Simple Watercolor Landscape Painting for Beginners

In this class, I will teach you how to paint a simple landscape using watercolors. This class is perfect for beginners but can be completed by all skill levels. We will be painting a beautiful green field, with a vibrant sky and dirt road. I will be demonstrating some important watercolor techniques in this class, such as the wet on wet watercolor painting technique, which is a vital watercolor technique for all artists to know.

Class Outline

Lesson 1: Getting started- materials and colors. In this lesson, I will show and explain all of the supplies I will be using for the class, as well as swatch the different watercolors I will be painting with. 

Lesson 2: Creating the sketch outline. We will create a basic pencil sketch to indicate the shape of the field and the perspective of the road. The sketch outline is also available as a downloadable reference

Lesson 3: Painting the sky. In this lesson, we will start painting the landscape. We will paint in the sky in this lesson, using the wet on wet technique. I will explain what the wet on wet technique is and the advantage of utilizing it in your watercolor paintings. We will paint a beautiful vibrant sky using shades of yellow, orange, blue and purple.

Lesson 4: Painting the road. I will demonstrate how you can use water to dilute your watercolors and get varied values in your work, by applying light washes of color and building up darker shadows and details.

Lesson 5: Painting the field. I will teach you how you can use masking fluid to preserve lighter details (like the grass) whilst freely being able to paint in darker colors around them. In this lesson, we will paint in a base wash of color to the field.

Lesson 6: Adding details to the field/ road. We will build on the previous washes of watercolor that we have already added to the field and road. I will show you how you can use the wet-on-dry method to add details to your landscape.

Lesson 7: Painting trees and finishing the landscape. In the final lesson of this class, I will demonstrate how to paint trees in the distance of your landscape paintings. I will also use a light green colored pencil to add a few finishing touches to the painting.