Watercolor Landscape Workshop; Tree Painting Techniques

1. Intro: Welcome to the enchanting world of watercolor tree painting. Are you ready to unleash your inner artist and bring the beauty of nature to life on paper? In this captivating course, you'll embark on a wondrous journey through the art of painting, trees and watercolor. Whether you're a budding artist or a season creative spirit. This course is designed to inspire and guide you every step of the way. Prepare to be amazed as we dive into an array of ten delightful video tutorials. Each showcasing easy to follow techniques for capturing the essence of trees and all their splendor. From the graceful sway of the branches to the lush foliage dancing in the breeze. You'll learn how to breathe life into your tree paintings with confidence and flare. But that's not all. As a special treat, will unravel the secrets of the masters as we explore how they use these similar techniques to create timeless landscape paintings. Grab your watercolor palette and let's embark on this marvelous artistic expedition together. 2. Painting Simple Trees: In this section we're going to go over just some elements. Rocks, grass, those things I think give people problems. And if you paint landscapes, you're going to come into situations where you have to have some tricks up your sleeves that if there's a certain type of tree, there's a certain type of rock, maybe there's a grass field and not quite sure how to handle it, that's what this section is for. Hopefully give you some ideas on how you can do it. Now, for the record, I'm not a photo realistic painter. I think that work may be impressive to look at. I dabbled in it early on in my career, but it just got to the point quickly that I didn't enjoy painting anymore. It was almost a chore just to have to go in the studio and like, oh my gosh, I have to sit down and figure this out. Got turned on to some more impressionistic, expressive style of watercolor art and just art in general. And that's what I gravitated to, and that was enjoyable. Okay. I guess I say that because a lot of what I do is it gets the point across and I'm going to show and demonstrate why that is in this lesson. Then it leaves a little bit of room for the viewer to use their imagination. You're not painting every single leaf where there's just nothing left for the viewer to try to interpret, because everything is there for you. Anyway, when we start getting into these trees in different situations, I'm going to use the approach that works for me in the things that feel good for me. Then it's up to you to make sense of it and to do it in a way that appeals to you. I may do it on a scale, let's say, of one to ten, ten being really, really loose and abstract, one being tighter. I may be in the seven or eight range to some of you, Maybe you're in the ten, maybe you're in the two or three. You can go in here and get as much detail as you want. For me, again, I'll get the idea across and then I get on down the road. That's my attitude for trees. I think it's important, really, all shapes and objects and symbols that we paint and you have to realize everything we do, and art is a symbol, it's a lie. All we're doing is trying to trick the viewer into seeing a certain scene that we're trying to paint. A subject that we're trying to paint. And hopefully leave a little bit of room for their imagination and their brains to explore. I can't really paint a tree on the two dimensional piece of paper. I can paint a symbol of a tree. In grade school, we learned to do this lollipop, and that was our tree. And that doesn't really cut the mustard as we get older, because we know trees aren't really shaped like a lollipop. They have a lot more interesting edge quality to them. And that's really what you want to do. You want to create an edge quality, A shape that has the symbol of a tree. That's what it's all about. Okay, Crack into it here. Color isn't going to matter here. It's really about the shape, the edge quality, and the overall idea of just painting the shape of a tree. Let's just start with some of this red orange here. Maybe I'll add a little bit of this turquoise to it. I'm just messing around here. Just stick in my brush. In some of these colors, I'll just keep mixing until I find something I like maybe this cherry red here works. Okay, for starters. Okay. Now, the paint consistency is thick, so I'm going to start a little bit thinner. Okay. So now we've got that watery feel. Now I don't want to go right to the paper with a completely loaded brush like this because it might be too much. So I'm going to just dab that off, get a little bit here, and then do this technique that's called. Scumbling when we scumble. What we're not doing is holding it with this tripod grip and using the tip of the brush. What we're doing is I like to use this overhand grip and then come down. I'm going to slide this over just a little bit before I can get my brush over here where your brush is almost level with the paper. The bristles just about level. You will have to go with a little bit of an angle to get the bristles to contact, but we're using this side of the brush. All you want to do is just make the organic shapes and don't, again, avoid doing lollipop circle because, you know, trees don't really have that shape. Maybe something like that. For starters, we can go in with a little more here and add a few darker notes. Trees had these little sky holes, they call them, where we can see through some of the holes here. For starters, I think that works pretty good. Now if you wanted to, you could go in with maybe a little more sienna. A little more crimson. A little more red. I'll just make a thicker color. There's the finger test, dab off a little bit of that because I know there's a lot. I can dot some of that in there and that's going to blend because the pain is wet. Again, very simple technique. You can do this with hot press paper where it's smooth to, you're not going to get quite the texture that this one has. But you can get a similar effect because really it's about manipulating the side of the brush and doing this sort of thing. Okay? Now I can take and switch my grip and then do just a trunk, something simple here. Maybe we'll do this double trunk like that. And then a little simple shadow or something underneath. Let's do that again. A little bit of water, just to thin out some of this right here, I'll remove the excess water. Now, load the brush. I know it's not like crazy loaded. What I'll do is just drag tip of the brush just along the paper there. You see it's not a straight line. I went in these little segments and did that. Now I can again use this scumbling idea of just dragging the side of the brush across the paper. Now, nothing that's too symmetrical. Okay, We don't need, we don't want to look like a fish skeleton or anything like that. Trees tend to be a little bit more organic. Then again, we can get some darker notes in here. Trees tend to have a little more darker notes towards the bottom. Then again, we can put a little shadow on that as well. That's those evergreen cedar type of trees. Then for the last one, I'll just put a little water on this. I'm not really going to use a scumbling technique, I'm just going to do a dead tree or maybe it's wintertime, and there we can just see the main trunk. Now the technique, if I barely drag this across the paper, that's like taking your finger and barely touching your skin, almost tickles. Then I can press harder like that. If I start out with this tickle and then press harder and harder and harder, we get this dynamic stroke that starts thin and then it gets thick. That's what I want to do here. I want something. That's going to start thin or thick. You can do the opposite. So we can start like this, then end with this light note by just lifting the brush off the paper. We're just basically manipulating the pressure we're using into the surface. Now, it may be more comfortable for you to flip your paper upside down, for example, here. And then as I reach up and here, I'll lift that brush and then I can come back in here and join again something like that. Maybe we have a little bit lighter branch like that you can get accustomed to. And I'll just do a little shadow there just to match what we have. I can even drop a little bit darker since the shadow is going this way. I can even do shadows on the right hand side. That's something to think about also, that was flipping the paper. You can try starting light and then getting down in here, then again heavy and then barely touching the paper and getting that tickle feeling again. We can do that. Then we can come in here while it's wet. Add a few, a little shadow there, form shadow, we're good over here. Using that scumbling technique here is using the pressure of the brush onto the surface. Any brush can be used this way. Doesn't matter if we have a sword brush, Motler, Quill, small pointed round, and even a synthetic brush. Now, there are other techniques we can do. Let's say, for example, I want to explore this idea. Well, if I have a flat brush like this, I can get some paint on it. Let me get a little bit more because it's fairly weak here. Let me gray that out a little bit. I can do segments. I can take this brush and press down a little bit, and go up and then break away from it, and then go in a different angle. We get this different look. We're going to explore brushes and this sort of idea. But we can do that too to create a slightly different approach. That's where we want to go now. Okay, what we want to do is take these ideas now let's explore how different brushes respond, using the scumbling, and then maybe using pressure as a sensitivity to it to create some interesting trees. We can get in here in these sky holes too, and put some branches, maybe a little branch coming out the side there happens that thing again, all we're trying to do, going back full circle now, is give the impression of things. We're not trying to spell out every single needle, we're not trying to paint every single leaf. Even though the color is a red, you may not see this in nature. It still gives you the impression of what it is without actually having to try to color match. That's all we're going to do as we move forward is paint symbols, things that look like trees. Some trees are more specific than others, and so on. 3. Trees with Alternative Brushes: Okay, I primarily worked with my pointed round, going to switch to my sword. This is my small, since I have a small space to work with, it only makes sense that I use a small brush as opposed to something like this. We're going to do a lot more trees, but I want to pound this home a little bit more. We'll switch colors maybe and do just put some blue into these. Red finger test tells you that's pretty thick paint. I can come right to the side here and just put a little bit of water. I've got some thick paint over here. I've got some thin paint. Again, if I didn't mention this before, I apologize. But this is dry paper. Unlike when we were working on the skies, when I pre wet everything, we're not doing that right now. This is working onto a dry surface. Here. Again, side of the brush. I can use this tip, this side, I can use this side, I can use this side. You get my point. It doesn't really matter. The point is to really explore your brushes. You saw where I use this one. But we can use this one to do the same thing, and I'm sure we will in this class, Just like I can use my motel and my Quill if I wanted to, but for now again, we just do this thing and have fun with it, okay? Remember to leave some little holes in there. If you get these little marks that you didn't mean to, That's okay. Nature is going to throw all types of crazy stuff at you and when it goes to trees. But one thing I want you to avoid is this symmetry, which is what I have going on. Now, if I did a circle around or took a line and went around all these edges, it almost make a perfect circle. We don't want that, things aren't really that perfect in nature. We also have some symmetry, where we have a middle one and we have this, and then we have that. There's quite a few issues with this, but one stroke can change all of that and just make sure that those things don't exist in your painting. Now, I can just take the point. Remember the pressure thing? A little bit of pressure. A lot of pressure. I can always use the pressure of the brush to create thin and thick branch quality. Okay, we can always do that. We'll do a little shadow this way. Maybe that's one there. Let's take the same brush, and I'm sorry, go with a little bit of thicker paint. Now, this tree that has this canopy tends to be a little bit darker underneath that canopy. Down below here, you'll get darker values. We can do some dots in there, but the key is to remember, we're only worried about the outside shape, not about what's really going on in the middle. We're not here trying to paint individual leaves. At least I'm not now, again, scumbling again. I can use this one however I want to use it. I'll pull down these branches again. Stay nice and loose with it. People don't try to control every single thing. Let your brush do some work for you. Imperfection is really a beautiful thing in art, I think. So long as you can back up from your subject, it holds together, That's fine. I think anyone looking at this, if this had a ground plane, a little blue sky or whatever, I think people would be able to associate this. Identify this as a tree. Clean my brush off, I'll go with the debtor trees there. I'll press down and then lift to get thin and thick. We can pull some smaller branches in there. I can go a little bit thicker there at the base. If I want, I can go high. You may find that you enjoy starting up here, as opposed to starting down below and pressing harder as you go down. You may enjoy flipping it upside down. You may find your trees are a little more gnarly or interesting shapes or whatever. If you do that, the key is to experiment now, as opposed to waiting until you're painting a finished landscape and you're sweating it out, like, how am I going to do this? You find your freedom now. Explore different brushes, different size brushes. You have a range of possibilities. We're not putting ourselves in a corner or giving ourselves only one option, we actually have a few. That's the idea that you want to do at this stage is just explore just this type of tree. Remember the things I talked to you a little bit about the shapes pressure into the surface. Don't try to make them perfect. You're just worried about the outside shape. We're not worried about the interior of the tree at this point. 4. Trees with Bristle Brushes: In this lesson, we're going to explore some alternative brushes. These are bristle brushes suited for acrylic. This is hog's hair, really stiff, bristles. These are synthetic. Two fairly stiff, again, suited for acrylics. Maybe oils, maybe not quite stiff enough for oils. But you can see compared to, let's say, a water color, they're just a lot harder, a lot firmer. I'll refer to these as bristle brushes if you have some of these. These are great for adding even grass and foliage and things like that. You can work a lot of magic with these. I'm not going to do every single one. You can even use a toothbrush if you want. But again, I'm just going to do a couple of these. I'll let say this one and then maybe this one because they're very different from each other. Let's get started here. I'm not worried about color, as a matter of fact, I'll just do this on a gray scale. If I mix all of this up on my palette here, I'll probably have exactly what I need. It's a good way to clean your palette off too. We'll just work with the same idea, the scumbling technique, leaving a few sky holes in there, making sure we get this nice organic abstract shape, something like that. I'll put a little bit more neutral tint into this. Maybe a touch of red and blue, just a little bit thicker and hit a few dots in here, something like that. Now I'll do one more similar to that, again just dragging those tips side of the brush along that paper, just coming up with a nice shape there. Again, just making sure I don't end up with anything that's too symmetrical Now, just putting a few dots in there, that's a great shape. By the time I take a small round here and we get a trunk going, I'll do that one more time. Again, we'll do this double trunk like that. Those make great alternatives for trees. I'll now switch to my smaller brush. Look at this one. This one is awesome. If I were painting on a little bit larger scale, maybe can have some fun with that. You can see the side of that, it's just very irregular. You can even rough it up a little bit, then go to town here. Make sure you move your elbow around. Get some flexibility in here. Work this way, don't just keep it in one position. Move it around a little bit and really get a nice organic shape happening again. A nice thick trunk, maybe on this one. A few more there just to finish it off. I'll start with these little thin strokes in here. Little wispy twigs, then maybe a short, squatty trunk on that. You can even do some splattering. When you splatter, don't come back. What you don't want to do is boom on the back. If you go down and up, the paint is going to go everywhere. In your face, on the floor. You name it. But if you load your brush and just go down, you get that. Now that had too much on it, so try to limit how much you have on it, but it just makes some nice, more abstract, less predictable stuff I can add. We can take your towel and do this blot and remove a little bit, just like we did with the clouds. Don't do it too much. Just a little bit. Come back in, do a few dots, you're good to go. I can remove a little bit. There, we get a nice transparent look to it. Just feather it out if you want. Again, you can learn by just exploring with these brushes and seeing what they come up with for you. 5. Pine Trees: And I know we just did this one type of tree. But don't stop there. I'd encourage you to do different types of trees, so we can just the tip here and press down and get our stalk like this, going in different directions. Then I can do this scumbling technique to put in the rest of it. Okay, so again, I can start down here. Again, sort of don't try to control it too much. The whole idea is you don't want to control it. And then that way you get a lose depiction and something that is less predictable can get it slightly darker, slightly thicker here. We can do little touch here and there, especially towards the bottom like that. Again, we've got a nice tree there I'll go to. This would be more for a tree like this, it wouldn't be suited to do these cedar looking trees, but maybe something like this would again getting our trunk down and then just the tip there to do the rest of it. I'll travel more again, starting at the bottom this time. And I really wanted to try this one. I'll see what I can do out of this. Maybe what I will do is use my rigger here to put in a little, a trunk and then this a little bit fuzzy. You see the edge quality is a little bit than the other ones, but I think with a little bit of practice, a little bit of getting used to there, that might be a lot of fun to work with. For trees, you get the idea. Obviously, like I mentioned before, I'm not going to do every single brush again. The key here is that we're not focusing on the interior, we're just focusing on this shape. Because this is the shape that tells people that they're looking at a tree. Okay, that outside edge right there is all people need to see how you get there. It's up to you, but I highly recommend you try some bristle brushes at some point. Again, we can wet this a little bit. Is drying up really fast. And here I got my lights on, obviously my film lights, and it's just crazy hot in Virginia today. But then we can get some thicker paint, get in here and do in a few dark shadows in here. And really bring even trees like this to life and give them an interesting look. And they would work great for watercolor painting. All right. 6. Trees with Color: Okay, we're going to crack forward here. We're going to still focus on trees, but now we're going to infuse some color, like a layering color. So thinking about working light to dark, of course, we're going to build upon some of those same tree painting techniques we've talked about, like scumbling, using alternative brushes and all that fun stuff. And then I'm going to share some other tips with you that you may enjoy. Again, you don't have to stick to just one brush. I've got some other ones here. This is a number two mop brush, squirrel mop, really small. So if I were painting a small tree, I could easily use that. I got my large sword. Get the drill there. But I think for this one I'm going to use my pointed around. This is cheap right here, but it's great. It's a golden natural. I think I showed you this in the materials. That's what I'm going to go with. What I'll do is mix up a yellow here. That's going to be a glowing yellow. All right? I think even before I do it, I'll give our light source here, indicate that coming from this side. Now just because I want some yellow in this for the foliage, I don't want to be intense saturated yellow. I wanted to still be gray down a little bit. I'm not really into highly intense colors. What I can do is take a little bit of this ochre, maybe even touch a little red in it. I'll go a little bit of this yellow, pale, some water, and I'll then it out a little bit, not quite enough. Maybe maybe something like that. We see how that responds to the finger test, that's just not as intense with something like this. That would just be a little bit too loud for me. I'll get all that moisture off. Then again, use this technique. You can scumble like this too. If you're comfortable, more comfortable holding your brush with this standard grip, you can scumble like that. But just remember, it's good to get down in here. Just use the side of that brush so we get all of this lovely artifact and spontaneous. Spontaneous. But it's unpredictable. Which part of the brush is going to get that texture of the paper. Maybe unpredictable is the way to think about that. That's good for our first layer. We got something like this. Again, I'll just abbreviate here. We used some yellow, pale CYP. I use some yellow ochre and a touch of Cad red. I think that'll give you a good reminder now while it's wet, we want to go ahead and move into the next layer. I can either use some sullan or some cobalt turquoise. I'm going to go with a little bit of turquoise here. As you may have guessed, that's going to push it towards a green. Now, if you get too green, too fast, you can come over here and mix up a little bit of orange. Maybe you can see that's really close to our ochre. Anyway, then you can take some of these turquoise, a little bit of blue will go in between them. I've got 123 puddles there. Let's get a happy medium there where it still has a little bit of this yellow in it, but it's not quite as intense as this, so it's a little more earthy. Now what I can do is take that, let me get some of that moisture off my brush. And these will be a little bit thicker here. I'm going to go a little bit thicker with the paint. I want this to be a warm green, leaning towards the yellow side. You can see that swatch there now. Again, scumbling and just touching that into a few places. Maybe there's a tip of that in here and of course leave some of this yellow as well as you go, we got that effect happening there. Again, two layers. This is basically the same mixture but just adding a little bit. Yellow, ochre, and a little bit of that cad red with the yellow pale, getting that more of a earthy green in there. Now what we can do again, is keep working with this. Now I can take some of these cobalts in there. Now what that cobalt going to do is going to cool it off a little bit. I'm going a little bit thicker now. As I do this, I'm not really going back to the water and adding a lot more water to it. The finger test tells you that's getting thicker. I'll clean my brush. We'll get our little swatch down here. I think I'm even going to go a little bit, a little more on the cool side there. I'm just adding some cobalt blue and then a little bit of cerulean again to cool that off a little bit. I'll load the brush up really good. Then I'll come down in here to the shadow area, which is really underneath over here again, away from the light source. I'll just touch some of that in there like that. Now you've got a more sophisticated tree. We can finish that off with my little rigger here. I can just use the same color if I wanted to, but just for giggles, I'm going to go with a bit of this neutral tint down here. A little bit of my burnt sienna. I got a fly on my table here for that. I'll put a little bit of water in it. Just so you can see it again, I've put too much and now it's running all in there. Burnt sena with that neutral tint, something like that. I'll start fairly pale again. What I can do is go with this heavier stroke, a little bit thicker down here. Now I'll go up a little ways, then what I'll do, trees have these little joints where they go up and they switch angles just subtly there, especially for that main trunk. Then maybe once they get to a certain point, they'll shoot off. That's what you want to do. What you don't want to do is paint a stiff telephone pole. Now I can touch a little bit of color into that, just indicating that light source. I'll take some of these darker values in here. And while it's wet, let it touch that side of the tree and it's going to bleed into it and do some heavy lifting for you all. Now, I'm going to do this again when I'm finished, but we can take this intersection here where it goes up and then switches angles. Let's say there's typically S where you'll have a new section. Think about like a 30 degree angle there. From this to this, it's about a 30 degree angle that goes up and maybe it switches again to about a 30 degree angle. And then maybe we have a 30 degree angle there and that maybe just goes off. We have all of these angles where you're going about 20 from here to here, you can go 2020 and so on. And that's a good rule of thumb sometimes to use. Again, I'm going to do one in just a second that we're going to go over this a little bit more. Maybe again, we've got this other trunk that's right beside it that helps support some of that weight. Again, I can do that. Same idea of a 20 degree angle. We can get up here where some of these holes are. Draw a few, we get a few the sticking out there as well. Maybe something like that. Then a shadow there to anchor it to the ground. I'll just put a little bit of color in it. I'll just take a little bit of this turquoise. Just cool it off and we'll exaggerate it to this side. Again, a very simple tree done with the same techniques we've used, but this time we're just exploring color a little bit. Okay, this was a neutral tent with some burnt sienna. You can even come back in here with a little bit of these yellows, turquoise, and maybe even add a little something there. That's good. Now what I was alluding to here, and this is just something you can practice on your own. I'm going to use a little bit of umber this time. A little bit of sienna, maybe even a little bit of turquoise there. Get this brownish color. You can do this with any color. Let's say for example, you, you had some dead trees in your scene. Let's say that tree can come up then it has like a joint to it. That joint maybe goes off about 20% this way, maybe this way. Then it goes up and then it goes off this way. Then maybe it comes back. I can go in here and just really paint these 20 degree angles like this all the way up the tree. Obviously as we go up a little bit, things will get skinnier and skinnier as we go. But that's just all using that same angle. Just some angles are moving in one direction and other angles are moving in another. Just something to keep in mind as you paint. And I'll just cool that shadow off a little bit here. Again, simple. Simple is where we're going with this, building upon those ideas we've already talked about. Let's do another tree below it. Here I'll switch to my, maybe I'll switch to my small mop. Again, this is a really small mop. If I compared it to the one I normally use, that's what we're doing with. I'll paint both of these with my quills. Let's do a different type of tree here. I will start with some of these browns. Um, neutral tint, umberiena, fairly thick. I'm going to start with this trunk idea. When I put my trunk in again, I can think about those sections, it comes down, maybe switches again. And they're not all of the same size like that. Now, instead of just using a gray or whatever, I'm going to come in here and start with my cerulean and cobalt turquoise. I'll add plenty of yellow ochre to that. A little bit of yellow as well. I'll get a little bit of this clean water in here that's pretty thick. I want to start fairly thin, then also fairly light in value. I want to make sure I get this effect. But these trees don't have this bright foliage. They typically are a little bit earth more in the realm of this. Again, using the scumbling technique, just taking that side of the brush, which I will go like this and away I go into getting this effect with the paper. If you find yourself getting in a pattern where it's small, big, just switch it up and make sure we have some variety. Now I'll go to this thicker paint here and maybe even add a little touch of this blue, maybe a little touch of sienna and red up here. And then drag some of this into it. Then maybe that's a little bit to to brown right away. I'm going to get it more of these darker greens. We can just touch some of those darker values into it. Again, I'll pretend my light source is coming over from there. Maybe the tops of greens are getting light and the other, and the right hand side is getting more shade. In general, then I can go with maybe even neutral tint now mixed with these blues. Maybe a touch of this turquoise. I really have something that's cool. I used these for the initial wash, then I went darker. I think I even had probably a little more yellow on the ocher side to this, something like that. And then we got into these. Then lastly, I'll go with these smoky blue grays here. A little bit of cobalt blue, cobalt turquoise to this. That's too gray. Then I can just take a little bit of this yellow ochre and push that in towards a yellow green. Now I've got something that's dark, it's in that green family. We can just drop a little bit of that again into the tree. I'll clean my brush. I'll get a little blue cool in this and do our shadow. All right. So as you can see, just again, using those same techniques to do it, but now that was just exploring brushes. Now I will go with my needle brush. This was, I'll put it down here. Number two. That was a really small squirrel quill. This was my number ten pointing around. This was a number six rigger. Now let's go with my three eighths needle. I can just use what's here is fine for this demonstration. I'm going to do a, I'm just going to focus on the stalk. Sometimes you just had this tree again that doesn't have any leaves. We want to get this look to it instead of just one value. All the way through what we can do. Actually I think I will clean this. I want to stick to something a little more colorful. Okay. Again, I'm painting on dry paper Here, unlike the skies, I'm not starting with any pre wet paper. Things are going to be a little bit tighter and when you put them on, but then whenever we work into inside our shape, things are going to bleed and blend a little bit because we're working wet into wet with this one. Let's say we start with these reds for giggles. And I'll put a little bit of our, my, I should say yellow ochre into that. Maybe a little more of yellow and yellow ochre. This tree is going to be a little more vibrant, but then we're going to knock it back. Once we get into it, I'm going to start fairly weak here. Do again these sections, maybe going up and then, and then back this way and then up again like this. I can even bring that down a little bit more so we get another section in there. Again, it's not a straight line. Okay. We've got, okay. Now, again, that's just using that combination of Cad, red, yellow, pale, and then yellow ochre. Now I will drop into that. Okay, So I'm going. To take the same brush while it's wet. If you want to remove some of this, you can. I will. Let's say now we want to make this a little bit darker so I can take some of my sienna touch, a crimson here and maybe even a little bit of my umber. What I can do now is just my brush and pop in some of those colors that's taking the same color. Flies still around, dag on it and adding some burnt sienna and umber. Then I can do another round. Maybe even make this even more colorful here by taking some of this cobalt blue with the crimson lizard, crimson. Now maybe to knock back just a little bit, I can do a little bit of this sienna. Now we can go a little bit darker in some of this as well. Maybe again, we've got our light source doing this. We want to show that light. Then of course, we can do our shadow running off like that. So again, that's using a little bit of Sienna. I think I have room to do this. That's everything that was there with some cobalt blue and then we used some Alizarin crimson with the colors that were there. And we get nice glowing tree. You can see just by introducing color here into this, using the wet and wet technique, you can really start to have fun creating some amazing trees. Now I can take some of these values. Again, there's our 20 degrees, maybe it comes out, goes off this way, that way. There's another notch in here we get here off of. Again, you can do this all day long. Maybe we have a smaller twig there. I can change the color a little bit and maybe even push that more towards this blue in there. If you really enjoy those colorful paintings, you can do that. All right, so you get the point. You have a lot of fun with that. And really do some interesting landscapes. If there was a winter landscape or something like that, these techniques would come in real handy to work with. And think about that 20 degree angle, that happens 30 degree angle. If I've been saying 20, it's about a 30 degree angle. Okay, So if this is our 45, that's in the middle, that's roughly good enough in there. If you just did know nothing but that, think about a right angle. If that's the right angle, you're like splitting the difference like that, maybe it's coming up and off about like that. Again, you'll see leaves a branch that may even go out in more of an angle. I'm just giving you something to build upon and something to think about. Then it's up to you to run with that. But anyway, I'll do it for this one next lesson. We'll again build upon all of these techniques and keep learning other ideas we can do to paint trees. 7. Winter Trees: All right, we're going to do some winter trees here. Again, when it comes to brushes, I recommend you try these techniques with all of your brushes. There is no sense in just using one when you've got a lot of variety and options to go with if you have different brushes. But I'll use a couple of different ones in this one. In the first I'm going to use my small sword again if you're curious about the size. This is a quarter inch with winter trees. They're not always leavelessy. Don't drop all their leaves all the time. Sometimes trees will hold on to a certain number of them. This is the effect we're after all my palettes. A little bit of a lizard, crimson, a little bit of umber. You could even put a little bit of blue into this. I would recommend keeping it a light brown, a cooler color, something that isn't going to be too saturated. And again, this finger test tells you it's very weak. Now, some scumbling again to get these shapes, and I'll do a couple of them here with this brush. Something like that. And then I'll switch brushes here. Just silver. We stay organized. This is my four inch for giggles. Go with the larger squirrel. I'll flirt with color a little bit. Now maybe I'll go with the brownish green, ochre, Turquoise, maybe a touch of burnt sienna in there. But again, keeping it gray brownish because you're not going to get a tremendous amount of leaves, that's probably too strong leaves. These are again, just leaves that are holding on a little bit different sizes. Just make sure I'll make these a little bit bigger like that. Just a very organic shape there. Just watch out for repeating patterns. Symmetry. I can get back in here with just a damp brush here and just even lift some of this if I wanted to, but not too much. At this stage, I've allowed everything to dry 100% Again, a very light wash water. If you want to go back into it and just drop a little bit of water, soften it up a little bit more, that's fine. You want to avoid anything that's too dark in value, so keep it again very light in value because these leaves aren't dense. They're just some scraggler leaves that are holding on and the new leaves are going to push them out come spring. Now for the big finish here, I'll take a little bit of a neutral tint, a little bit of umber, maybe a little burnt sienna, and clean my brush and then mix that up. The reason I let this dry is because typically, as I alluded to earlier, the leaves aren't dense. Because of that, you're going to see the skeleton of the tree. You're not going to see too much overlapping and things of that nature. And hopefully it'll make a little more sense once I get into it here. A little bit of blue into this as well. Again, finger test tells you is thicker than what I had, but not crazy thick here. I can just start with my trunk again, don't do a straight line, make it crooked, and get those little notches going. Now notice as I draw the structure that we're seeing a lot of it, okay? It's not hiding behind the leaves, okay. We're again making that impression of dead leaves and they're not again that visible. Then I'll do that again. I can start up here if I want, member of that 30 degree angle thing. Pressure, light, heavy pressure, and then pulling away as we get. Further away from a notch or joint. Okay. So now I can do a little shadow under that one. You get that feeling, the impression of a dead tree. Now if for some reason, or I'm sorry, not a dead tree, but dead leaves and a dormant tree. Now, if you wanted to make this even more subtle, you could take it and a few places, but not too much. Because again, we don't want that limb structure to hide behind too much. But if it gets too dark in a few places, you can do this dabbing thing. I can switch colors. Now let's see, I think I use this brush, so I'll use it again. I'll just take same colors here, take a little bit of ochre into it. Maybe we'll make this more of a golden brown. The nice thing about these quills is you get the points. I'll just do my best to use that point. Again, look at the structure, I'll do this one a double. We're not getting that telephone pole. Look, I'm thinking about those 30 degree angles, but without getting too anal about it, something like that. Again, a little shadow and we're good to go. Play around, play around with your brushes. Play around with different sizes. You can blot a little bit. Again, don't blot too much where it completely removes it. Maybe this one a little bit wider here at the base. And then we get this structure here. Something like that. Okay. And then again, I will get a little shadow there. Again, winter trees, you can apply the foliage with this. I've got other brushes, I can try bristle brushes. All those things are perfectly fine to give a shot here scale. If you wanted to do some larger scale, like half a page or even a whole page, it's good to do that. It's good to fall in here and do some smaller ones. Now, I mentioned this earlier that allow these leaves to dry 100% The reason why is I'm going to do another one, and this would be maybe a bad example here. Let's say these are my leaves. I didn't let it dry, I'm going to work right into this. I'll go ahead and do my trunk now. Watch as those branches go into the leaves here. They disappear. They bleed out. What that's going to do is give the impression that the leaves are more dense. Then the structure, the skeleton of all of these limbs and stuff. They fade away. Then it looks like a spring tree and the leaves are just coming out. That's why I recommend doing this in two layers. Foliage, let it dry, come back, add over it. If you feel the tree structure, the branches are too dense, you can just dab it a little bit and that will lift a little bit, but still put them in front of the foliage. Okay, some tips there on painting winter trees. Obviously you can flirt with color to cool more brown. I can go bluish gray and so on. So you can take the idea and run with it and see again what you come up with. Okay? 8. Birch Trees with Negative Space: All right. I'm going to do a negative space birch tree painting for you. This is two lessons in one. We're going to do another technique, you can paint trees. Then we're going to do that negative space technique that we've talked about. In case you didn't see it, you fast forward to this lesson. A positive space tree would be, maybe just painting the actual tree itself like this, just doing the trunk now like that. A negative space is different because we're only going to focus on the space around it. To do it, what I want to do is sketch out a couple of trees here to begin with. So maybe something like this. And then maybe we'll do a little branch coming off there. What I'll do is I'll paint around that. I'll use these browns. I'll go with some siennas. You can use any color. I'll even put in a little bit of blue and crimson pushing this towards a violet. Maybe lots of water to begin, so you can see very soupy. What I'll do now is go to the edge of the tree on both sides, but I won't actually paint the tree so it's doing just the background there. I'll do that here. Since I have a blind spot, I'm going to flip the paper like this. I can't really see through the brush that edge. So what I'll do, flip the paper now I can clean it up like so. All right, for the first layer, that's all we need. I'll take a hair dryer to this and then we'll do the next one drop to the touch. I'll do maybe one back in here like this, maybe it curves out. And then maybe one here, and then another one in there thing that'll work. I'll mix up some more paint. A little bit of water. Same colors, crimson, blue, sienna. So still pretty watery, but more color than I had before. I want to bump this one over a little bit. I'm just going to do that. That'll leave room for another layer. I'll just do something like this and I can go to this one. And then that one sort of sneaks behind our first one. Then we've got this one here again, I'll go right up to the edge and then have to flip it to do this one. Obviously, you can explore whatever brushes you see fit. We'll go a little bit skinnier too, so I can sneak in a little bit there. All right. You can already start to see the depth happening with these being a little bit, those getting pushed back because they're in the forest a little bit, they're not getting the same sunlight. Now, I want to do the same thing. I'll dry it and we'll do one more layer. All right? You know the drill. I'll put more back in here, then let's do another one back in here. I think that'll be enough, just more paint. It doesn't really need to be a lot darker because with each layer, it's going to get darker just because you're layering one more over top of the next one. But I'm going to go a little bit thicker, maybe a little more brown, a little more blue on this one, less red. And away I go, this tree, obviously a little bit deeper in the woods. Maybe I'll put one more back in here. Maybe super skinny and maybe it gets lost right in here. And then we've got a little one here. Again, that one's really shoved back there. Now what I can do is just feather this. I don't need to go to the edge because what I want to do is add a more paint, brown blue touch of water. Make this a little bit darker towards the middle here and maybe just a touch there. All right? So really adding that deep rich color right in there, you can really see that negative space painting there going on. What I can do now is soften some of these edges and add a little bit of detail to these trees just to make them look like birch trees. Maybe in here, I'll do a different color just because they're closer to us. But let's say I take a little bit of yellow, a little bit of blue off to the side here. Maybe get more of this Cerulean and ultra. It's not too bad. Maybe I will put a little bit of that in there. Maybe even a touch of yellow there just to give it that feeling of green. Yeah, a green, gray. I can even take a warm it up a little bit with, let me see. That's probably too much. I want to get that back to a green. A work so I can take this really weak though. Actually, I've got the wrong brush for the job here. I'm going to go with my pointed round, make sure it's clean. I'll just go on the left hand side here. This is still a little wet. You'll get a little bit of bleeding in there like that. Maybe I'll push it more to a blue for the next one. Just for variety's sake, I'll touch that blue into here just to tie it in something like that. Maybe this one's got a little bit too, but I'm not going to put as much detail in the ones that are getting farther away from us. Not as much. I really want to now, while that's I can work wet into wet. I'll switch to my small rigger here. Just go with a little more blue ultra something like that, maybe a touch of that brown fairly thick. We can that texture that birch trees have don't do too much. You can always add more but it's hard to take it away. Yeah, we can put a little bit on the limb to here. Soften that up a little bit with some detail. Take a little shot of blue in there to. So there you go. And maybe I'll just suggest just some dots and different things. I want a couple of these just so they don't look too naked. All right, so we'll just a little bit of technique there and a little paint, right? Little water, some layers. Able to do a really cool little painting here of some trees using negative space. This technique of negative space, huge, It's going to make a big impact in your art, not just trees and landscapes or whatever. If you really start to harness the power of negative space, you're going to find so many ways to do it. It really gives your paintings a very rich professional look. I would do this as many times as you possibly can to grasp it and to master it. Because the more you research and look at artists work, the more you'll see this negative space painting. But anyway, very important skill to have under your belt. 9. Palm Trees with Palmettos: All right, we're going to do some palm trees and maybe even some palm meadows. Give it that tropical look. Again, we can explore brushes for something this size. I'll probably go with a smaller medium. But I could do this exercise with my sword. I could do it with my pointed round. I could do it with my small mop or quill. You get the point. I could do it with this one as well and do it with a combination of them. It doesn't really matter a whole lot. What we're going to do though is start just pointed round and then maybe I'll work some other brushes into it. For color, I'll think something an earthy green. I'll start with this ochre, that's right here. Maybe a little bit of this Cerulean and a little bit of the turquoise here. Cobalt turquoise. I need a little bit of it. I may as well mix up quite a bit, get some water going here. I'll start midtone. Mid tone is a tone that's basically not too light and not too dark. These trees have a little bit of body to them, so they're not completely pale. I think starting here will be fine, plus I'm going to get a little bit of drop ball F test tells you that's nice and soupy there. Let's go for it. We'll say these trees are blowing in the wind. So we can do these strokes that are doing this thing. We'll do a couple of them. Maybe I'll do one down in here, different height. Have a little bit of fun with it. Don't take it too serious. Maybe I'll put a little more yellow into this one, technically, that's called charging. A lot of times you'll hear me say, putting some dots in there and just dropping paint into the wet pigment and letting it spread. That's basically what I'm doing. Now notice my stroke speed too. I'm not going real slow. I brush whip across the page. That gives you this texturing look again, I'm not painting any of this on a wet surface. This is a dry paper. For a slower speed, you're probably going to get this result. The quicker you start to move it, you're going to get the texture of the paper. If you're using compressed paper, I can go ahead and continue using this brush. Down here in the corner, I've got some grays. I can throw a little bit of Ultra there. Maybe a little bit of a lizard and get some violet going. Maybe touch a little red and yellow into it. Just maybe brown it up just a little bit. That'll work. I don't want it too dark. Again, that midtone like that start maybe a little bit thicker towards the bottom. A little bit whiter trunk. And then as we get to the top, maybe it gets a little bit thinner. I can even hint at something in there. Again, notice the sections I'm doing, these little sections of a trunk. We got one in here, then maybe one more coming down in here, I'll go behind that, some of these palm fronds or whatever they're called, and that will give that illusion of that's in front of the trunk or the stalk, whatever you want to call it. All right. So that's pretty good. We can let that dry for now. As it does, let's do some tropical complement to it, some shrubbery. But maybe before we do though, I want to make sure I get a few darker notes into the trunk here. What that does, it keeps it from drying too flat. A lot of times, if it's just like this, that will dry a little bit flat. Whenever I put these little dots in there, that helps. Gives the illusion that it's more complex than it really is. Again, that's just technically that's considered charging, but I'll just call it dots. Putting just touching, a wet wash with another color and letting it do its thing. Now for the frons or like these palmettosI'b get something like this. I'll take some of these greens that are already there, mix a little bit more. I'll make these a little bit darker on the ground. I can even take some of these violets into it, but not too dark. Again, a mid tone, but maybe not quite as green as all of this. I can do this stipling, basically touching the brush to the paper and getting that look. Now, if you wanted something a little bit thinner, if you wanted more, let's say a bladed look, you can take a smaller pointed brush and do this thing. What I'm doing is I'm using this point, say as my axis. And I'll flip my brush, I'll flip my hold, so I'll go over top. Just touching it and going around like that, that creates that fan look that palmettos have. Let's just do that. What I'll do is just get some color down. First, some blobs in here that let's do a couple behind, get some darker ones here like that. For now, I'll go a little bit of blue into this. Maybe even a little bit of my umber, a touch of yellow, darker. There's your finger test there now. Again, taking that, I'll get some of that paint off. You see that nice fine point there picking an area and notice how I'm working the edge. I can do one down in here. I'm forming that edge as I touch into that. All that's bleeding into each other there. I can clean my brush and take some lighter values. Okay. So we don't want everything to be the same. There may be some lighter values in here and so on. I can get the same idea. I'm going in that same rotation, finding that point, and then pushing up like that. Let's go with a little bit of darker gray here. I can put a few now. It's wet into wet. Everything I do now is going to have that soft edged look to it because it's all blending. Now I can take a little bit of blue into this. We can put some shadows coming across like that, give it that three dimensional look. That's good. Now as I've been doing that, all of this dried. Now I can clean my brush off and do the same idea with these fronts. I can maybe do a line and I notice how I'm just adding a smidge of detail doing that stipling technique. You don't want them all coming in the same direction, so maybe something like that, you can flip it if you need a better angle. Not too much. We're just trying to suggest details. We're not trying to paint it and spell out every single palm frond for them. Maybe this one switches. Again, really fun way to paint, very creative and suggestive technique. There you can go with. A lot you can toy with and explore on your own. Now, I'll take some yellows back in here, touch a little bit of this turquoise into it. As I get to these fronts or these palmettosybe, I can suggest some points on top there, You see that strengthens that idea of these blades. That's negative space painting. I can take one that's not even painted and do that. We're going to let all that dry. When it does, we'll do a little bit more negative space so I can get in here and negative space paint a few little tips in there, so we'll just have it look like a little tip of the front. Just having fun with that. Go a little more violet, maybe a little more blue. Into this touch of this ochre, we can splatter. Remember splattering? We don't want that to recoil. Okay, we go down, down, down, down. That gives that nice fresh look. It could be all types of little details and different things in there. You can take some of that and suggests a really loose palmetto. Doing that stiping again, know that it's working wet into wet. So you're going to get a little bit of that bleeding in there at this point. I'm going to take a hair dryer to it just so I can throw a little bit of negative space painting back there. All right, nice and dry. I'll take my small rigger here. I'll take some of these darks that are on the palette. Tell me a touch, a red, touch, a sienna, a little more blue. I'll go much darker here. Look at how much darker that is than some of those mid tones. Now I can suggest some branches and different things that could be going on in here. This could be just a larger shrub back there. I'll clean my brush really good, Remove most of that moisture, very important. And then soften some of these edges. What that does that just gives it a little bit more of a blended, realistic look without having to work too hard at it. Maybe a few more here just to tie it in. Maybe we have some structure in here too. Again, clean the brush, dry it off really good. Just fade that out a little bit, so doesn't look too unnatural there. I can even touch a little bit of water into some of these to soften it. I can touch towards the base. Maybe they're more in shadow down in here. I can take and even do some positive shape branches coming off from that. Again, a lot of fun you can have with this negative space painting. Again, there's a crazy amount of ways you can use that. I'll just take my flat here, a little bit of ocher, a little bit of yellow, a little bit of turquoise. I'll just run a shot something there to make it feel like it's Anchor down, it's some grass. Take a dryer to it. There you go. Nice little wake and work with palm trees. If you wanted to come in here and just take it on another level, I probably would. I probably wouldn't even take it this far. That's probably more detail than I would use in my paintings. But again, I do this thing for the masses and not really for myself. Maybe just a few little details on the trunks like that. Again, I can clean my brush, remove the excess, I can soften some of those edges like that. Anyway, you get the point there. Basic palm trees try different brushes, different colors. It's really the technique that you're thinking about the most right now. Don't try to do anything other than focus on that. If you get the technique down, the sky is the limit, but that's the stuff. It takes a little bit of time experimenting. If you're painting on a bigger scale, you can try this stippling with one of these Motler brushes. I've got these smaller flats, these are for acrylic painting. Again, I could do it like that too with these. Again, I'm not going to go over every single brush I could possibly, but I just want to plant the seed. What you do with it from here is of course, totally up to you anyway, palm trees. 10. Scratching in Trees Technique : All right, let's get cooking here. I'm going to show you a few more techniques we can explore with your trees. I'll just put in a little sky here just so it's a little more of a complete sketch. A little bit of blue, that's just on dry paper. I didn't pre wet it or anything, then a little bit of warmth in there too. Just to mix it up, clean my brush. And then you can just let some water trickle in there. I'll pull some of those yellows down in here is fine, even some of the blues. There you go. Just tone in the paper with a little bit of a sky in mine there. I want that sky to be very weak. I'm going to put some tree branches and whatnot extending up into it if the value is too dark. If I went with like a gradation and put some co ball blue or darker blue up there, then I'll lose that opportunity to put these tree masses up in. It'll be the same value. You have to think about those things a little bit, actually, before it dries. Before I dry it, I'm going to take a little bit of this ochre, a little bit of this turquoise. Maybe a touch of this yellow. Just run a little grass there, maybe take a little bit of this blue touch of this crimson touch of these yellows. And just do a little gradation in the foreground that's going to draw a lot weaker than you think, which is good. I'll do a hair dryer and then I'll be right back. Okay, a little bed down here. We still wet, but I'm not going to be working in that area. So far, I've got this impression of a sky here, light and value. I didn't really work hard for it and I didn't want to because I don't want to overstate the sky. I don't want to put darker values in it, like I mentioned before because I'm going to use it for another reason. Again, these are the things you have to think about in your painting. What's the painting about? The co, the formation, the color in the clouds. Do you want to put these trees that have a nice foliage to them and some maybe tree branches going up in the sky? You can't have it all, okay? You just simply can't do it. You pick what you want to say and then you try to say it. I'm going to do some distant bushes and trees. I'll just add a little bit of blue to some of this. What's already on the palette, a little bit thicker than what I used before. There's your finger test. A blue green is what I'm after here. I can use this scumbling technique. I can get in here and just use the side of my brush and these random patterns. Okay, you saw, I did that in like, what, 5 seconds maybe. I'll do a little bit of umber, touch of red, a little bit of blue. I'll just touch some darker values in this like that. Some random painting going on. It's intentional. I know I know why I'm doing it and I know that I'm doing it, but I'm not trying to control it. So I'm not here going to touch and let it go. I'll clean my brush off, dry it. This is getting really wet. If you use this towel technique like I do here in your painting process, be sure when it gets really wet like this to dry it off. While this is setting up, I want this to dry about 80% When it does, I'm going to scratch into it while I'm going to take a moment and clean this. All right. Not too bad. I think I can go ahead and work with this. What I'll do is I'll take advantage of some of those darks because what I'm about to do will show up better the darker the value. This is an exacto knife, You can use your fingernail. I'm going to take this and then just scratch right into that wet paint. What that does is it reveals a trunk when something like that is good. Maybe one more couple, maybe skinnier ones in here like that. I've got a couple against this darker tone. I got one here against the lighter tone. Now what I'm going to do is, again, that's scratching into wet paint. It doesn't work on dry. If you try to do it on dry, you'll get these flakes scratchy looking things. You're not going to get those smooth runs. Again, timing is important. If you do this when it's too wet, it's just going to back run, okay? What's going to happen is you're going to put this color down, then you're going to scratch into it. And it's just going to backfill just almost as fast as you put it down. And you're not going to get a smooth scratch like that. Now what I want to do is take some of these colors that are on the palette. All of this stuff is in the distance, it's in the middle ground back there. We don't need anything that's going to be dark in value. What I can do before this, I'll even combine a technique here that you're already familiar with. I'll take this really weak, a grayish green. I'll scumble. I'll scumble a little bit in here. I'll scumble in here. And maybe scumble a little more in there like that. Maybe I'll do, this is going to be for the future. I know that sounds weird, but you'll see what I mean here in a second. Let's say I've got a little bit darker value here and color and I'll put a little bit of blue into that. Now I'll draw that brush off, load it, and then I'll do a little bit of that. I can splatter in there and then make something of it. We've got that not much, right. What I can do now is take a small liner here. Now I'll take some of these values that I've already used on the palette. Maybe touch a little bit of gray into it. A little bit of neutral tint, again, very pale, that may be to green. I'll push that more towards a blue gray. Then I can just take this and extend that down a little bit. Extend it down like that. What I'm doing is I'm pulling those trees below that tree line there. Then what I can do is connect to that scratch and do some branches that disappear into the foliage. Now, if I were doing a winter scape, I may want this foliage to dry a little bit. Okay? That would put the tree branches in front of the leaves and that would indicate that the branches, that the leaves are just dead. And it puts the tree trunk in front of it and it gives it that feeling of just dead leaves. Again, I can do the same thing here. I can maybe even pull this one down a little bit further in here and then connect a few branches. I'll go a little bit darker and maybe a little bit brown. I can come down in here, even this is going to be a little bit wet, so you see it disappearing and that's fine. That doesn't need to be too prominent. Now, I've got this other tree. I'm going to go a little bit richer here, A little bit darker in color because it's closer to us. I want this trunk to be nice and dark. Maybe not that dark though. I'll take a little bit of sienna, a little bit of ochre into that. That's probably more like it in there. I even got those purple, maybe I'll take a little bit of this lizard, a little bit of blue, and I'll pull into that a little bit. Remember stroke speed. A stroke speed, go fast, You get the texture of the paper. Now, the paper has to be dry. Where this is wet, it's not going to work, but where's drying? And it will if I go slow. Okay. You're not going to get the texture of the paper. I want the texture of the paper. I'm low my brush. And then get a little bit of that texture of the paper gone. Then I can get some branches coming off of that a little bit, maybe putting one in front of that foliage. And that really tells you, you already know what's in front of all of this. But I like that layering idea where the dark that branch is in front of that distant tree there. We've got that going on again, I can even accentuate that dark there. I can put a little bit more there. Now, I'm going to take some of these greens, mix them with blues here. All of this is dry. Now what I can do is do some negative space painting. I can get in here, maybe create the illusion of some tree branches and whatnot happening back in here. Maybe towards the bottom. It's a little bit darker, so just a couple, just enough to hint at it to suggest some negative space painting. Now I can clean my brush, dry it off where it's just a little bit damp there. And just soften those edges a little bit. Now we're combining multiple techniques here, a lot of fun. And maybe we've got a little tree kind of sticking up in there, just a couple of branches there, right? Clean my brush, dry it, soften those top edges, maybe even diffuse the bottom. So you see how that works, right? You see how a lot of these little techniques can be combined. I can also do a little shadow like this. I'll put a little more green into that dark green if I can get it not too dark though. So I can maybe just indicate a little bush in there by just doing that negative space painting, Soften the edge. Now you get that layered effect, you get the point there. Hopefully this again, takes some doing. You have to get your feet wet. Try it out. I'm going to go a little bit bluer here. Value is first for me, I'm always thinking about value. Then once I get a value, right, I think about temperature and I want the shadow to be dark and I want it to be cool. Same idea. Watch how fast that stroke is. You'll get a little bit of that texture of the paper that can scumble a little bit. These are in the distance definition there. Then maybe we have another top of a tree here. Watch those fast strokes and you'll see that texture of the paper come into play. All right, so again, building upon those ideas, right? All the while backing up a little bit, trying to practice the things we've worked on and then showing you different ways on how you can use them in different situations. Again, it takes a time, little bit of effort there, to just work out the techniques and you have to learn them first. You have to physically get in here and get involved, But then you have to apply it in various situations and get comfortable with it. Then over time, what's going to happen is these things will start to trickle out in your art. They'll start to make an appearance without you consciously saying I want to, negative space painting, I want to do this. They'll start to become second nature in your work. That's, that's really cool. When it starts to do it on its own almost. But you have to do the work first. I'll just do a little bit of splattering in there just to give the ground and everything a little bit of texture, Okay? All right, well, I'll just stop there. I could ramble all day, but you get the point. 11. Bonus Tree Technique: All right. I thought I'd do a little bonus tree demo here for you. You guys have been so awesome. I wanted to spoil you a little bit. So I'm just going to focus on the trees primarily and then I'll tie it into some sort of grass or something later on pre wetting the paper there. All we're going to do is put down some greens as a base. Okay, I'll get this green shade gone, and then we can take a little bit of yellow tie into that. I can take some orange tie in cleaning my brush. We can take some cools. I'll take some of these Ultras, teals, and maybe put that towards the bottom. Some shadows. I'll just finish it off with some ochs. Let that trickle around there, just for giggles. Let's go ahead and add a little bit of yellow here. I'll leave a little sparkle there towards the back, the sparkle being white of the paper. We'll go with a nice rich golden green. I'll just do a little gradation leading up towards the field. Now I want that field to be nice and dark. I can already tell it's not going to be dark enough. Let's go with a lizard crimson, some ultramarine blue. Even a touch of these browns just to knock it back a little bit. It's saturated and intense, and we can do something like that. All right, that's probably going to get us in the ballpark of where we need to be for this demo. As I've talked about before, this is going to dry about 20% lighter. That's probably about where it needs to be. But now speaking of drying, we're going to work with this in a state in the next level or the next stage. I don't want this to be 100% dry. I want it to be about 90% that way that I'll give me some fuzzy edges and not really hard edges. What I will do is dry this off about 90% and I'll be right back. All right, we are draw to the touch here. As you know, negative space painting is a technique that I have been sharing quite a bit with you here. We'll take some darker hues, even maybe turn this into a nice rich violet. I can get in here and do some negative space painting. Do some big trunks there, maybe a small ones. So now we can make some secondary branches. But again, keep it fairly simple here. I'll put it just a couple more over. And here that now I'll clean my brush off, get some fresh water, Tap it out then we'll just soften these edges at the top. That's going to dissolve it. We can even soften some of the edges on the side of the trees. If you get to me, hard edges, you can do that. I can run a little bit of water along the bottom to. Soften a few of those, we can scratch. So if I wanted to scratch into that wet paint, I can do that. Now, this is pretty much dry over here. Okay, and what I want to do is share a bonus technique. We soften a few of these edges while I still can a bonus technique here, you can try, because all this stuff you already know about, I'm going to take my rigger or my small point around and wet it. Get most of the excess off. We want to have it pretty wet, but not too much. Now, I'm going to paint a tree using just water into this dry paint. Maybe I'll do one more in here just for giggles. Maybe I'll try to lift another one in here. What we have to do is let that dry, dry, but let that wet pigment. Let me try again. We have to let that water loosen up that dry pigment. I think if you give it about 15 or 20 seconds, which is about where we are, I can take this and just blot some of that excess water out. I'll take another one here just because that one's fairly dirty. I think this one will work. What we want to do is rub where we put those marks. Okay? And then you've got some trees, very light suggestion of trees. And then if you wanted to, you can strengthen that a little bit by coming in here and doing some of that negative space painting that we worked so diligently on in this class. Just suggest them, they're in the background. But another fun way you can do that, you've got a negative space and then you have, using water, fun stuff there. Things you can do. You can soften a few of these edges in here that really create some interesting and a lot more dynamic effect. Once you start really harnessing all of these things. It's not like you have to put every single technique in your paintings, but it's nice when you can start to know they're there, these techniques, and then use them advantageously as you paint and create your art. I'll just do a little bit of, maybe a little bit of shadow color here. Maybe we got a few of these. Maybe that could be, let's see this. Pick this one and then maybe we've got one coming in off the side like that. I can extend down a bit. We can extend this one down a bit, touching that shadow, All right? I can even extend that one down If you start to see how useful a lot of these things are once you start to learn them and play with them a little bit, that's that again, I just want to put that out there. I know we've talked a lot about different techniques with trees and sometimes you can get so many different ideas going that it's a little overwhelming, but I think you can handle it again. Always encourage you to slow the process down a little bit. Always remember that when you get overwhelmed, then you have to back up. Take a break, take a break, go back, Take your studies, and don't throw them in the garbage bin too soon. Try to analyze it. Spend a little bit of thought into where you feel it went wrong. Did you over wet it? Were your color, poor choices? Did you go into the wet paint too soon with too wet of a pigment, that sort of thing, then go at it again. But when you're in that zone of being frustrated, that's when you, I think, have to know it's time to give it a break and come back with fresh eyes, fresh attitude. 12. Master's Tree Examples: This one, we're going to just focus on the trees. The main thing I want to point out is just the lack of details. Everything that is depicted in this scene here, let me get a, let me get a more vivid color, more contrasting color here, I'll go with this yellow orange. But if we go around, let's say a prominent, we get a smaller brush. But if we go around some of these edges here, for example, let us look how subtle that is, is suggestive when painting, we indicate rather than state, you're just trying to give the impression of trees. Look at this one here where we came back with a darker note and did a positive tree, a darker note for this one in the background, again, even against the light of the sky, it's a very quick and easy outline of a tree. It's not focusing on every single needle and leaf that's out there. That's something I wanted to bring to your attention because I'm sure as soon as you look at that, you know there are trees. We don't have to sit around and guess about that. The next thing I want to talk about, number one was simplicity. And you know few details actually. That's a hell sorry about that, but it gets the point across. You can clearly see what's going on. Okay. All good. Number two is the negative space painting. This is where, this shouldn't be new to you by now. When I say negative space painting, and being able to start light work to dark, that concept should start to re, register with you at this point. When we look at this, we can probably guess that Homer started here, maybe even lighter, maybe the sky, he did everything in the sky wash, let it dry, and then came back and then added the blue greens first. In this light value, that may have been one, and then maybe two was this value here. Then the third value here, we can see each layer was put on, it was put on probably as a big blob first. Probably this one layer right here was the same as this back here. That goes all the way down in here, maybe even down in here leaving a little bit of the white of the paper there. And then coming back with two. And leaving this alone back here and just working with what's in the foreground. While he was painting that two, maybe he came over here and hit a few little details on this side just to give a balance. And then the three, these darker notes were probably added when all of this and here these darker notes were added. But that negative space painting, starting with that blobby look, that blobby look, it wasn't a complete blob. Probably towards the top of that wash, there was a few light trees painted. I'm sure they were thought out. Then as the second layer was added, it was carving out a few trees out of that blob. And then the third layer was again carving out edges and things like that and painting maybe even some positive shaped trees. But I like how this black right here on this tree begins as a positive space. And then turns into a negative space. That's really cool. When you can do that, it's doing it here too, these dark notes. And then we get some positive shapes for the edge of a bush or tree. Same thing here, this dark, not carving out the edge of that bush or tree. And then it becomes a positive note on the edge of that bush. Okay, good stuff. All right, so let's move on to the next one. All right? This is a Sg. I wanted to focus on a few things. First of all, we can look at the same idea of negative space painting. All of these light values here, that's probably a terrible color to use here. Let me use this purple. All of these light values were added. We can even see that value a little bit here, a little bit there. Again, that light value is probably added in here. Maybe it was connected over on this side, it was probably more of this bluish color and then probably splash some yellow in the foreground there. Once that dried, probably with that first wash, it was a two layer thing, I think over here and I'll just hash it out. It was more of a yellow and then it went more to a yellow gray on the edge. Then those colors probably just faded down into here. Just let them blend and bleed. But once that dried, then these darker notes of this grayish greenish teal were added. But look how that negative space painting, it was done with precision down here a little bit. Then he connected, he came back and connected these browns. With that, we did some negative space painting for the trunks that I'm sure all of this was thawed out. Hey, I've got some light trunks against a dark mass. I can start with this lighter mass, add a little yellow over here, yellow gray. Let it dry, and then come back with these darker notes of the blue grays, blue teal, a grayish teal. And carve out the bottom part on both sides. It wasn't completely dry. If you look really close, you can see shots of where things blended a little bit because it was wet, probably slightly, and then coming back with the siennas and ochres. And here, these browns and positive space painting, these trees connecting into it. If I remove that layer, you can almost see where that was connected right in there. I'll circle that again with some black so we can see where that positive space connection was done on that tree. Then probably for third, wash the brown colors, let me switch to a yellow, that should stand out, we have these darker blues and then some browns in here. Again, negative space painting to get that feeling of texture. Maybe grass or shrubbery connecting down in here, we're good. This one over here on the right is just positive space tree. Probably when this wash was added and connected in here, he came back with some darker notes. This lighter violet was added and then did a splash of this yellow so they could blend into each other. Probably when that was semi wet, he came in with these darker grays. And just look how loose. He's not sitting there staring at the details of all of this stuff. On the edge of the tree, the tree probably had growth on it, vines, whatever, maybe some leaves. And they're just dry brush strokes. They're dry brush strokes against dry paper probably when this wash was added over here. The initial wash was added on this side. I'll hash that in. You know where I'm at. Maybe all of this was added here. Then as I got maybe halfway, two thirds dry, we came in with this darker gray and just let that all and mingle and bleed into each other. But all of this back here, the white of the paper that was all dry, you can tell that because these are very hard, crisp edges. But look at this stroke. This is just a brush stroke that goes and then draw branch, draw branch. I mean those are all just draw branch, draw branch and then dry very little paint, probably a little bit thicker and just to indicate leaves, I just want to point that out, that's all being methodical and thinking about how you want to approach your subject before you do it. That's, you know, give you some idea on how to lace in these negative space painting techniques. And looking for opportunities where you have a light trunk against dark masses and things like that. If you don't have it, you can make these things up. This is very simple painting, but the way it's done and the technique that was used, giving people negative space painting. Positive space painting, dry brush. Look at, even if I didn't want to get into trees, but look at this negative space painting around the dark switch to a light blue. These darker notes down in here that suggests some weeds or grass or something here. Negative space painting loosely and then coming back with these positive, we got them over here to Flick Flick, when things are a little bit drier to do some positive grap, you know, that's just knowing those techniques exist, getting comfortable with it, and then finding opportunities to exploit it. But I did want to point out negative space painting and then how these trees on the left hand side were not only negative space but also positive as they got into the sky, something we covered when we painted trees. Well, I wanted to point out this to me, has a feeling of like most of the leaves have fallen. You don't see a lot of heavy leaves and anything that indicates that there's a lot of foliage. I say that because look at this blue line I'm drawing around these leaves. You can even look at this over here, Who knows? I mean, it could be summertime, it could be dead trees or whatever. But I feel the artist was suggesting that the leaves were very sparse. Okay. And there's no energy spent or wasted trying to paint individual leaves. They're just blobs when we look at this blob right here, and they're probably very wet, very weak paint. These are just short brush strokes is all they are. Right, that was put on first. The reason I say that is now we can see how this branch was put on was added over top of it. All of this is very crisp and if it were painted wet into wet, then all of this that touched this paint right here would bleed. Did that. For all of this, the artist thought out, I don't want to overstate these leaves, whether it's winter, spring, whatever the trees die in. I'm going to do this very weak strokes here and let it dry and then come back and do the branches that tells you there wasn't much. Effort there or to conceal the branches, to hide them, or let them blend into a mass of leaves because we can see the hard edges on them. I wanted to point that out to you and just show you how that works. Also, if we just follow, I'll do this in yellow. I told you not don't do telephone poles. Look at these strokes, how that angle goes this way and then up this way, and then back that way, and then off up this way, and then changes back that way. It almost has a subtle hint of going off in a different angle, This one going off and look at that lovely angle there. And then changes direction and goes up this way, and then changes directions again and goes that way. Okay. Nothing was painted like a telephone pole. A lot of thought into the angles of the trees and how he wanted to depict them. Another thing I'll point out to you, this is a design thing. This one is wider, obviously. This is your main tree. He's telling you this is the one that's in front. It's my main tree. And we've got that heart landing there on the ground. And this trickles over. Then we have a shadow that goes behind it and this tree is next. This tree is in the distance because there's the bottom, a very light suggestion of the bottom. And this is here. What I wanted to say is like these trees could have been in one clump. But the feeling, but you never want to do that. If you have three trees, you don't want to start three trees on the same line. Okay? So I'm just going to do a lollipop tree here like that. All of these trees are started on the same line and there's no depth. That doesn't give you any indication of depth in that painting. What you do is you try to design where one is bigger and closer to you. And then the next one starts here, and then the third one can start there, you get a 123. Okay? That's a good way to do it. Like how this branch is coming down this way. Let me change color. They don't all have to go up. But look at that degree there, boom, boom, boom, boom. All right, This one is a little bit less, this one almost a 90. This one is about a 30. Then this one, if we flip this upside down and look at this angle, in this angle, it's probably about a 30. It's just going in the opposite direction. That's something I didn't really point out to you in the tree section and drawing branches. But yeah, that 20 or 30 doesn't always have to go up. Clearly we can get branches that come to just a little observation. Spending time looking at these things, admiring artists of the past and ones you like would reveal stuff like this. This is another one I'll just show you real quick, of how this feels more like a winter tree. And of course we know this because we have the white snow, but look how this was suggested around in a very light gray even over here, right? And allowed to dry. And then these hard branches, hard edged branches were drawn into those shapes. That tells you that the branch structure is more dominant and the trees are, the leaves on the trees are just intended to be subtle, barely hanging on and in the background behind the structure of the branch. I'll do it for trees. I recommend you do some more research. So Edward Sego, Winslow, Homer, any of those artists are great to look at. There's other ones out there. But just study that stuff and you'll see these things that we've talked about in this course start to reveal themselves. There's just really good learning tools and we'll give you more ideas on how to exploit the techniques. 13. Recap and Projects : Congratulations on finishing the class. I know it was a bit of a journey, but we did cover a lot of techniques that I think will enhance your watercolor landscape painting. If you did complete the demos and hopefully you did, please post those as a class project. I would love to see what you did. And of course, if you have any questions about what you learned or would like some feedback, just leave that information in there and I will be glad to respond to it. All right, thanks again and I'll see you in the next one where we take on rocks and grass and we'll continue to level up our watercolor landscapes together. See the?