Easy Watercolor Painting Tutorial for Beginners 🍂| A Peaceful Autumn Landscape, by Paint with Paris on YouTube. 6 min 44 s.
- Video length
- 6 min 44 s
- Time to do it
- 45 minutes
- Difficulty
- Easy
- Steps
- 9
What you need
Steps
Tape your paper to a board or table so it stays flat, then sketch a light horizon line about two thirds of the way up the page.
Mix a pale blue wash and paint the sky from the top down to the horizon, leaving a few gaps for soft clouds.
While the sky is still damp, add a row of distant trees along the horizon using a soft grey-green mix. Keep them small and low contrast.
Paint the open field below the horizon with a light yellow-green wash, working side to side and leaving some paper white for light.
Let the field dry, then add a few loose horizontal strokes of darker green and ochre to suggest grass and paths.
Mix warm autumn colors: yellow, orange, red and brown. Load your large brush and dab rounded tree shapes in the middle ground.
While the tree shapes are damp, drop in a second color so the tones blend. Do not scrub the paper.
Use the small brush to add trunks and a few branches in dark brown, then dot small leaves around the edges of each tree.
Add a few darker marks in the foreground field for depth, then let the whole painting dry flat before removing the tape.
Tips and common mistakes
Keep the distant trees pale and blurry and the near trees darker and sharper to create depth.
Test colors on scrap paper first so you do not overload the painting with strong pigment.
Let each layer dry fully before adding the next, or the colors will turn muddy.
Work with a light hand. Watercolor dries lighter than it looks when wet.
Questions
Do I need special watercolor paper?
Yes. Use cold press watercolor paper around 140 lb or 300 gsm. Thin printer paper will buckle and the paint will not blend well.
How do I stop the colors from turning muddy?
Let each wash dry before adding a new one, and rinse your brush between colors. Mixing wet paint into wet paint too much dulls the color.
Can I fix a mistake?
Small mistakes can be lifted with a clean damp brush and a paper towel while the paint is still wet. Once dry, watercolor is hard to remove, so work lightly.
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.
