How To: Paint An Evergreen Tree

1. Introduction: Hi. I am Sam, the creative alchemist. I have a bachelor degree in art therapy, and I understand the power of creativity and its ability to create change. Most of my classes do have a therapeutic element to them. However, this one, I'm more focused on teaching you some skills. I'll be taking you through how to create beautiful bre backgrounds for your trees and the basic shapes and lines of two kinds of trees and how to paint them. There's an invitation to practice practice practice by creating a lovely rainbow forest, and we'll finish up by putting it all together to create an artwork with a quote on it. Be sure to check out the supply list PDF, if you want a list of the exact products and colors I used throughout, but I invite you to simply use what you have on hand to practice these new skills with. Make sure you follow me on skill share and Rezuku, as well as all the socials. I also have a newsletter you can sign up for to stay in the loop. Just head on over to my website, and fill out the pop up box to join my weekly e mail newsletter, where I talk all things, art, therapy, writing, and well. Who knows what else I might rabble about. I'm always super keen to hear from you. So feel free to reach out to me via e mail or on the socials. And please, please share your projects. It gives me so much joy to see what people create. So with all of that said, let's go express ourselves unapologetically. 2. Meditation: It's time to make yourself as comfortable as possible, either sitting up or laying down. Make sure you're warm and all your basic needs are met to the best of your ability, not hungry, not thirsty, bladder is empty. Once you're comfortable, the invitation is to close your eyes and begin to focus on your breath. Just notice the natural rhythm as you breathe normally. Pay attention to if your chest and stomach are moving with each breath, or perhaps you're breathing quite shallowly and only your chest is rising and falling. If you are breathing shallowly, I invite you now to make sure you are taking nice full breaths right down into the bottom of your lungs, allowing your stomach to rise and fall with each breath. Now try to extend your in breath, just a bit, and then extend your out breath just a little bit more than that, making your outbreath longer than your in breath. Now that you have focused on really filling your lungs with each in breath and emptying your lungs with each outbreath, we are going to do some box breathing. This is a simple breathing technique that will help center us into our body, and we do this by breathing in for four, pausing between the in and out breadth for four, breathing out for four. Pausing between the out and in breadth for four, and then cycling through this again. Let's begin. M breathing in, two, three, four, holding, two, three, four, releasing, two, three, four, holding, two, three, four. Now, let's do that a few more times. Breathing two, three, four, holding, two, three, four, releasing, two, three, four, holding, two, three, four, breathing in. Two, three, four, holding, two, three, four, releasing two, three, four, holding, two, three, four, breathing in two, three, four, holding, two, three, four, releasing, two, three, four, holding, two, three, four, Now allow your breath to go back to its normal rhythm as you begin to pay attention to your body. Notice any comfort or discomfort in your body. Notice any sensations or feelings that are happening in your body. You don't have to do anything about these things. All we're doing right now is being mindful in the present and connecting to our body. As you notice in your body, we're going to imagine our feet growing down and extending into the earth below us like the roots of a tree going deeper and deeper through the layers of the earth, below the crust, past the vast crystal caves deep into the hot magma until we reach the beating heart of our planet. As we tap into our planet's heart, we allow that deep red love and warmth to flow back up into our bodies and begin to circulate up up up up into our feet, up our legs, up through our torso, and arms up our necks to the top of our heads, and then fall back down to our feet and cycle through our body in a circular motion to our heads, back down to our feet. And now with our body full of the delicious warmth from our Mother Earth, we focus on our head now. Imagine it growing and expanding, up, up, up through the Earth's atmosphere, continuing up and out, into the solar system, going beyond and out past the edges of our milky way, and out into the universe where we tap into the collective conscious. Sometimes known as the cacic records. As we connect with that super brain of all knowing, we draw down the cool blue energy down, down, down, into our body. Letting it pour into our head, going down our neck, down our arms and torso, into our legs, right down into our feet, and then cycling back up the body to the top of our head, and then back down again and back up in a constant circle. As these two energies merge in the center of our being, we find ourselves connected to the planet and connected to spirit, centered firmly between the two as they flow through our body, cycling together, intertwining, and merging to create a beautiful, rich, royal purple color that fills our body with everything we need in this moment. As the two merge, it is time now to contain that beautiful energy and our bodies and withdraw ourselves from first the collective consciousness in the vastness beyond our planet. Bring your tendrils back down, down, down into the milky way, down, down, down into our solar system. Keep bringing yourself back back into Earth's atmosphere. Finally, bring all of yourself back into your own body, your own head, and seal off knowing you can tap into that all knowing energy anytime you want to. Now begin to bring your tendrils back up from the Earth's warm core, back up through the magma, back up, up through the vast crystal caves, ride up through the Earth's crust and into your own body, your own feet, sealing off, but knowing you can tap into the Earth's nurturing energy anytime you want. Notice the energies from both still swirling around your body full of knowledge and connection, warmth, love, divinity, centering you right here, right now, in the present moment in your body, with your limbs, your brain, your thoughts, your abilities, in your room. When you feel ready, begin to move your body, wiggle your toes and your fingers, begin to roll your ankles and wrists, stretch out, and move your legs and arms, feel your face and torso, and come back into the new, opening your eyes when you are ready, and moving on to the next lesson, knowing you are connected and centered and grounded, 3. Shapes and Lines: To begin with, I'm going to show you the very basics of a tree, which is basically if we put it down into shapes and lines, is a triangle. We can have long thin triangles or we can have fat wide triangles. Anything in between. From this triangle, we will draw the trunk straight down the middle. Then all it is is a bunch of lines going across. Now, of course, we don't want it to look like that because then it's just going to look like a ladder. We add a little bit of variation. Make some of them longer. Leave a gap here and there because maybe the tree had a bad year that year and didn't grow so much. You can even make a few go off in the wrong direction. Basically follow your heart and just do what you need to do or want to do to create your tree. If you want to decide a Christmas tree, let's say this one's a Christmas tree. We'll do our line down, but we're going to want our leaves to come down this way rather than straight across. That's what will help you make a Christmas tree. Of course, you can't have a sting tree. Maybe it's had a tough time growing. Maybe it does only have just a few little bits and bobs here and there. That is the basics of these trees. Now let's put some paint on it so you can see how to put the painting part. I prefer to have a damp brush, dry, sp, just a little bit damp. I'm going to use die for the base. I'll just put some on H. Using my flat brush. I'll just grab some of the paint, make sure that the whole way across is filled. Then turn it over and make sure it's filled on the other side. Then that way, it's really well loaded. I'll flip it over a couple of times and pick up a bunch of the paint. As you can see, it's not a lot of paint on there. It's a thin layer of paint. It's just really well loaded into the bristles if you wipe it on. Then the first thing you'll do is do your What do you call it? Trunk. Load up some more paint. Then holding it perpendicular to the page. Straight up from the page. Just start laying down lines of paint. Now I'm moving it backwards and forwards because I don't want it to all be theme looking going do. Any time you seem to run out of paint, just load a bit. You may need to load up a bunch of times because I think it's better to have small amounts of paint to dab on here rather than doing a big load of paint, which will give you much thicker branches. If you want thicker branches, by all means, go for some extra paint on your brush, but that's not what I like to do. I'm going to just keep gloding it up and do smaller ones. Now, I chose thethllo turquoise because it's really dark. I especially with acrylic, I like to start with dark and then build up and put lighter over the top. That's what we will do today. Now, I just used when I did that to make it really small, I just used the tip of my brush and laid the tip down, not the full length of the brush. Now, you could just put some light turquoise over the top of it. But if the paint, it's usually okay to just add a little bit of white. I add some more paint. What acrylic paint dries pretty quick. We do need to be quick, but you don't have to do it this way. You can just add this color and then add the turquoise over the top and then the white on top of that. But for this one, I'll do the white and the same thing. I'm not clean my brush, by the. I'm just going to pick up on the tip of my brush, and it will slowly mix with the turquoise that's already there both on my brush. And on the paper or canvas. I just tend to do the edges. I like to keep the insides fairly dark. And same as before. Keeping the brush, not flat like this, but straight, as you go down. You maybe do summer cross, and that is how I do my trees. Now, I'm going to clean up my brush. This time, I'm going to load up just the edge of my brush or about half of my brush and do the very, very edges with the pure white. That's really good if you want to do a snow ski and you want the trees to have a little bit of white on them, which of course makes them super. You don't have to be picky with it. I'm not interested in being a defectionis. If that's your style, I'm not the teacher for you, I'm sloppy upping about it. For this one, I'll show you the three different colors. Let's start with the dark sallow turquoise again. Your brush really well. Do the trunk. And then this time, we're going to put the branches on an angle going down. Just like the other tree, we hold the brush perpendicular to the paper at a 90 degree angle. Yeah, maybe perpendicular is not right. Maybe that's supposed to be a perpendicular. At a degree angle. I'm going to have to look that up. I will put some writing along here if I'm, which I could very well be. Okay, so now, I'm going to add some of the some of the light tis. It is light toi. Anyway, I go to pick this up the same as we picked up the other one. The top. This just creates layers and layers create an interest and they make things look more three dimensional rather than flat. It's always good to have lights and darks. Throughout painting. Okay. I got a little dry, so I'm going to go over it again with the wet paint. I got a bit distracted. Sorry. Now, again, I'm not going to change clean up. I'm going to do the down the sides. To get it back grad into the co. Some in the middle here and there. We don't want it to look all uniform because nature is not uniform. Quite random. Have a Christmas tree. Okay. Hopefully, you get the general idea. I will see you in the next lesson where we will start practicing and putting trees on those backgrounds we did before. See there. 4. Ombre Backgrounds: Let's do some backgrounds for our trees. To start with, I'm going to get an 84 piece of paper, and measure out a 1 centimeter border the whole way around, then measure down the middle and create two A five size canvases to paint on. I use painter's tape to tape my page down and help me keep the borders white. You can, if you want, just paint from edge to edge, if you don't want to border or even paint a border afterwards, if you like. If you do choose to use tape, perhaps use washi tape as I believe it comes off easier than either masking tape or painter's tape. Both of those seem to pick up and rip off the top layer of my paper when I leave it on for too long. I just don't like wasting the pretty washi tape, and I working on a canvas, I don't have this problem. When working on a piece of paper, I usually scan it and then produce prints to sell rather than the original piece. The texture of the top layer of paper coming off isn't so much of a problem. Now I have the tape down. I'm going to start on the left hand side, using my 1 " flat brush. For this one, I'm going to divide the page roughly into thirds and put some more tape along the bottom third, leaving the top two thirds so that I can paint in the sky. For this one, I'm going to use quinacridone violet and titanium white. But you use whatever colors you feel called to. Get a lovely umbra effect. I always mix my paints right on whatever canvas I'm painting on. In this case, I'm starting with my darkest color on top to represent the dark or darkening sky. Then I put the lighter color on the bottom. I then begin to swipe my brush from left to right, right to left, the entire way across the canvas in one stroke, and slowly move the brush from dark to light, then light to dark and keep repeating the process over and over again until I am happy with the blend. You can make the blend more distinct by doing it only a few times. Or if you want a more seamless finish, keep slowly mixing the paint together as you move the brush up and down the canvas and watch as the paint slowly begins to mix in with the other color, merging the two into a seamless umbra effect. While we wait for the sky to dry, I'll move on to the right hand side, and for this one, rather than creating a distinct break between the sky and the ground, I'm going to let the ombre effect create the distinction with no stark horizon line. For this one, I'm going to use three colors, and I'm going to make the ground the darkest part. For the ground, I'm going to do transparent red, iron oxide, and then that will lead up into nickel azo yellow, and then titanium white at the very top. Now, I did put a bit too much paint down on this one. I do get a little carried away sometimes. I always make sure I have a spare piece of paper nearby so I can lay the excess paint down to use as a future background as well. Or sometimes I might turn it into an abstract piece of art or even rip it up and use it as a collage for another piece of mixed media artwork later on down the track. Just like we did in the first one, slowly make your way doing long strokes from left to right, right to left, and ever so slightly make your way up and down the page. You'll find that while you start with the dark paint on your paint brush, by the time you reach the top, the paint on your brush will be light. So make sure you go slowly from the bottom of the page to the top of the page. Then from the top of the page, slowly down the bottom of the page, over and over again. Don't take your brush from the top of the page, and then go straight down to the bottom. Or you're going to end up putting your light paint filled brush on your dark paint and it won't stay on bra. Just remember that the more you go up and down the page, the smoother your blending will be, the more gentle, the change of color gradient will be, as the paint literally mixes on the page. Now, that one is done. We can go back to the first one and add the ground color. I'm going to do it in exactly the same colors, and like the sky, I'm going to go from dark to light to show the horizon line clearly and with a really stark contrast from sky to ground. This part won't take as long as it's a much smaller area to do. Okay, on to the next ones. For these two, on the left, I will show you the same thing with the horizon line, except we'll use contrasting colors rather than the contrasting value of color. On the right hand side, we'll do what is called a vignette, which is where the outside is darker than the inside, creating an organic framework. For the sky in this one, I'm using dioxazine purple and permanent light violet, along with titanium white. For people who are interested, titanium white will affect the color value of your darker paint. While zinc white will not unless you use a lot of it, and even then it won't change the lightness or darkness of your color very much. So for the purpose of doing this umbra effect, titanium white is the white you will want to use to get the best effect. Now again, while we wait for this one to dry, let's move on to the vignette. So for this background, I'm going to use halo turquoise and light thalo turquoise. I start in the corners with the dark color and then add the lighter color in the middle. And in much the same way as the straight up and down. I slowly blend the light color outward and the dark color inward. This one isn't quite as easy or as seamless, but it still gives a really lovely effect. So I encourage you to give it a go, remembering that the only way we can get good at something is to be bad at it at first and keep trying anyway because it's fun to dry. It never has to be perfect, and I guarantee your bad is still 1 million times better than someone who doesn't even try. The viewer isn't going to pick up on your mistakes the way you do, so. Don't worry about it. Don't worry that it's not perfect. Just do it anyway. Now we've done the vignette. It's back to the other side for the ground. On this one, I'm going to use light thalo turquoise, and I'm going to make the lightest part up near the horizon so that the two light areas are together on this one, because we don't need the different values in color for us to see the difference as they're two different colors. I do add a little bit of white on the horizon line to make it really pop, and I blend it into the light thalo turquoise. And then at the bottom, I add some dioxazine purple to give it just a little kick of darkness. However, in this case, the purple is so overpowering, I actually need to wash off my brush before I begin to blend it in. Otherwise, the purple is going to take over the whole lot. In this case, once I cleaned off the brush, I chose to start at the top where the turquoise is so that the turquoise is already loaded on my brush by the time I get to the bottom. That way, the lighter color helps to lighten the darker color before I pull the dark color back up into the light color. That way, the dark color doesn't end up overpowering the light color. Now it's your turn. Prayers and backgrounds for your trees using this ombre effect. You could do the same combinations as me or come up with your own. You can experiment with composition, making the ground bigger than the sky, or even putting the horizon right in the middle. Try out different color combinations to see which ones you love the most. Be sure to share your backgrounds with everyone so we can see what you come up with. Then next, we're going to look at the shapes and lines of these trees. I'll see you in the next lesson. 5. Trees on Backgrounds 01: For this lesson, we are going to take the first two backgrounds we did and begin adding trees and other elements to the page. These are just practice pages. However, if you wanted to turn them into Christmas or birthday cards, be sure to watch the how to make a card lesson. I am going to start on the right hand side using my 1 " flat brush and dioxazine purple to lay down a really dark version of the tree I want. I'm putting this tree directly in the middle of this background, starting with a thin trunk. I'm using the very tip of the brush at first when I start the tree, so I have a nice pointy tip of the tree. Even though acrylic does dry really quickly, I still prefer to have more than one project going at a time. I will probably go back and forth between the images as we go adding different elements. I accidentally laid the entire length of the brush down creating a far bigger branch than I wanted here. Before it dried, I quickly wiped it off, which is possible to do when you are putting your acrylic down on top of already dried acrylic. Keeping in mind that triangle shape I showed you in the previous lesson without actually drawing the triangle, just imagine it there. I am doing the same technique of loading my brush and da, da, dabbing the paint straight across, holding my brush at that 90 degree angle to the page until I get all the way to the bottom. Then using the same paint, I decide where the horizon is going to be and where the ground is, and I smudge some of the paint onto the ground, creating a shadowy effect and use my finger to smudge it onto the page even more. This does not have to be exact, it's just a representation of shadow. M Next, I'll be adding some light violet over the top in the same way, I just laid down the dioxazine purple, making sure to only load the very tip of my brush and flipping it over a couple of times to get a good but thin load onto the bristles. I gently dab the paint on moly toward the outer edges, bringing the lighter color into the middle occasionally. But with the aim of keeping a good amount of the really dark shadow color there to create that depth and contrast that will help the tree look more three D than flat. The key is to be really random about where you apply the lighter color. Try not to make it uniform or a pattern of any kind. If you do find that you're being too uniform, just add some random extra lines of lighter paint here and there to break it up a little. Don't add any of the light color to the ground here as the light color represents the leaves on the branches catching that light, whereas the dark paint on the ground is more the actual shadow of the tree. Lastly, for the tree, I add a touch of white to the very edges. For this, I'm going to use my smaller flat brush, so I don't accidentally do lines that are wider than I want them to be. Because I really want the very light white to sit on the outside tips of these branches where the light is going to hit the leaves, the strongest and brightest. With that, the purple tree on the golden background is done, making for a very contrasting image. Now I'm moving on to the other painting and have decided to do a moon and mountain in the background of this one. Moons really need to be quite perfectly round. I'm going to use my white poscapen and my circle template to create the edge of the moon around two thirds of the way across the horizon line. I'm going to make the moon look like it is only halfway risen over the horizon. To paint the moon, I'm going to use a size six round brush and my titanium white to fill in the half moon going slowly around the edges to keep the shape as precise as I can. I like to add a lot of white paint to make it as white as possible, so you can't see the violet sky underneath. Then I get some mas black on the very tip of my brush and just dab it randomly across the surface of the moon to create the illusion of crater holes. I prefer to keep one side of the moon with less crater holes than the other. To give the painting a little more depth. I'm also going to add the silhouette of a mountain that goes across the moon, making it look like the moon is peaking over the top of the far off mountain. I do get a little bit of white to smudge along the silhouette of the mountain while it is still wet. I add it quite randomly, imagining the light of the moon, bouncing off the rocks and cliffs of the mountain. But I don't want it to stand out too much, so I let the white mix in a bit with the still mas black paint. Now, I lean more towards the unrealistic type of colors. That's what gives me joy. But you might have a blue sky and green grass, and that's perfectly fine. You could make the moon a sun, so this could still all work out exactly the same way. I am just really drawn to more fantasy like scenes rather than realistic, but the same principles and techniques apply. Using the thalo turquoise, I'm going to add my trees down the left hand edge of the other side of the page to my background mountain and moon. Using the very same techniques I've taught you so far. I make the trees get progressively smaller as they begin to point towards the moon, as that is how perspective works. The further away an object is the smaller it looks. I'm using my smaller brush again here for the smaller trees, as the bigger brush would end up making the branches look far too wide for the smaller trees. After adding the first layer to these trees, I felt like the foreground of the painting was a bit bare. I decided to do a few tree tops in the bottom right corner to add a little bit of balance to the painting. This image would have the viewer likely in a house nearby, looking out over their verandah and seeing the nearby tree tops and off in the distance, the end of the forest pointing towards the Mona mountain. You can add as or as little detail to this as your heart desires. I'm not adding the midtone of color to the trees this time. As the first layer of dark pain is quite dry by the stage I'm putting the white on, the white's going to go on without mixing with the turquoise below it. I'm also not being very precise with dabbing on the white. I actually got a bit annoyed with my smaller brush as it is a little split and doesn't sit as crisply straight as my big one. I ended up using the bigger one for the trees closer by. Then with the remaining white on my brush, Much in the same way I added the ground shadow to the one on the right. This time, I'm adding some white to the ground to indicate a bit of snow has fallen on the ground, and the white in the trees is bits of snow clinging to the leaves. The last thing I'm going to do to these is get some white paint and water it down so it gets quite runny, not quite dripping, but runny enough that when I tap my brush, little droplets will fall to the paper. For the one on the left, I'm going to make the droplets be stars in the sky. I'm putting a piece of paper down. The one I used before to remove the excess paint when I put too much paint for the background on the right, which will stop any drops from getting on the ground or mountain. I try to make sure no drops fall on the trees, either though if they do, they will likely just blend in with what is already there. I tap as gently as I can so as not to make the drops too big and fat. For the one on the right, however, I want that to look like it's actually snowing. I add a bit more water, making it a bit more runny and tap a bit harder to make the drops look fatter as though they are in the foreground rather than up in the sky like the other one. I make sure the droplets fall all over the painting from the sky to on top of the tree, and droplets to cover the ground as well. I also add a lot more droplets to this image, while the stars in the other image are more sparse. Now they are done, we get to peel away the tape so we can see what it looks like with the white borders around the edge if that's how you chose to do it too. No matter how slowly or gently, I try and peel the tape off, it still wants to pick up that very top layer of paper sometimes. Luckily, the paper is thick and can handle it. All I can do is try to make sure it doesn't take any of the image with it. And that's it. In the next lesson, we'll practice these trees some over the other two backgrounds we have made. I'll see you there. 6. Trees on Background 02: I don't know why I like to start on the right hand side, probably because I'm right handed, but we're starting on the right one for this one as well, and I'm actually going to do a pretty monochromatic piece for this as I'm using the thalo turquoise to create the tree on the background of the same color. As you can see here though, I've decided to do a more traditional Christmas tree and I'm painting the branches on that 45 degree angle down. For the Christmas tree, I'm making the branches quite dense, so you can't see a lot of the background behind it. I'm not being particularly precious with branch placement either. I'm going straight for the white on this one, while the teal paint is still wet, letting the white mix with the thalo turquoise on my brush as I go. I'm starting at the bottom and making my way up rather than the other way around. I start off here trying out making the branches come around the tree, though I seem to get messier as I go upward, and eventually decide, I'm not a huge fan of the way I had done the branches. As you can see, it's easy enough to just keep adding more white and eventually remove the weird shape I had going on. T hough, this is a great lesson in just giving it a go, whatever it is, because acrylic pain is so forgiving. It's easy enough to paint right over the top of it. I go on to use the mixed paint that is left on my brush to create a snowy ground in front of the tree, which would make a nice calm space to leave a Christmas message if that's what you wanted. I leave the tree to dry a little bit and add some more white to the tree to give a real indication of snow on the tips of the branches. Trying to keep it as random as I can, with longer and shorter strokes, the hallway down and curving it around the bottom of the tree. Then add a few random strokes along the inside of the tree as well. Looking at it, I feel like I could have made the tree a little wider down the middle. But anyway, I now add some white to the top of the tree and rub it in a circle, which will create a glow for the star that goes on top of the tree because I decided to decorate this as an actual Christmas tree. Next, I decided to add some stars into the sky of the background on the left hand side with my number six round brush and runny titanium white paint. I continue with the same white paint to put snow all over the Christmas tree canvas. Lots and lots of snow. I live in a very hot tropical part of Queensland Australia, putting snow all over a paint and gives me unreasonably good joy. Next, I put down some white where I intend to do the baubles for the Christmas tree because I want to put neon paint over the top and Non shows up better when it has white paint underneath it. Finishing off with putting a white star on top, and then I leave that to dry and move on to the left hand side. I decide to grab my very thin number two round brush and do some flicky stars in the sky, always starting in the middle and flicking the brush quickly and lightly outward in four directions. I then decide I want a really big moon on this one. I get out my compass with a stabilo all water soluble white pencil attached. Get out my ruler and I measure where the middle is so I can create the center of the moon as much in the middle as possible and draw a half circle on the horizon line. I have this lazy habit of putting the paint straight onto my canvas and just going from there. I think it's part of my neurodiverse brain type where I prefer to do as few steps as possible to get to my end result. If you prefer though, place your paint on your palette rather than directly on the canvas. I'm using a titanium white to fill in the moon and vastly underestimated the amount of paint I was going to need. I decided to wait for the entire page to dry before coming back to it and laying down another layer of white because the first layer didn't quite cover the sky behind it. Once I got the next layer of white on, and before it could dry this time, I added some mas black and used my very scruffy and beaten up brush to dab in the craters. Again, my amusing neurotrgin brain doesn't want to use the palette, and I just dab the black onto my brush straight from the tube. Another thing I tend to do a lot. As I mentioned in the last lesson, I like to make one part of the moon darker than the other, and I also like to spread the craters randomly across the surface of the moon for interest. Now, while the moon dries, it is time to add some bright neon paint to the Christmas tree using my small number two brown brush and taking the paint right from the tube again. I think part of it is I hate wasting paint. This makes me feel like I'm not wasting as much because there's no big patches of paint left on the palette. Anyway. I have the royal and Lang nickel essentials neon acrylics and used the lemon yellow. The pink or rose, the orange yellow, the purple or violet, the light green, and the rose for the different baubles and the star. Now I'm going to play a little bit with perspective, and we're going to either draw or imagine a big cross coming out from the middle of the moon. I am using mybo water soluble pencil again. Afterwards, if I need to, I can just wipe the lines away. I'm only putting them there as a guide. Before I put the trees in, I'm going to use my scruffy brush to lay some thalo turquoise down in the triangle shapes formed on the edges of the paper by the big x we just drew. This is just a very rough representation of the forest of trees behind those that we can see on the front line of the forest we're about to paint. This background does not have to be perfect or completely filled in. It's just there to suggest a lot of trees further back. For the trees, I'm going to lay down the base color and shape in dioxazine purple, starting with very small trees way off in the distance near the middle of the painting on top of the moon. Then following the top and bottom of the triangles created in the thalo turquoise, I make each subsequent tree bigger and longer as a line of trees slowly makes its way forward towards the viewer. By creating this very distinct path, this composition will draw the viewer in. Now, I don't do this, but you could put some bats or something flying across the moon or the silhouette of a person as though they're walking down the path toward the moon to add some extra interest. You could leave your forest without any highlights at all and leave it quite dark. But I am a sucker for highlights. Seeing as I forgot the press record. When I was adding the highlights, you can see the very quick difference between the dark forest and the highlighted forest and decide for yourself which one it is you want to do. I added light violet and then the very tips, I added just a hint of titanium white to create those rows upon rows of trees. Even looking at it now, I think I actually prefer it to stay dark. All that's left to do now is peel off the tape and hope it doesn't take off too much of my paper in the process. There we have the finished images. If you want, you could use any one of these as the front of a handmade card. Keeping them as is or writing a message over the top somewhere, such as seasons greetings or wishing you a winter wonderland, or whatever you like. You can scan them and type the wording in and have them printed out, or you can handwrite your lettering right over the top. Whether you do that or just use them to practice or turn into an piece or hues in your art journaling. Make sure you share them with us. Inspire others and let me see your work. I absolutely love seeing people giving it a go. Next, we're going to create a rainbow forest of trees to practice practice practice and get us closer to those 10,000 hours or 1,000 times, so we can become masters at painting these trees in acrylic paint. So see there. 7. Rainbow Forest - Practise, Practise, Practise: This is an invitation for you to practice what you've learned so far and also to have a play with colors and see which ones you like or don't like. I'm doing a more normal blue sky and green grass for the background for my practice page today, I'm going to keep the video in real time for a little while so you can see the speed that I normally paint at. If you paint slower or faster, that's fine. Go at a pace that feels comfortable for you. So pull out your paints and let's start painting together and listen to some of Michael's music while we do the background. Ions Oh H Now I'm going to do the first two trees in real time for you as well so that you can see the speed that I paint those in. Then I'm going to speed up the rest of the video, so it doesn't take forever. But you feel free to keep painting along with me as you go, choosing your favorite colors, and I'd even tempt you to some colors you don't like that, you might discover that they make a really good tree color. D. Thank To finish this off, I'm just going to add a sun in the same way that I do the moon, except with yellows and reds instead of whites and blacks. And then on a few cloud using my brush and adding a little bit of purple to them. And I'm going to call my practice page done. Please make sure you share your practice page with us and fill this place with a whole heap of rainbow forests. In the next lesson, I'm going to do a very quick run of how I would do a using the previous paintings, and then we'll finish off with a project piece using everything you've learned so far. See there. 8. Making a card: This is just going to be really quick because it's not a card making lesson. There's just something I really want you to be mindful of if you are turning these into cards. This is an A four piece of paper, a normal printing size piece of paper. Of course, if you want to make a card, all you're going to have to do is folded in half. And score the edge, usually with a pair of scissors to make it nice and crisp. The thing that I just wanted to make you really aware of and conscious of when you're making the card is that the front cover needs to be on the right hand side of the page. If you've got a blank piece of paper, don't do the artwork on the left, otherwise, it's just going to end up as the back page of your card. So make sure that you do the art on the right hand side. If for some reason you do accidentally do it on the left hand side. It just means you might have a nice, lovely piece of artwork on the inside of your card as well in case you do make a mistake. My recommendation would be to fold the card before you start, make sure it's in the correct orientation, and then tape it down while it's still folded and then that way you know you're not going to make a mistake. That's all I wanted to say about the cards. Thanks. See you. 9. Final Project Part One: Now you have learned the basic structure of these trees, how to paint them, how to use your flat brush, and how to do your umbra background. Now it's time to do the complete project with me. Of course, you can do any of the other ones that we did as we learned all these skills leading up to now as a project as well. I'd love to see every single one of them. That would be amazing. You might be able to see some So drawing on this. It's just because I was practicing some lettering on the other side. I mean, on this side and I didn't like it, side did on the other side, and I don't want to waste paper if I can help it. I'm just going to paint over the top of this because acrylic will go straight over the top of it. The first thing we'll do, if you want to, you do not have to. If you don't want the white border around your art, that is fine. You can paint all the way to the edges. But if you want to now is the time to put your tape on. Now that you have your tape on, you get to decide where you want your horizon to be, whether you want it in the middle, or if you want a lot of ground or if you want a lot of sky. Seeing as we're going to have the tree coming up over here, and also because I love a clear blue sky, I'm going to have more sky than ground. I'm going to do my horizon line as the bottom third of the page. Again, I'm going to put the tape along here. So I can have a nice straight horizon line. Now it's time to choose what color you want your sky to be. I think I might try something a little bit different than usual. I think I might go with some light blue and light pink. Into an orange yellowish. Maybe we'll see. We'll see what happens. Let's have ale experiment. Either way, we're going to need a lot of white because all of my colors are dark. I'm going to just put a line of white all the way down. And I'm going to put a little bit of blue. A little bit of red. Hopefully, when they meet up, they'll make a little bit of purple together. A little bit of yellow. Let's see how this turns out. I might need a little bit more blue. We'll see. We shall see. This is either going to work out good or it's going to be a perfect disaster. He I'm going to wet my brush a bit. Now, again, I don't want it dripping, so I'm going to just dab it on some paper tail and now it's time to start blending. Straight on the page because that's how I do it. You can always mix your colors beforehand if you want to. That is a totally valid option. Now as I go down. The red might have needed a bit more white, but I don't care. I'm just going to go with it. Now, I'm going to go down into the yellow. Some interesting colors happening here. Not a fan of the purple and the yellow mixing, but it is what it is. I actually think what I might do. I just need to get this paint. To there. See I like this, but then as the yellow comes in, I'm not liking it as much. So I'm going to add a bit more white. Los that's yellow. I'm going to add a bit more white down here and see if we can fix this a bit. I'm going to add some more water to my brush. Yeah, I like it a a bit better. Now, I'm gonna add a bit more red, I believe. I need touch, and then a bunch of more white. B red and white make pink. Oh my gosh, a bit more Dabit. We're gonna lend this one down into the yellow. Hm. Look at that horrible little lump there. Get that gone and this one here. Wedding my brush again. Interesting. Interesting. Now I'm going to clean my brush. A some blaze. H. I'm not a big fan of what's happening here. I could not tell you why it's happening, either. So I'm going to completely clean my brush. Now, I'm going to put a lot of water on my brush. And I'm just going to go over it with a of water this time. Clean up my brush again. Put a bunch of water on my brush. Oh, I actually I like that, though. I like the different streaks. It almost looks like clouds. Almost makes it look like a sunset, maybe, or a Sunrise. Yeah. I'm happy enough with that. That. I actually think this roughness that I'm noticing here is probably from when I was using the rubber on the writing underneath when I was trying to erase it. I think it's not here because I didn't have any writing, but it made the paper rough. And so the pain is just picking up that roughness. But that's fine. It doesn't need to be a masterpiece. I'm just doing this because I want to teach you guys how to do things because it's always practice. Every little thing is practice even when it doesn't turn out the way you want it to, it's still really good practice. While I'm here, what I might do also is get my scruffy bruh, scruffy scruffy. This one, get some white paint. You're going to put it on my palette over here. That was a bit much. That's. I'm just going to pick up a bit on my brush and do some clouds, I think. By d d d. Tap dp. Try to always keep the bottom of the cloud fairly straight. I'm doing this while it's wet because it's going to pick up the paint underneath, which I actually want and we will come back later maybe if it doesn't work now and put some more white over the top. That way, you'll get the different variations of color in your cloud, which will make it really pretty. That's one cloud and I'll come back and put some more white on it later. Let's do another cloud over here. I actually put use my flat brush and just do you know how sometimes clouds have that line that goes across like this. I'll just do that. My put a line of cloud up here as well. Yeah, I like that. Okay. Let's let that dry. We'll peel this off before it dries because it comes off a lot better when the paint is all still wet. Let that dry. Maybe I should have done it with a new piece of paper. I'll let that dry and come back. And I will peel this off and. We'll do the ground. See, then. Okay, I've fripped off this paper. Now, I'm keeping this like this because I want to show that it doesn't have to be perfect. And also that there are ways to hide some things. And at the very least, it's just its practice, and the more we practice, the more we progress. So I'm leaving this. And I'm going to do the ground, and hopefully we'll see, won't we? Hopefully. The tape doesn't pick up. This. Oh, I take it back off later. Kind of not gm enough to push it down too much. I guess for the ground, I'm just going to go with some some some We'll do some deep turquoise at the bottom. This one's liquid tex, not golden. And then some light turquoise up here. Hopefully that's enough. We'll just blend that in like we've been blending in all the other ones. 10. Final Project Part Two: While we're here, I'm just going to add some more white to these clouds. I'm just going to grab some on just one edge of my fluffy. M scruffy fluffy. And I'm just going to put the whites on the top rounded edges. Of the clouds. You giving him some dimension, some lanes. Of course, you don't have to add clouds if you don't want to, or, you know, feel comfortable with it. This turquoise is looking a lot like water, but that's okay. Nothing needs to be perfect. It's all just practice. So the way I will cover this up is just by putting a little mountain in there. And I'll do that by using my dark d d d dark purple. And creating a mountain. Just keep it going. And using some leftover white from the clouds. Just highlight the tops a bit. That's more than a bit. But we'll just keep. But brush over it. Until it blends in a bit more. And now we've missed that little blemish that we had there. And I might just add a little sun. Teeny, tiny little sun. Here. Hm.'s not gonna do it. We might have to add some white. No, that's fine. I just want it to be very little. Okay. Now, I'm going to use my stabilo all white water soluble pencil to sketch in where I want this tree to bend. And then sketch in hand, the shape of a head dress and some feet a hand coming out that I will do the silhouette of. I'm going to make this tree magenta. Cause why not? I'm just going to use my round brush to do the trunk, add some water. Mark, my little itty bitty brush. To do tip that that person is holding onto. And I'm gonna use my small flat brush to do the leaves. My small flat brush I don't know if you can see it. There's a bit of a hole bit in the middle, so it's making these interesting shapes there, but that's okay. I'm all about going with the flow. E so, I'm still doing it at a 90 degree angle to the page. This brush is also making the leaves thicker than I normally would make them because of the honess. I'm just going to do a little bit of shadow here. So the ground doesn't look like the ground. So the tree doesn't look like it's just floating on nothing. Using the same magenta. There we go. Now, I need my white to add to the tree. Again, I'm not rinsing, adding. So there's just can show that different brushes can create different effects. But with the same technique, it's always going to look like a tree. Just, experiment with color, experiment with different brushes, and just use the same technique. Then you have a tree. Now, for the silhouette. I just going to use the dark dark dark pepple. We're going to use Mt brush, which apparently has a little bit of a split in it right now. I think there might be some old paint stuck in the bristles somewhere. No, on, I'll just be mindful of that. Hold him onto the tree. Woo. You don't get brown away. Free. Go to give hair, long hair 'cause I have long hair. Give a bit of a nose. She looks like a bit of a witch. That's okay. And there's my person, holding on to the tree, bending with the wind. Staying connected so that she doesn't just fly away. I'm actually thinking there's not a lot of space. I'm going to try it out in Fuss. Posca. I'm not any good at painting letters. I have far more control when I have a pen or a pencil. And I think it might actually match the tree. And then we'll highlight it in white. So let's go. You can bend. With Noah, I might do winds of change in. Cursive. Winds of change. You can survive anything in capitals. You Now, I'm gonna get some wit. That's than I thought. Oh.