We are now at the finishing stages of this watercolor landscape painting. I just need to paint the remaining details and the painting will be finished with the addition of the strong shadow in the foreground.

Watercolor Landscape Painting: The Details and Shadows

I paint in the distant shed and cows keeping the tone weaker than that of the foreground trees so that these items do not come forward in the painting plane. Don’t forget to put the shadows under the cows and the side of the shed, make sure the shadows are away from the direction of sunlight.

I also painted in the small tree on the right to keep the eye from wandering out of the painting.

The old fence posts are put in next with quick brush strokes of quite thick paint (French Ultramarine and Burnt Sienna). While these are still wet I paint in the shadow shapes on the ground.

I use a mix of French Ultramarine and Alizarin Crimson for the shadow color, I lean the mixture slightly to the blue.  Before painting the shadows I painted some plain water here and there in the foreground and across some area where the shadow line will fall so that when I paint the shadow in I achieve a lot of variety in the shadow shapes and colors on the ground.

I now step back and have a good look at the painting, I check that it all balances, if I have lost critical highlights I may use some Chinese White to recover them e.g. sometimes I use this to place little highlights on the backs of the cows.

The painting is now signed and it is done!