Whimsical Tree in Acrylic Paint

1. Introduction: Hello love and welcome to my Windsor full tree acrylic painting class. An oak tree is a symbol of strength and knowledge and as one of the most beloved trees in the world and as the world changes around us, the old oak tree remains a lasting source of natural beauty that we can go back to again and again. My name is Jennifer Laurel Keller. I'm an artist and instructor with over 20 years of experience in the arts. And while I love to paint impressionistic and sometimes more realistic landscapes, sometimes, and it's a lot of fun to change it up with a more whimsical style. So in this class I share with you a technique where I play with a very expressive, colorful under painting. And then layer over that by painting the negative space around the tree. And the birds taking flight around it. By allowing the underpinning to come through, we reveal magical colors and marks which give this piece a ton of character. I share step-by-step instructions for painting this fun composition, you'll learn how to let go and paint a lively under painting, plot out a chalk outline of our shapes, and then how to fill in around the shapes to allow the focal point to pop with the negative space around it. In seven lessons, we'll cover materials, mixing, brushwork, market-making, sketching, contrast, texture, loosening up and layering. Every move I make, as explained in the class. And you can follow along at your own pace. This class is right for you. If you want to expand your understanding of layered painting and create a mystic oak tree. I've seen beginner and intermediate artists do really well in my classes. And the key is to have an open mind and understand that patients and practice make progress. It's all about exploring and having fun. Once you understand these techniques, it will open up a lot of doors for you as you continue to paint future artworks. Are you ready? Let's go. 2. Materials: Hello and welcome to the Materials lesson for this class, I have a reference image that I want to make sure that you've download so that you can have it next to you, either on your computer or a different device, or you could even print it out so that you can have it ready to look at anytime you want to reference for this piece. And I also have a materials list for you to download as well so that you can gather all of these materials. So first off, I have an 11 by 14 canvas panel and a flat palette. I have a one-inch bright brush or flat brush. This is optional. I only used it a tiny bit in this class, and you can use this next brush instead. So you could use this five eighths bright brush. I have a 1.5 inch bright brush. I have a quarter-inch bright brush, and I have a tiny round brush. I also use a stick of chalk. And for paint, I use the fluid acrylics by Golden, and I recommend getting either a one ounce bottle or a four ounce bottle if you paint more often or you'd like to paint larger, these are a little bit more fluid than what you might normally think of, which is the heavy body acrylics by Golden, those are okay. You can use those and they come in this tube, and they also come in these jars for larger portions. But we're going to use the fluid acrylics in this class or the heavy body, just don't get the high flow acrylics by Golden, those are way too thin. People use those four, calligraphy and letter work and don't get the open line of acrylics by Golden, which is the slow drying acrylics. We want those acrylics to dry up quickly so that we can layer easily. And I have yellow ochre, chromium oxide, green. Payne's gray, which is a nice navy blue. Quinacridone magenta, and titanium white, which we use a lot. So you might want to consider getting a larger amount if you want to continue painting because titanium white is the most common paint used. But for this class, a one ounce is also fine. I also have a paint rag, a couple pints of water, and that is it. So up next we're going to work with these colors and play around with the under painting. So I will see you there. 3. Color Play: Hello, love, and welcome to the first lesson, which is color play. In this lesson, it's really a lot of fun, very expressive. We're simply going to throw some paint around, just mix it up on the canvas in little sections so it does not matter which color paints you have. You can use any colors you want. I have my palette, but yours could be different. And I have a little bit of white. However, I want to just caution you not to make this too light. Don't mix too much white into your paint because we're going to have a really light background and I want there to be enough contrast for the tree to stand out later. So let's take a look at this technique. So I'm just going to pour the white in the center of the pallet and then I'm pouring out my quinacridone, magenta, my yellow ochre, my chromium oxide green, my Payne's gray, and my burnt sienna, which is a really red brown. I have this bright brush and I'm gonna start by just jumping in. I picked yellow first, but you could pick any color you want, and you can do honestly anything you want right now. So I am placing colours adjacent to each other, letting them mix up on the Canvas. Just allowing these colors to play and have fun. So here's some Payne's gray in my brush and I'm not washing my brush too often unless things are getting too muddy on my brush and I'm coming up with too many neutral colors because all of these colors are mixed together on my brush. You can do a little bit of details and market-making here. I did a bit of that. But in the next lesson, we're going to jump into more of the market-making for this under painting. So at this point, don't worry about doing anything with a bunch of detail. We're just putting down these really, really lose swatches of color. And this is an opportunity for you to see how things mix up on the canvas, see how things look when they're adjacent to each other because color plays off of other colors. So blue that's next to an orange, might pop, but if you mix them together, it might get a little bit more brown. You can see how it works when you mix white into a color, just not too much white because we want things to be medium in value or dark. We're not going to light here. Yellow is a little bit light out of the tube. The rest of the colors are pretty dark. So that's about as loud as you want to go as this yellow. And what I'm going for here is simply coverage. I'm playing. I'm letting things mix up and just seeing how things react to each other. You do want to pay attention to a bit of balance within the composition. You don't want all of the purple to be on one side of the canvas and all of the yellow to be on the other. Let things circulate, let things be balanced. So there's blue in all of the four quadrants of the canvas. And that colors are repeated throughout. And then every once in a while, just pause and see what you are lacking in. Perhaps you didn't use very much blue, so you want to bring in more blue. This can be really simple. You don't need a lot of colors. You don't need as many colors as I Have. You don't need the same pigments. It's really just about playing and loosening up and letting this paint flow and feeling freed up and loose about it. Don't overthink it. Don't judge yourself. Just allow this to be a fun exercise where you're just activating the canvas with paint, getting a lot of coverage down and playing like a kid. So here we are. We're at the end of this painting lesson. And I'm getting all that good coverage wrapped up. And just having fun. Ok. So don't forget to wash your brush at the end. Up next we're going to get into the market-making sections. So have a lot of fun with us. Don't overthink it. I'll see you in the next lesson. 4. Mark-Making: Hello and welcome back to the market-making lesson. As you can see in this lesson, this is what will happen at the end. It is busy, very busy, and we're really just going crazy. Here. We're using smaller brushstrokes and playing with mark making. I will take you through what I do, but yours will look totally different than mine. You might have different colors than me. You might have different signature market-making techniques that you enjoy. So take inspiration from this lesson, but don't try and replicate it. Brushstroke for brushstroke because it's really about loosening up still and finding your own personal mark making style. This is going to be the underpinning for our tree, of course. And only a little bit of this is going to show through. I don't want you to worry about the next layers right now. This is really about just being very expressive. So let's get into it. So I am going down a brush size. It's still a bright brush, but it's a little bit smaller. And I'm going to jump into my quinacridone magenta. And I'm going to follow a, a round and do some organic curlicues and spirals, some dots here. And I'm not paying too much attention to having things be perfect in uniform. Some of those were more streaky, some more polka dotty. Here I have some white and quinacridone, magenta. And I'm gonna put it over this blue and purple and make kind of a leaf shape. And really loose. Picking more of that up now. And I've got a few dots going up at the top corner. And it's fun to see how these paints react over the previous layer. You'd, you want this to be fairly dry, but you don't have to have at 100% dry. But the dryer it is, the easier it's going to be to paint over this. Okay, so now I'm painting this pink color over this yellowing Green, and I'm bridging some of the gaps between these different colors. So mu can take lines and crossover a blue section and then take it into a pink section. Here more than lines where I just kind of crossover between colors that I'm layering over the top of. Here, I am mixing up some white and green and just doing a row of triangles near the edge of the canvas, I did another row. So there's two rows of triangles. And then some dots. I making pretty quick decisions in the moment. But this is also sped up a little bit because it is so loose that I want you to feel free to try things out that feel good to you. It's really hard to screw this up. Here's some yellow ochre and just doing some lines in a row and some burnt sienna. Seeing how that works, if I do some kind of organic lines up the top and then some broader marks, sum and the dots there. You can follow along and kind of reinforce other line work or just go straight over the top of it. Some darker lines are fun to give some contrast here, some dots in a row and I'm using the brush, the Broadway to make these little squares, which is nice with the bright brush. And then mixing some widen to the Payne's gray to make a lighter blue. Got these circles on the corner and Mark dot. So things are getting pretty nuts right now, but we're going to keep going and take it down a brush size. Because that's gonna give us some variation in the scale of our brushwork. And here's some quinacridone and yellow ochre mixes up kind of like an orangey pink. More aligned. See what your brush we'll do. See what happens if you scrub into the canvas. See what happens if you use a little bit of the bristles. See what happens if you use a lot of pressure on the brush. See what happens when you use certain colors over the top. Are they transparent or they opaque? Here's some little lines over these circles on the corner. And I'm kind of imagining where my tree's gonna go a little bit at this point because I want that area to have some nice elements in it. A legacy and a lot of this is gonna get covered up. But I want you to do the whole canvas just because it's fun. First of all, it's really loose and it's gonna free you up and just in your creative thinking. But also it would be weird to think ahead with the under painting just where this tree is going to go. We want to, we want to let it be free and not overthink and plot things out too much. Here's a big brush. I added some water to some quinacridone, magenta. And then I did my brush back in the water and add more water over the top of that. And I'm creating some drips and there's some transparency there. You can see some of those dots come through the quinacridone. And so that's a fun thing you can try as drips. You can also use a spray bottle over the top of wet paint. Just make sure you have a rag down here. I'm gonna do it again with green. So I've got a wet brush and just dabbing a lot of water into a green area on the canvas. And then I let the drips fall down onto my rag. Okay. And then you can just absorb any last bit of water that's running down to the bottom. You might want to have something down on your table. And you can also use the rag to wipe things away. Okay, so I'm just gonna keep that rag under the canvas for now. And now I have a teeny tiny round brush. And I'm just going to add some white that areas a little bit wet still, but I'm playing here and seeing what happens when I use paint over wet paint. And also we see a variation in the width of my lines at this point because I'm using a smaller brush, which is keeping things interesting. But I can replicate some of the line work that I used before and do some spirals. And just see what, just see what happens. Okay, here's some white and quinacridone again, the magenta. And that's a little bit light, but because this brushes so small, it's not over powering. And just kind of dancing around. Let things hang off of the edge of the canvas. It's okay if you're mark making touches the edge and end just kinda follow along the path of what's already happening to use what's down to guide you. But then break the rules as well. And it's just a fun way to exercise your creative power. Playing with rules and breaking roles. Okay, so this is now looking super crazy, but I'm just having too much fun to stop. So I've got these wavy lines. Not washing my brush very much. And with these small round brushes, I have to go back for paint quite a bit. They don't hold a lot of pain, but you can let the paint run out on the brush, see what happens when the patient gets used up and you get more drag on the canvas instead of that high flow loaded brush feeling. And now I'm adding some Payne's gray just by itself. And I love the contrast here from the dark, dark Payne's gray, which is really more like a navy blue. And just coming around in adding more elements. I'm, I'm really into these spirals today. So I've got quite a few of those happening. Here's a little star that I put in with just a few lines. Let's do another one of those. It's fun to have repetition. It keeps things interesting. Great. Now I've got some white with the Payne's gray getting that nice, lighter blue. It's not really, really light. It's more of a middle blue. Going over that little dark area with some lines. Looking great. Now this is so busy. There is a little gap by the edge of the canvas. I'm gonna paint that in with some magenta super. Here's some yellow. So we're just really, really going nuts here. Dots and lines, spirals, drips. Feel free to make up your own. You don't just have to do what I do. The more you can be unique the better. So up next, we're going to do a chalk drawing of our tree. And I want you to let this dry all the way 100%. You can go set it out in the sun. You can hit it with a hairdryer and dry it that way. Put it in front of a fan. But you want this all the way dry. Go make yourself lunch or whatever, take a break, and I'll come back and see you in the next lesson. 5. Chalk Drawing: Hello, welcome back to the chalk drawing. So here we are going to draw a chalk drawing of our composition. It might look a little too busy looking at this picture right now. But when you do this yourself and as you watch me do it, it's going to bank way more sense. I promise you. What we have here is a horizontal line for the ground. And then we're going to draw the tree. And then we're gonna do some sweet little birds up in the sky taking off out of this tree. So let's have a look. Okay, so we are making sure the canvases drive I touching it and making sure no paint is coming off onto our hands. And I actually flipped the canvas over. I thought that I liked the top area better and I want to see it revealed on the bottom. So I just flipped it over and you can do the same thing if you want. So I'm just kind of using my hands to plot this out. I'm gonna come down about 1 fifth from the bottom and then do my tree and leave enough room for the birds. So here's about where I'm gonna start my line and I'm just gonna go right across. You can use a ruler if you want, but I just free handed it. And now right about here, we are going to start the trunk and I'm gonna come up to about there. So I'm still not even at the halfway point vertically. And I'm going to have a little curve as the trunk meets the ground. Nice organic lines. And then from the top of that line, I'm going to carry it up at an angle and and about an inch from the edge of the canvas. And I'm just going to do all of my main branches right now. So they're all going to fan out and these kind of wavy lines, not perfectly wavy, but kinda Benton curvy. And we're just going to come out from that center. This one goes down and then over and then out that way. So I have six main branches on my tree. Years can look a little bit different. And then I'm just going to come out from those branches and do these little forks. So I've got a little bit of an angle on these and you can have one coming out and then one coming out from there. And just filling in this negative space kind of evenly and coming up, you want to leave about as much space at the top as I have between the bottom of the canvas and that horizontal line for the ground. And just letting those branch out. So forking and to and following through to the end. And then I'm gonna come way down for that one and have that fork as well. One more. And that looks good. Now I'm gonna do these puffy groups of leaves. I'm not gonna do individual leaves and doing these, they're almost cloud shaped. And I'm going to put a few of those around. As you come around to the sides, they're going to be a little bit angled and you don't want them to be vertical. Exactly. I started doing that and I kind of corrected it. And that's the great thing about the chalk is that you can fix it if you have any mess ups. And there's also going to be an opportunity to change these a little bit. Well, we paint as well, so it's not set in stone. But you want to have a few in the middle. We're not just outlining the edges, okay? And now for the birds, birds are like a curvy v with a little line through the center, were not doing really detailed birds, but just the essence of them. And notice that the v's are sometimes upright and then sometimes they're upside-down. So bird's wings go in both directions, right? So sometimes they're flapping up and sometimes they're flapping down. So just a little V and then align and that's for the head and the tail. Okay. So just cross it through. Sometimes a mine didn't cross all the way through, but that's okay because and I can correct it later with the paint. And I can also just let it be because these birds are far away and we're not seeing this. We're not saying them with much focus. Ok, so let's do one off the edge. Looking good. One more up there and you just want to evenly spaced and they're kind of going out in different directions. So they shouldn't all just be going in one direction. And that is it. So up next we're going to paint the birds, but we're not painting the actual birds were gonna paint the negative space around the birds to make the birds OK, I will see you there. 6. Birds: Hello and welcome to the birds lesson. In this lesson we are going to be painting the sky around our birds. And I wanted to start with the birds first because they're up at the top. So we don't have to reach over them as we paint. But also they're more simple than our tree. So this is gonna give us a nice warm-up for trade. Okay, let's see what this technique is like. So I have some white and a little tiny bit of Payne's gray, like barely anything at all. It's much darker than the white. So we want our sky to be light, light, light blue. And so I'm bringing in a whole lot of white. I want to have enough paint to last me. And this is just the first layer blue that we're gonna do. We're gonna come back over this in the final lesson to do a second coat of this blue. So I'm coming up to that edge. And then I'm taking the corner of my brush and I'm going around the head and around the wings. I'm letting the chalk show through. And I'm giving those chalk lines a little bit of a gap. So you're going to see a little bit of the margin of the underpinning show through. Here we go again, v and then a little mark in the center. And then I carry that wet paint through to the space in-between the birds rather quickly so it doesn't dry up. You don't want to leave any harsh lines drying at this point. If you can feather him out a little bit, it's easier to make it seem less abrupt in-between brushstrokes. So we're just basically filling in around these birds. And then later the chalk is just going to wipe up with water and disappear, leaving this gorgeous colorful background. So just go, go at a comfortable pace for you. I'm used to doing this so I can go a little bit faster probably. So i just come through with the corner of my brush using a lot of pressure on the brush when I want to get a lot of paint out of the brush. And then when I'm want more detail and precision, I use less pressure on the brush so that not as much pain is coming out. So coming around and meeting the other brush marks to create this, the surrounding sky color. Letting some of the background show on each side of the chalk just by a little bit. And it's really fun to wipe this away when we're done. Okay? And now I am just repeating this over and over with each bird. So it's more of a it's great practice. It's fun to see everything getting filled in. And I'm taking this a little bit faster now I sped up the video just because this is repetitive. And I don't want you to get bored watching me do this over and over again at a normal speed. And I'm taking that color right down to the outline of the tree. Ok. And you can use kind of a fluffy dry brush technique over the background if you want to have more texture in your background. But if you want it to be really smooth, you can do more pain and more pressure on the brush. So you can see when I have more paint in my brush, I can get that more opaque color. And then once it starts getting used up on my brush, I can feather it out and make it more Misty, more airy and let some of that colour from before show through. So I'm not just getting a solid color, I'm using the previous underpinning to my advantage. Not only where it is going to show through under the chalk, but also as a base color for more depths with my paint layering. And that's what acrylic paint is all about, is layering, loosening up, and just having fun. I don't worry about making things photorealistic obviously. But I like to just play each painting I learned something new. So don't take it too seriously. Don't be too hard on yourself if it doesn't look exactly like mine. Everyone's gonna have their own brushstrokes, their own little. Look here. Yours could be more solid than mine and that's okay. So now I'm just going to come through and reinforce that line on the top of the tree to give us a nice, a nice line to define that. And then up next we're going to continue down with the tree. So I'll show you what that looks like in the next lesson. See you there. 7. Tree: Hello, welcome back to the tree lesson. In this lesson, we're going to paint around our tree. And I just want to kind of take you in here and show you what to expect. I do, add a little bit more white. I decided on this lesson that I wanted this guy to be just a little bit lighter than the paint mixture that I had before. But don't worry, we're going to bring it up over the blue that I used before or you don't have to, you can keep it as it is. But I decided I wanted it more light because of contrast. I wanted to have more contrast with my tree against the sky. So we are going to outline our tree, fill that in, define the branches. And then I do a darker blue area at the bottom, closer to the ground, where I'm imagining that is a like a line of trees way out in the distance in the background where you might see something above that ground level. And then we're going to leave the bottom open. So I see my spirals and my stars and my line work there. At this point, we're looking really good. I'm excited to show you how this goes. So I'm going to mix up a little bit more white into my blue this time. And this is a personal choice that I made. If you like it, the color that I was using before, that's fine. Or you might like to make just a little bit more widen to give it more contrast. And we're going to start with the outline of the tree. I'm not going to worry about the interior branches at this point. And this is gonna help us get our bearings a little bit. So I'm just taking that paint all the way into the chalk line. And you will have a few gaps that you're just going to kind of skip over when the leaves break up and their space to go down into the tree. Kinda go around that you can go into a little bit. Here. I'm going in a little bit just to give the leaves a little bit of definition. And there's a gap there. Okay, going around this little area now. So I've got these larger areas where I have those areas of leaves. It's important to pay attention, of course, to your chalk lines. So carrying that down, you're going to stop at the horizontal line at the bottom where the ground is. And then I'm gonna go over to the other side and fill in around the leaves. And every once in awhile you might run into a branch. But for the most part you should only be painting around leaf areas at this time, these kind of bundles of leaves. So then you can do a smaller line to get that definition and then carry it down to get the coverage. Going around that little portion at the bottom and then the trunk. So I'm going to carry the paint all the way down to the trunk and then I'll worry about that darker area later than I was telling you about curving around with the trunk. And here's where you can redefine any lines that you're not happy with. But just definitely keep an eye out for your chalk lines because it's easy to get confused with all of the busy-ness of our under painting. So I'm just kind of fanning that down. Coming around this branch now and filling in the space under the branches. Okay. Very similar to how we did with the birds. Wiping off excess paint. That's not at the end of the brush. You can just roll it onto the canvas and use that. And you can leave a little bit of the background transparency showing. And at this point we're going to go down a size because we're going to start our branches and pouring more white out onto my palette. And I'm going to mix up the same color and bringing lots of good light white into the mix so that we see that contrast. And I'm gonna start around my bottom branch here and follow around, giving lots of space to my chalk line. Because I wanna see that branch from across the room. When the chalk has removed. It's going to be really fun to see the chalk go away. And hearing, kind of making up where that little arm pit of these two branches that are meeting, it just comes down to a point and I'm giving it more width and giving the branches more width at the base of the branch. And then the paint can get slightly closer together around the chalk line as the branch gets thinner. And then filling in the middle. Okay, so now we have one branch clearly defined. And then there are these little gaps as there are more smaller branches at the end. And you're going to need to find those little pockets and fill those in as well. Reloading my brush. You don't want too much pain on your brush at this point because that can get a little messy and we are working with a lot of precision right now. Just filling in these little shapes in between the branches. Heres the bottom of another branch and see how much space I give that chalk line. Having that negative space come down on a point and then filling in around the branch, giving it plenty of space around the chalk line filling in. And then I'm not taking the paint all the way out because I want to make sure that I don't confuse myself and get paint over an area that is supposed to be open and showing the under painting. So that's something to definitely keep in mind. So just take your time and if you get confused about which line is what, It's totally fine. Just don't rush it. And remember this chalk just wipes away so you can wipe it away if it's not making sense to you. And redo a branch if you want. And now I'm speeding up the video just a little bit because we're just filling in at this point. So I'm gonna come over to the left side now and carry that paint through to the bottom branch. And that one doesn't have any leaves on it. So I just sharpen up the ends of those branches a little bit. Filling in and letting the leafy area of the tree have enough space. You want to make sure that you don't cover up any of the leafy areas in the middle of the tree as well, because there are these areas that we drew in, in the middle that we don't want to go over. So just be careful, take your time. Don't sweat it too much. You can always repaint a small portion of a background to kind of bring it back. If you painted over something that you didn't want to paint over. But just be careful in the first place. Alright, coming around here, filling in the gaps. Here we have a, an area that does have leaves in the center of the tree. So I'm going to leave that open. This area here is kinda thin. So I'm using light brushwork. They're using the corner of the brush when things are tight, using the narrow end of the brush when things are narrow and the wide side of the brush when I want Mark coverage. All right, so now this is really coming to life. We're starting to see all of the structure of these branches. And I just love saying things come together. Little dot right there. There were three branches covering each other, overlapping. And then here I was a little bit unsure, but it turned out fine. But I took a little break to do the darker blue area at the bottom. And this is just kind of to indicate that there's something else out there in the distance. May be at the edge of a meadow or. A field. And so I'm just popping in this dark blue area with ten of a wavy top, this broken up top. I'm just doing loose brush work. And then carrying it through. I left that little bit Exposed. I'm gonna come back and work on that. And then just kinda scribbling ends grabbing in this tree line. That's part of the background. And the coverage is a little bit light and airy. I'm going back in to define the bottom of the area though I'm going to sharpen that line up a little bit. Don't carry it through under the tree that's going to be open to the bottom. And that looks good. So right here, I decided I'm going to fill that area and I just wanted to take some space from it so that I could see it a little bit more clearly with a new perspective when I came back. And then there are a few little areas here where I opened it up with some small brushwork in between some of that chalk. Okay. And that's looking pretty good. It drying can completely make sure you don't have what paint right now that would be not cool. And I dipped my rag and some water. So it's a damp rag. And I'm just wiping off the chalk. And it's just fun to see it all revealed now. Alright, and so make sure your paint is dry. And here we go with the branches. And it's like peeling off tape. It's really fun. And let's just speed that up so that you see that big reveal. So cool. Oh, I love it. This is so much fun. Alright, there's the tree shape, I love it. Okay, I'm gonna get some more paint on my brush with that light blue. And I'm gonna do some touch ups. I'm just going to do some like a second coat here. She's tighten up any lines. I come over the tree line again to sharpen that up. And I do like how that looks. Okay. Coming through with a second coat on the side. I gave that little branch some room, you know, just it's a good chance to make any corrections, change any brushstrokes. You can decide how layered Do you want this to be? I softened it up a little bit down on that line after all. So you can decide which way you want, whether you want it to be a hard line or a soft line. I kind of liked it both ways. Okay, up next, we're going to work on the detail. So at this point, the painting could be done. You could decide that this was fun. You'd like it the way it is. But I encourage you to at least watch the next lesson, the final lesson to see what's possible with a few more details if you want to hop in there. So let's have a look. 8. Details: Hi and welcome to the final lesson where we get into some really cool details. And like I said, at the end of the last lesson, the painting at this point could be done, but I wanted you to see what's possible and this is how the paintings going to look at the end of this lesson. So I break up those leaf areas a little bit and pop in some texture so that it looks like light is coming through the leaves just a bit. And then I rounded that lighter blue up into the area where the birds are hanging out so that we get some really cool texture with the darker blue showing up under the lighter blue. And they're both light blues technically. But we're just going to layer that color even more to give it more dynamic texture up in the sky. Okay, let's have a look at this lesson. So I have my light blue on my brush and I'm doing another pass up into the branches, filling in that color a little bit more so that I get that nice coverage and contrast. And I just kinda went over that area, was a little congested right there. And I can just come around and tighten up any lines. I'm looking for perfectly harsh outlines, but sometimes it's just nice to see that contrast take place and make these branches pop a lot more. Especially in these areas in between the branches, or just allowing them to stand out here. Okay. And now we can take that color around our leafy areas and just bring it out. Making it more rich, making it a little bit more solid. And I'm noticing there that there's some chalk that didn't wipe up. They got wet with the rag but and lump-sum streets. So we're gonna come back to that. And so I'm just going in and around the branches. Having fun seeing where I want to make any little minor changes. And at this point, we start popping in some of the breaks in the leafy areas of the branches for light to come popping through. And I'm also going to break up the outline of those shapes with some little dots. Okay, so up here, just popping it in, just breaking up that outline as if that dabbled sunlight is coming through the branches. And then every once in awhile I come in between the branches for something, just filling in again. And then here, dot, dot, dot, dot, tap, tap, tap. And it makes it look more detail, more in focus. And be careful because you don't want to take away too much of these areas. So make sure you're using a small brush. This is my smallest bright brush. And I'm just tapping in for the most part with the corner of the brush. So very little area of that brushes touching down. And as we move along, it starts to really look really leafy. And I, I like the effect a lot. Here we go again. Breaking up the outer outline, but then bringing some of those taps into the middle as well. Here's this side. Tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap. And as we move up further, the background blue is a little bit darker still, but don't worry, we're going to fix that. We're going to come around and make it blend in more. So at the top outline of the tree, I'm really coming in with a lot of broken line and then carrying that paint up to cover the sky above it so that those breaks in the leaves feel like they're the same color as the background. Okay. Very fun. I love it. Some in the middle of that area and then really breaking apart that outline. And now I'm gonna take that same color around the birds. And I'm using a smaller brush. And I like how when I kind of scribble around with the smaller brush, I'm able to get some really interesting texture up in the sky. I'm letting some of that darker blue show through. I'm using some dry brush technique at some points and that just means that the brushes loaded much less at that point. So I have a Fuller Brush when I come in and I'll do some, some detail. And here I went even lighter still. So there's a little bit of a fade from the back of the tree up into the sky. I really want a lot of contrast up of round those birds in the sky. So they seem like they're backlit and that they pop against that skype. Ok, so coming around and then bringing that color up into the sky, you're texture could look a lot different than mine. You might decide that you like a solid color. But you might also decide that you want to try just doing a lot of dashes or dots in the sky. You could go really wild with a texture up there and do lines and you know, a different kind of scribbling. Make it look more like a van Gogh. I don't know. So feel free to make this your own with the way you do this brush technique. I'm just doing my smallest bright brush and honestly just scribbling around, letting some of that background blue show through. And don't be afraid to reload your palate so that you can mix more pain if you run out. It makes it a lot easier. A lot of students will try and stretch that pain out as far as it will go. And I do it too. Okay. So things are moving pretty fast right now. Just because of that repetition, I I didn't want to bore you. So then I come over the whole area and just get it more uniform. And it looks really fun carrying it back down again. And here I'm just kinda fussing with the painting. This is my own little fussy, fussy time at the end of the painting where I tweak anything that needs to be tweaked. I fill in anything that needs to be filled in so you don't have to do all of this that I'm doing. Exactly the same. But I will encourage you to look for any last minute pieces that you want to fix. Any touch ups. Any places where you need more contrast. You can add more white to the mixture of paint if you want and keep going until you're happy with it. It helps to kind of broaden your focal like your eyes and kinda blur your vision a little bit and look at it as a whole. You can also take a picture and look at the picture to give you a different perspective. But at this point I feel like a painting is mostly done. I'm really loving it. I let the paint dry and I came back through with a damp rag once again because I had a few little streaks leftover from my chalk from when they were getting wiped off before. And that is actually going to give me a little bit deeper color in some areas. But this is so I hope you enjoyed this. I had a great time. I can't wait to see what you may. So thank you. Thank you so much for joining me for this class. I had a great time creating this piece. If you enjoyed this class, please consider following me for future updates on new classes that I offer. Remember Art is meant to be fun. So if you show up and practice with an open mind, you'll learn something new every time. Happy painting, much love.