Watercolor Landscapes: Painting Your Dream Travel Destination

I don’t know about you - but sometimes, I just need to ESCAPE the monotony of daily life. When I'm knee deep in work projects, wrangling babies, and taking care of the tasks of daily life, I often find myself wishing I was sitting on a beach with a book in my hand, or exploring Europe with my camera and paints. Who doesn’t like to daydream about where their next vacation would be? But life is hectic, finances can be tricky, and the reality is that sometimes traveling the world just isn’t an option. 

>>> Enter your new fave... Watercolor Landscapes: Painting Your Dream Travel Destination <<<

My usual roles are artist, designer, and educator, but today consider me your virtual travel agent & tour guide. We are going to take an all-expenses-paid trip around the world and paint what we see - all from the comfort of our homes!

Together, we will visit several exciting destinations virtually and learn step-by-step how to plan, paint, and add detail to watercolor landscapes.

We will discuss how to travel virtually, review basic watercolor fundamentals, do a warmup painting in the Tuscan hillsides, and finish up with a full sized landscape painting of your dream travel destination. You will need watercolor paints, watercolor paper, a pencil, water, artists/painters tape, and brushes in a variety of sizes. You may also wish to pack some optional supplies, like colored pencils, gouache, and a white ink gel pen.  

Travelers/Artists of any experience level are welcome on this trip, although the instruction is geared toward intermediate level painters who have a good understanding of color theory, mixing paints, and watercolor supplies!

We will go over the principles of watercolor landscape painting, which include:

• -Choosing a subject
• -Planning and sketching our scene
• -Utilizing layers to build the background, middleground, and foreground.
• -Methods for adding detail to finish our masterpiece, including pencil, ink, and gouache.

I've created a comprehensive class guide that is available for download in the Project & Resources section. It's 37 pages of step-by-step instructions, tips & tricks, reference photos, supply recommendations, and even a few fun facts about yours truly. It was a labor of love and I hope you find it helpful in your journey to travel and paint watercolor landscapes.

If you're new to watercolors, you may want to check out my classes on painting greenery and layering trees where we go over a lot of the fundamentals:

Watercolor Basics: How to Paint Floral Greenery

Watercolor Basics: Layering with Trees

• What This Class is All About
• Supplies + Class Guide
• Choosing Your Destination
• Setting the Scene
• Planning: Making Artistic Choices
• Planning: Zones + Layers
• Warmup: Sketching
• Warmup: Wet-on-Dry Layering
• Warmup: Background Layer
• Warmup: Middleground Layer
• Warmup: Foreground Layer
• Warmup: Final Layers
• Intro to Adding Detail
• Intro to Detail: Pencils
• Intro to Detail: Ink
• Intro to Detail: Gouache
• Warmup: Watercolor Details
• Warmup: Gouache and Pencil Details
• Project Instructions
• Project Demo: Planning + Sketching
• Project Demo: Layering
• Project Demo: Final Details
• Conclusion