No Sketch Autumn Forest Painting 🍂 | Autumn Watercolor Landscape Tutorial, by Dream Painting studio on YouTube. 8 min 18 s.
- Video length
- 8 min 18 s
- Time to do it
- 45 minutes
- Difficulty
- Medium
- Steps
- 8
What you need
Steps
Tape your watercolor paper to a board so it dries flat. Spray the surface with water until it glistens, but stop before puddles form.
Load a round brush with yellow ochre and cadmium orange. Touch the brush to the wet paper in the upper half and let the paint spread on its own.
While the paper is still damp, drop in burnt sienna and a little ultramarine. Tilt the board slightly so the warm and cool colors blend into soft tree shapes.
Add darker mixes of sap green and burnt sienna to suggest trunks and clumps of foliage. Keep the brush moving and do not outline anything.
Sprinkle a pinch of salt over the damp paint. Leave it alone until the paper is fully dry, then brush the grains away to reveal speckled leaf texture.
Switch to the liner brush with a thick dark mix. Paint a few thin trunks and twigs where the color has faded, working from the ground up.
Soften any hard edges with a clean, damp brush. Lift mistakes by pressing a dry paper towel onto the wet paint.
Let the painting dry completely, then pull the tape off slowly at a low angle so the paper edges stay clean.
Tips and common mistakes
Keep the paper damp rather than soaked, because too much water makes the colors pale and muddy.
Test each color mix on a scrap of the same paper before you put it on the painting.
Salt only pulls texture from damp paint, so add it before the paper dries.
Work from light colors to dark ones so the forest keeps depth instead of turning flat.
Questions
Do I need to draw the trees first?
No. The whole painting is built from wet paint spreading on damp paper, so the tree shapes appear as you drop in color. You can add a few trunks with a liner brush at the end.
Which colors make convincing autumn leaves?
Yellow ochre, cadmium orange and burnt sienna cover most autumn foliage. Add a touch of ultramarine or sap green for shadow and depth.
Can I use normal table salt?
Yes, fine table salt works well and gives small speckles. Coarse salt makes bigger, slower blooms, so try both on scrap paper first.
This guide was drafted from the video's details and general task knowledge. It has not been checked against the full video. Check the video and relevant product instructions before following a procedure. Report a correction.
