Watercolor Landscape Painting Demonstration

About Terry

My art is about life. It expresses what I feel about people, places, and experiences around me. In order to create a painting, I need to feel a connection with a subject and see what that subject means to me. I need to see and feel every detail of it.

When I immerse myself in something that I want to paint, the idea for the painting becomes clear to me. Because I start painting without knowing exactly how it will turn out, as I put those first colors on the support, I am always nervous about what I am doing, because I do not know where I am going with it.

But as I continue, one technique or color leads to another, and I just know how to move on. If it feels right, I can continue. If not, I have to set it aside until I am inspired to go on…

You can learn more about her and view more of her work by visiting the Websites below:

https://terryhonstead.wordpress.com/

https://terry-honstead.artistwebsites.com/?

Italian Waters – Watercolor Landscape Painting Tutorial

I started off working on the distant background and working my way forward. The building were blocked in lightly with color as were the wooden poles and water.

Then I darkened the buildings sometimes with the same color and sometimes with another to change the color. I also started painting the background boats.

The wooden poles were done in three yellows, two browns and indigo. I also used a little white to gray up some of the colors.

Then the fun part was doing the water. I used phthalo green and French Ultramarine blue mixed. The interesting part was the way they separated into the separate colors even while I was using them. I liked the way that looked and did add more of the blue in areas where it didn’t do it on it’s own.

I used more of the French Ultramarine blue for the tarps on the boats. I also started using other colors for the things inside the boats, but kept them grayed.

Then to darken areas of the tarps and give them shape and body, I used indigo, which is a very dark blue that almost looks black.

Using indigo, I started on the shadows in the water. This is always the fun part to do because when you put in the darks of the painting, it pops out the rest of the painting.

After doing the small parts of the water, I continued onto the boats themselves with the same color. It took several coats of paint to get it dark enough. I left areas of white for the stripes on the boats and later used a very watered down indigo to gray them up a little.

Once the boats were done I finished up the larger parts of the water shadows. I also worked more on the details inside the boats. It was really hard not to stop here because it basically looked done.

The last step was cleaning up the lines and adding details to the boats, tarps, and things inside the boats. I also darkened up the poles a little more and sharpened and darkened more areas.