Winter Cabin Watercolor Painting Process

Whenever I sit down to paint my monthly Paint With Me Challenge painting, I always film it because I made myself a rule that I would always share the process behind my own painting.

Sometimes, the first version gets discarded and I try again. I almost discarded this one, but I was on the fence about it so I asked over on Instagram if it was worth sharing. And if it was worth sharing the video, I asked if there was anything people would want to know about.

Most of the responses had to do with the plan and the process I used to approach the painting.

My gut reaction was to think: Plan? What plan?

When I think of the word “plan” I think of taking notes, making outlines, doing test-runs and a lot of pre-thinking.

Having a plan would mean that I had a step-by-step approach to the painting that would theoretically result in what I wanted to achieve. (If only that were actually possible!)

But then I looked up the definition of ‘plan’ and one of the definitions is: “an intention or decision about what one is going to do.”

Ok then, I did have a plan before I started. I had a few intentions I set out with before starting.

Those intentions are what gave me a plan as I started to paint.

This is the tricky part of painting loosely with watercolors. The end results don’t come from a rigid step-by-step approach but rather rely on loose guidelines mixed with experience and experimentation. At least that’s true for me at this point in my journey.

If you’re interested in reading through it, I shared details of my planning process and order of layers in written form below. If you’d rather watch and listen over on YouTube, you can just view the video!

The Planning Process

But actually, when I really thought about it, I did have a plan - even if it was a loose one. It also turns out that it did help structure how I approached the painting so I’ll explain it below.

There were 2 main concepts that were part of my plan:

1. Paint it with warm colors & a limited palette

2. Paint it using a wet-on-wet approach

The Plan Part 1: Warm Colors & A Limited Palette

Lately I’ve really been wanting to explore painting with a limited palette of just 3-4 colors. I tend to not use that many colors (or so I think) until I realize that I definitely just use whatever is laying around because I have it in my palette.

I’d like to be more intentional about the colors I have in my palette and what I’m using. It also takes a lot of “guess work” and decision making out of the painting process.

Inspired by this video by Grahame Booth on YouTube, I decided to paint my winter scene with warm light and with a limited palette.

This helped me plan the colors I would use:

1. Quin Gold (ended up adding a bit of Naples Yellow for fun)

2. Burnt Sienna

3. Payne’s Grey

The Plan Part 2: Wet-On-Wet

I am continuing to work on my loose wet-on-wet painting techniques, so it was automatic that I would do this using a wet-on-wet approach.

However, in exploring and practicing more, I’m honing in on my own approach to painting wet layers and starting to work on my own awareness or how I’m layering the piece.

One of the ‘basics’ of watercolors is that you work from light-to-dark since you have to protect the whites or lightest parts of the painting. It’s one of the things that makes watercolors difficult since you are basically having to avoid these parts. And if you accidentally cover up the parts you were trying to protect it’s not so easy to bring them back. (Not impossible, but not an ideal situation!)

So with this decision, I had a plan for my layers:

1. I would need to mask some tricky parts I wanted to keep white

2. I’d work from layering: light, medium, and dark values

There’s a very helpful video by Andy Evansen on YouTube in which he shares his value study technique that breaks down looking at an image in light, medium, and dark values.  After watching this, I had a better understanding of how I’d approach my layers so I highly recommend it!

This leads me nicely into sharing the layers I actually executed when painting!

The Order of Layers

Watercolor painting is not always ‘step-by-step’. It is far from being a “color by numbers” kind of deal. So while I am outlining the layers below that I used in this painting, it’s much more fluid than that.

Sometimes there is a back and forth going on. When using watercolor we have to remember that we’re responding to many moving parts and often times need to react to where the painting and medium needs us to go at that moment in the process.

However, here is a rough outline of the order of layers that I used:

Layer 0: Masking Fluid

As I mentioned before, there are areas of white snow in the reference photo I’m using that are tricky to protect. So I decided masking fluid would be my best bet.

I chose to use masking fluid in specific places only like:

• Snow covered trees

• Branches I wanted to keep white against dark background

• Surrounding foliage at sides of cabin to bring detail attention to the cabin

Layer 1: Lightest Layer

This first wash captures the color of the warm light and some of the lightest grey values

Layer 2: Middle Value Layer & Defining Trees

This layer I think I could have executed better but it included the ‘middle value’ which was the big grouping of background trees and the base color of the cabin.

In this layer I began to define the tops of the background trees.

Layer 3: Darkest Values, Details & Textures

Began to add both the darkest values and details in this layer. Looking back I could have gone even darker in value (a common theme I’ve found for myself - working on it!).

At this point much of the paper is starting to dry and I used a damp brush to do a lot of dry brush texture for the background trees and the wood on the cabin.

If you’d like to see exactly how I created the textures, the video is the best place to check it out!

Layer 4: Removing Masking Fluid & Final Details

In this final pass, I remove the masking fluid and refine the areas that were left the stark white of the paper. Shadows were added and some final foreground details were put in as well.

I think watching the painting in action along with knowing the general plan and outline of my painting process will probably be the best way to learn from my approach.:

I had some very rough plans in my head (I didn’t sit down to define them before starting) and approached the painting with a general idea of how I would do it.

Ultimately I’m still learning and always will be! But I hope that by me sharing a bit of my own process, it helps you learn the same way I’m learning from watching others as well.

Thanks so much for reading (and watching)!
Susan

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