Last weekend we had a very pleasant get together with some close friends who live on Berowra Waters, New South Wales. I have visited them many times and always found myself spending a lot of time looking out at the beautiful view from their deck and wanting to paint it. This time I took the opportunity to do some plein air painting and took my outdoor watercolor painting kit with me.

Berowra Waters is on the outskirts of Sydney less than an hour from the center of the city. There are very few houses on the water and there will never be any more due to limited space and planning restrictions. It is a wonderful location, very peaceful and beautiful and a great place for contemplation and creativity.

Figure 1: Berowra Waters in the afternoon on a bright sunny day

My plein air painting watercolor kit

I have put together a reasonably lightweight outdoor watercolor kit that I use for my plein air painting. It is basically constructed from and old cutlery box and a light photography tripod. At some point I will provide more details of my system as I had fun putting it together for a trip I was taking to Venice where weight was an issue. For now you can at least see a picture of my set up below.

Figure 2: Plein air painting kit for watercolor

This painting was done on an Arches 300 gsm Cold Press watercolor block. I like to use a block when painting plein air as I don’t need any supporting board nor tape to keep the paper down. This all helps to keep weight down when plein air painting; this is especially important if you have to carry your gear for any length of time. However, I do sometimes tape around the edge anyway as I like to see what my painting looks like after the tape is removed – a bit like putting a mat over it.

As usual the painting was done from light to dark. Starting with the sky and painting the most distant hill while the sky was still wet to give it a soft edged look. I took my watercolor paint color across all the hills and let it dry.

After this dried completely I painted the stronger hills to the left and right. Again I let it dry. You must resist the urge to keep watercolor painting into damp paper or else you will end up with a muddy mess. This is particularly important with plein air painting as you are often at the mercy of the weather and your paper will often dry very slowly. You just have to be patient. It is better to finish off a watercolor painting back in your studio rather than ruin it by trying to get it done  by continuing to paint in damp paper.

My next step was the water at which time I dropped in the reflections of the hills.

This was followed by the tree branches and foliage on the right.

Finally I painted in the two boats along with their reflections.

Here is my finished plein air painting. I am quite happy with it as they don’t always turn out but this one did. In the future I will create a full watercolor painting demonstration article of this scene and painting. For now I hope you enjoy the painting.

Figure 3: Plein air painting of Berowra Waters done in watercolor paint by Joe Cartwright