Watercolor Landscape Sketches Tiny And Abstract

I am dreaming of painting landscapes in my sketchbook, or not, on a regular basis, and yet something always seems to get in the way. It took me all summer long, but at long last I grabbed some watercolors and got to work on what should be some very quick and quite abstract landscape watercolor sketches. I have to say, I was quite pleased with the results……not professional use of the medium by any means, (and the watercolor palette I used is low quality and not dense pigment) but happy and still can’t believe I actually painted these little studies. The funny thing is, after painting these I got overly confident and went for a full page, and……disaster, well not entirely, but I have to laugh and try to reclaim that innocence of the first attempt! At the very least a few more pages of this landscape orientation sketchbook have been filled, and am looking forward to filling some more, and then getting something whose first pages won’t fall out, and thus need masking tape as you can see here. I am learning that the purpose of a sketchbook, whether for drawing or painting or both is to experiment and capture whatever is going on in your brain at that moment, without being overly concerned about the results. I am working on that one! I have a few tips for making little abstract landscape watercolors, so keep on reading……

You’ll Need:

• a watercolor paper sketchbook, or watercolor paper
• watercolors and a medium sized watercolor brush (like a 6), use whatever you have on hand!
• a jar for water, and a towel or paper towel for dabbing water off brush after rinsing it off
• reference photos of landscapes with graphic division of sky, land etc

How To:

The whole point of this exercise is to break the landscape down into shapes, and if you want to get really minimal about it, to only paint horizontal bands (that didn’t work with me….) While I did go back over my paintings, because the quality of the paint was poor, in reality one puts down paint on the paper, makes a few strokes and that is it. No futzing, no attention to tiny detail, or at least nothing more than a suggestion of something, and just areas of sloppy color.

You can start with either the sky or the foreground, and do try both. The main thing is to not overthink it, and to just be as loose as possible. And not to worry, if you don’t like the results you can always use them as a backdrop for some flower sketches, or do a little drawing over them, which also looks great!

Hopefully I’ll have some more success with using my own photos as reference, and I’ll share that with you in the not too distant future!

Next up is doing a study of watercolor clouds, can’t wait!
My daughter walking into my studio last night and thought I had a “How To Paint Watercolors” book or something open, as I’ve never done anything that looks like this, and that my friends is truly exciting. So stretch your limits as the results can be either exciting, or not, but either way there is creative growth!