Watercolor Tutorial - How to simplify the scene in a Venice painting - Demo by Tim Wilmot #34

So you have a complex landscape or street scene you want to paint? How can we simplify what we see (or maybe you are trying to paint from a photo) down to the main shapes and values. In this video I take a scene from Burano (a pretty island near to Venice, Italy) and strip it down to bare essentials for a loose style watercolour painting. See more of my paintings at In this demo I will be covering... 1) Choice of Subject. What makes a good watercolor subject. How to simplify the scene. What to leave out. 2) Materials I use such as the paper. I will also cover the paints I use and the palette, plus how I hold the different brushes for different techniques. 3) Doing the outline sketch as the first step. How to draw boat shapes and figures. 4) Doing the sky and the first wash of the background and then the foreground. 5) Shadows and details of the figures and boats. 6) Watch out for the highlighting tips at the end.