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Watercolor Tutorial: Painting A Cottage In A Storm
Step-by-step tutorial for capturing dramatic light effects
For me, one of the pleasures of watercolour painting is how the medium produces unexpected effects. The paint drifts and bleeds, and when it dries it always looks a little different to how you expect. In this way, the artist must always be on the lookout for the benefits of serendipity — and embrace them when they come.
Being (slightly) out of control like this lends itself to certain subjects above others. A stormy day on a countryside hill provides no better context for watercolour paint to do its best unruly work.
For this painting, I found an image of a farmhouse as the basis. This would provide the central point-of-interest in the work; the rest of the painting would be imagined.
My idea was to make the cottage a lonely object on a hillside with the oncoming storm rising up behind it. The emphasis would be on effects of light and atmosphere. Tonal values would be important, paying attention to the relative amounts of light and dark in the painting.
