8 Techniques for Painting Watercolor Pine Trees

1. Class Trailer/Introduction: Have you ever tried to paint a pine tree and it's simply didn't turn out how you had envisioned. Or have you seen a beautiful pine forest scene and didn't even know where to start painting. Then this class is for you. I'm Julia lists, and I've taught thousands of eager students how to paint beautiful watercolor paintings with easy step-by-step instructions. Even professional looking pine forest paintings can be replicated with the right techniques. This class is a fun, practical exploration of pine tree painting methods. You'll learn how to apply the right brush strokes, the right places to achieve a variety of evergreens. I'll show you how to make your trees pop with simple strategies using different parts of your paintbrush. I'll share what you need to take into consideration when choosing the right type of pine tree for your chosen background. Finally, you'll apply your newly learned techniques to appropriate landscapes to achieve a stunning forest painting. There is something so satisfying about painting and intricate painting using simple steps. So I hope you'll join me on this exciting journey of watercolor pine tree exploration. 2. Supplies Needed: Let's first go over our materials for this project. Of course, we will need watercolor paper. Any watercolor paper will do, but I'm specifically using 100% cotton paper by arches. You'll also need a variety of paint brushes. You do not need all of these paint brushes. But I'm specifically going to be using a size quadruple zero, a double zero, and a size one by Winsor and Newton, as well as a size 8.14 round brush by Grumbacher. I'm also going to be using a variety of green watercolor half pans. If you only have one green, that is completely okay because you can use black to manipulate the color. And of course we'll be using black watercolor and possibly a little bit of brown. In other materials, you'll need a paper towel as well as a cup filled with some water. 3. Tree #1: Cascading Tree: The first tree is called the cascading tree or would I like to call the upside down swooping V tree? I have taken my size one Winsor and Newton round brush here. But I'm going to show you how to do this with both a very thin brush as well as a larger round brush. I'm just picking up my watercolor and you can choose whatever green that you want. It doesn't matter since we're just going for the technique. And we're first going to begin by creating a swooping small upside down V like that. And then we're just going to start from that center point and continue the sloping downwards. As you move down the tree, you're swoops become even wider. And you don't necessarily have to follow this exact V-shape like this, but you can save a little bit of time and go bit faster and swoop the same side over and over a few times in a row before matching it on the other side, try to always start your swoops towards the center of your tree moving outwards. Because if you start on the edge going inwards, your ends are much less likely to be pointed and less natural looking as you get to the bottom of your tree, makes sure to fill in that gap by cascading the bottom of the tree outwards. You can alternatively add a stump, but I think it looks more natural if the tree ends cascading. Let's try this same technique using a bigger brush. So I've picked up my size four round brush by Grumbacher. And we're going to do the same thing. We're going to start paint that upside down V at the top. And then we're going to start cascading out our tree. Now, it's definitely a little bit more challenging if you have a thicker brush because you don't get all those individual strokes or upside down v's because your brushes much thicker. However, it does fill in the tree a lot more, which presumably gives it a little bit more of a natural look. If you feel that your tree is looking a little bit too much like a blob. It might be one of two problems. One is you've picked up too much water along with your ink. And the second issue might just be that your brush isn't pointed at all. If you have one of those more inexpensive dollar store brushes, they may not be giving you the control that you need to complete this look. And there we have it. Two trees using the exact same technique when using a larger brush and the other one using a thinner brush. 4. Tree #2: Flared Cascading Staircase: This next technique, I like to call it the flared cascading staircase. And I have taken two of my greens and just mix them together to create another pigment. And again, I'm using my size one by Winsor and Newton brush. The color doesn't matter and the brush doesn't necessarily have to be a thin brush, but it definitely helps. So similar to the first technique, we're going to first create a little bit of a upside-down V-shape. And then starting right from the center, we're going to start cascading this out. So this is basically what it looks like, an escalator staircase. I just painted it out there for you so that it's easier to see exactly what we're doing. But in addition to this cascading staircase, as you paint each layer of the staircase, you want to apply pressure on your paintbrush vertically as you're moving it horizontally. And this will create these little flares. So I'm just adding those flares manually right now. Just because I wanted to show you the staircase effect. But now I'll paint what I mean. So I'm positioning my paintbrush flat. Instead of holding it like this. I'm holding it more flat like this. And just going like this. Back. You're welcome to go back and make any adjustments that you wish by adding some extra points on the ends. Of course, don't forget to add little stump. 5. Tree #3: Scruffy Dog: This third technique, I like to call the scruffy dog technique. And I have pulled out my quadruple zero Winsor and Newton brush. And I'm going to take another green, of course. The difference between this one and the previous two is that we're not going to be cascading our slopes downwards. Instead, they're going to be flicking upwards and then slowly move into the downwards position. You can begin by painting a stroke upwards like this, and then two strokes going up like that. We're going to gradually flare out our branches as we move down the center line. So keep painting your center line downwards as you flare out your little branches. And at one point they become in the neutral position. Before they start to cascade downwards. Here I've just switched to my size one by Winsor and Newton. And when you are about two-thirds down your tree, you no longer want to flare out from the center point. You want to create a rainbow of flares that originate from various parts of your tree. As you start to move towards the bottom, you can start making your flares a little bit more horizontal and less vertical. You can go back and thinking some of your sections. If you feel that they're a little bit too thin, you can choose to leave it without a stamp or at a stamp with brown watercolor. 6. Tree #4: Loose Realistic Tree: I call this the loose realistic tree. Again, I have my size one, Winsor and Newton brush. I'm using any generic green color. And we're going to start off with painting a line. At the very top. Off of this line, we're going to tilt our paintbrush horizontally. So it's not held vertically, but rather a little bit more horizontal. And we're going to start painting these loose additions to our, the main stem that we painted at the top. And as we move progressively down the tree, we can continue our stem and keep adding to it in sporadic areas. So you don't want to make this tree symmetrical. So you can add a few short strokes on one side and then a few longer strokes on the other. You can leave gaps between the strokes. You want to make this look like a realistic tree. Make sure to of course, flare out your lines wider and wider despite the, the how why do you want them as you move down the tree? As you move towards the base of the tree, base of the tree, you can begin to hug your lines a little bit narrower too, round the tree off. In about the same width as somewhere in the middle of your tree. 7. Tree #5: Umbrella Technique: This next tree I like to call the umbrella technique, and it starts out very similarly to one of the other trees that we've painted. So of course we want to start with the top. And again, I'm using my size one by Winsor and Newton. So we're going to start off by painting just a line for the top and just a few details at the top. Just some horizontal lines. And similar to one of the previous techniques, we're going to start moving our paint brush from the center to either side. Making sure that as we move down our tree, our wisps become wider and wider. Now, the difference between this one and the other technique is, and why I call it the umbrella technique, is because you're going to add little details coming from each individual branch. Now I'm using my size quadruple zero to really paint in those tiny details. But as you saw earlier, the size one worked just fine as well. To finish off, you can paint some more vertical lines rather than horizontal that just taper off. You're a tree. That's our umbrella technique. 8. Tree #6: Reverse Umbrella: This next technique I like to call the reverse umbrella. So similar to the previous technique, we are going to be using a similar technique, but it's going to be done facing upwards rather than downwards. So as always, we want to start off with the top point of our tree. And instead of painting or details horizontally or even downwards, we're going to paint those tiny little initial pints facing upwards towards the sky. And we're going to continue that upwards motion as we move down our tree. I have switched to my size one by Winsor Newton. I use the quadruple zero initially just to get those few details down at the top of my tree. Just like the first tree, I'm switching back to my quadruple zero. And we're going to paint those little details facing horizontally and moving upwards instead of facing downwards, like we did with the other technique. I do like to paint the tree in stages. So I'll paint a few branches and then I'll add the details and then I'll continue on with the tree. The reason that I do it this way is because I don't want the branches to dry before I have time to add the tiny little details. If you find that you have any gaps, larger gaps in-between your branches that you want to fill, just feel free to add one more smaller branch in-between the two larger ones. Again, don't forget to make your branches wider and wider as you move down your tree. Otherwise you'll have a very stick looking tree. The last few branches, as you want to finish off your tree, you have two options. You can make them a little bit more horizontal like so. Or you can paint a stump to finish off your tree. And that is our reverse umbrella. 9. Tree #7: Blotchy Blob: This next technique I like to call the blotchy blobby technique. And it's quite descriptive of the brushstrokes that we'll be making. So I'm starting out with my size one by Windsor noon as usual, just to paint the top of my tree. And we're going to start it off similarly to the others, where I just kinda paint some blotches that run horizontally to the center of the tree. Now, as we move down the tree, you're welcome to paint just a guide, the stump. As your guide. Move your piece of paper diagonally and hold your brush slightly vertically rather than horizontally. And try to keep it flat to the paper as flat as you can rather than pointed upwards. Because we are going to be utilizing sides of the brush and creating these blotches on the sides of our on either side of our pine tree as we move down the stop. So as you press downwards, you want to do so more so in the center and then lift your brush up so only the tip is touching the paper as you move outwards towards the sides. This will create this what I call Blache technique. You don't have to be completely symmetrical. You do want quite a bit of pigment on your paint brush for this technique. Don't forget to make your blotches wider as you move down your tree. And then when you're happy with your tree, you can just taper it off. And that is our blotchy Blache tree. I'm going to utilize this technique one more time with a larger brush. This time I'm using my size 14 by Grumbacher. The only thing that I'm going to do similarly is use my thin brush, my size one, just to paint the top. So again, we have the pointed tip and then we have some horizontal lines at the top. Now look how different this technique is going to look when I use a thicker brush. Notice how the ends are a lot more rounded. This technique, using the larger brush. It's also a lot faster. Now this technique is great for covering large areas where the details don't matter as much as they would for other trees. 10. Tree #8: Distanced Realism : This next technique I like to call distance realism. I'm starting out using my size 14 Grumbacher, but any thicker or round brush will do. And we're going to first cover a large portion in color. So this usually works when you want to fill in a large area, but you don't want to spend too much time on all the detail work. So I'm just creating a large Blache here. And then I'm going to begin by flicking my paintbrush upwards to create these pointed tips. You do want to work quickly here. Because you want to paint the details on before these tips dry completely. Now you're going to take a smaller brush. I'm going to use my size one. And I'm going to extend those tips. So they have a very long, thin tip. Now I'm going to begin painting these horizontal zigzaggy lines all the way down the length of the tips. I'm going to try and do this quickly. Before it dries. We've covered a very large portion of space in very little time, and we have beautiful detailed pine tree tips. To add even more realism. You're welcome to go over it again with a darker pigment. So this time I'm using black and I'm making sure not to make my tips go past the first layer, although you're welcome to do that too. And there we have it. 11. Applying a Technique to a Landscape: Now let's apply these techniques to a painting. I'm just applying a wash to the back of my piece of paper first before I apply it to the front. This prevents the buckling of the piece of paper. When we are painting landscapes that are so saturated with water. And of course, we want our piece of paper to be as flat as possible. In these particular paintings. Make sure that you have a nice even spread of water before continuing with your painting. I'm just preparing the background of my piece of paper by painting random pigmented lines in random locations and then fading the moat using a mop brush. Now, we are primarily going to be using the last technique here. So I'm painting a long line and then I'm swooping out my lines like so. And I'm doing this very loosely because this is our first layer. Now, I'm not going to go into the details on how to blend out these pine trees too much. Since we are focusing on painting the pine tree itself. I'm clearly using the sweeping down, upside-down V-shape technique here to create these pine trees. But you can definitely choose one of the other seven techniques to create a similar effect. E.g. one of the last few techniques that I used, the distance realism technique would also apply really well in this landscape simply because we blur out the pine trees after every time that we paint them. Apart from the last few layers when we really want the trees to stand out. But as you can see here, every time I paint the pine tree using the technique, I don't wait for it to completely dry. Instead, I switched to a bigger round brush, specifically my size 14 by Grumbacher. And I apply just a hint of water to it to keep the general structure of the tree, but to blend it out into the background. And I do this layer after layer after layer, tree after tree after tree in different areas of my landscape. To give the effect that this is sort of a mountainous forest landscape. You can vary up the size of your trees. You can even use multiple techniques in the single painting. But I find that that upside-down V-shape technique works the best for this painting because it doesn't require that much effort. It doesn't have to be hyper detailed because we are blurring out or details with that larger round brush. Because I keep repeating the exact same painting technique entry over and over. I have sped this up just so you can see where I'm placing my trees and how I'm blurring them out. If you do want to replicate this painting yourself. Remember, the most important thing to keep in mind is to keep your brushstrokes loose. Create those upside down v's, and then gently blend them out before they have a chance to completely dry. You can definitely experiment with a multitude of techniques until you find your favorite or the one that's most suitable for the landscape that you're working with. As you can see, as I apply more and more layers, I begin to make the trees a little bit darker. And I do this in two ways. One, I add black to my green watercolor and the other method is applying less water and more pigment so that your trees appear harsher or darker and more prominent than the trees that you painted in the previous few layers. This is how we create depth and how we make it look like there are multiple layers to our painting. You can also choose to blur out your trees a little bit less pain. But there we have it. You can see based on four of the techniques that I'm showing here that the best one I would say for this painting because we're blurring them out, is that upside-down V-shape one. 12. Summing Up!: And there we have it. Eight pine tree painting techniques. Whether you want to use the umbrella technique to paint a soft background or the blotchy technique to create a similar end. Whether you want to cover a large area with little effort or focus on detail, or you desire a delicate tree for your foreground. This class should equip you with the basic techniques to apply to a variety of landscapes, to create beautiful paintings, greeting cards, or whatever art you desire. Keep this class handy in case you want to revisit any of the techniques and check out my YouTube channel. Julia lists art for dozens of videos where I apply a variety of these techniques to landscapes for which you will now have the skills to paint yourself. I would love to see your application of these techniques and any background. So please upload your creations to this class's project gallery. Good luck and keep painting.