Art for your Lifestyle

We are going to paint our sky AND an underpainting for a tree, all in the same wash!

Why would we do that you ask?

Oh my goodness, this is going to transform your paintings! You don’t always have to do an underpainting, but sometimes is can produce amazing results.

As a beginner I would sometimes paint everything with such a dry brush that I would end up with white flecks all throughout my painting and it would have no watercolour feel to it. A wet in wet underpainting would have solved that. An underpainting can cover the whole paper, or just a specific part of the composition.

Here are two paintings I did a few years apart. The one on the left is painted with a very dry brush. I wasn’t sure how to paint the mountain behind the trees, and I wasn’t using much water in my brush, other than in the sky. The result is white flecks all throughout my painting and it looks very dry.

The painting on the right has a wet in wet underpainting. I still saved my white paper for the top of the mountain (by keeping that part dry) but if you look closely you will see how the sky bleeds seamlessly into the background of the bushes on the right.

Sure there are leaves painted on top of the sky, but those were added later.

If you look past the details on the bushes, you’ll see a soft green background that was painted wet in wet at the same time as the sky. No harsh outline!
Even the trees at the base of the mountain had a wet in wet wash (an underpainting) which I let dry before I added details.

So, what exactly is an underpainting?

An underpainting is the first layer of paint which is intended to be painted over. It’s a foundation for the rest of the painting.

Acrylic painters use underpaintings all the time. They might paint the canvas bright orange for example, and then paint a mountain and sky with contrasting colours, lots of blues and purples, and just have tiny flecks of the underpainting showing through to give the paintings life.

But how do you do an underpainting in watercolour without making a mess? I’m definitely not going to paint my watercolour paper bright orange if I want blue and purple mountains. Since watercolours are transparent, we know we can’t layer colours that way.

In watercolours, the underpainting is simply a wash (commonly wet in wet) that goes underneath your painting. You let it totally dry, and then you paint your layers and details on top. That’s all.

So when you painted a sky over your entire background, let it dry, and then painted your mountains on top, like we did for our misty mountains, your sky was an underpainting.

This works when you are painting from light to dark. However, if your mountain needs to be lighter than your sky, say if it has snow on it, then you’ll need to save your white paper by painting your sky around your mountain.

You might not do an underpainting in that case, or you may choose to underpaint only certain areas of your composition.

 

Let’s look at some more examples of underpaintings and where you might use them.

In watercolour, an underpainting can serve to:

• Establish the sky and water

Here is an underpainting and the finished painting.

I painted the sky and base layer of the water all in one wet in wet wash. The islands and trees were glazed once the underpainting was dry.

• Establish clouds and soft shadows

This underpainting was painted in one wet in wet wash as well, but a blossom accidentally formed as it dried. I talk you through the underpainting in this short video: https://youtu.be/0m8YQdO5DrQ:

 

 

If you like, you can also watch me paint the mountain in this short time-lapse: https://youtu.be/xnV_yCjai6I:

• Establish the sky and form of the land

Here I used the underpainting to fully paint the sky and also the underlying shadows of the landscape wet in wet.

If I just leave the snow white then it ends up looking very flat.

Notice that I included some pink from the sky reflecting in the snow in the underpainting too.

The only part that I left white from the paper was the sun spot. This helps it stand out as the focal point of the composition.

• Form the first layer of the entire composition

• Provide an opportunity for negative space elements

In this example, the underpainting included everything except the waterfall which was left dry to preserve the white of the paper.

To bring out the shapes of the logs and trees, I painted the negative space, which means I painted the shapes of the shadows around the trees rather than paint the trees themselves. The colours from the underpainting pop out and become the trees and logs. Then I added some final details on top.

• Create the sky and shadows on snow all at once

In this painting I left the flag, the light, the structures and some of the trees dry so I could save the white of the paper. I wet the rest of the paper and painted the sky as well as an underpainting of the mountain and snow. This is time saving and unifies the painting.

The above examples give a good idea of where underpaintings can be used. These aren’t even the only ways. Hopefully some of these ideas will inspire you in the future.

This is only an excerpt from a 55 page ebook explaining how to paint clouds and create depth and harmony with underpaintings.

This is one of 6 in my watercolour class, Introduction to Watercolour Basics, Watercolours Made Easy.

See more at https://kendraart.com/courses

In this course you will learn all the techniques needed to build a solid foundation in watercolour, and how to overcome common struggles that beginners normally encounter. You will see each technique demonstrated in a step-by-step, easy to follow manner with a pace specifically geared towards beginners. I demonstrate everything twice so you can relax and watch the first one and then paint along with me.

The course includes over 10 hours of video instruction as well as 6 e-books adding up to over 320 pages of comprehensive step by step notes.

Let me know if you have any questions.

Sign up for a free tutorial on How to Paint Misty Mountains and Misty Trees, an excerpt from my watercolour class, and this time it includes a free video and a free eBook with step by step instructions.

kendraart.com/courses/free-tutorial/

Happy painting.

Super easy and fast way to paint trees in watercolour! Step by step notes in the captions below and also a video to follow along to here:

You can use any green but I like to use a mixture of hooker’s green, ultramarine blue, and burnt sienna to create a rich forest green.

Gently scrape your brush off the edge of your palette so that there isn’t a big droplet of paint at the end of your brush. It’s easier to get defined lines if the brush isn’t overloaded.

Honestly this is a really easy and fast way to paint watercolour trees. This is just a 1/2″ flat brush. Hold the brush vertically and just use the very tip of it to tap the paper where you want the top of the tree to be.

As you tap the paper, the lines will create the branches of the pine tree.

 

Angle your brush out slightly up and away from the center of the tree and tap a few more times.

Go back and forth from one side to the other dabbing your brush and pivoting your brush.

It’s super fast to dab in the rest of the tree.

Try not to fill in every gap. You don’t want it to look like a perfect triangle. In fact it looks better if there are a few air holes left where you can see through to the sky.

 

If you would like to add in some depth, and variety, it looks great to dab a couple of other colours into the tree while it is still wet.

Ultramarine works great with forest green and it will blend into the tree to create some shadows.

I mixed a little aureolin yellow with hooker’s green and dabbed it onto the other side of the tree.

 

If the paint on your brush is wetter than the paint on the paper, then it will create little wet puddles which will dry with an outline.

These puddles are often called blossoms, runbacks, or cauliflowers, and they are caused by wet paint trying to bleed into damp paint.

Once the paper has already started to dry, the paint loses its capacity to mix together and blend on the paper, and it resists against the wet paint which sits on top and the tension created between the wet and damp paper causes pigment to be pushed to the edges of the wet area and dry darker than the rest of the painting, making what looks like an outline.

 

I’m not saying you need to avoid this, as it can look great, especially in a tree like this, but it is really good to know why blossoms happen and how to avoid them if we need to.

You can avoid blossoms by matching the wetness of your brush to the wetness of your paper. So you could mix more pigment into your paint mixture, or you could dab off the extra wet paint on an old tea towel.

Here I’m just adding some ultramarine blue to my second tree while it is still wet.

A little hooker’s green mixed with aureolin yellow dabbed in to create some bright areas within the branches.

 

Have fun painting!

See more at https://kendraart.com/courses

In this course you will learn all the techniques needed to build a solid foundation in watercolour, and how to overcome common struggles that beginners normally encounter. You will see each technique demonstrated in a step-by-step, easy to follow manner with a pace specifically geared towards beginners. I demonstrate everything twice so you can relax and watch the first one and then paint along with me.

The course includes over 10 hours of video instruction as well as 6 e-books adding up to over 320 pages of comprehensive step by step notes.

Let me know if you have any questions.

When I first started painting with watercolours my paintings turned out streaky, dull, and splotchy. I was so frustrated until I took my first workshop and as soon as my instructor showed me how to paint the paper with a flat blue wash, I was hooked. It was so smooth and so bright compared to anything I had tried before. I’m going to break it down into the very basic steps so that we don’t leave anyone behind, starting with how to mix the paint.

Here is a video if you prefer to watch the demo. Otherwise the step by step description is below with screenshots.

This is an excerpt from my online course “Introduction to Watercolour Basics ~ Watercolours Made Easy”

I’m working on 140lb (300g) Arches cold press paper. My paper is 7.5×11″ divided into 9 sections with blue painter’s tape. I’m going to be using a 1/2″ flat brush.

Dip your brush in water and bring it into your mixing area and then with your wet brush, tickle the paint and bring it into the mixing area and swish it around in the water.

If your paint is freshly squeezed out you won’t need to tickle it much at all to get a good amount of pigment, but if you are painting from pans or from tube paint that was previously squeezed out and then had time to dry, then you will have to tickle it more vigorously.

Dip your brush in water to bring more water into the mixing area and then continue to bring more paint and mix it thoroughly into your mixing area so that there aren’t any undissolved bits.

 

If you tip your palette up and all the paint runs down your palette, leaving it white, then your paint is too runny.

If you tip your palette up and the paint doesn’t move at all, then it is too thick. You want your paint to be nice and creamy, but with enough water in it that it still has some movement to it. You know when you defrost frozen blueberries in the microwave and some of the juice oozes out, that is the consistency of the paint that we want. Not too watery but not too thick. Rich and juicy is what we are going for, and you’ll need a nice sized puddle of paint so that you don’t run out half way through your painting

When you scrape your brush through your mixed paint, you should still see some of the colour on the palette. It should flow like cream, not spread like cream cheese.

 

Clean your brush thoroughly and wet the paper with clean water (well, at least fairly clean.

My water is light blue but it’s not going to tint my paper and if it does I’m painting the paper blue so it will be fine.) Go back and forth and every which way to make sure that the paper is evenly wet.

Tip your paper up to the light to make sure that it has a nice even shine all over and that you haven’t missed any spots.

You want it to be nice and shiny, but not drippy. If the water is pooling then it is too wet. If the paper is matte then you need to rewet it again to get a near gloss.

 

Dry off your brush and then dip it in the paint and fully immerse your bristles. Don’t just dab the end of your brush, swish the whole brush end in the paint so it is fully saturated.

If there is a big droplet of paint at the end of your brush then take it off by either by dabbing it on your palette, scraping it off the edge of your palette, or dabbing the tip of the brush on an old tea towel. Start at the top of your wet paper and paint a line across from one side to the other in one steady motion.

Overlap the first line and paint a second line. Dip your brush in paint and then dab off the drip from the end of your brush. Don’t dip in water at this point, just the paint.

Notice that whenever you lift your brush off the paper the paint will burst.

 

Since I am right handed and working from left to right, the paint will burst as I lift my brush so I will get a bigger deposit of paint and pigment on the right side of my painting.

I won’t worry about this as I’m painting or try to fix it because at the end I can just tip my painting to the right and hold a paper towel just at the very edge and it will wick up any extra paint if there still is any.

Since we are working on wet paper some of that paint will flow back into the painting and blend all by itself.

Sometimes when the painting is nice and wet then it is ok to go back over an area to smooth it out, but for the most part I want to avoid going back into an area that I already painted. Watercolour is transparent and light travels through the paint and reflects off the paper into our eyes.

If we overwork an area by painting over and over in one spot, then we smoosh the pigment into the fibres of the paper and it dulls it right down, plus as the paint starts to dry then painting over it will cause streaks and blossoms to form. So it is best to use as few brush strokes as possible and let the water and paint do most of the work for you. The paint will continue to blend on its own without the need to ‘smooth’ it out. This is something that will be easier with time as you get used to your paper and paints.

Continue to overlap previous brushstrokes and work your way from the top to the bottom of the paper.

Dip in the paint once more to ensure that we keep a fairly even value throughout the wash.

Dab off the excess on your palette or towel. Overlap the last brushstroke and complete the wash.

 

See how the masking tape is wet with paint? We don’t want to leave it there because as the painting is drying it could flow back into the painting and cause unwanted blossoms to form.

Wipe off the masking tape with paper towel, and you can also tip your painting and wick away any extra paint to prevent the paint from pooling on the paper.

See more at https://kendraart.com/courses

In this course you will learn all the techniques needed to build a solid foundation in watercolour, and how to overcome common struggles that beginners normally encounter. You will see each technique demonstrated in a step-by-step, easy to follow manner with a pace specifically geared towards beginners. I demonstrate everything twice so you can relax and watch the first one and then paint along with me.

The course includes over 10 hours of video instruction as well as 6 e-books adding up to over 320 pages of comprehensive step by step notes.

Let me know if you have any questions.