Category Archives: Winter landscapes in watercolour

DAVID BELLAMY: ADDING VARIETY INTO A LANDSCAPE

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Often, even in a stunning landscape subject, I feel the need to add something of myself into the composition to enhance it as a painting. Whilst this may involve introducing an extra tree, perhaps a more handsome specimen than is present, or enlarging a feature to give it more presence, or many other such alterations, here I will concentrate on adding a little variety to the existing features in a scene to breathe fresh life into it.

In this scene set in Mid-Wales the only feature I have added is the puddle below the right-hand gate which helps as a lead-in to the farmhouse. The main point I would like to put across, however, is the addition of colours into the outbuilding roof, and its exaggerated wonkiness at the top and bottom. I used cadmium red and cobalt blue on the corrugated iron roof, leaving some white untouched paper for highlights and a mixture of the two colours on the darker left-hand end. Energetic dry-brush strokes of the brush work well in this situation, and any slight mess at the bottom can be overpainted with a dark mixture of burnt umber and French ultramarine as in this structure.

Sometimes a chimney can benefit from being a different tonal value than the gable end of a building, and as you see here I have made it dark, then losing the dark tone as it merges into the wall below. It is better to let this gradually change in this way, rather than paint a strong and hard definition between chimney and main structure as you see in many buildings. These are just minor points but they can have a striking effect on your finished work.

I have been invited to demonstrate at the International Watercolour Masters exhibition in Lilleshall Hall in Shropshire on 13th May 2026. You can find details at: https://internationalwatercolourmasters.com/portfolio_page/david-bellamy-uk/?v=7885444af42e

I am looking forward to the event and hope to see you there. I’ll be happy to answer questions, and do bring along any of my books you would like signed – this is something many people bring up when they come along and have left the book behind! Enjoy your painting during the rest of this amazing summer…..or maybe you are longing for a bit of good old British autumn drizzle for a change?

David Bellamy – BRINGING WARMTH INTO YOUR SNOW LANDSCAPES

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I’ve just returned home from doing some staged paintings in the studios at Search Press. They are aimed at the next book which is about landscapes through the seasons. More on that before long. It’s been a truly busy autumn, so busy that I was only able to squeeze in one trip, a visit to the Cinque Terre in Northern Italy, where I managed quite a number of sketches despite appalling weather for much of the time.

There have been so many demonstrations and workshops that my own work has had to be put aside for a while, but at least I might do some of my own painting over Christmas – painting is like a disease, I just have to keep throwing the paint around!

 Hopefully we’ll have some snow at some time, when we can get some new subjects. How it changes the landscape, so be ready to go forth with paints and camera – it might not last long.

The watercolour shows Pen-y-fan, the highest peak in the Brecon Beacons, which is currently on show at the Ardent Gallery in Brecon Tel 01874 623333 (the painting, that is, not the mountain!) I sketched it in colour during the middle of the day a few years ago, but felt it needed more colour, so I added a warm, evening sky and heightened the warmth of the vegetation and on the central tree. It’s always a good idea to add some colour to a cold scene if you can manage it.

 Have a great Christmas and I wish you much success with your paintings in 2020

Painting misty ice-rimed trees

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We have a lot of mud in Wales, and this winter it has excelled itself, making hiking something of a messy process, so it would be a pleasant change to see some good clean snow for a change. Then back to mud, of course.

I love those misty mornings with the sun beginning to filter through. It’s worth finding a local river scene on these mornings as they lend themselves well to this sort of atmosphere. This scene shows only part of the composition, and I have applied masking fluid at the top of the birch trees to accentuate the hard edges of the ice-rimed branches. When this had dried I worked in the background wet-in-wet to create a soft, misty effect, and this included the distant trunks and branches. It was an intensely cold morning. I have washed in Naples Yellow into the right-hand sky area and into the birch trees to add a sense of warmth, as well as in the reeds. The water was again achieved wet-in-wet – note how the bank below the birches has a slightly darker reflection than the bank itself.

This is taken from my Winter Landscapes book which is crammed with ideas for painting winter scenery, even if you have no intention of going outside to take full advantage of all that glorious mud!!!

David Bellamy – Creating a sense of sunlight in snow scenes

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Injecting a little sunshine into your landscapes will give them a strong appeal, and the best way of achieving this is to lay cast shadows across a light surface. Nothing will give a more striking or fresh approach than doing this across a pristine snow scene. With winter upon us you will hopefully have opportunities for practising this effect before long.

In this watercolour the sense of strong sunshine has been achieved by laying cast shadows across the foreground and over the left-hand part of the roof. For the shadows I used a mixture of cobalt blue and cadmium red, although very little of the latter was included as it is a powerful colour. This produces a lovely, fresh shadow and is not as dull or overpowering as say burnt umber mixed with the cobalt blue. French ultramarine is also a superb colour if you wish to substitute it for the cobalt blue.

Note also the warm colours employed on the house and trees – this takes away the utter coldness of a snowy landscape. Aim to have white highlights on the snow, but not an overall whiteness. On the left-hand trees I deliberately applied white gouache with a painting knife. I don’t normally do this, but I wanted to show a variety of techniques in my Winter Landscapes in Watercolour book, where this scene appears.

This painting is now on show with several others in the Ardent Gallery, in the High Street, Brecon tel. 01874 623333, and is also available as a Christmas Card, available here 

Don’t forget to watch out for that snow – it rarely seems to stay long these days so make the most of it whilst it’s still around, and preferably before all those tobogganers have churned it all up!

David Bellamy – Watercolours in The Arctic

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The sun has just risen and Torben is already up, proclaiming loudly on the beauty of the intense colours in the sky. I fight my way out of the sleeping bag, automatically grasping my painting gear while gasping at the temperature – even with the stove firing away the hut is cold. The window is in the perfect position to view the sun casting warm fingers across the icy wastes, and turning ice hummocks to gold.
A few pencil strokes shiver their way across the sketchbook and then I apply the watercolour washes, starting with the blaze of light that is burning away at the edge of the vertical crag. This is chiefly quinacridone gold, blending into some less violent Naples yellow, then pushing outwards, away from the point of maximum brightness with a mixture of cobalt blue and cadmium red. In the hunters’ hut this is luxury sketching for a change, especially when Jens puts a mug of steaming tea into my hand.

Later on I sketch Isak tending to his sledge-dogs in his usual kindly manner, and so in the finished painting here you can see how I have brought the two separate sketches together to form a narrative. The secret of making sunlight ‘burn’ into a feature is to keep the critical edges soft and push the light area into the feature as though it has burnt a hole in the side. In the foreground I have covered the wet blue washes with cling-film and moved it about until I am satisfied, then left it to dry. It is a remarkably effective way of suggesting ice and sastrugi ridges. Beneath the sunburst I included some of the warm gold to suggest the reflections of the colour in the ice. The painting was carried out on Saunders Waterford 300lb not paper.

This is one of a great many paintings in my new book, David Bellamy’s Arctic Light, which has just been published by Search Press. It is crammed with paintings, sketches and anecdotes, and contains one chapter describing some of the methods used to sketch and paint, often in almost impossible conditions.  Subjects vary from glaciers, sea ice, mountains, wild seas, waterfalls, people and many wildlife works are included, from polar bears, walrus, musk ox, Arctic foxes to birds. More details can be seen on my website.