Rainbow Mountains at Sunrise: A Quick and Joyful Watercolor Tutorial
Why I Painted This (And Why I Had to Paint It Twice)
It was another gray, rainy Pacific Northwest day — which, if you know me, means it was the perfect time to create my own sunshine on paper. I came across the idea of painting rainbow-colored mountains in a soft sunrise sky, and honestly, the cheerful colors were calling my name. So I grabbed a cold press block of Academy watercolor paper (I use this one for studies), and dove in.
Full transparency though: this was actually my second attempt at recording this tutorial. The first time I painted it, I forgot to press record through multiple transitions between painting and blow-drying. I had to set it aside, sleep on it, be a little salty about it, and come back the next day. But the painting itself? Genuinely one of the most fun and easy things I've done — and I think that joy still shows in the final result.
Setting Up a Soft Sky Fusion
The very first thing I did was wet the entire paper. A fully wet surface is the key to getting that soft, dreamy sky where colors blend into each other without harsh lines.
Starting at the top, I laid in Daniel Smith Cobalt Teal, then added a Winsor Yellow toward the middle. Here's an important detail: I left a small gap of white paper between the two colors. I did this for two reasons. First, if blue and yellow meet while wet, you get green — and a green sky was not the vibe I was going for. Second, that little strip of white creates this beautifully hazy effect, almost like a distant, misty cloud. It gives the whole sky that soft, atmospheric quality you might see on a sunny summer morning.
Once those two colors were down, I grabbed my blow dryer. This is honestly one of the rare times I use one, but for this painting, getting that sky fully dry before moving to the mountains is essential. One thing to keep in mind: watercolor always dries much paler than it looks when wet, so don't be alarmed when your sky seems to lose some intensity. It's normal, and the layers that come next will bring the painting to life.
Building the Mountains Layer by Layer
With the sky dry, I mixed a warm pink — a Winsor Rose — and used it to paint the first mountain layer. I worked freehand, eyeballing jagged shapes rather than drawing anything out first. Immediately after painting each section, I bled the pigment outward with water so the edges dissolved softly rather than leaving a stark, uniform hard line.
To keep things interesting and avoid a flat look, I went back in and disturbed some areas with a wet brush. This breaks up the evenness of the wash and starts to suggest where light might be hitting the mountain versus where there's shadow. A few extra drops of paint in select spots help with that variation too.
This approach is essentially a glazing technique, and that's why I specifically recommend using transparent watercolors for this project. Transparent pigments layer beautifully and allow the luminosity of each color to shine through the layers above it. Granulating colors can shift and move when you're working wet-into-wet like this, which can get unpredictable. Transparent colors give you more control over that layering effect.
The Four Colors I Used (And Why You Don't Need Them Exactly)
For the entire painting, I only used four colors:
Daniel Smith Cobalt Teal — for the sky
Winsor Yellow — for the golden glow in the sky
Winsor Rose — for the warm pink mountain layer
Winsor Violet (Dioxazine Violet) — for the deeper, dramatic purple mountains
That said, you absolutely don't need these specific paints to recreate this. The principle is simple: a light blue, a yellow, a pink, and a purple. Work with what you have. And honestly, this concept works in any color palette — cool fantasy tones, lush greens for something more realistic, warm desert hues. I even considered doing a version entirely in greens. The structure of the painting stays the same; only the mood changes.
Layering the Purple Mountains and Managing Transparency
Here's where I want to share something I learned the slightly hard way: because I'm working with very wet, very transparent layers, whatever is underneath will show through. That's a feature, not a bug — it's what gives watercolor its luminous glow — but it does mean you need to think ahead.
On the lower purple mountain, I made sure to bleed and soften some of the pink layer beneath it before painting on top. That way, when the darker violet went down, the layer below wasn't too distracting or visually competing. Where I didn't do that as carefully — the coral-pink layer on the left side — you can see it peeking through the violet. And honestly? For a fun color study like this, that's totally fine. This painting was never meant to be a gallery piece. It was meant to be joyful and quick and colorful.
Getting the Composition Right
After the main mountains were in, I stepped back and realized the composition felt too centered — everything was wrapping up too neatly in the middle of the page. So I made a small but important adjustment: I let one mountain disappear off the edge of the page and then brought another one jutting back up, creating a little visual break at the bottom. That asymmetry immediately made the composition feel more dynamic and natural.
Throughout the mountain layers, I kept going back in to interrupt solid washes with water — not to blend, but to add variation. That's what creates the sense of light hitting certain ridges while other areas recede into shadow. It keeps the mountains from reading as flat shapes and gives them a bit of three-dimensional form.
One thing I was deliberate about: making sure there was no excess water pooling at the bottom of any wash. I had the paper angled as I usually do, and I kept my brush on the drier side toward the edges to avoid unwanted back runs.
The Finished Painting: Sunshine You Can Make Yourself
Start to finish, including drying time, this painting took about 12 to 15 minutes. Four colors, one brush (a size 10 Princeton Neptune round, which I used for everything), and a whole lot of color-fueled happiness.
That's something I love about painting — no matter what the weather is doing outside, you can sit down with a palette and create exactly the mood you need. This little rainbow mountain sunrise was my antidote to the gray, and it genuinely worked.
If you want to try this yourself, I'd suggest painting one version following along with my colors, then doing a second version in a palette that's entirely your own. You might be surprised how stunning it looks no matter what colors you choose.