Winter Trees With Acrylics: Learn To Paint Foliage Textures And Fine Lines | Kate Broadhurst | Skillshare
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Winter Trees With Acrylics: Learn To Paint Foliage Textures And Fine Lines

teacher avatar Kate Broadhurst, Artist / Painter / Educator

Watch this class and thousands more

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Taught by industry leaders & working professionals
Topics include illustration, design, photography, and more

Watch this class and thousands more

Get unlimited access to every class
Taught by industry leaders & working professionals
Topics include illustration, design, photography, and more

Lessons in This Class

    • 1.

      Introduction

      1:08

    • 2.

      Project 1: Getting Started

      0:43

    • 3.

      Project 1: Paint Your Background

      4:13

    • 4.

      Project 1: How To Paint Tree Textures

      4:22

    • 5.

      Project 1: Paint Your Pine Tree

      5:55

    • 6.

      Project 2: Getting Started

      0:52

    • 7.

      Project 2: Paint Your Background

      3:26

    • 8.

      Project 2: How To Paint Fine Lines

      3:18

    • 9.

      Project 2: Painting Your Winter Trees

      10:55

    • 10.

      Congratulations!

      0:22

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About This Class

In this class I’ll guide you through the process of painting beautiful winter trees using acrylic paints. With simple steps and plenty of opportunity to practice the techniques, you’ll soon be painting complex trees with confidence. You’ll come away with two gorgeous tree paintings to be proud of and the knowledge to paint many more!

As winter draws in, trees can be a wonderful source of inspiration, creating amazing silhouette shapes with their branches and foliage. You can paint stunning trees of your own by simplifying what you see and practicing the techniques I’ll show you in this class. 

You’ll learn:

  • How to use stippling and dry brush effects for realistic foliage textures
  • How to simplify a tree shape and approach it step by step
  • My top tips for achieving smooth, fine lines with acrylics (no more paint ‘blobs’, or rough edges!)
  • How to control the pressure of your brush to paint a ‘tapered’ brushstroke with ease (the perfect technique for tree branches)

Materials needed:

  • Acrylic Paints (Black, White & Blue)
  • Brushes:
    - A large flat brush (I used a 1 inch)
    - Small and medium pointed (round) brushes (I used size 0 and size 4)
    - A fan brush (optional)
    - A stiff bristle brush (optional)
  • Acrylic paper/canvas or a sketchbook to work on
  • Some scrap paper for practice
  • Waterpot & palette
  • Tissue / Rag for cleaning your brushes
  • Pencil & eraser
  • Hair dryer (not essential but can speed up drying times!)

Happy Painting!

Recommended Next Classes:

More of my Skillshare classes: https://www.skillshare.com/user/katebroadhurst
My website: https://www.katebroadhurst.com/
Join me on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/katebroadhurststudio/

Meet Your Teacher

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Kate Broadhurst

Artist / Painter / Educator

Teacher

Hello! I'm Kate.

I'm a professional artist and I love to share my passion for creativity with others. I’ve been running my own art school for adults for a number of years and in that time I’ve helped hundreds of people discover the joys of painting.

My style of teaching is peaceful, gentle and encouraging. I want you to relax into the process of painting and just enjoy every moment!

I’m best known for my vibrant and realistic acrylic paintings but am currently allowing myself some freedom to explore new styles. I sell my original paintings to collectors worldwide and teach in person from my studio in Cardiff, South Wales.

For more information, visit www.katebroadhurst.com or find me on Instagram @katebroadhurststudio

&nbs... See full profile

Level: Beginner

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Transcripts

1. Introduction: Hello. In this class I'm going to teach you how to paint winter trees, like these ones here. I'll be honest and tell you that painting trees always used to scare me a little. The complexity of all the branches can be a little bit overwhelming, but when you break it down and let yourself go with the flow, they become much more manageable. In this class, I'll guide you through simple techniques to paint two types of winter tree. In your first class project, you'll learn how to simplify a tree silhouette and create realistic foliage textures using dry brush techniques. For your second painting, I'll be sharing my top tips for painting fine lines with a credit. Perfect for tree branches. This is a really fun tutorial and you'll come away with two beautiful tree paintings to be proud of, plus the knowledge to paint many more in the future. It's a class for all levels, whether you're brand new to painting or want to strengthen your skills with a new subject. I can't wait to get started and see what you'll create. Have fun. 2. Project 1: Getting Started: Hello. In this class I'll be showing you how to paint this lovely winter pine tree. This is a really fun tutorial and you will learn some great ways to create foliage effects with your brushes. You'll need your black and white paint and some blue. And you'll need a large flat brush and a small round brush. If you have one, you could also use a fan brush for the foliage. I'll show you two methods, one with a round brush and one with a fine brush. I'll also be using my stiff bristle brush to create some splatters for snow at the end, but that's completely optional. Get yourself setup with your supplies and then we'll get started. 3. Project 1: Paint Your Background: First of all, we'll paint in the background. So I'm going to squeeze out some white, black and a touch of blue. Sky will be a nice pale gray. I'll take some of this white and I'm going to mix in some black. You'll see that because black is such a powerful color, I only need a small amount to create my gray. I'm also going to add a touch of blue to give it a cool winter feel. I'm going to take my flat brush and just paint a horizon line, which I'm going to give a bit of a curve as though it is a snowy hillside. Once you have your horizon line, you can fill in the rest of your sky. I'm keeping my darker gray towards the bottom, but I'm going to blend in some white so it gets lighter towards the top while the gray is still wet. Just pick up some white on your brush and work back and forth, just blending those colors into each other. Now I have this nice subtle gradient, which will be the snowfields sky. For the snowy hillside itself, we'll just use a paler version of this same gray. So I'm going to mix this up with more white. Leave a little of your darker gray aside because we will use some of this again later. You will aiming for a nice crisp edge along the horizon. So load your brush up with paint and rotate it so you're using the flat of the brush going horizontally across the page like this. The fewest strokes you can make here, the easier it will be to get a nice crisp line. Once the edges done, just fill in the rest of that space at the bottom of your paint. While that is still wet, we're going to add some of the darker gray again, just to create a shadow underneath where our tree will be. I've switched to my round brush here. I'm just using this brush in a small area of shadow. Then you may just want to blend and soften the edge of the shadow a little. You could even create some texture by using smaller brushstrokes and leaving them nice and loose. While we let the background dry, we're going to practice some ways to create texture. So whenever you are ready, you can then grab yourself some scrap paper and we'll explore some techniques together. 4. Project 1: How To Paint Tree Textures: Here I have some scrap paper, a tissue, and a small round brush. And I'll show you how you can use a stippling technique for foliage textures. Stippling is basically just dabbing your brush on the surface to build up lots of small marks. It works best when your brush is dry, you want to gently dab off the excess paint on a tissue before applying it to your page. Because my brush is quite dry, you can see that the texture of all those bristles is coming through. So I don't have to physically paint every leaf on my tree. The textures I'm creating, well, give that illusion. Will typically be more leaves towards the center. You'll want to lay your marks to build a darker area. Then the leaves will thin more towards the end of a branch. Don't worry too much about the shape address now, but do keep practicing that stippling technique. To add a bit of extra definition to the edges of your branches. You can just use the point of your brush, dip it in paint to add some extra dots and dashes. You don't need to dry the brush on tissue for this one, but you're just using the point to create smaller marks. This extra step can be quite useful because even though the stippling technique creates a wonderful texture, it does leave slightly fuzzy looking edges. If you happen to have a fun brush, this is also a great shape for painting trees. The technique is exactly the same, but with a fan brush, you can do a whole branch at once, dip into your paint, dab off the excess, and then apply to your page, just pressing on or off to create the texture. You can twist the brush a little to create variation in the direction of the leaves and branches. And just keep building up and layering those marks. For smaller branches, you want to just use one side of the brush rather than the whole thing. It can take a bit of practice, but when you have the hang of it, the fan brush is much faster at building up those marks. You do get less control them with a pointed brush though. Either technique will work. It's just about experimenting and finding what works best for you. You could even use a combination of the two with the fan brush filling in the majority of your shape. And then the point of your round brush. Just to add the extra definition towards the ends. Feel free to pause this video and keep on exploring on your scrap paper. If you'd like some more practice, then whenever you're ready, we'll add the tree into our painting. 5. Project 1: Paint Your Pine Tree: Before we paint the tree, it's good to take a moment to really observe the shape. I'm going to take my pencil and just loosely sketching a line for the trunk of the tree. The reference photograph, the branches form a tool triangular shape. I'm also just going to use my pencil to lightly indicate the edges of this tree shape. This will help to give me a bit of a guide which will be really handy as I start to fill in the textures. Once you have the shape, take your small round brush and use this to paint in the trunk. This is what will give the tree its structure. And notice how it is thicker towards the base of the tree and narrows towards the top. I'm going to use a bit of the stippling technique to rough up the base of the tree here too. So it looks like it's just emerging from the snow. I'm going to work from top to bottom as I paint the tree to avoid accidentally smudging the paint with my hands. The branches at the top of the tree are quite small. So I'm using just the point of my brush here for a bit more control. Dipping it into my paint, dabbing off the excess, and then just gently building up the textures. You don't have to be super precise with the branches as long as you follow the overall tree shape. I'm using the reference photograph as a guide, but I'm not copying it exactly. The main thing is to make sure you have a few gaps between the different branches and that they get thinner towards the ends. If you'd like, you can use the point of your brush to draw a line for your branches as you go, which will give you a bit of a structure that you can then add your textures too. You just need to keep working your way down building those textures. If you're using a fan brush instead, the technique is exactly the same, just dabbing and layering to create the illusion of all those small branches where the foliage will be thicker and denser towards the middle of the tree, you can just keep on layering or use slightly more paint on your brush to build a deeper area of that texture. You can keep on tweaking and adjusting your tree until you are happy with the overall shape. I'm now going to switch to my smaller size 0 round brush and use this just to define some of the edges. I'm just dipping the point into the paint and adding a few dots and dashes around the edges of the branches to help them look a little less fuzzy. Imagine that you're seeing these branches silhouetted against the light background. And you can just make out a few more defined details around the edges. Next, we're going to add a few snowflakes. You can paint these in by hand, but I'm going to use the splatter technique, which has lots of fun, but also a bit more risky because you don't have so much control over where the paint goes. I'm using a stiff bristle brush and I'm watering down some white paint, filling it with water to help get a more even dispersal of paint splatters. I'm holding the brush quite close to the paper and just flicking back the bristles to create the snow. If your paint is too thick, you will get bigger blobs or it might just be too difficult to get the splatters. It make sure you have thinned that paint down enough with your water. Then just keep on spattering until you feel like you've done enough. There we have our lovely snowy landscape with the silhouette tree. I really hope you enjoyed painting it with me and I'd love to see how yours turned out. Next, I'll be showing you how to paint a different type of winter tree using fine brushstrokes to create beautiful branches. When you're ready for your next project, just head to the next video to get started. 6. Project 2: Getting Started: Hello. In this class I'm going to teach you how to paint winter trees, like these ones here. I'll be honest and tell you that painting trees always used to scare me a little. The complexity of all the branches can be a little bit overwhelming, but when you break it down and let yourself go with the flow, they become much more manageable. This class should take around 30 minutes and you'll only need your black and white paint. For your brushes. You'll need a large flat brush and a small rounded brush with a nice point. I also used a stiff bristle brush to add some texture, but that's completely optional. Painting fine lines in a credit can be trickier first, I'd also recommend having some scrap paper or your sketchbook on-hand. So you can do some practice along the way. Have fun. 7. Project 2: Paint Your Background: First of all, we'll paint in the background. And for our sky, we're going to create a nice gradient going from white to gray. So squeeze out some black and white onto your palette to get started. I'm going to take some of this white and use it to mix a very pale gray because black is such a powerful color, I'm just going to add a small amount. I'm going to use my flat brush and paint a slight diagonal, the line which is where the sky will meet the snowy land. Don't worry about getting a neat edge here because we'll paint the snowy hillside over the top afterwards. Then continue working upwards with your gray curving your burst strokes. So you end up with a curved edge, almost like a semicircle. Our light is going to radiate down from that top left-hand side of the painting. You can dip your brush into the white paint and then softly blend this down into the gray. Keep working back and forth where the two colors meet to soften and blend that edge. Then you can just continue up the page with your white until you end up with this lovely soft gradient. When the sky is painted, we'll add the snowy hill. Still using your large flat brush and just your white paint. You're aiming for a nice crisp edge. If your gray is still a bit wet, let that dry off beforehand. You'll be using the flat of the brush just going horizontally across the page like this. The fewer strokes you can make, the easier it will be to get a nice crisp line. Once the edge is done, you can just fill in the rest of that space with white. 8. Project 2: How To Paint Fine Lines: While you wait for your background to dry, let's practice painting fine lines. Grab a scrap piece of paper, and the smallest pointed brush you have. Because acrylic paint is naturally quite thick. Painting fine lines is a challenge. Even though my brush is thin here, I have this thick blob of paint collected on the bristles, which makes it difficult to achieve a fine, delicate line. The solution is to thin your paint down with water so it flows better. It's hard to give an exact ratio for how much water to add in. But I'm aiming for the paint to be thin enough to flow nicely from the brush. And you can see that there are no thick blobs around the bristles. When I brush it across the page now, there's no resistance, just a nice smooth flow. You want to use the smallest pointed brush that you have. There are some brushes like my liner brush here, which are perfectly designed for thin lines. If you paint a lot of fine details, it might be worth getting yourself one of those. Otherwise you want the smallest size round brush that you have. I'm using a size 0 here. Round brushes are able to hold a lot of paint. You need to be quite careful about how much pressure you put on your brush. If you press too hard, you'll get thicker lines because all of that paint is being pressed out of the bristles. For a fine line. You need to use a much gentler stroke by using very little pressure on the brush here, I get a much thinner line to get a line that gets thinner towards the end, which tree branches often do. You can gradually release the pressure on the brush as you go. Use more pressure at the start and lift off towards the end of the stroke to get this nice natural taper. One last factor to consider is how you hold the brush. I'm painting a line upwards and I hold my brush at the side like this. You'll see how the line is thicker. Instead, if I rotate the brush so the handle is pointing in the same direction as my line and paint it this way, then I'll get a thinner line. If I was painting a horizontal line, instead of holding my brush like this, rotate it so the handle is pointing in the direction I want to go. And then I'll paint my line like this, almost dragging the tip of the brush behind me. Having said all of that, I know from experience that it isn't as easy as it looks. This is something that has taken me quite a lot of practice to master. So just keep on trying those tips on your scrap paper until you start feeling a little more confident when you're ready. We'll then move on to adding the trees to our painting. 9. Project 2: Painting Your Winter Trees: Now let's paint your trees. When you paint trees, it's important not to get caught up in trying to paint every single branch. Instead, you want to look at the overall structure and shape of the tree. These trees have strong vertical lines. Feel free to use a pencil to sketch in the trunk of your trees as a guide. We'll have one tree standing tall at the frontier and then another a little further back on the hill. Looking at my reference photograph, the overall shape, the branches form on these trees is almost like an egg shape. I'm very lightly just going to put down some guiding marks so that I can keep from our branches loosely within the shape. When I start painting. We're going to paint the trunks first. Make sure you have some slightly thinned down black paint ready. Your trunk should be a thinner towards the top and slightly thicker towards the base. Next, you'll want to add a few key branches. I'm looking at the reference photograph for branches that stand out. And that will help me give structure. You can use the photograph yourself or just simply follow along loosely with water I'm painting. I'll add a couple at the bottom here, then some towards the middle and a coupled towards the top. To notice that I'm starting at the trunk and painting outwards. You always want to follow the direction of growth with your brush. The branches grow out from the central trunk. Your brush strikes should grow out from that too. If you can try to paint each branch in one stroke from beginning to end. If you do find that your brush is a bit dry to do that, then mix up some more paint and water so you always get a nice smooth flow. Notice that I am making sure some of my branches crossover each other and some come out at different angles. This is really important to make the tree feel natural. Although I'm not painting every detail from my reference photograph, it's still important to truly observe the subject and try to notice these kind of small variations. People will often assume that they know what a tree looks like. And we'll paint what they think they see rather than what is actually there in real life painting. Well, it really help you to improve your observational skills. As you begin to look at your subjects a little closer. Then it's time to fill in the gaps. I tried to just let this flow naturally rather than getting too caught up in trying to paint every single small branch. You don't want to get bogged down and lost in every detail, but you do want to observe the general direction and shape of the branches. Then just try to let your brush find a flow with it. Really. Make sure you are changing direction and add in a few branches which overlap each other occasionally so that the tree doesn't end up looking to uniform. You're adding smaller branches that are coming off those key branches you painted earlier. And this really is just a matter of patients. The technique is exactly the same. Thinned down paint, very little pressure on the brush. I'm perhaps a lift off of the pressure just at the end of the strokes. To get that nice tapered edge. You simply need to repeat it over and over until you build up enough branches that the tree shapes starts to come together. To finish off the painting. I'm just going to use a dry brush stippling technique at the base of the trunks where they meet the snow. So it doesn't feel as an abrupt. I'm using one of my stiffer bristle brushes here, but any brush would do dip it into the paint and then dab off the excess on a tissue until it's pretty dry and there's just a small amount of paint clinging to those bristles. When I dab the brush on the paper, you'll see I get this nice texture which will look like gaps between the snow at the base of arteries. You want it to be quite subtle. So if you find you're getting big blobs of paint, keep dabbing off on a tissue until you get just a very light texture. I want it slightly darker, closest to my tree. And then for it to fade out into the snow, I'll repeat the dabbing motion closest to the tree just to build up a bit more depth. And then I'll just have a few marks, a bit more spaced out as it fades into the snow. We have our lovely winter trees. I really loved the simplicity of the background in this piece and the way the shapes of those branches stand out. I hope you enjoyed painting this along with me and I look forward to seeing your results. 10. Congratulations!: Well done and congratulations for finishing this class. I'd love to see your results. So don't forget, you can share them in the project gallery for extra feedback and encouragement. If you enjoyed the class, I'd love for you to leave a review. And if you'd like to carry on learning to take a look at my other acrylic painting classes here on Skillshare. See you soon.