
Develop your own unique watercolor style through deliberate practice and evolving visual language. Learn to plan with composite scenes, design references, and refine brushstrokes, watercolors, composition, and subject matter.
Develop your own watercolour style by refining brushstrokes and confidence, choosing elements from reference photos, and practicing two-part scenes: a lavender field in France and a Gozo, Malta landscape.
Learn to synthesize multiple reference photos to plan a lavender field drawing, balancing sky, mountains, and a building with deliberate shadow and depth.
Identify light and dark areas in the lavender field and use a wet-on-wet approach with minimal yellows, greens, and purples to create soft, atmospheric high-key tones.
Explore darkened shadows and midtones in a lavender field composition, creating sharp building edges, distant mountains, and expressive figures with washes, textures, and selective lifting.
Master the final touches on a loose watercolor lavender field, balancing shadows, highlights, and subtle details like windows and figures to create cohesive depth.
Craft a Malta harbor scene in watercolor by selecting and blending elements from multiple boat and building references, prioritizing simplified boxy buildings and a light source from the right.
Mix ultramarine with yellow to create turquoise water, cut around boats to preserve whites, and paint soft wet-on-wet waves. Add lighter boat colors and darker shadows with purple for depth.
Master darker areas and shadows in a Malta seascape by layering washes, using neutral tint, and adding windows, boats, and reflections to achieve a loose, cohesive painting.
Develop your own watercolor style by exploring wet-on-wet and wet-on-dry techniques, choosing which steps to tweak, and embracing evolving vision as you paint.
Develop your watercolor style through brushstrokes, color choices, and subject matter, refined by practice, references, and sketching from life; be adventurous and let your planning and experiences shape your art.
Create a unique watercolor scene through freehand sketching, then finish with the class watercolor steps, using the two featured scenes, templates, or your own photos, and upload your project.
Welcome to Watercolour Essentials: Developing Your Own Unique Style. In this course, we will go through how to create unique watercolour paintings from a series of related images. When planning your painting, it can be difficult finding a reference photo that matches your final vision. Often, it's necessary to design your own scene by forming a composite painting.
Finding your own style is something that comes naturally through time, and through deliberate, repeated choices that you make in your paintings. Believe it or not, you already have your own personal style! Style is linked to your own visual language. In painting, this relates to your brushstrokes, use of water, colours, composition, and choice of the subject matter.
This course will show you how to make your own decisions when composing your painting. It will help you to develop a heightened sense of awareness of your use of visual language, brushstrokes and technique. Together, this will allow you to develop your own unique style.
I'm excited to get started, so let's get painting!
Assignment:
Your course project is to compose and paint your own unique watercolour scene! This can be one of the two scenes featured in this course or based on a series of your own related photographs or scenes.
You can also refer to the attached scanned drawing/painting templates. I recommend drawing each scene free hand. Drawing is an important step in improving your painting skills. This provides you with an opportunity to compose and plan your painting. Once you've finished the drawing, use the watercolor steps and processes included in the course to complete your painting. Finally, upload your project.
Materials:
Use any normal or mechanical pencil/pen, watercolour paper, and brushes you have available. I recommend:
Mechanical pencil (0.5mm)
100% cotton watercolour paper or sketchbook
Watercolour Brushes - mop brush and a variety of round and flat brushes.
Getting Started:
Follow along with the process in the demonstration videos. You will learn how to draw from elements in multiple scenes to come up with a composition you are satisfied with.
As an additional challenge, research some free reference photo websites and find a reference photo you would like to paint. Using the steps and processes included in this course, create your own unique painting.
Sharing Your Work:
Once you've finished, share your final painting and progress shots with the course by uploading them to Q&A or discussions section on Udemy. I'll provide you with constructive feedback on your painting if you ask. If you have any questions or need more tips, please let me know. I'm happy to help.