Welcome to my quarterly realtime painting sesh! Or it seems to be quarterly of late. Today: a lakeshore watercolor painting, capturing the beauty of Lake Superior. I’ll be painting wet-in-wet again, like in my previous post. Unlike that painting, this one’s much tougher! But even if this is beyond what you might feel you’re ready for, this will show you the power of practicing wet-in-wet techniques. And there’s plenty of tips included – despite a section where I think I just babbled word salad! ha.

Tutorial: Lakeshore Watercolor Wet in wet + atmospheric perspective

I hope you’ll paint along – be sure to share your painting with me if you do!

Watch the video below and scroll to the end to leave comments or questions — or click HERE to watch it on YouTube and leave comments over there. I read both dutifully!

First version

I painted this one smaller first; it’s often very helpful to create a smaller study so you can work out colors, etc. This is half the size of the rest of the paintings shown here. I struggled with things getting away from me here; I wet the entire paper and painted the whole thing together, which made the greens flow into the rocks, and the water muddied the offshore rocks. Whoopsie.

Second version

I waited on the rocks on the left til the greens had dried back some – but didn’t wait long enough on the offshore rocks. Whoopsie. But the water and reflections started to really jive well. I also liked the way the trees were just so undefined here. They’re not the goal of the painting and I like their artistic approach.

Third version

I loved how this one came out – but dangit if the camera operator didn’t forget to tap the “start recording” button again after the drying session. Ha! But experimenting with dividing sections helped so I could see how it would progress for teaching. The underwater rocks here have a lot of definition – I waited longer for it to dry so I could get some crisp and some soft edges.

Fourth version

I could call this the final version, but it’s likely I’ll try this one again! Overall I’m pleased, especially since I captured the footage for today’s video! ha. It’s the little things. A few things I’d like to manage better:

The trees look about the same distance (same amount of detail)….fuzzing out some would help a lot. All that’s left is a green halo in the distance.
The offshore rocks were from memory here, my ipad ran out of juice! I thought I could nail it without looking. Uhm nope!

Are you painting along?

I hope you’ll try this lakeshore watercolor painting! If you do please share it with me – tag me on social media, or post it over in Artventure. I’d love to see how your version worked out!

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