Mountain Moods in Watercolour

Six evenings painting mountains in changing light and atmosphere, with step-by-step demonstrations and personal guidance.

Mountains are never quite the same. In one landscape, the peaks almost disappear into mist. In another, they catch the last warm light of the day. They can rise sharply above still water, turn blue and violet in the distance, or sit behind a foreground full of sunlit grasses.

And all of these scenes look irresistible to paint. Until you actually start.

How do you make a mountain feel monumental without painting every rock? How do you use intense colour without losing harmony?
How do you keep mist soft, snow bright, reflections convincing, and still bring the whole painting together?

That’s what these six weeks are for: taking the watercolour techniques you already know and pushing them further through one of the most expressive subjects in landscape painting.

Six landscapes, six moods

Each week brings a different mountain landscape and a different watercolour challenge.

We’ll paint snow and reflections, misty distances, dramatic skies and glowing evening light. We’ll work with expressive foregrounds, grasses and rocks, and explore how contrast can completely change the feeling of a landscape.

Some paintings will depend on soft, transparent washes; others on rich pigment and deep contrasts. We’ll work with bright colours and learn how to connect them so that even a bold palette feels harmonious. We’ll also use masking fluid, experiment with different paint consistencies, and practise knowing when to keep an edge sharp and when to let it disappear.

The goal isn’t to copy the reference. It’s to understand what makes each landscape work and find the right watercolour language for it.

How it works

Each session begins with the reference: what creates the mood, where the strongest contrasts are, which colours hold the painting together, what needs detail and what can be simplified.

Then we paint step by step together, from the first washes and large shapes to richer layers, textures and final accents. Each stage is demonstrated before you try it yourself, with personal guidance and feedback throughout.

Recommended experience

You don’t need to be an advanced watercolour painter, and you don’t need any previous experience painting mountains. But this course is not designed for complete beginners.

You should already have some experience with:

• Wet-on-wet and wet-on-dry
• Flat and gradient washes
• Basic colour mixing
• Building a painting in layers, from lighter washes to darker accents
  

You don’t need to be confident with all of these, you just need to have used them before. We’ll develop these skills further throughout the course and introduce more advanced ways of working with colour, contrast, paint consistency and masking fluid.

If most of these techniques are completely new to you, we recommend starting with one of our beginner watercolour courses first.

Six evenings, six mountain landscapes.

All materials provided.