Tuscany’s unique beauty is fun to capture in watercolor and even beginners are challenged to give this easy landscape a try. Follow along step by step and I challenge you to improve upon my color choices and poppies!
Downloads for Tuscany Watercolor Landscape
Suggested Colors for Step by Step Tuscany
- Blue – Cerulean, Cobalt, Cobalt Hue, any light sky blue
- Red – an orangy red like Cadmium or Pyrrole Red
- Yellow – any good yellow
- Gold – Quinacridone gold or Brown + yellow
- Orange – Mix red + yellow or Pyrrole Orange
- Brown – Burnt Sienna or other brown
Painting Steps for Easy Watercolor Landscape
Step 1 – Draw or trace your Tuscany outline onto your watercolor paper with graphite paper.
Step 2 – Paint the sky.
Mix a small puddle of a sky blue color.
Wet the sky – For a smoother sky, use a big wash brush and wet the sky area with clean water. I wet over the trees and house, as those will be darker than the sky.
Paint blue at the top of the sky and feather it down towards the horizon line. If you have streaks or brushstrokes, you can pick up and tilt your paper or use a damp watercolor fan brush to gently blend.
Step 3 – Paint the distant mountains and trees.
Pick your color – The mountains can be purple/gray, brownish or green – it’s up to you!
I mixed a purple with mostly blue plus a little red.
Use a small brush to add color to the top of the mountain and feather it down towards the bottom.
Mix a puddle of tree color – The trees are a medium value green – use Sap or Hookers or mix your own color. If your green looks too bright, you can tone it down with brown, purple or red.
Paint the right side trees.
Step 4 – Paint the field in this easy landscape.
Mix and paint – mix a puddle of green or gold – your choice – and paint the field.
Step 5 – Paint the house and cypress trees.
Paint the house a light or medium color of your choice, light brown or bluish gray are both nice choices.
Paint the roof orange. When dry, use darker orange to draw tile lines on the roof. and a line across the bottom of the roof.
Cypress trees – Mix a dark green/almost black for the cypress trees. (You have several options for this color – Perylene Green, or mix Hookers (or Viridian) with Magenta or mix Phthalo Blue with Burnt Sienna or another brown.)
Paint the trees – paint the biggest tree with the darkest paint, the medium tree a little lighter (more water) and the distant trees even lighter.
Step 6 – Paint the foreground – Poppies and Yellow Flowers.
Paint the yellow flowers in the right corner.
Paint an initial wash of color on the poppy area with a hit or miss wash. Using a small brush dribble water on the area, leaving a lot of unpainted spaces. Then repeat this using red paint. Dry.
Paint individual poppies over top the red wash. You can add bigger poppies with their distinctive dark centers and a few stems, also. If you have unpainted areas from the hit or miss wash – they are an excellent place to add some green/gold for the field.
Step 7 – Finishing touches for Tuscan with Poppies Tutorial
Clouds – Use a damp brush to reactive the watercolor paint where you want clouds in the sky and dab up the color with a paper towel.
For clouds that stand out, paint opaque white along the top of the cloud, then use a damp brush to soften the bottom edges. You can also add darker shadows to the bottom of the cloud by mixing your blue and orange to make a gray. Paint the gray on and use a damp brush to soften the top AND bottom edges of the gray.
Grasses – Paint tall grasses in the right corner to connect all three plains in this picture – the sky, the foreground and the middle field.
House detail – You can add doors, windows, shutters, even tiny stones to the house with paint, pencil or pen.
Painting Tuscany Watercolor Landscape Summary
I hope your painting turned out even better than mine! Summer is coming soon and while those wonderful vacations don’t last, you can paint them and keep the memory forever!
Happy Painting!