Paint A Winter Scene In Watercolours

This demonstration is from an original watecrolour by me of an old cottage on the river bank opposite the famous Durham Cathedral. Here I will show you how to paint stonework so that you can use it on the main lesson to paint stonework on the bridge, I have included a downloadable photograph of the painting for you to use.

This demonstration shows you how to paint trees in winter without having to paint in every single twig.

This shows how to get a roundness to a large tree trunk.

This clip shows more detail on how to create a rich dark shadow under a bridge.

Starting point, using a half sheet ( 22" by 15" ) of watercolour paper we will make the initial drawing.

Before we start to paint we will use masking fluid to preserve the white paper where we want details.

Now we need to paint in the sky and drop wet darks in to suggest distant trees.

While the sky dries we can put the first washes into the river.

Adding the distant winter trees.

Getting in closer to the distant trees.

Getting a bit more detail into the far trees.

Now we paint in the clump of bushes in front of the bridge.

Now we come to painting the main tree in front of the bridge.

Here we add the finer branches to the tree.

Now we put the first broken washes onto the bridge.

While we wait for the bridge to dry we can add some reflections in the stream.

Bit by bit we add stronger broken washes into the bridge.

Using clean washes we can add shadows and form to the snow covered bank side.

Now we add in the branches on the left hand side.

Using a fine brush we can add detail to the bridge stonework.

Now we can add little details to the river banks by adding small clumps of sones and growth.

Here we finish under the bridge to get the dark shadows, I have done another demonstration of this in Lecture 5.

This is it, remove the masking fluid and add the little accents to finish your painting.