How To Paint Trees
Part 5 of Five Lessons – Trees Close Up
This lesson is the last in a series of five lessons about upping your tree game. In this lesson, we work with trees that are much closer giving us a better look at the trunk and much less of the canopy and it’s foliage.
Painting Trees That Are Close
This lesson is the last in a series of five lessons about upping your tree game. The previous two lessons have really dealt with ideas and techniques to represent the entire canopy of foliage on a tree that is some distance from us.
In this lesson, we work with trees that are much closer giving us a better look at the trunk and much less of the canopy and it’s foliage. In this case, the concern is more about the characteristics of the trunk than the foliage as a group. The good news is the techniques for painting foliage can be used to paint the trunks. You’ll learn how to use them a bit differently to represent the texture of bark and, obviously, the colors will be different as well.
It’s likely that some of foliage at the bottom of the canopy will be included, so we’ll work on that – especially in trying to get the look of some individual leaves without getting too fussy about it.
The lesson has two exercises for painting the trunks of close-up trees, and we’ll finish our simple summer landscape scene.
This is the last of the series. It’s recommended that you follow all five in a row, especially if you want to complete the summer landscape painting.
The five lessons are:
How To Paint Trees – Introduction
Mixing Greens For Your Landscapes
How To Paint Distant Tree Lines
How To Paint Single Trees and Small Groups
How To Paint Trees Close Up (this one)
Drawing Layout For Any Painting
One note on the drawing layout. The downloadable layouts are done with heavy lines to make it easy to see and copy onto your watercolor paper. It is best not to draw the lines too heavy on your paper, especially in the sky, since there is a good chance the lines will show through the paint. It’s not a deal-breaker, but those heavy pencil lines are sometimes a distraction.
What you’ll need
- Brushes – 1 1/2″ Flat, Medium Round, Small Round, and Cotman #3 Rigger .
- Colors – Winsor Newton Perm. Alizarin Crimson, Raw Sienna, DaVinci Burnt Sienna, Daniel Smith Quinacridone Deep Gold, Winsor Newton French Ultramarine Blue , DaVinci Cobalt Blue, any Cool Yellow like Lemon Yellow, Aureolin, Hansa or Azo Yellow.
- Watercolor paper – preferably Arches 140lb Cold Press cut to about 7″ x 11″ or so
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