The last step when painting trees in watercolor is to let the painting dry and return with fresh eyes to the work. Add detail using the dry-brush technique or take away detail by applying a glaze over an area that has been overworked and needs to be pushed to the background. A successful painting has a balance of shadows and accurate perspective. A unique painting has rhythm and pattern in the details.
How to paint leaves on trees in oil
This lesson is going to show you the sequence for how to paint leaves on trees in oil paint as well as painting your detail and edges in a landscape painting. Don’t forget to look for the link to the dvd at the end of the post.
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Many people ask questions such as…“Should I paint over another area (overlapping), should I paint around an area I already painted, etc.
Let’s try to cover some of that here.
I will use an old master landscape for our lesson.
Note: Museums are the best place to learn and I strongly suggest going as often as you can and looking for real examples of the lessons you learn from me.
This is an old master landscape painted by the Dutch artist named “Hobbema”. A nice wooded landscape I’m sure any of you would be happy to paint, or at least know the procedure to create a landscape painting such as this. Then you could paint your own landscape using the same or similar procedures.
Lets focus on a detail of this painting and see some of the leaves on trees in the next image…
Look to the right of the Black Letter “A”. Do you see how those leaves overlap the sky? This is painted over, not around. Have no fear about going over the sky. It is most likely done after the sky has already dried. Painting into a wet layer, like I will explain soon, helps to get rid of that cut out look.
If you look to the left of the letter “B” and at the highlighted leaves all around the letter “C” you will see another example of detail being painted “over” not “around” an area.
The step by step process would be something like the following…Let’s use the area to the left of the letter “B”.
After the dark areas of the trees in the background were already in and dried, an intermediate glaze layer would have been applied…
Here are the steps from this point, starting with the intermediate glaze layer.
1) Use a bristle brush of the size that would fit the area you are working on.
As an example, you may want the bristles to be around the width of the letter “B” itself. This should give you a good idea of the size brush to use if you were working on this painting and the image above was life-size.
Now, take that bristle brush and dip into a darker green and thin it down with your medium. Perhaps a mixture of sap green with a little burnt umber, or perhaps raw umber with some ultramarine blue. The color mixture is not what we are focusing on here so I am generalizing about color for this example.
We are only mixing color and thinning paint, getting it to the right consistency in this step.
2) Loading this paint on your brush. The paint should not cover anything, therefore we do not need thick paint. Your goal here is to only make the canvas wet to paint into it and add a thin film of color. And not dripping wet either, just a damp film (maybe think of it as a stain) of color.
3) Apply this thin film of color over the dried area where you are going to work on the detail. This would give you a wet base to work into.
4) Make sure you have a clean brush and create a mixture for the light color of your leaves on your palette, but not your lightest, (perhaps with some sap green mixed into a light gray – again color mixture is not the focus of this lesson so I am generalizing on the color)
5) Take a clean small sable brush to apply this mixture right into your thin film of color that you have using dabs with the point of your brush. The harder you push, the larger the dab for a larger clump of leaves. Do not try to paint every individual leaf at this point.
6) When your dabs of color start to take on the color of the thin film of color you put down in step 3, it is time to load your brush with more fresh color of the mixture you made in step 4. How many dabs will this take to happen?…until you need to reload?… Perhaps 3 to 5 dabs. And when you pick up a fresh supply of paint on your brush, make sure the brush is clean first. Yes, that may mean cleaning it in turpentine before picking up the color again. Wiping it on paper towels alone may work as well.
You have to judge when you pick up and apply new color. If it is not clean, your brush was still dirty.
If you do not clean the brush between loadings of it, your dabs will blend more into the dark area that already have down. This may be effective to paint the light areas which are not the final highlights, but not for the real hard light areas where you are picking out individual leaves.
7) Lighten your mixture with more white (or lighter gray) and load your brush to pick out even lighter leaves which have even more light shining on them. This calls for a little thicker paint and a softer touch with your brush. You are laying on the paint, right over the other paint you layed down. Don’t keep teasing the dabs or they will mix with the wet paint underneath and lose their original brightness.
The thicker the paint, the lighter you need to apply paint with your brush.
If some areas are too light and you need to make them blend into the background more, you can use the sable brush without any paint on it and dry and dab into the paint you already have on the canvas, because everything is already wet, it will automatically blend into the thin film of color that you originally laid down.
Soft Edges
Note that areas are painted right over one another. Every leaf is not drawn in first and then the sky carefully filled in around it.
The edges of the trees are not drawn in first and then the sky carefully filled in around that.
And edge is a detail and can only be made soft by overlapping areas, either when the paint is dry or wet. However, putting down a wet film of paint like I described above will help keep edges soft, especially if you use the right medium. using the right medium will automatically soften edges for you.
Of course, paint what is “behind” first and paint the overlapping objects afterwards.
Details All Over
In this image below you can see I have put a red letter “D” next to some areas where there are details that are painted over other areas.
Branches, highlights on branches, highlights on leaves, leaves painted over the sky, etc.
It is the highlights on the leaves that do all the “drawing” work. They are the details and they make it seem as if every last leaf is drawn. The darker areas are masses of dark, and have no real detail in them.
But with some dabs of lighter thicker paint, these individual leaves are picked out and are great detail work.
Painting Trees in Watercolor – Sketch and Composition
Trees are surrounded by foliage and the tree trunk appears in and out of the greenery. It Disappears behind the leaves, spreading in different directions. Roughly sketch the trunk of the tree, include parts of the trunk overlapping with other trees.
Distinguish the different areas, such as where the sky surrounds and appears through the trees, the areas of foliage, as well as the undergrowth around the tree. Sketch the outline of the leaves that draw your attention. When painting trees in watercolor you don’t paint all the individual leaves, instead paint the green area as a whole, with a few individualized leaves that are distinguishable in the foreground. The best and most honest way to paint a tree is through observation. Trees can be awkward, straight, playful or delicate. Observe these character distinctions before you begin your sketch.
The inspiration for this watercolor tree painting came from observing the trees outside my window. The techniques used in this close up perspective can also be used when painting a tree in a landscape setting.
Painting Trees in Watercolor – Wash and Wet on Wet Technique
Dilute yellow paint with water in your palette. Then dilute blue paint with water in a separate pool in your palette. Wash the areas of sunny sky with the yellow paint and the blue sky with the blue paint. In the areas closest to the tree branches, overlap and mix the two colors. This gives the effect of the sky poking through the leaves. The yellow and blue paint mixed together make green paint. The green paint will depict the leaves, the pure yellow paint depicts the sunshine, while the blue paint will create the blue sky.
Apply a wash of two shades of green paint to the foliage areas. Use the lighter of the two green shades in the areas that are directly in the light source and the darker shade where there are shadows and thicker growth. Dab a flat square brush to leave a delicate leaf texture. The light and dark greens should be intermixed in the wet on wet technique, since the light flows through the leaves sporadically. Apply a base wash to the trunk and branches in a light brown or gray. Always consider the fluid and organic nature of a tree. Soft and hard lines are mixed and random patterns can develop. Your painting should reflect the organic lines of nature.
There are layers to the dry-brush technique. When painting the details on the the tree trunk you are going to want to use light, medium and dark shades. They should overlap to create shadow and texture. Use a small brush with undiluted paint and scratch along the sketch lines with the dark shade, then with a round brush dab and swipe the paint to achieve a smooth texture.
To add detail to the leaves, dab and move your brush up and down or side to side. Alternating the brush strokes to give the floppy smooth texture of leaves on a tree. Use light and dark shades of green and mix them with your small brush on the paper. This will mix the two shades of green organically and naturally achieve a medium shade of green, to further develop the shadows and depth in the painting. Continue adding the leaf detail over and around the branches and the tree trunk making purposeful choices.
How to create the perfect V when painting foliage, using the fan brush
Creating the perfect V shape when painting foliage on trees can be a little tricky, have you ever felt frustrated or struggled to get the right technique when trying to achieve this look or wondered how I do it?
I use the Series 4 Fan brush, to achieve finer tree details in my paintings.
Available to purchase here .
Using paint with nothing added, the trick is to load more paint on the brush than you think you will need. Pulling all the hairs together by brushing both sides of the brush in the paint on the pallet, pulling backwards and turning over to collect the paint and flatten it. This will pull all the bristles together to form a more uniform brush tip, with no loose hairs sticking out, a nice flat sharp edge is what we’re looking for.
The top edge will form a V shape
You may find one edge will work better than the other so it’s best to test it first!
Hold the brush level, with the fan horizontal and the edge of the brush towards the panel, angle the brush at 45 ̊ from the panel then angle the brush tip so it’s also about 45 ̊ twisted away from the panel and drop the handle down slightly.
Add the brush mark with a light touch, this will enable you to make the small inverted V. You may find the first couple of marks are more like little round blobs.
In order to get the brush marks looking right you may need to adjust how you hold the brush and try out different angles.
Another way of loading the brush is after pulling backwards and loading the paint onto the brush push back slightly into the paint, this will load more paint onto the tip. Still using the tip of the brush this will make the triangles more uniform, the more paint you put on enables you to get a single brush mark with an impasto effect.
It’s fairly easy to get consistent brush marks with the lightest of touches. You can experiment with the pressure you put on the brush to make bigger marks which are more suited to trees in the foreground, but for trees in the distance you need to make sure the brush marks are a lot smaller by just touching the very tip of the brush.
Adjust the angles, tilt the brush, pull the handle away from the panel or pull it towards the panel. Experiment with how each movement effects the marks on the panel.
If you want more of a feathered, smooth look suitable for the trees in the far distance, you can take more paint off the brush, that will give the effect of having lots of little brush marks with each touch of the brush, almost a furry look.
By adding a small amount of Liquin or thinner to the paint you will achieve a consistency in between an impasto effect and smooth. Loading the tip up by pushing the brush back into the paint will help to give a tighter shape and define the V even more.
Although a good tip to remember, removing paint from the brush will leave a less defined brush mark, so it is important the brush is loaded sufficiently.
Each of these methods works equally as well so long as there is enough paint on the brush, (more than you may think you’ll need) the consistency is not super important but the angle of the brush seems to make all the difference.
The series 4 Fan Brush is available in two sizes in my online store.
Remember each brush will behave slightly differently, if you have an older brush with ragged tips it’s easy to trim the tips off it to create a sharper shape.
