Landscape With Afternoon Light Watercolor Painting Lesson

Value Contrast Is The Key To Showing Light

If you only do one lesson – make it this one! This lesson will show you EXACTLY how to improve your paintings by starting with a simplified, abstract value pattern. And then sticking to it!

The ONE thing! That will dramatically improve your watercolor paintings!

There is one thing that will make more of a difference in your paintings than anything else – start with a simplified, abstract value composition that clearly defines large value shapes. It is an easy process but a difficult mental switch that requires you to think differently about what you are doing when you create a painting and to think differently about the subjects of your paintings.

In this lesson, we create a painting using a small value sketch that has been created from the photo of a really ordinary scene. The process of creating a painting while following the value sketch requires mental discipline in starting with the large, simple value shapes.

We go step by step in a very detailed way in this lesson.

What you’ll need

Brushes – 1 1/2″ Flat, 1″ Flat, 1/4″ Flat, Medium Round, Small Round, and Rigger .
Colors – Permanent Alizarin Crimson, Daniel Smith Quinacridone Deep Gold, DaVinci Aureolin Mix, Cobalt Blue, Winsor Newton French Ultramarine Blue , Burnt Sienna
Watercolor paper – preferably Arches 140lb Cold Press cut to about 7″ x 11″ or so

This is a Premium Learning Library Lesson. Access The Entire Library With a Premium Membership – Cancel or Pause at any time.

More Premium Member Info Here.

Already a Premium Member? Login Below

Just browsing? Check out these FREE lessons.

Related Lessons

Value To Color

Value Composition Sketches are extremely valuable tools for creating solid and dynamic paintings.

But, many people have difficulty maintaining value when working in color.

This group of 20 lessons work through the value sketch process and then converting it to color while maintaining the values as designed.

Small color studies are very helpful in learning this valuable skill and are covered in this section.

Other Lesson Subjects

FREE Lessons For Beginners!

A group of fourteen FREE watercolor painting lessons that will get you started. Learn the techniques and paint some simple scenes to put them into practice.

Landscape Painting Lessons

Our largest group of lessons – 24 in all – includes easy, intermediate and advanced lessons covering important techniques and composition ideas. Click To See All Landscape Painting Lessons

Seascape Painting Lessons

The ocean is a continual source of inspiration for artists. It’s constant movement and change is compelling and intimidating. This series of lessons will teach you to handle seascapes with confidence and ease.

Flower and Still Life Painting Lessons

This set of lessons include a range of subjects, techniques and methods as well as everything from quick sketches to longer, more finished floral and still life paintings.

Quick Sketches and Unusual Subjects

In this group of lessons you’ll find a lot of unusual subjects and quick sketching projects. Unusual subjects are those we don’t normally think of painting – often everyday objects that are ‘invisible’ most of the time. Quick sketching is a way to build many important watercolor painting skills. The sketches can also be developed into finished paintings.

Skill Building Learning Tracks

Tips and Tricks For Watercolor Painting

Video tutorials with easy how to’s and other tips to make watercolor painting easier and more convenient. Most of these are FREE lessons – watch without a Premium Membership.

How To Paint Elements Of The Landscape

How to paint trees, skies, clouds, rocks, weeds and more. These lessons focus on individual objects that are common in landscape and seascapes. Every lesson covers ideas and techniques specific to each.

How To Paint Water

Water shows up in landscapes and seascapes in many different ways. Adding water in any form – puddles to open ocean – requires some special considerations and techniques. These lessons show how.

Value Basics

Value is arguably the most important characteristic of color to learn and use in painting. It has two primary functions for the artist – as a fundamental component of Composition and as a way to create a sense of light and form. These lessons cover both functions.

Color Basics

Color is an aspect of painting that can take a lifetime of study to really understand. The 25 lessons in this group are is meant to introduce you to the various aspects of color and simple ways to explore color schemes, color choices and color combinations for your paintings.

Value To Color

Value Composition Sketches are extremely valuable tools for creating solid and dynamic paintings. It can be difficult to maintain the values as designed in the composition once you begin working in color. There are 20 lessons in this group that work through the process of creating a value sketches and then converting it to color while maintaining the values as designed.

Light And Form

Recreating the effect of real world light on objects in a painting means creating the changes in color and value that simulate the real-world effect. Although the effect of light has many different visual impacts, there are certain, tried and true ways of creating patterns of light and shadow in our paintings. This group of 14 lessons will get you started.

Basic Practical Linear Perspective

All linear perspective systems are based on the simple idea that objects that are farther from you appear to be smaller. Perspective, or linear perspective, is a system for representing the illusion of depth on a two-dimensional surface. There are 9 lessons in this section that will introduce basic linear perspective and show practical ways to use it in your paintings.