Watercolor painting can be a therapeutic and relaxing way to spend an afternoon. If you haven't tried painting a sunset, these steps break it down so that you can easily create a watercolor sunset from start to finish with no stress or frustration, just the way watercolor painting should be.
Instructions
1. Wet the paper with a water-soaked mop brush. This technique is called wet-into-wet, and it softens the surface and prepares it for soft absorption lines rather than hard, defined lines. Wet-into-wet is used mostly for sunsets and clouds.
2. Tilt your paper at a 15-degree angle so the paint will run downward as it seeps into the paper.
3. Dip your brush into the blue paint, which is the first color to go onto the paper. Stroke the paint along the top edge of the paper. Overlap the first stroke with a second stroke of blue paint. Use the remnants of the first dip of blue paint.
4. Rinse your paint brush in clean water. Dip it into the red paint, run a stroke along the paper so that the red overlaps the blue to create a purplish hue.
5. Dip your paint brush into clean water to make the next brush stroke. Do not rinse the brush-you simply want to dilute the paint that is already on the brush. Finish this part of the sunset with several gradated strokes across the horizon.
6. Turn your paper upside down so that it's still at a fifteen degree angle, but now the paint runs in the opposite direction from the red and blue. Dip your brush into yellow paint and make several strokes across the paper. Work your way towards the red and blue strokes. Overlap each stroke.
7. Allow the paper to dry completely and then re-wet it with clean water. Dip your brush into the red paint and go back into the yellow areas and spot-touch with red to create subtle bursts of red sky.
