My latest watercolor painting demonstration on YouTube covers the subject of skies and their reflections. It is based on a demonstration I did for the Macquarie Towns Art Society in Australia.

Here is a summary of what is covered in the video:

I begin with a loose sketch of the scene, where I discuss ways to simply the subject, what to add, and what to leave out.

The painting starts by wetting the back of the paper – it take s a lot of water – while still keeping the front dry to touch.

The sky is painted with fully loaded brushes (lots of paint) allowing the paint to gently flow, leaving a nice clean watercolor wash. I made sure the sky was not too dark or too light. This sets the mood for the rest of the painting.

Once the sky is finished I went straight in and painted the water and the sand. The water needed to be a little duller but generally stronger in tone than the sky. I let this stage dry – with the aid of a hair dryer to speed things up.

With the paper dry I painted the distant hill in a light tone mix of watercolor paint. This was followed by progressively darker mixtures of paint for the distant islands, then the tree and rocks. Finished with some smaller details.

Have a look at the video. If you like it please subscribe on my YouTube channel, and hit the notification bell if you would like to be advised of each video as it is uploaded.