How to simple watercolor meadow for beginners

In this tutorial I will take you step by step on how to paint a Watercolor meadow for beginners. This tutorial is great for those who want to practice watercolor painting but don’t always have a lot of time for a whole painting.

You’ll find a quick fun 15 minute watercolor painting for beginners.

Lets get into it!

Materials used

  • 300gsm cold pressed watercolor paper (A5 size)
  • Watercolor brushes
  • 2 jars of water
  • Paper towel
  • Watercolor paints (you can use whatever you have)

Colors used

The colors I used for this painting are listed below, however you can use whatever alternatives you have in your palette or prefer.

  • Sky:
    • Light gray: Cerulean + Burnt sienna
    • Light blue: Cerulean
  • Mountain:
    • Dark blue –Indigo
  • Meadow:
    • Light green: Prussian blue+lemon yellow (more yellow than blue)
    • Cool green: Prussian blue + Lemon yellow (more blue than yellow)

Step by step watercolor meadow

Painting the sky

Although this painting doesn’t require a sketch, I still found it helpful to draw a straight horizon line through the bottom third of the page.

Begin by wetting the sky area with clean water, next paint the clouds by adding dabs of light gray (I am using cerulean blue + burnt sienna).

Next paint the sky around the clouds with a light blue (I’m using cerulean blue), make sure to leave some white areas.

Let it dry…

Painting the mountain

After the sky had dried I painted in the mountain using indigo, I painted a simple flat line across the horizon. Then to paint the peaks I painted uneven bumpy lines.

The meadow

To paint the meadow I wet the lower half of the paper with clean water and painted in a light green (I used cobalt blue +lemon yellow). You can create a graded wash by decreasing the strength of the green as you paint towards the bottom of the paper.

If you’re struggling with watercolor washes (graded washes) you can always sign up for my freen3 day beginner watercolor exercises here where I go through different watercolor washes in depth.

While the wash is still wet, start adding in the mid values of green, paint with irregular brushstrokes as shown below:

Time to add a cool green in the foreground (I used prussian blue + lemon yellow ). You can see how using irregular brushstrokes can create texture:

Use the point of the brush to paint in long thick strokes that resemble grass as shown in the image below:

Dampen the brush by removing excess water on a paper towel and dry brush some texture into the meadow.

Continue layering the meadow, adding more texture with each layer. Remember to add more texture and detail towards the foreground and less in the distance.

Switch to a smaller brush and add in thinner more defined grass lines in the foreground like so:

I felt the meadow needed more yellow-green on the top of the field so I added another layer:

I finished the painting by adding more texture but making sure the distance looks less defined than the foreground.

That is it for this tutorial! Now grab your paints and start painting 🙂 If you enjoyed this tutorial and are looking for more practice sketches check out this post on how to paint summer, autumn, winter and spring trees.

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