Initial drawing for our watercolor landscape

The drawing for this watercolor landscape is relatively simple however there are some points which you should note when doing your own. For ease of photographing my drawing I pressed somewhat harder than I suggest you should, especially for the distant hills as you don’t want the pencil marks to show through the soft edges. After taking a photograph of my drawing I then erased most of the distant lines before starting my watercolor painting.

Some of the things to take into account in my drawing for this watercolor landscape are:

• Only mark in a thin sliver of water on the left had side.
• Lightly indicate the shape of the distant wet sand line.
• Draw the figures with their heads below the horizon line. This assumes the viewer is looking down from a little above the figures. I felt I didn’t want their heads to be right on the horizon line as they would have been if the viewer was at the same level and about the same height as the couple walking along the beach.
• To give the couple the impression of walking draw them with their shoulders slightly angled and have one of each of their legs up from the sand.
• The figures are in shillouete so don’t bother trying to put in too much detail. The important thing when drawing people like this is to get proportions right. Figures are roughly three heads wide at their shoulders, the hip is roughly half the length of the figure and the hands reach to about halfway down the thigh. Don’t make the arms both hang down however as it will give your figures an unnatural stance. Remember when walking both the arms and legs will be in a state of motion and usually at some angle other than straight down.

With the drawing for our watercolor landscape painting complete we can now move on to the first painting step with is the sunset sky.

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