Watercolor Painting Techniques for Interior Scenes

While most of my watercolor paintings are landscapes and street scenes, I really love the challenge of painting interior scenes. Sometimes an interior just enthralls me, and I have to paint it. 

But when you're painting an indoor scene, there are some specific things that you need to pay attention to. There are some watercolor techniques that you’ll want to do a little differently.

Watercolor Tutorial - Painting an Interior

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Interiors can be more intimate than landscapes or cityscapes. They can offer a glimpse of everyday life, of history, and of meaningful relationships between people and important settings.

Unique Challenges When Painting Interiors

Interiors offer unique challenges to watercolor artists, but believe it or not, my watercolor painting process is not dramatically different when I tackle an interior. To demonstrate this, I’m going to take you through the watercolor painting process I used to paint the interior scene above, highlighting some strategies I used along the way. 

Drawing for Watercolor Paintings of Interiors

The first thing that you need to be mindful of when you're taking on an interior scene is the drawing.

Of course, the drawing is important for all of your watercolor scenes, but there's added complexity when it comes to painting an interior. 

In many landscape scenes there are more organic, natural lines that allow for some wiggle room as you work to depict the scene. Many interiors demand a different level of precision. There isn’t much room for grace, so make sure you take time to perfect your drawing before you start painting.

Also, take time to consider what you are working to convey in your scene. Are you concentrated on the coziness of a space, wanting to depict the stunning architecture of an historic structure, or focused on the relationship between people and objects? The answer to this question will guide some of your choices, so you’ll want to answer it early on as you’re imagining your scene.

My intention with painting was to depict this magnificent building and convey the warm and alluring atmosphere created by the craftsmanship and light. To honor the art and beauty of the original setting, I had to think carefully about perspective and meticulously draw this scene.

Do not shy away from the use of a ruler and eraser when you’re trying to perfect your lines and achieve the right perspective. 

When I’m finished drawing my scene, I wet both sides of my paper - front and back - to extend the time I have in my next phase to work during the stage where colors can mix together in that beautifully characteristic way. 

Watercolor Techniques for Interior Lighting

For the first wash, I am laying down the lightest values of my scene, and I am thinking a lot about the light inside this cathedral. I have to put light at the forefront of my mind because it is very difficult - and sometimes impossible - to regain light in your scene after they’re covered up by middle values and darks. 

Keep in mind that interior lighting can be very different from outdoor lighting. In many cases, there are both natural sources of light and artificial sources of light at play, and each must be considered. In my cathedral painting, there is a large stained glass window that impacts the lighting of the entire scene. It’s beautiful, and I want to make sure I get it right.

So my advice when it comes to interior light is to pay close attention to what is happening with the light, whether it's fluorescent lights, whether it's manmade light versus window light. Take a minute to study your scene or look at your reference photo. Think about what your approach to the light of the scene is going to be.

These different color temperatures from light sources are one major reason I was drawn to this scene. The window light is a lot cooler in temperature than the other interior light, so there is cooler light streaming through the window that interacts with the warmer light of the interior.

This effect was really intriguing to me, and I wanted to try my hand at it. 

On the stained glass windows, I dropped in some of those bold colors while the paper was wet, keeping it nondescript and surrounding the color with a really light wash to show the light coming in.

As I took time to study my reference picture, I noticed that some of the color from the stained glass was reflected off the top of the church pews and the ground over at the front of the sanctuary. So I add some of the blue there to show that cool light. 

In this first wash, I'm being very mindful of the light effect in the scene, referencing my photo, and making sure that the scene reflects the various light sources (the window, the candle, and the artificial lights that are out of the shot but affecting the scene).  

After this, I let my paper dry and then we're going to move into the middle values of the painting. But I don’t stop thinking about light because light affects everything. 

For example, as I laid in the values for this wood structure on the left, I wanted to paint around some of it to show the light that was hitting it. So you can see I painted right around the top of that. I also avoided the light source above the wood structure, in order to pronounce those lighter values I’ve already laid in. 

As always, I work my way from left to right. And to really emphasize the interaction of cool and warm light, I mix cooler colors and warmer colors together. For that warmth, I use a lot of Raw Sienna, and for the cool colors, I use Cobalt Blue, Lavender, and Neutral Tint. 

One of the biggest challenges of this scene was to create enough contrast to make the light feel bright but not overworking it so much that I lose the depth in the scene. A technique I used to get the right effect was lifting. Lifting is using a clean, damp brush and absorbing some of what I just painted so that the light is more diffuse. 

After this, I continue working through this middle value, taking my time to paint around the window, adding color for the figures’ clothing, and addressing the light shining on the top of the pews. 

Here's a look at the middle values of the scene after that has dried. Now I'm ready to come in and really start bringing this whole scene together with the third wash.

Learn How to Focus Your Interior

The last wash is all about darks and details which, combined with all the work we’ve done up to this point, makes the light really pop. 

At this stage, we’re also thinking about the focus of our painting. The focal point often has the most contrast and the most detail. And the other components of the painting should work to complement it. The focus of this painting is that prominent figure facing the gorgeous wood structure. Knowing this, I need to make sure that my viewer’s eyes are led there by the other aspects of the painting.

There are a lot of little details in this scene, and it takes me some time to render them out. I have to continually keep stepping back and making sure that things are looking how I want them to and that the darks and details are working to highlight the main idea of the painting.

When I add detail to the figure, it really starts to bring some attention forward and adds some importance to this area of the painting. This is valuable because once you add those details, the background starts to feel more like a background. Even though it's important and it's a big part of this painting, we want it to recede a bit from the focal point.

Don’t be Overburdened by Meticulous Detail

In this scene, there are beautiful arches and intricacies all over the place. And that's one of the big challenges with a subject like this: I know I can't paint everything exactly as it is. And if I do, then the paint is going to be very overworked and cluttered. You're not going to know what's important in the scene.

So finding ways to suggest as much as you can is helpful in that goal of creating focus. That's a very vague statement, I understand, but with time and practice, you’ll learn what works and what doesn’t. The more you can squint at your reference and study the values that make up your scene, the better you're going to get at creating a loose feeling and an impression of something rather than rendering every little detail exactly.

So, here it is - the final painting! 

Painting interiors is really fun and exciting and different and the subject matter is just endless. I hope that these tips are helpful for you and that you can use them in your next interior painting.