Painting Without a Plan: An Intuitive Abstract Landscape

Hi, I'm Valerie Englehart, and today I want to walk you through something a little different: a loose, atmospheric, abstract landscape done completely from imagination — and completely without a plan.

Where This Painting Came From

This one started almost by accident. I'd recorded a landscape tutorial for my watercolor membership, and afterward I had paint left over on my plate — still wet, still juicy, and honestly too pretty to just let dry out and go to waste. So I thought: let's just go crazy on a piece of paper. If it turns out great, it turns out great. If nothing happens, nothing happens.

I grabbed a scrap piece of paper from the other end of my desk and a cut piece of plastic card, and I started with the darkest color on my plate: Rockwell Arts Lapis Brown.

Letting the Paint Lead

From there, I brought in Mayan Blue Genuine, one of my favorite blues, from Daniel Smith. Using a size 12 synthetic round brush, I got some flow happening and softened the colors just enough to let them mix, without pushing too hard and turning everything to mud.

This is what I'd call intuitive painting. There's no plan. You just look at what's in front of you and ask, "What do we do now?" I picked up some lavender and splattered it in, and while it looked fine, nothing was really happening yet. So I reached for a spritzer bottle and sprayed the upper part of the paper, letting the water carry the pigment where it wanted to go. I sprayed the blue section too, hoping for something like a misty sea spray, tilting the paper and letting gravity do some of the work.

Painting without a plan can be frustrating if you go in expecting something specific to happen. I didn't have that problem here, because my only real goal was simple: I didn't want all that paint going down the drain. Everything after that was just seeing what would happen.

Suggesting Trees and Texture

I picked up a calligraphy brush and, using more of that Lapis Brown, started making strokes to suggest trees. I turned the paper upside down while it was still wet so the paint would flow downward with gravity — which, once the paper was flipped back, would read as flowing upward on the actual painting. Combined with the earlier spritzing, I was hoping to get organic-looking tree textures.

A quick technical note: you don't want to spray the paper until it's completely saturated, or the paint will fuse together with no breaks left in it. Those white gaps matter — they're what read as light coming through foliage and branches.

Working With Warped Paper

If you've worked with wet watercolor paper, you know what happens next: one side gets saturated while the other stays dry, and the paper starts to warp into a tube. Even with nice, heavier paper — I was using 140-pound paper — that curling is going to happen if one side is as wet as mine was. I used small blocks to prop the paper at an angle and keep the curling manageable, though honestly, I don't mind a little curl. Sometimes it creates interesting patterns on its own. It does make painting trickier, though — like trying to paint on a 3D cylindrical object instead of a flat sheet.

Back with the calligraphy brush, I added small flicks to suggest twigs and branches, holding the brush way at the back rather than close to the bristles. That's intentional — holding it back keeps the strokes loose and full of motion instead of tight and overly controlled.

Scraping for Rocky Texture

Once I placed my blocks on top of the paper to hold it in place, I went back to that same plastic card, this time to scrape paint away rather than apply it, working toward a rocky texture. Timing matters a lot for this technique: the paint needs to be wet enough to scrape up cleanly, but if it's too wet, the surrounding paint will flood right back into the scraped area and often leave it darker than before. I also stamped the edge of the card into the blue to suggest a waterline at the horizon.

Working With Limited Values

Since I was just using whatever was left on my plate, I didn't have access to a full range of values — nothing was going to get to the darkest of darks. My range stayed light to mid-tone at best. That's not a problem, though; it just means depth and shape have to come from somewhere else, like playing with the warmth or coolness of the tones instead of leaning on value contrast.

Why Paint Without a Purpose

I really do encourage doing something like this every so often. It's a great way to play without expectations, and it's also a sneaky way to build real skills — like practicing a good scraping technique for rocks, or learning how to spray paper in a way that leaves believable white gaps.

There's a lot of pressure, especially with social media, to always be producing something polished, something worth posting. This painting had no purpose beyond having some leftover paint and wanting to have fun with it, and I think that's worth protecting as part of your practice.

Finishing Touches

Near the end, I noticed I had some orange left on my plate, so I mixed it into my cascade green to warm it up. It created a beautiful, springy light green and gave the whole piece a slightly ethereal feel.

And that's the finished painting — no plan at the start, and something I'm genuinely happy with at the end.