Get started with Loose Watercolor Landscapes

To paint loose watercolor landscapes you need some materials: paper, paint, a brush, a palette, a glass jar or something to hold water, a wooden board and some tape to hold the paper in place while you are painting. Many top quality brands exist and all of them can deliver great results, but I know some people are interested in what I use, so here is a list:

  • paper: Arches or Hahnemuehle

  • brush: synthetic hair mop brush, small

  • paint: mostly Sennelier, I use tubes rather than pans

The Paint:

I use Sennelier watercolour paint and I tend to use a limited palette, which is just a fancy way of saying that I only use a few colors: Cobalt Blue, French Ultramarine blue, Prussian Blue, Cadmium Yellow and Light Phthalo Green. As you get started in watercolor my advice is to also keep your palette limited to no more than five or six colors. The ultimate limited palette uses just one color. So why use a limited palette? I advise using just a few colors for two reasons:

  • try to get used to thinking about value and not just color (hue), value means the lightness or darkness of the paint, limiting the number of colors available to you forces you to think about and experiment with values

  • limiting the colors you use can produce a more harmonious composition, using too many colors might result in a discordant painting

Watercolor paint is available in two main forms - tubes and pans. Pans are small dried blocks of paint, you have to use a wet brush to re-activate the paint. My reason for using tubes is I sometimes dab small amounts of undiluted paint onto the paper, this technique is not possible with pans. I don’t use a palette to mix colors since I prefer to use pure unmixed paint. Mixing can result in muddy paintings.

The Paper:

There are many types and brands of water color paper. They can be quite expensive. Things to consider include, what is the paper made of, what weight/thickness is the paper and is the surface rough or smooth.

  1. the best watercolor paper is 100% cotton - it warps less than wood pulp paper when you add water or wet paint

  2. try to use paper that is at least 300 grams per square metre (140 pounds), thinner paper is cheaper but it will buckle as you add water and wet paint

  3. watercolor paper is available with different surface textures - rough (= cold pressed), smooth (= hot pressed) and NOT (slightly textured surface), for looser styles rough surfaces are good.

Brushes:

I use just one brush, a small mop brush. Some people have a large collection with many different types of brushes but I like to keep things simple. When choosing a brush - always choose a brush that is made for watercolor not oil painting or acrylic or anything else. Many watercolor brushes are made from natural hair, if you prefer you can also get high quality synthetic brushes.

Some examples of my watercolor landscapes:

Some watercolor painters use natural hair brushes such as sable or squirrel hair because these brushes can hold more water than synthetic brushes. The bristles are also more flexible than synthetic brush fibres.

Other things you might want to include: a wooden board - you can use masking tape to fix the paper to the board while painting. The reason for using a board is flexibility, you tape the paper to the board, you can then tilt the bord or lay it flat, you can also control how the paint moves down the paper. I use a plastic tray as a palette. Some people use ceramic plates and other things.

Course available on Udemy:

I have a complete course on loose watercolor landscape painting on Udemy.

Loose Impressionist Watercolor Landscape Painting

Where to start?

Once you have some painting materials you need to decide what to paint. Be realistic, start simple. A basic landscape using a limited palette. If you are using a photograph you need to simplify it, look past the details to the main shapes, the sky, the horizon, middle ground and foreground. Remember reference photographs are for reference only unless your style is photo realism you don’t need to include every detail. Look at the examples above, each of these paintings has just a few, usually less than five, components. For the first 20, 30 … 50 paintings focus on keeping things simple and developing your own style. This YouTube playlist may have some ideas that might help some people. One of the videos is linked below:

If you would like to support me I have a Patreon page with weekly notes and ideas for painting loose watercolor landscapes.

I also have a Kofi page where you can make a one time or recurring donation.

Paul O'neill4 Comments