Learning loose watercolor painting? This is a free workshop that I ran which goes over how I painted two subjects in a loose method and how I achieved this look.
Negative painting is a fun way to draw out the contrast in a scene, but also learn control with your brushwork.
In the scene above, I painted the lilies first with green and left some white for the flower. Afterward, once those areas had dried, I dropped in some darker cerulean blue and Payne’s gray at the bottom in order to create extra darkness.
There’s only one chance to do this, and I make sure that I’m paying attention when defining the oval shapes of the lilies. Give it a try!
This was a fun scene and since I had already done a night landscape of Hallstatt, Austria in a previous workshop, I thought I’d try to sketch a loose daytime scene of the same location.
One thing to keep in mind is to always paint the lighter areas of the landscape first.
In this scene, the lighter areas are the areas of cerulean blue in the sky, lighter colors in the water, and the warm areas in the buildings. I make sure to drop in a few different warm colors into the buildings, leaving some white, then leave this to dry.
Afterward, I add all the shadows and darker areas into the buildings to indicate a light source from the left side of the scene. I also use some dark colours on the top right to cut around the brightness of the buildings and create more contrast.
I hope you enjoyed reading this article on learning loose watercolor painting. Remember, the workshop is available for free, so check it out and let me know how you go!
