A Beginner's Journey into Watercolor Painting

Welcome to a new instalment in my Beginner's Journey into Watercolor Painting series! Today, I have 10 new watercolors to share with you, all dating back to April 2023.

A waterfall. My first attempt at painting one of my favorite subjects as a photographer. (Long exposures for the win!)

The process was simple: After I was done with the sky, I focused on the hill, with the wet-on-wet technique (two layers of paint). The water was the final step. I played with the white, purple and blue until satisfied with the overall look; then dabbed some dry white paint for a more "realistic" effect.

The inspiration behind this scene can be found here.

A waterfall (2). I successfully complete this piece on the same day as the previous one. It could appear on a future book cover... I used this image as inspiration.

Birch trees, based on the painting here. Aspen and birch trees are magnificent to behold. They make wonderful subjects for photography or painting practice. During the drying process, I almost ditched my piece because of the weird-looking orange-olive green mix in the middle. I feel that it can be greatly improved with more work; and will probably end up redoing it.

Blossoming. I love taking photos of flowers, but drawing them is another story. This piece was a real chore. I have no idea why the petals and leaves are so misshapen. I doubt I will ever paint a scene like that again.

Tiles. Something different for a change. Not very good because I had to draw the lines without a ruler. And of course, the paint did not spread evenly on the paper due to its low quality. I had to use watercolor markers here and there to cover mistakes...

A mountain lake. As I recently shared, there are a few things I cannot do, including touching my face while looking at myself in a mirror. I also find it almost impossible to draw mirror images like what you see in this painting. While the rest of the scene was a breeze to paint, the reflected duplication of the mountains took me almost three hours to complete. Needless to say that I am very proud of this piece. A few months ago, I would have given up after ten minutes.

A view of coastline. Using this painting as a model, I quickly went off script because I wanted a more abstract-looking scene. It will probably end up in a book.

A mountain lake (2). I wish I could remember where I saw the inspiration for this, because it is very pretty. Still, my version is quite nice.

The house on the hill, inspired by this scene. This painting had potential and could have been very good. Unfortunately, I was very tired on that day and left my common sense behind. Two lessons for novice painters: Using a watercolor marker on still-wet paint will lead to bleeding into the paper; and (accidentally) brushing said paint with your sleeve will ruin everything. 😁

Fields. I will call this a practice piece. There are so many mistakes that I ended up having to use a black marker to hide them. Strangely enough, the black lines give it a distinctive look. Loosely inspired by this painting.

That's it for today. See you next time for more paintings from yours truly.

Want to see more of my work? Check out my other posts below:

• Part 1
• Part 2
• Part 3
• Part 4
• Part 5
• Part 6
• Part 7

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I hope you enjoyed this post. What is your favorite watercolor in the list? Do you paint? If so, show me some of your work.

Oh, and by the way, if you are a writer, author, or artist, I would love to hear from you. Click the link below for more information.

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Cendrine Marrouat is a writer, photographer, podcaster, blogger, anthology editor, and the co-founder of Auroras & Blossoms and A Warm Cup of Cozy. She has authored and co-authored more than 40 books, including The Train: A Short Story (2023), In Her Own Words: A Collection of Short Stories & Flashku (2022), After the Fires of Day: Haiku Inspired by Kahlil Gibran & Alphonse de Lamartine (2021), Rhythm Flourishing: A Collection of Kindku and Sixku (2020), Walks: A Collection of Haiku (2019-2020), and In the Silence of Words: A Three-Act Play (2018).

Cendrine's work has appeared in many publications. She is the creator of the Sixku, Flashku, Sepigram, and Reminigram; as well as the co-creator of the Kindku, Pareiku, Vardhaku, and Hemingku.