A Simple Watercolor Painting Background Tutorial

Often it’s the details of our painting that get the most attention and praise. So new watercolor artists often believe that the more detail they add to their paintings, the better they’ll turn out. 

In fact, the opposite is true. Too much detail makes for chaotic, unordered, overworked paintings. But what should you simplify - and how? 

Today, we address how to simplify the background of a painting for a polished and focused result. Keep reading to learn watercolor techniques that will help prevent overworking your painting!

How to Paint a Background in Watercolor without Overworking Your Painting

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Backgrounds do a lot for a painting. They provide depth, context, atmosphere, and a backdrop for the main attraction. But we want to make sure we don’t emphasize it too much. Placing too much detail here will be to the detriment of the rest of the watercolor. 

Painting Watercolor Backgrounds to Support the Focal Point of Your Scene

You can separate watercolor compositions into three different parts: 

• The background - the backdrop or the matrix of the painting; the part of the painting that appears furthest away from the viewer.
• The foreground - the part of the painting that appears closest to the viewer
• The middle ground - the space between the foreground and background

Most often, the main idea is in the middle ground or the foreground of a painting. And in these cases, you don’t want the background to steal the show. Instead, it should provide proper context and depth to the scene.

It should support the overall vision of the painting. 

So, let’s talk about what makes a focal point and then we can dive into how to use the background to support the goal of the painting.

What is a focal point in a painting?

A focal point in a watercolor painting is the area (or areas) that you want the viewer’s eyes to go to. It’s the main idea or the subject of the painting. In the painting below, my focal points are in the middle ground: 

• the boat in the water and 
• the property on the right side of the painting. 

When I painted this, I thought about how my viewer’s eyes would move around the scene. My goal was that they immediately land on my focal point, but that elements of the painting move their eye around the scene. 

As I look at this painting, I find my eyes moving from the property on the right to the less prominent houses on the left, down to the boat in the water, and back up to the main property. This circular motion is great because it keeps a viewer’s attention. They stay attentive and notice more and more as they are guided through the scene. 

The elements that demand this attention in a painting are:

• High contrast
• Hard edges
• Defined shapes
• Broken or Dry Brush Marks

Watercolor Techniques to Paint a Simplified Background

So that brings us to the background. We know that these elements (high contrast, hard edges, defined shapes, dry brush marks) demand attention from the viewer. And we also want the background to recede and support the rest of the painting. So that means that those elements should be used sparingly in the background.

Instead, in the background of a watercolor whose focal point in is the middle ground or foreground, we want:

• Smooth lines
• Soft edges
• Suggestions of detail
• Connected shapes 

And, again, the reason for this is that we don’t want it competing with the main ideas of the painting. 

Check out this reference photo that I painted from recently.

The background in this photo is full of detail. This park is abundant with life, teeming with trees. And that’s gorgeous, but it doesn’t make for a great composition. 

For the purpose of my painting, I had to turn that detail down a bit. 

Painting each one of these trees would not only drive me crazy, but it would leave my painting severely overworked. Instead, I thought strategically about how to convey the lush verdance of the park without letting the trees take over the scene.

First Wash of Park Scene

Remember that the goal of the first wash is to lay down all the lightest values of your watercolor scene. 

For the purpose of this blog, though, I want to point out all the soft edges. At this point, pretty much my whole scene is soft, but do you see how I had to really simplify the background?

To accomplish this:

• I wet my paper on the front and back before I came in with any pigment. 
• I pared down and simplified the colors and shapes in the background

Second Wash of Park Scene

The second wash deals with the middle values of a scene and the goal of this phase is to create the large connected shape of the scene.

To accomplish this:

• I used clean water and a clean brush and gently wet down the paper again to create soft edges in the background. 
• I massed together the trees and tried to connect the individual shapes into one.
• I allowed the background to connect to the middle ground and foreground.
• I suggested detail by leaving bits of light on the grass in the background.

Notice how broken the texture is in the foreground compared to the smoother texture in the background. I have grouped a lot more of the shapes in the back and left the texture less defined. What that is doing is establishing the “closeness” of the foreground to the viewer and allowing the background to recede. 

Look how these trees are now standing out compared to the background. We know that that background is a mass of trees. What we don't need to do is to separate and paint each one of them individually. 

So grouping them together, and making them weaker in value than the trees that are closer up, keeps the viewer’s attention right here in the middle ground where we want it to be.

Third Wash of the Park Scene

When you complete this wash, your focus should be on the darkest values of the scene and the essential details. 

To accomplish this:

• I was careful not to bring too many details or hard edges to the background.
• I added contrast to the focal point of my painting. 
• I allowed a few trees and dappled light to suggest the lush scene.

Related Blogs

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Use Reference Photos to Create Beautiful Watercolors