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HandoutHandout 1: Supply & Shopping List
Handout 1: Supply & Shopping List Intermediate Watercolor Landscapes — Spencer Nielsen
Okay. Before we paint anything you need the right gear, and I want to save you some money in the wrong places and tell you where not to skimp. Cheap paper is fine to learn on. Cheap brushes will lie to you about how good you are. Keep that in mind as you read this.
Paper
Budget: Cold-press, 140lb, student grade. A pad of 9x12 or 11x14 is plenty. You'll go through it, that's the point of intermediate work, you need room to commit to strokes you can't take back.
Nice-to-have: Individual sheets of 140lb cold-press artist-grade, cut down yourself. Better texture for lifting and dry-brush work. Not required for this class, but if you fall for this hobby, it's the first upgrade worth making.
Skip hot-press for landscapes. Too slick, doesn't grab the pigment the way our air-dried, wet-on-dry style wants.
Brushes — don't cheap out here
Budget: One round #8 or #10, one round #4 or #6, one flat 1-inch. Look for synthetic blends labeled "watercolor" specifically, not the all-purpose craft aisle stuff. Somewhere in the $8-15 per brush range.
Nice-to-have: A good natural-blend or squirrel-mop round for washes, a rigger for branches and thin lines. This is where money actually shows up on the paper. A good brush holds its point and releases paint evenly. A bad one drags and you'll think it's your technique. It's not, it's the brush.
Paint
Budget: A student-grade 12-24 pan set. Doesn't need to be fancy. You want at minimum: a warm yellow, a cool yellow, a warm red, a cool red, ultramarine blue, a phthalo or cerulean blue, burnt sienna, burnt umber, and a black or a way to mix a good dark (I mix mine, ask me what's in it and I honestly might not remember).
Nice-to-have: Tube paints instead of pans, more control over how much water you're mixing in. Artist-grade if you want more pigment punch, but student grade will not hold you back at this level. I've made fine paintings with student paint. I've also ruined good paper with expensive paint. The paint isn't the problem usually.
Everything else
- Two water containers, minimum. One clean, one dirty. Old yogurt tubs work fine.
- Paper towels, actual cloth rags are better if you've got old t-shirts to cut up.
- A pencil (2B or so) and a kneaded eraser for light sketch-ins.
- Painter's tape, not packing tape, not masking tape from the garage. Don't leave your board in a hot car with tape on it. I did this once, cooked the adhesive right into the paper, lifted a strip of sky when I peeled it off. Now I'm weird about it and you should be too.
- A board or something rigid to tape your paper to. A clipboard works. A cheap piece of masonite works better.
- A palette with mixing wells, plastic is fine.
Shopping notes
Craft store here in town covers the budget tier on everything except decent brushes, hunt those down specifically, don't grab the first "watercolor" label you see. If you're doing a Costco run anyway, their off-brand paper towels are actually great for lifting techniques, better texture than the name brand, weirdly.
Bring what you've got to week one even if it doesn't match this list exactly. We'll figure out what's working and what's fighting you. That's kind of the whole class.
HandoutCheat Sheet: Core Techniques & Settings
Cheat Sheet: Core Techniques & Settings
Keep this one in your kit. It's the stuff I say every single class, so I figured I'd save my voice and just hand it to you.
Water Ratios (Our Air, Not Wet-Coast Air)
Utah County is dry, we're up around 4,600 feet, and washes set faster here than in almost any tutorial you'll find online. Don't fight it. Work with it.
- Wash consistency (skies, big background shapes): milk, not water. If it looks like it might run off the paper by itself, it's close.
- Mid-tone consistency (midground trees, rock faces): more like heavy cream. Enough pigment that you can see the color true on your palette before it hits paper.
- Detail/dark accent consistency: closer to yogurt. This should feel almost too thick. It thins out more than you expect once it hits a damp surface.
If you're not sure, go one step thicker than feels right. Our air waters things down for you as they dry.
Timing (The Part Everyone Underestimates)
- Wet-on-wet window: maybe 30–90 seconds here, depending on your paper and the day. In a humid climate this is minutes. Not for us.
- Wet-on-dry: this is our home turf. Let the first layer fully set — actually shiny-to-matte, not just "looks dry" — before you go back in. Touching a half-dry wash is how you get bloom marks you didn't want.
- Cold changes everything. Painted up American Fork Canyon one October and the water in my rinse cup froze at the edges. Cold slows dry time down a lot. If you're painting somewhere chilly, or it's winter and your studio's cold, budget more time between layers than you think you need.
- Heat changes everything the other way. Never leave a wet or freshly-taped painting on a car dash in summer. Learned that one the hard way — the tape cooked into the paper and pulled up a strip of sky when I peeled it.
Brush Guide
- Big wash brush (round or flat, largest you own): skies, water, any large flat area. One pass, minimal fuss.
- Medium round: midground shapes, trees, rock masses. Your workhorse. You'll use this more than anything else.
- Small round or rigger: only for the last 10% — thin branches, final dark accents, edges. Resist grabbing this brush too early. Beginners reach for detail brushes before they've even built the painting.
My real opinion: buy the good brush before the good paper. Cheap paper you can learn on fine. A cheap brush won't hold a point, won't release paint evenly, and it'll make you think you're worse than you are.
The Layering Rule
Three rough bands, roughly light to dark, back to front:
- Background — lightest value, cool color leaning toward blue or gray, softest edges.
- Midground — medium value, more color saturation, edges starting to sharpen.
- Foreground — darkest value, warmest color, sharpest edges and most detail.
If a landscape's reading flat, it's almost never a detail problem. It's a separation problem. Fix the values between those three bands before you touch a detail brush.
Two Rules I Repeat Until You're Sick of Them
- Fewer strokes on the sky. Commit and walk away. Overworking the sky is where most beginner paintings die.
- Don't poke at a drying wash to fix a mistake. Let it dry all the way, then decide what to do. Nine times out of ten, messing with it mid-dry makes it worse than the original mistake.
Worksheet```markdown
```markdown # Handout 3: Layering Checklist Intermediate Watercolor Landscapes — Spencer Nielsen
This one's for you to fill in while you paint, not after. Foreground, midground, background. That's the whole game with landscapes and most people skip straight to detail instead of doing this part first. Don't.
I feel like this is the single biggest jump between beginner and intermediate work: not better brushwork, just actual separation between the three zones. Fill this in as you go, section by section, in order.
---
Background (sky, distant ridgeline, far water)
- [ ] Value check: is this the lightest and coolest area of the painting? (It should be. Write your dominant color here: _______________)
- [ ] Number of brush passes used: _____ (if it's more than 3, stop and ask why)
- [ ] Did you let this layer go fully dry before touching midground? Y / N
- [ ] One true thing that's working here: _______________________________
Sky is where beginners die. Fewer strokes, commit, walk away. If you're still fussing with it after the third pass, you're not improving it, you're just moving water around until the paper gives up.
Midground (hills, tree lines, middle distance)
- [ ] Is this layer visibly darker/warmer than the background? Y / N
- [ ] Wet-on-dry or wet-on-wet for this layer? _______________
- [ ] Did you wait for background to set first? Y / N
- [ ] Where's the edge between midground and background — sharp or soft? _______________
Our air dries fast. Use that. Wet-on-dry is home turf here, not a compromise.
Foreground (nearest rocks, grasses, trees, whatever's closest to you)
- [ ] Is this the darkest, most detailed, most saturated part of the painting? Y / N
- [ ] Did you resist adding detail before the values were separated? Y / N
- [ ] Texture notes (dry brush, splatter, lifting, scraping): _______________
Overall gut-check (fill this in last, sheet still wet or dry, doesn't matter)
- [ ] Squint at the painting. Do the three zones read as three separate distances? Y / N
- [ ] If no — which zone is fighting for attention it shouldn't have? _______________
- [ ] Did you poke at any wash while it was drying to "fix" it? Y / N (if yes, we'll talk about it)
- [ ] One thing you'd do differently starting over: _______________________________
---
A note on that last box
Don't fix a mistake mid-wash. Nine times out of ten you make it worse. Let it dry all the way, then decide with a clear head whether it's actually a problem or just something you weren't expecting.
I ruined a good sheet a while back trying to lift clouds out with a dry brush after the wash had already locked in. Dry air here sets fast, faster than you think, and by the time I noticed it wasn't working I'd already torn the surface. That sheet's why I hammer this so hard. Let it dry. Then decide.
At the end of the day — and I hate that I just said that — the layering is the landscape. Detail is optional. Separation isn't.
Turn this in at the end of class, or don't. It's for you. ```
HandoutHandout 4: Troubleshooting Guide
Handout 4: Troubleshooting Guide
Every one of these has happened to me. Some of them more than once. Print this out, tape it inside your paint box, whatever gets it in front of you next time you're mid-painting and things are going sideways.
1. Muddy color, everything looks gray-brown You mixed too many colors in one spot, or you went back into a wash before it decided what it was doing. Fix: fewer colors per mix, and let a layer commit before you touch it again. If it's already mud, it's mud. Let it dry and glaze something clean on top rather than trying to rescue it wet.
2. The sky looks overworked and blotchy This is the number one thing I see. People keep going back into the sky wash "just one more pass" and it falls apart. My rule: decide your sky move before you touch the brush, do it, and walk away. Fewer strokes. Commit. The sky is where beginners die, I say this every class.
3. Hard edges where you wanted soft ones Our air dries fast. If you wanted a soft blend and you got a hard line instead, the first layer had already set before you added the second. Not much to do after the fact. Going forward, work wet-into-wet within the same few minutes, and know that a humid-climate tutorial is lying to you about your timing here.
4. Backruns — those dark tide-line edges inside a wash Too much water pooling and dragging pigment to the edge as it dries. My first real painting had a sky that did exactly this. Fix for next time: tilt your board slightly so water has somewhere to go, and don't overload the brush on a wash that's already half-dry.
5. Paint won't lift once it's dry The dry air locks pigment down fast, faster than most tutorials assume. If you're trying to lift out a cloud or a highlight, you've got a much smaller window than you think. Once it's set, dry-brush lifting mostly just scuffs the paper. I ruined a good sheet learning this. Lift early or don't bother.
6. Flat-looking landscape, nothing pops This usually isn't a detail problem, even though it feels like one. It's a layering problem. You need real separation between foreground, midground, and background — value and temperature shifts, not tinier brushstrokes. Adding detail to a flat painting is like turning up the volume on a bad recording.
7. Painting looks fine up close, falls apart from across the room Check your values. If your darkest dark and lightest light are too close together, nothing reads at a distance. Squint at it. If you can't tell where the shapes separate when you squint, neither can anyone else.
8. Buckling, warped paper Too much water for the weight of paper, or you didn't stretch/tape it down first. Also: don't leave a wet painting in a hot car to speed-dry. I did that once with tape on a finished piece and the heat baked the adhesive right into the sheet — pulled up a strip of sky when I peeled it off. Now I'm neurotic about tape and sun, and you should be too.
9. Brush won't hold a point, feels mushy This is probably not your technique. It's a cheap brush. I'll die on this hill: bad paper is fine to learn on, but a bad brush lies to you about your own skill. If your lines feel unpredictable, try the same stroke with a better brush before you blame yourself.
10. You poked at a drying wash to fix something and made it worse Yeah. Nine times out of ten that's how it goes. A drying wash is not asking for your help. Let it dry all the way, then decide with a clear head whether it needs fixing at all. Most of the time it didn't.
---
One fix at a time. Don't try to solve all ten in your next painting or you'll freeze up. Pick whichever one bit you last class and just work on that.
podcast_scriptClass podcast — episode 1
Audio coming soon — show notes below.
JESS: —so I told him, no, that's not a taco, that's the point of the mountain, and he just kind of stared at his painting for a long time.
SPENCER: It was a fair question. In my defense, I was painting from memory on a Tuesday between clients. That's not the conditions you want.
JESS: This is Spencer Nielsen, everybody. Welcome to episode one of the podcast for Intermediate Watercolor Landscapes, which is a class that meets Tuesday nights over at the community center, and this is just us talking about it beforehand so you know what you're walking into.
SPENCER: Yeah. I do hair for a living, over at Westbench, so I want to be upfront that I'm not a trained painter. I came at this sideways.
JESS: Through the notebook, right?
SPENCER: Through the notebook. I used to just bring a little notebook on trips, canyoneering stuff, mostly for route notes. And at some point the sketches stopped being reminders and started being the thing I actually wanted to do. I tried watercolor because it packs small and dries fast, that's it. There wasn't a moment where the heavens opened.
JESS: Tell the fridge one. I love the fridge one.
SPENCER: Oh, the slot canyon painting. Yeah. First real painting I did, I'd rappelled into this canyon that morning, and I sat down after and tried to get the wall right — the way the light was hitting the rock. And I got the rock. Genuinely, I got the rock. But I completely blew the sky. Dumped way too much water in and it flooded down into the rock like a tide line, this ugly bloom right across the good part.
JESS: And you kept it?
SPENCER: Taped it to my fridge for a year. Because the rock was right, and I wanted to look at that every day and remember I could do that part. The sky I just had to sit with.
JESS: That's basically the whole class in one story.
SPENCER: It kind of is. Intermediate is the point where you're not learning to hold a brush anymore, you're learning to commit to a stroke you can't take back. The sky thing especially — I feel like that's where people get stuck. They overwork it. Too many passes, too much water, poking at it while it's still wet trying to fix something.
JESS: So what do people do instead?
SPENCER: Fewer strokes. Commit, and walk away. Actually — let me back up, because this is the one thing I'd want somebody to take out of this episode even if they never sign up for the class. If you're working on a wash and it's not doing what you want, do not touch it while it's drying. Let it finish. Nine times out of ten, going back in to fix it mid-dry makes it worse than whatever you were trying to fix. Just walk away, make coffee, come back in twenty minutes and decide then.
JESS: Which is hard advice for people who like to fix things.
SPENCER: It's hard for me too. I still want to poke at it. Especially here — our air is so dry, up around 4,600 feet, that things set up fast. You don't get the long open window you see in tutorials filmed somewhere humid. I used to fight that. Now I just work with it. Wet-on-dry is basically home turf for us whether we like it or not.
JESS: Okay, so session one, what are people actually doing?
SPENCER: First class is mostly just getting a feel for how fast our paint dries compared to what people expect, and starting the layering habit — foreground, midground, background. That's the thing that actually makes a landscape read as a landscape. People think it's detail. It's not detail. It's separation between those three layers. You can have almost no detail and if the layers are right it looks finished.
JESS: And next time?
SPENCER: Next session we're doing skies specifically, since that's where everybody's nervous, and then I'm going to have people bring a photo they took themselves — up the canyon, off the point of the mountain, wherever — because we're going to talk about composing from a reference. I don't care if people think that's cheating. It's not. The composing is the actual work.
JESS: Somebody's going to argue with you about that.
SPENCER: Somebody always does. I'll still be right.
JESS: That's Spencer, that's episode one. Come find us Tuesday.
podcast_scriptClass podcast — episode 2
Audio coming soon — show notes below.
JESS: —so wait, you're telling me the whole "let it dry" rule started because you ruined a good sheet of paper.
SPENCER: A really good sheet. I was trying to lift clouds out with a dry brush, and the wash had already set. Our air locks things in fast, I keep saying this, and I did not listen to my own advice that day.
JESS: What happened.
SPENCER: I basically scrubbed a bald patch into the middle of a decent sky. It didn't lift clean, it just tore up the surface. You could see exactly where I panicked.
JESS: Did you keep that one for the fridge, like the canyon painting?
SPENCER: No. That one's not fridge-worthy. That one's cautionary-tale-worthy, which is a different category. I actually still have it in a folder I show the class sometimes, just to prove I'm not making this up.
JESS: Okay so this is episode two, we're two sessions in. For anyone catching up — last week was materials and first washes. This week was skies, right?
SPENCER: Skies, yeah. Which is where I lose the most people, honestly, not lose them like they quit, lose them like they overwork it. Everybody wants to keep touching the sky because it's the first big shape on the page and it feels important. But it's wet paint. Every extra pass is a chance to muddy it.
JESS: So what's the actual rule.
SPENCER: Fewer strokes, commit, walk away. That's it. I mean it as a whole practice, but it's most true for skies. Lay your wash, make your one or two moves for clouds or gradation, and then physically step back from the table. Go refill your water. Anything. Just don't hover over wet paint with a brush in your hand, because your hand will find something to do and it's usually the wrong thing.
JESS: That's the tip, right? Something people listening at home could actually use even if they're not in the room.
SPENCER: Yeah, I'd say that's the one. Walk away from wet paint. You don't need a class for that, you just need the discipline, which is harder than it sounds.
JESS: It sounds so simple though.
SPENCER: It is simple. It's not easy. There's a difference. I've been doing this for years and I still catch my hand drifting back in.
JESS: Okay, tell people about the cold thing, because I think that's relevant here too — the canyon trip with David.
SPENCER: Oh, right, this was October, up American Fork Canyon. We hiked up with our kits, found a spot, and it was cold enough that the water in my little rinse cup started icing at the edges. And I'm sitting there waiting for a wash to set, and it's not setting, it's just sitting there wet, and I'm confused because I've built my whole sense of timing around our dry air doing the work for me.
JESS: So the cold slowed it down.
SPENCER: Way down. Threw off everything I thought I knew. I'd gotten so used to "give it two minutes, it's dry," and that day it was more like ten, fifteen. Good lesson though. Made me actually think about why things dry instead of just trusting the clock in my head.
JESS: Is that why you kept bringing up temperature in class today?
SPENCER: Probably, yeah. Same reason I'm neurotic about leaving paintings in a hot car — that's a whole separate disaster, we'll maybe get into that one another episode — but temperature's not just a mood thing for watercolor. It changes your actual timing. People don't think about it until it bites them.
JESS: Alright, so next session. What are we doing.
SPENCER: Trees and midground stuff. This is the one where I get on my soapbox about layers versus detail. People think a landscape needs more detail to look finished, and usually what it actually needs is separation — foreground reading different from midground reading different from background. Once that's there, you barely need detail at all.
JESS: Is this where the pine tree thing comes back?
SPENCER: It might come up, yeah. I've got a reasonably fast pine tree in my back pocket at this point. Long story.
JESS: We'll save the long story.
SPENCER: Please do.
JESS: Alright — bring a photo reference if you've got a favorite landscape, he says it's not cheating —
SPENCER: It's not. The composition's the work. Bring whatever's going to get you painting.
JESS: See everyone next week.
podcast_scriptClass podcast — episode 3
Audio coming soon — show notes below.
JESS: —so I said okay but Spencer, in the recording, you can't just say "you know the wash I mean," because nobody watching at home was in the room.
SPENCER: Fair.
JESS: So back up. Tell them about the wash.
SPENCER: Right, so this is about skies. This week in class we did the sky-first landscapes, and I keep telling people, fewer strokes, commit, walk away. And of course somebody's wash starts drying a little patchy in the middle, and their instinct is to go back in with a wet brush and fix it.
JESS: Which you say never to do.
SPENCER: Which you should never do. Nine times out of ten you make it worse. Let it dry. Then decide if it's actually a problem or if you just watched it happen and panicked.
JESS: This feels like it connects to the sheet you ruined. The one you talk about.
SPENCER: Oh, the lifting one. Yeah. I had a wash that had already set, and I decided, in my wisdom, that I could lift some clouds out of it with a dry brush. Just scrub a little texture back in.
JESS: How'd that go.
SPENCER: Badly. Our air here dries fast, so that wash had locked in already, it wasn't lifting anything, it was just tearing up the paper fiber. Ruined a good sheet. Completely my fault, nobody to blame but me and my own impatience.
JESS: And that's the whole reason you're so intense about timing now.
SPENCER: Basically, yeah. I feel like people think timing is this minor technical thing, and for us, with the dry air pulling everything so fast, it's the whole game. Wet coast tutorials, they've got all this time to blend wet-on-wet. We don't. Our air rewards wet-on-dry. I'd rather you work with that than fight it for two years like I did.
JESS: Okay, so — practical tip. Something someone listening at home, not even in the class, could use tonight.
SPENCER: Sure. If you're doing a wash and it's not behaving, don't touch it again once it's past the shiny-wet stage. There's a window where it's still wet and forgiving, and then it goes matte and tacky, and that's the danger zone, that's where every bad decision gets made. If it's matte and tacky, put the brush down. Walk away. Come back in twenty minutes and look at it with fresh eyes.
JESS: Twenty minutes specific?
SPENCER: Here, at this elevation, in our air — probably fifteen to twenty for a decent-sized wash. Longer if it's humid, which, when does that happen. Point is, resist the urge. That's the whole tip. Resist the urge.
JESS: I like that it's basically a discipline tip disguised as a painting tip.
SPENCER: I mean, most of painting is a discipline tip disguised as a painting tip.
JESS: Okay, last thing, then we gotta wrap. Next session.
SPENCER: Next week we're doing layering, foreground, midground, background. This is the one I actually care about most, honestly. People think detail is what makes a landscape read as a landscape, little brushy trees, little textures, and it's not that. It's separation. Get three distinct value zones going and the eye does the rest.
JESS: Less detail, more depth.
SPENCER: Basically. We'll do it with a canyon scene, actually, kind of appropriate, and I'll bring a bad one of mine to prove the point before we start, because it's faster to show you what not doing it looks like than to just tell you.
JESS: You always bring the bad ones.
SPENCER: They're more useful than the good ones. At the end of the day — and I hate that I said that — a good painting doesn't teach you anything. A bad one tells you exactly where you went wrong.
Videos worth your time
Hand-picked by your instructor — with notes on what to watch for.
- Step-by-Step Watercolor Mountain Landscape with Trees | Easy Watercolor Painting TutorialDream Painting studio
Watch how the instructor softens mountain edges with a wet blend before adding tree shapes on top.
- Watercolor Landscape Tutorial | Easy Forest & Mountain Painting for BeginnersAsmu art
Pay attention to how foreground trees are layered darker than the background forest to build depth.
- Paint 4 Different Watercolour Skies, Simple Landscape Watercolor Sky Storm Practice Demo Tutorial,Lois & Morgaine Davidson Art
Notice the four different sky techniques and how wet-on-wet timing changes the cloud and storm effects.
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