Landscapes are daunting. No doubt about it, with all that perspective and the arrangement of the features you want to include. Then there’s scale, and tonal values, and proportions, and and and….

But there is an answer. Why not try my two-dimensional fun landscape of your village or townscape?

For this painting I used a piece of Hahnemuhle Bamboo mixed media paper from one of their pads. They also have spiral bound books of this paper on Amazon. I really like this paper for the whimsical paintings I am doing at the moment. It’s very forgiving to watercolor and is a good surface for penwork too. There are other mixed media papers too, and the Canson one is good.

For the drawing part of the painting I used a fineliner pen. My choices are shown below. There are other options but make sure your pen is waterproof if you want to be able to paint over it. I think it’s a given that the pens aren’t going to last forever when you use them in conjunction with watercolor paint, but they are inexpensive enough not to worry about this too much.

For the painting of the picture I used my watercolors from A. Gallo in Italy. These are handmade watercolors which come in a range of delectable colors unavailable elsewhere. I have the Signature Set 1 and 2 and you can buy them direct from A. Gallo here: https://www.agallocolors.com/shop

Alternatively Jacksons Art do stock their 48 color set and smaller sets of 6 or 12 to try them out, and a starter 24 set but you need the 48 set to get the special colors. Find them all here:

The other supplies I needed for this painting were some metallic paint in gold to paint the border to the picture, although this is not essential and you could use any color paint, or leave the border out, or do it in black or another color ink.

These are a selection of good metallic colors I can recommend:

And finally the brushes I used were a small round, size 3 for the details, and a larger one, size 7 or 9, for the larger parts of the painting. Depending on the size you design your painting, you might need a bigger or smaller brush.

Here are a few good options for brushes:

How to Paint the Village Walk

Here are three more good choices for paper when you paint your picture.

And here are some options for inexpensive paints as a beginner. ideal for How to Paint Graphite Circles for you to paint: