Painting Barns in Watercolor

This instructional video, featuring professional artist, educator, and author Tony Couch, will expand your understanding of watercolor painting, and arm you with new techniques for visual storytelling.

The workshop begins with an introduction to Couch’s signature “juicy color” style, and walks you through the initial steps of a successful painting, including composition and design. Couch begins by showing students how to sketch a concise reference drawing of a barn and surrounding landscape, establishing the shapes and values that will form the foundation of the piece.

Couch continues the lesson by sharing his techniques for maintaining a consistent light source in your work, and using a variety of shapes and sizes to develop your scene. Students will enjoy his discussion of incorporating local interest, and bringing sufficient information with you into the studio, so that it’s possible to create a scene that’s accurate without becoming cluttered with details. Slowly and patiently, Couch reveals his process for developing a painting, from wetting the paper to mixing pigments. He’ll also explain how to make color choices that will establish temperature and help you define the value center of the painting.

Couch will also share his unorthodox method of creating texture with a credit card, different ways to control and isolate the attention of the viewer, and the purpose of the wide variety of brushes that he uses in the painting. Throughout the course of this lesson, Couch will impart essential tips and techniques for creating a scene that tells a story of time and place.