Creating Depth and Realism: Essential Strategies for Watercolor Landscape Artists
Oct 30, 2023If you follow my work even casually, you know that I love painting watercolor landscapes.
I am captivated by clouds, enamored by natural light, mesmerized by the changing seasons. The watercolor possibilities are endless when you step outside and spend time in the natural world.
But how to do you use watercolor to emulate the beauty you experience in the world? Today, that will be our focus.
Watercolor Art Tutorial: How to Paint Watercolor Landscapes
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1. Plan Your Watercolor Scene Before You Begin.
Your plan begins with a sketch which will serve as your roadmap for the rest of your painting process.
Look at your reference photo - or your real-time scene - and draw a light pencil sketch to place the major shapes are of your scene. Through this process, you are determining where the major areas of interest are in your watercolor landscape.
Often up in the sky, I just might have a few little guidelines that give a little structure to the clouds in the scene. Other than that, I don't worry about drawing much in the sky. In the rest of your scene where there are more middle values and darks that you're going to want to be able to reference later, I make sure and draw these lines in a little bit darker because the first wash will cover this up.
What's More Important - the Sky or the Ground?
An important question to ask yourself when you're setting up your scene is: what is more important in this painting - the sky or the ground?
This isn't usually a difficult task. Something drew you to the scene - was it the light over distant hills, the changing colors of a meadow, or a uniquely shaped cloud? Whatever is most captivating is usually what you want to highlight. Typically, you don't want your horizon line in the exact middle of your painting, so place it either in the top third or bottom third, in a position that allows room for that main idea of your painting to shine.
The Rule of Thirds
Another thing you want to think about as you create your watercolor sketch is the rule of thirds. The theory here is that to create a compelling and balanced scene that directs your viewer's eye to your focal point, it can help to imagine lines on your sketch like these.
Using the rule of thirds will often - but not always - result in better watercolor compositions.
It doesn't have to be exact, but it is sound practice to favor one of these thirds on your paper. It also helps you achieve balance to place your areas of interest or your main ideas around where the lines intersect. See how most of my action is placed toward the bottom third, and I have placed sheep in the bottom two intersections?
2. Create a Guide for Your Watercolor Painting Process.
Once you have done your sketch and once you have worked through your composition, you want to take a minute to plan through the process of how you paint.
This is a step that a lot of artists skip, but because of the nature of watercolor, it's very important for the watercolor artist to get good at. The more thought we can put into how we're going to paint a scene, the better off our paintings are going to be.
So, you're going to want to think from light to dark. While some artists differ, this is how a lot of watercolor artists paint. You want to think through the lightest values of the scene, through to the darkest values of the scene and assign them to a wash (first, second, third).
Typically, the sky is going to be your first wash because it has the lightest values of your scene. Now, there are exceptions to this. If you were painting a winter scene where the rich blue of the sky is darker than the snow, then you might be painting your sky in your second wash. But typically, this lands in the first wash of your painting. Additionally, if there's a building or structure, the light side of that building is likely going to be painted in your first wash. And if there's a lot of light on the ground, that light can be handled in your first wash. So thinking through the process of when you're actually going to apply the specific paints is very important.
You might even make a list for yourself to follow. The watercolor painting process can get stressful, and having this guide can help remind you of your plan.
Once you can get this organized and have a good plan on how you're going to paint your painting, you're going to be miles ahead of where you would have been if you would have just jumped into your scene.
3. Use These Tools to Create Depth in Your Watercolor Scene.
Okay, so you've planned your painting. You've thought through the watercolor painting process. Now let's do a big of a watercolor techniques tutorial that will help you create the depth you want in your landscape.
One of our primary goals when we paint is to create the feeling of depth on a thin sheet of paper. We have three tools to create depth: edge, color, and contrast. Let's talk about each of these and learn how we can use them to our advantage.
Edge/Texture
When we talk about edge or texture in our painting, we're talking about soft edges versus hard edges.
The key to remember is that texture generally brings an area forward in your painting. Soft edges push an area back. We want to have softer, more non-descript edges in areas that we want to appear further back in your watercolor scene.
One of the gorgeous juxtapositions in watercolor is placing a really hard, sharp mark over a soft edge (like in the picture below). Notice how how this really pulls the branch forward in the painting and really allows that soft background to be pushed back where you want it - way off in the distance. And so if you can trust this process, that's when you can really start to create a feeling of distance in your work.
Color
Now, the second tool to create depth in your watercolor landscapes is color.
What you want to remember here is that colors that are cooler - more in the blue spectrum - appear further back in the painting and warmer colors typically bring subjects forward.
Many times we are using a lot of green when we are painting watercolor landscapes. So what we want to think about is what shade of green do I want for the background? What hue do I want for the middle ground? What color green do I want closer up to me to bring that area forward? Well, adding a little bit of blue to the green, that's in the background is going to help you create that feeling of distance. And as you come closer, you can add a little bit more saturation, a little bit more warmth, and that will bring that area forward.
Contrast
The last tool that we have to create depth in our landscapes is contrast. Contrast is a sharp difference in values - a really light area next to a really dark area. Typically, the more contrast you have, the closer up that something is going to appear to be in your painting.
So for hills that are really far off in the distance, for example, you want to reduce the contrast. And for a shadow cast in the foreground, more contrast will push it forward in for the viewer.
4. Learn to Group Shapes Like a Master Watercolor Artist.
Something else that you want to start to do when you are painting landscape scenes is grouping shapes in your scene.
Here's the trick in painting landscapes. We can look 200 yards away and we know that there are little branches, little sticks, little leaves - very complicated texture - really far away from us. And we also know that that same texture exists in the middle ground and in the foreground. But what happens when you render out that texture all the way from the foreground to the background? Automatically, you lose your feeling of depth and your paintings become very overworked.
As essential skill we want to learn as we paint landscapes is to be able to simplify and group shapes together. If you squint at a landscape scene, you can really see how these trees all become one shape.
Here's the interesting thing - we can paint them as one shape, and then, later, you can add a little bit of texture in some key areas of your painting. Automatically, that shape reads like a group of trees.
We don't need to paint everything that we know is there. We don't need to see every little bit of detail in the distance or all over the scene. Our painting would just be covered with texture and hard edges. We need to learn to see those shapes. We need to learn to group and then add enough information that will allow the viewer to know what those shapes are instead of saturate our paintings with detail.
Use These Watercolor Strategies to Paint Landscapes with Depth and Beauty
So there are 4 watercolor strategies for you to start painting beautiful landscape paintings:
- Plan your scene before you get started
- Outline your painting process,
- Create depth with the tried and true watercolor techniques
- Pay attention to the large shapes of the scene.
