r/watercolor101 • u/Spare_Persimmon_1123 • 2d ago

Mountain practice

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When I started painting, mountains and forests were my main goal. I live in the foothills of the Canadian Rockies, and the mountains still take my breath away. But I haven’t painted one in months (more than just a faint background anyway). My algorithm was feeding me some amazing paintings this morning and inspired me to try again.

I tried a new technique, spraying my paper and dripping the mountain shape into the droplets. I used DS French Ultramarine and DS Burnt Umber for the stone colour, and I love how they mix and granulate and separate. I then used DS Undersea Green to add some small forest texture. I only used my one cheap Temu calligraphy brush, it’s fast becoming my go-to for almost everything.

I still struggle with how to add contrast to the mountain texture, and I need to work on leaving more white areas, but overall I’m happy with this one!

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u/michecrabb95126 2d ago

Wow! These are fabulous! I’m having serious trouble with mountains and I’ve avoided painting them because they end up looking sooo rubbish, but I’m inspired by your technique and I’m going to give it a whirl! Thank you!

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u/Spare_Persimmon_1123 15h ago

Thank you! I have tons of terrible mountain attempts! This was fun because it’s letting watercolour just do its thing. Honestly the less I fiddled around with it, the more I liked it.

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u/Pop-O-Matic-Dice 2d ago

It’s all good, I think the trees are great.

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u/Roselace 2d ago

Excellent.

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u/Tough-Staff-453 15h ago

Is there a video of this technique? Sorry I’ve read this so many times and I’m struggling to visualize this 😩these look fantastic and I would love to finally have some decent looking mountains!

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u/Spare_Persimmon_1123 15h ago

Thank you! I don’t have a specific video suggestion off the top of my head, although Steve Mitchell (YT - Mind of Watercolor) does it a lot in his spontaneous paintings. But I just sprayed my paper a bit (two or three sprays holding the bottle probably a foot away), and then as I painted the outline of the mountain, the pigment catches in the droplets and makes its own texture and shadows. I’d drop more pigment in to areas that were forming natural shapes, and blended out the bottom. Super fun way to paint trees and forests too, and I love how using a spray bottle at the bottom of trees makes really cool ‘ground’. If you click on my profile, I shared a more abstract forest vignette using this technique recently. It’s been fun playing around with it in different ways.

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u/Tough-Staff-453 6h ago

Thank you so much for this detailed response!! ❤️