Watercolor painting tutorial, painting a forest and grass

Resting on a Park Bench
Watercolor and Mixed media on paper mounted on board
Wax finish

This is my latest watercolor and mixed media painting on paper, mounted on board and with a wax finish instead of varnish. I did record the whole process to make a time lapse video that you can see at the end of this post, here is a description of the steps I took.

This is not the usual way to proceed but I like to mount my paper on the board before starting to paint, most artists will mount the finish painting. I like painting on the hard surface of the paper mounted on the board. I did make my drawing and even saved some white with masking fluid before mounting the paper.

To see a detailed description of how to mount paper on board, see that post: Mounting watercolor paper on board

When the paper is dry, I can cut the edges with a cutter. After my painting is finished I will send the edges to have perfectly clean edges.

painting the trees and grass with watercolors

I am painting the grass and trees, mixing colors wet in wet with a mix of Lemon yellow, cadmium yellow, hooker green and Cyan Blue

I am then painting the trees trunks with a mix of blues.

Then I am painting around the foliage and the trees trunks a darker background.

On top of that dark background, I will use a semi transparent mix of white gouache and water to add a few more trunks and branches in the background

I then take off all the masking fluid with an eraser, and will soften most edges with a stiff brush and water. I am painting the bench with Yarka watercolor English red.

Time to splash! I am spattering with watercolors, white gouache, water… and let the paint move on the painting.

I noticed that wax can remove a bit of the gouache on the paper, so to avoid that issue I am spraying some workable fixative n the painting before applying the wax.