Abstract Watercolour Landscapes – Creating a mood

When I first started taking my painting more seriously I was really drawn to creating abstract watercolour landscapes. I really admire the skill of artists who create very realistic landscapes in any medium, but for my own walls I like a landscape that's open to a bit of personal interpretation...

The type of art I connect with most is the kind that makes me feel something, so the majority of art that I’m drawn to tends to be more abstract. Even when I was at school and we learned about Turner, I always loved his more abstract and moody paintings the most, like his Storm at the Mount of the Grand Canal, Venice.

So I suppose it’s only natural that once I started painting watercolour landscapes, I’d want to experiment with creating more abstracted paintings myself (though I’m obviously not comparing myself to Turner 🤣🤣🤣).

Exploring new techniques

This was one of the first abstract watercolour paintings I did, and it was just a random experiment using a palette knife with watercolours on wet paper. Although it’s very simple, it was closer to what I felt when I saw that particular view than something more realistic would have been. It hints at a sky and sea but the colours and the white space are what I love about it.

Here’s another example where I used the same technique. Again, it was too simple to be considered a finished piece of art, but I was excited when I created it because it made me feel something!

I kept experimenting with this technique, trying to create a mood within more finished paintings...

Because watercolour landscapes can sometimes look a bit wishy washy I wanted to use vivid colours and also get some details in to make them more interesting.

I started with the background first and used the palette knife with watercolours mixed straight from the tube on very wet watercolour paper. This gave me areas of stronger colour which then faded out with lovely soft edges.

I'd then go back in once it was dry to darken some areas and to add details. I used a mixture of a cut up credit card, thin paintbrushes and that same palette knife to create the effect of grasses and flowers.

After a bit more experimenting I managed to create a few abstract watercolour landscapes that I was really happy with, and which I now sell as fine art prints on my website... 

Nowadays I don't use watercolours as much as I used to, but I've recently started experimenting to see whether I can create this type of painting on a bigger canvas with acrylic paint. Here's the first layer of one of these experiments:

I'm really happy that I managed to get a 'watercolour' effect with the acrylic paint, so I'm going to play around a bit more with this to see where it leads me...

It's all about the feelings

It always amazes me how a semi-abstract painting can make you feel different emotions. Changing the colours or the contrast and adding just a few small details creates a completely different mood.

It’s also funny how abstract landscape paintings can sometimes remind you of a real place. I think it’s one of the things I love about abstract painting – everyone can get something different from it and it becomes really personal…