landscape

This time let’s paint a simple but beautiful summer landscape with mountains, rapeseed fields, and a few houses. Just follow the instructions, which also give you one or the other tip.

To get you started, you will find a coloring page for this landscape in step 1. It is in A4 format and you can download it and print it out. If you prefer to paint smaller (my finished picture is in DIN A5 format), make sure to reduce the size when printing.

DRAW

First, the motif is roughly sketched on watercolor paper. If you feel confident enough, feel free to skip this step. Or you can – if you prefer to be on the safe side – download the design, print it out, and transfer it to your sheet of paper using graphite paper.

PAINTING THE SKY WITH CLOUDS

Moisten the surface of the sky with a brush, visit to get a high-quality paintbrush, and apply blue paints. Use a cool blue (e.g. ultramarine) or violet at the top, and a warmer blue (e.g.a helio turquoise) further down. The color should also be stronger in the upper area than below the horizon. The clouds are created by carefully dabbing away the still damp color of the sky. You can do this with the help of a piece of kitchen paper, some cotton, or a small sponge.

DESIGN THE BACKGROUND

When the sky is dry, you can paint the mountains in the background. To do this, apply a mixture of indigo, ultramarine, and violet glazing i.e. diluted with water. Be careful not to paint over the houses. Let dry. The bushes and trees in the background are painted with the same mix of colors. However, I added a bit of sap green and a little less water.

PAINT THE FIELD

Now it’s time to go to the bright yellow rapeseed field. To do this, dilute the colors with water so that they can flow into each other and apply to the dry paper with the broad brush. It looks best if you use a warm yellow (e.g. cadmium yellow) for the rear area and a cool one further in front (e.g. lemon yellow).
Sap green is applied to the front area. In addition, use a thin brush to dab green areas into the still moist yellow field.

HOUSES AND BUSHES

After your field has dried, mix up a shade of scarlet and sienna to paint the walls of the houses.

Tip: To achieve an effect of light and shadow, paint a second layer with this color – but only on one side of both houses. This makes these sides look darker and therefore shadier. Add some sepia to the color to darken it. You will use it to draw thin lines directly under the roofs. It seems like these are casting shadows. That gives the whole thing a little more space. Once the paint on the walls has dried, you can grab a thin paintbrush and use it to paint the windows. Use a mixture of sepia and indigo for this. The roofs are painted a light shade of gray. Again, make sure that you don’t color in everything consistently, but leave white areas.

Now your picture is as good as finished. To make it look even more interesting, bushes or a tree are added in the last step. Use the color mix of the mountains and add a little sap green. Then use the tip of the thin brush to dab the paint irregularly until it looks like the foliage of a tree or shrub.