love it. I'm going to bring just a bit of that pink in here. So I'm tapping directly into my palette over here. And because I've got some of that yellow ochre in there, it's kind of blending. Now I'm going to go straight down like this. There we go. So we're getting this gorgeous wash here. Now the other thing I'm going to do, just kind of blending that out. Always such a great thing if you are trying to blend, you can always just dampen your brush a bit. I'm going to grab a little bit more of that pink, just kind of trying to bring some of that purple down into my yellow. Ooh, how pretty. Okay. So now at this point, I just want to create a tiny bit of cloud. So I'm getting, look at that, the tiniest little with my tissue. And the harder I press, the more it's going to pick up. So I don't want to press too hard. Winding that up just a bit, just tapping in. I just want some little light, wispy clouds here and there. Like that. See how light I'm tapping? Just for like, there's a little bit of a cloud cover or something like that. And then I'm taking my brush. Let me grab some of that purple. And I think I'll add, maybe there's a cloud coming in from over here. Like that. Ooh, see how dramatic that is? Maybe here. There we go. Just creating some fun little clouds and things. Yeah, I love, I love, love, love that. Okay. Now, if I wanted, I could also with a dry, clean brush on its side, I could create some more white areas, but I think I'm good with that. So what I'm going to do here now is go in with my green. So let's get our green here. I've actually got a little bit in this palette and I'm going to use, let's use tree green. There we go. And start laying in some of that green here. There we go. And then I might take some of our, I'm going to add a little bit more cad yellow, just to brighten that up a bit like that. A little bit more. And then for this patch in front, maybe a little bit more vibrant because as you move forward, you're going to have more vibrancy. So let's grab that. And then I think I'll add, I'll make some dark olive green here. Of course you can use the olive green that you have in your palette, but I'm going to add a touch of red and that's going to give me an olive green. There we go. I'm just going to dab in a little bit of that. And along the back, maybe we've got, we've always got trees lining the hills here. So let's grab some of that. And I'm doing this damp and damp. So I don't have a ton of water on my brush and we'll keep deepening that color as we go. There we go. Maybe just creating some nice white areas, lighter areas. And then I'm going to go straight into my green because what's in front is going to be much more vibrant than the back. There we go. Go into my green here and just tap in. So it's a little fuzzy in the back there, which is what we want. And then I want just a little bit more gold or yellow here like that. Yeah, I like that. There we go. Okay. Now washing, rinsing my brush before that background dries, I'm going to take my finger and let's just get a bit of a sun here. There we go. And what you can do, which you saw me do, is take like an angle brush or take a brush that is somewhat dry. And I'm just going to create a few little of these streams of light shining through. So look how nice that is. So fun. Okay. The next thing I've got, and you can use your fingernail, you can use the bottom of your brush, whatever you want, but I'm going to go in here. Actually, let me, I feel like I want a little bit of yellow down there in that corner. So let's grab a little bit more of our yellow. There we go. Yeah. Wash, rinse. And now I'll just take, let's smooth that out a bit and take, this is just a little gadget I've got here. And wherever I'm seeing kind of some dark little tufts, I'm just going to add maybe some grass here like that. And while that is wet, let me see if I have, oh, I don't have it here. I don't have all my brushes here because I just got back from being gone. So I'm going to use this one. This is smaller. This is a, I think this is a four Princeton. And let's grab some of that dark green. So a little bit of our dark green with maybe some brown here. You can also use the one you made with the red. And I'm going to go in here and start adding in just to give this a little bit more form. And I'm doing this at this point because it's kind of starting to dry, but not quite. So that's kind of the perfect time. And then I'm going to go around my sun just with a damp brush. There we go. Just smooth that out, wash, rinse. So I'm just using a very damp brush to kind of create like a, just smoothing it out. So it looks a little like almost dreamy and the sun isn't perfectly white because I think that's a little too stark. So I'm liking this a lot so far. So what I want to do now is go in here and add just a little bit of that dark green. Again, you can use your olive green, you can use your red and tree green, and I'm going to tap in a bit. This is also going to make this feel like it's in the front a bit. There we go. Just blend that out a bit with a damp, clean brush. Okay. Now what I want to do is go in just a little bit more up in here with thicker paint. So probably 90% pigment, 20% water. And I'm going to add just some little dots so that it looks like there's maybe little shadows in there. So it just gives a little bit of interest, but not too much detail because it's in the background. So you want to save a lot of that detail for your foreground. So there we go. I like that. Now I'm going to grab, rinse that off. I need like a liner. Let me see what brushes I can find here. So you want to use, let's see here. I had a little tiny brush here. What did I do with it? One second. Darn, I'm not seeing it. One second. Oh, here's one. Look how tiny that is. So I'm going to pick up some of that dark, dark, dark green and just lightly, such a light touch and just create some little pieces here and there. Pick up some more, not too much. I barely want any on my brush. I just want a tiny bit of detail. I don't want too much. Okay, so we're about done here. Let's see. Let's take off our tape, pulling straight across. This is my favorite part. Look at that beautiful clean edge. Isn't that wonderful? So satisfying. I love it. One more. And then what I always like to do is just add a few little pieces, maybe extending outside the border. I just love that look. So I've got that teeny tiny brush. If you have a liner, a rigger, those would all work as well. I don't even know what this one is. And I'm just going to, there's just something cool to me when it kind of goes outside of the border. I don't know why. I just love that look. There you go. Love to break the rules, right? And just a few here, not too much. Few darker value. There we go. All right. Well, I hope you guys give this a try. I'm kind of curious if I could still, nope. I would have liked to have had a little bit more of that cloud, but I think it's nice how it is. So I'm not going to do anything to it. All right, you guys have fun with this one. And, you know, play with your values here, play with your horizon line, making sure you don't put it smack in the middle. And just remember, you are an artist. Happy painting, everybody.