Painting an autumn landscape in watercolour

You would love to paint autumn in watercolour, but you are not quite sure where to start?

During my first live session, I painted an autumn landscape in watercolour: a mountain view over Lake Annecy, from the col de la Forclaz, in the light of a sunset. Here are all the steps, the colours I used, and what to use instead if you do not have the same palette.

It is a more approachable subject than it looks: a few wide areas, a short palette, and hills that take shape one after the other.

Contents

• The subject: a mountain lake in autumn
• Materials
• The autumn palette
• Transferring the sketch
• The main steps
• What I would do differently
• Your questions during the live

The subject: a mountain lake in autumn

It is a very well known view around here. If you want to see what it looks like, type « lac d'Annecy vue du col de la Forclaz » into Google Images or Pinterest. You will find it photographed in every season, which will give you plenty of colour ideas.

I had already painted it as a step by step in my first book, Un mois pour se mettre à l'aquarelle, but in winter light, with a strong atmospheric perspective and fir trees reserved with masking fluid.

This time I went for autumn colours, it is the season after all, with the backlight of late afternoon.

Materials for this autumn landscape

Here is what I used to paint this landscape:

• a sheet of cotton paper, A4 (A5 works just as well)
• Princeton Neptune brushes in sizes 8, 6 and 2
• a graphite pencil for the sketch, softened with a kneaded eraser before painting, or a light watercolour pencil

The autumn watercolour palette

I used my Les Complices palette with Les Couleurs VF: abricot, céladon, figue, rose poudré, renoncule and hellébore. I added two pans of slightly brighter colours, fougères and ercolano, which you can also mix yourself: flamant rose with figue and abricot for one, céladon with abricot for the other.

The idea behind this palette is to work mainly with browns and warm yellows, then to complete it with two greens that bring a colour contrast.

If you do not have these colours

Here is the Sennelier equivalent: Venetian red, Naples yellow deep, caput mortuum, chromium oxide green, Sennelier grey. I added a mix of caput mortuum with white, which changes the hue completely, and a quinacridone red with caput mortuum for a muted burgundy.

If you want to know more about using white in watercolour, I have written a whole article about it.

In short

Here is what you need:

• a dark brown, which will carry the contrast
• a warm yellow, leaning towards orange
• a natural green
• desaturated colours, slightly muted

No need to look for light colours: you get them by diluting. What you really need is one properly dark colour.

And if you want to match céladon, a desaturated green with a little blue in it, start from perylene green or burnt green earth and add a touch of ultramarine blue. As a bonus, ultramarine granulates a little, so you will get a slight pigment separation. If that effect appeals to you, I have written an article about granulating and duochrome watercolours, with the colours that produce these textures.

Transferring the sketch

The best tool is a watercolour pencil in a light shade, which will disappear under the paint. Choose it within the range of the subject: orange or yellow for this autumn landscape.

Above all, avoid heavy graphite lines: they show through the watercolour, and you cannot erase under the paint.

The main steps

Here is how to paint this landscape in four main steps:

• the lake: it reflects the colour of the sky, so I use abricot near the horizon, then renoncule, ercolano and a touch of figue, and I finish with clear water
• the hills: I work from the back towards the foreground, blending them softly into each other in the distance, with a little brown at the foot of each one to mark the backlight
• the sky: it picks up exactly the colours of the lake and stays light, so that it does not overpower the rest of the painting
• the fir trees: once the paper is dry, I add fir trees in the foreground with a colour gradient, yellow, red then brown, to suggest the light of the setting sun

What I would do differently

My sketch sits too high on the paper. As a result I had very little room left for the sky, even though the sky was carrying the whole sunset mood. I should have lowered the horizon to give it more space.

It happens, and it is worth saying.

Your questions during the live

Do you have a precise idea of the result before you start, or does it come as you go?

It depends on the composition. For this live session I had prepared a little. In general I go with the flow, but that instinct is built on years of practice and on many landscapes of this kind already painted. It is not improvisation. I almost always have a mental image, even without a rough sketch or colour tests on the side.

I cannot manage to paint fir trees

I have a video dedicated to fir trees on my channel, watch it before you start and you will feel much more comfortable.