Making this decisions can be complicated, and that’s why I’ve chosen this topic for this week’s blog: how to paint trees in watercolor.
How to Add Highlights to Background Trees in Your Acrylic Portrait
In this video, I’ll show you how to add highlights and depth to the background of your portrait, especially if it’s trees.
Specifically, we will be diffusing the edges of the tree line and blending it into the sky.
Let me show you how to do it, in this real-time tutorial video, with explanations of what I’m painting and why.
- Adding highlights to your acrylic painting
- 5 Excellent Reasons to Use Aluminum Foil
- Paint Realistic Wrinkles in Acrylic
- Painting Clothing in an Acrylic Portrait
- Paint a Cloudy Sky Acrylic
- How to add Semi-Opaque Highlights
- How to Enhance the Contrast in Your Acrylic
- How to Add Glaze to Your Acrylic Painting
- Paint Realistic Reflections on Eyeglasses in an Acrylic Portrait
- Build Up Depth on Your Acrylic Portrait Backgrounds
- How Do You Do Layers With the Glazing Technique?
- Learn How to Paint Wrinkles in Acrylic
I’d love to hear your thoughts on this video. Please share it with your friends and family. Let me know if you have any further questions. I’ll greatly help you.
If you’d like to learn more, sign up for my free email tips and video class today.
Thank you so much for taking the time to read this tutorial and watch the video. That means a lot to me. I hope you find it very helpful in your portrait painting.
Yours for Better Portraits,
P.S. Did you find this post helpful or encouraging? If so, send it on ahead! Let others know with the share buttons below. I’d love to hear your comments. Thank you so much! Also, do you have a question on acrylic portrait painting you’d like answered? Let me know, and I’d be happy to help!
Learn to Paint Watercolor Trees
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Painting Trees to Create Depth and Focus
Trees give you the opportunity to enhance your watercolor’s depth and to highlight the area of your painting you want highlighted.
For example, say you’re working with a reference photo like this:
The line of trees in the background is an essential part of the watercolor scene, as is the tree closer to the viewer. And here’s what can be tempting – to render them both with the amount of detail.
Let’s talk about how we want to handle these trees opposed to the one that is closer to the viewer – and why it’s important to create a connected shape with the foliage.
Notice how I chose to minimize and simplify those background trees and to keep the main focus of the painting in the middle ground? If both parts of this watercolor landscape were painted with the same level of detail, this scene would be overworked and unfocused. It would be unclear what the main idea of the painting is, and a viewer would lose interest quickly.
Here are the watercolor strategies I used to paint this scene:
- I muted the green that is further away. When you cool the background down just a little bit, it provides a depth you want to convey in your paintings. You don’t want the green of the tree line in the background to be as vibrant as the trees that are closer up. So as you get further away in your background, use a more muted hue green hue.
- I created softer edges in the background and painted some harder edges as I moved forward in the painting. It can be tempting to take the hard edges that you see in the photo – the visible branches, for example – and include them in your painting. If the main idea of your painting is the light on the boat and on the water near the more prominent tree, though, you’ll want to spare the details for this part of your painting. If the same amount of detail is rendered in both parts of the painting, they will compete with one other.
Learn to Mix Watercolors to Paint Trees
Color mixing can feel overwhelming, especially as a beginning watercolor artist. Mixing greens can be especially tricky.
In the video on this page, I show my palette as I mix each green in this painting. Here is the breakdown of the way I create the different greens for this scene:
For the trees in the background, I mixed a dull/muted green with:
- Cobalt Turquoise
- Lavender
- Raw Sienna
For the shadows on the trees in the background, I added:
- Neutral Tint
- Raw Umber
For the closer tree, I mixed a thicker pool of paint using:
- Raw Sienna
- Cadmium Yellow Medium
- Cobalt Turquoise
And for the shadow side of the tree I added:
- Neutral Tint
- Cobalt Turquoise
Watercolour Negative Painting Tutorial
This painting tutorial is based purely on the negative watercolour painting technique.
What is Negative Painting in Watercolour?
Negative painting is a technique where you paint around the subject rather than on the subject. It’s a technique that can add depth and dimension to your paintings.
Negative painting challenges us to shift our perspective and concentrate on the surrounding negative space rather than the subject itself.
In this blog post I will explain how to do this technique, I’ll provide some tips and I’ll show you one of my negative watercolour paintings.
Why is it Called ‘Negative’ Watercolour Painting?
It’s called negative painting because it refers to the technique of painting or utilising the area of negative space around a subject. You are effectively, painting the negative spaces in order to leave the positive shapes.
Negative spaces on a painting are those empty areas that surround your subject. The positive spaces or positive shapes, are the subject itself.
In the example below, instead of painting the flower I have painted the negative space around the flower. The background has formed the edges of the flower and the white area you see is the white of the paper showing. That is what negative painting is.
The positive space is the flower itself and the painted negative space is the background.
I didn’t mask the flower when I painted around the petals but sometimes the use of masking fluid can make it easier to paint the background in.
