Autumn Inspired

Hello to you today. It is Tuesday, which of course means it is time to upload my sample card for the Watercolour Challenge at Splitcoaststampers. I am hosting this weeks challenge asking all to freehand paint from a choice of two scenes. The videos that accompany the challenge can be found here.

I decided on the first scene as I found it a bit more challenging for me with the mountains and the glow of the sun, including on the water. But that is not to say I won't do the second scene. 

To watercolour I am using Arches 140lb cold press watercolour paper. My watercolours are Daniel Smith and Roman Szmal.

I roughly drew in the mountains and the branch, which gives a good idea of carrying on freehand with watercolour. 

I then started with the yellow background, and while that dried I painted the mountains using my Roman Szmal watercolours. I love these colours for nature and especially for mountains and they worked out exactly as I expected they would.

 Once all was dry I moved on to the branch and leaves using the Perylene Red. Then I decided I also wanted orange leaves so I added in the Pyrrol Orange. I used my #4 round brush to paint the leaves.

When I first did the branch I used full strength Burnt Umber, but I wanted it much darker so I added Sepia and drew back over the branch to get that deep colour.

I then painted the lake water using Daniel Smith Manganese. I love this colour for the sky normally, but I thought it would look good in this scene, and I think it works. 

I waited a bit for the water to dry somewhat then added in the colours for the mountain shadows, using my Roman Szmal paints and Burnt Umber and added the mountain base where the water meets the mountains.

This was such a relaxing card to make, I loved the whole process. I hope you might give this a try as it is very easy for those of you who would like to, or do watercolour.

Thank you for joining me today. Following are Affiliate Links for the products that I have used for this card, at no extra cost to you.