Follow Barry Herniman to paint a beautiful Devon landscape, with flowing river, in watercolour.

Demonstration: Light on the Water, Watersmeet

Stage one - tonal sketch

This tonal sketch was made from a slightly higher viewpoint.

There is a lot going on with this scene and I find a quick tonal sketch helps to focus the mind and acts as a template for the darks, lights and mid-tones.

I used a 2b pencil here but also love using charcoal and graphite sticks, which can produce some lovely grades of light to dark that are so useful when doing tonal sketches.

Stage two

I drew in the main outlines of the scene with Pitt pens, taking care not to get too fiddly, and used masking fluid to reserve the sparkling whites on the water.

I mixed up some colour and flicked and spattered yellows and blues into the main foliage areas, keeping slightly darker colours to the right and lighter ones to the left.

With madder brown, orange and cobalt blue I painted in the main rocks, adding a little manganese violet to the foreground areas.

Stage three

Working into the water areas I dropped in fluid washes of cobalt turquoise, orange and cobalt blue, painting around the rocks.

It is now evident where I had placed the masking fluid. In the past I have added a little rose madder to enable me to see where I have used it.

Mixing up my colours to a slightly creamier consistency I began to establish the darker areas of the background trees with helio turquoise and manganese violet before dropping some darker, fluid washes into the shadowy areas of the water near the banks.

Stage four

I began to punch some darks into the rocks using cobalt blue, orange and manganese violet, adding a touch of helio turquoise to the foreground areas.

The same mix was used for the two trees on the left.

After removing all the masking fluid I worked into the foliage areas on the right with some rich mixes of the yellows and blues interspersed with some orange and manganese violet.

I spattered some textures into the foreground weeds and dropped some textures into the large foreground rock and the left-hand rocks.

I was careful not to make the dark areas too dense, which would have rendered them rather dull and lifeless, and lifted out some highlights here and there.

Stage five - the finished painting

Light on the Water, Watersmeet, watercolour, (37x37cm)

I worked into the left-hand tree area using a little more orange, cobalt turquoise and manganese violet in the mixes.

With a very dilute mix of rose madder and cobalt blue I established the shadow areas on the water.

Using my riggers I painted the branches within the foliage areas. I then put the finishing touches into the water with pure white gouache for the highlights and white mixed with cobalt blue for the foam trails, plus a few highlights into the foliage with some white mixed with a little green.

I also added a few people to the far boulder on the right-hand bank for scale.

Barry Herniman organises and tutors painting holidays at home and abroad. He is also available for workshops and demonstrations to art societies. His Cloverleaf paintbox is available online at: cloverleafpaintbox.com. You can order a selection of books by Barry in our online bookstore.

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