Watercolor Painting Essentials: Beautiful Night Landscapes

Hi, I'm Darren from Watercolour Mentor. Welcome to Watercolor Painting Essentials: Beautiful Night Landscapes".

BONUS: Additional Night Market Workshop included (2 hours) - view this workshop by scrolling to the end of the course lectures (final lecture).

In this course, you'll learn how to create fresh and vibrant night landscapes by following my unique watercolor layering process. There are 6 fully narrated demonstrations for you to paint along to. You'll build your confidence in using strong and vibrant colours to create magical scenes and areas of light and darkness. By learning to be deliberate in your brushstrokes and colours, you'll create some beautiful impressionistic landscapes that you can show off to your friends and family!

In this course, we will cover a range of subjects featuring seascapes/beachscapes/coastal cities to streetscapes and small towns. The idea with each scene is to simply whilst enjoying the process. I use a 2-step process to paint. We firstly paint the light, and then the shadows afterwards. Cutting around the light areas is crucial in creating depth in your paintings.

Many beginners often paint too light, too dark, or in the same tone. This can lead to flat paintings that lack character. I'll show you how to do the opposite and convey mood and emotion through your use of tone and brushstrokes. Colour also plays an important role. Using complementary colours, or more simply, warm/cool colours next to one another can create stunning compositions that demand attention!

Included: 6 free line stencils, original royalty-free reference photographs and scans of my paintings to help you to transfer or draw these landscapes prior to painting. It is your choice which of these references you want to use when transferring over your drawings. These resources are included under the 'Materials Required' lecture.

I'll be covering:

• How to paint any night landscape in watercolor from a photograph

• Sketching - how to reduce a photo or scene in front of you down to essentials and pick out elements and objects of focus

• Layering - learn how you only need 2-3 layers in order to complete a watercolor painting

• How to use colour effectively to create areas of interest or portray the mood of a scene

• How to use tone, or light and dark areas to create depth and richness in your paintings

• How to paint expressive reflections and wet roads

• Understand how to layer effectively to build up details in your painting

I'm excited to get started, so let's get painting!

Course Project:

For the course project, follow along with the sketching and painting demonstrations. There are 6 unique night landscape demonstrations with a pencil sketching and watercolour painting component. It's important to complete the sketching exercises in each scene, as this provides you with an opportunity to practice composing your painting. This will increase your confidence in completing your painting and more importantly allow you to plan your brushstrokes.

If you have finished the 6 demonstrations featured in this course, pick a royalty-free photograph or perhaps one of your own photographs of a favourite night landscape. Using the process and techniques described in this course, create your own unique painting.