How to Paint Trees
Hi there! My name’s Sarrah, and today, I’m going to show you how I paint trees in the art program, Clip Studio Paint.
Tree Anatomy
First off, let’s take a quick look at the characteristics all trees share. A tree has a trunk, from which limbs sprout and branch off into smaller and smaller branches, ending in some type of leaf. The leaf-covered part of the tree is called the crown. The roots are usually hidden beneath the ground, and branch off in a very similar way to the limbs.
Trees come in a huge variety of shapes, so it’s important to study references! You can find pictures of any kind of tree you want by doing a quick search online, or take a walk outside to get ideas.
For example, coniferous trees like pine and spruce usually have very straight trunks and cone-shaped crowns. Deciduous trees like oak and maple often have rounder, flat-bottomed crowns and their trunks may begin to branch much nearer to the ground.
There are over 60,000 species of tree on earth, and every tree is different. Once you have an idea of the type of tree you want to create, the variations are practically endless.
Distant Trees
From a distance, you won’t see much detail in a tree at all. To paint a distant tree, I start with a sketch. I like to do my sketching on its own layer.
On the layer panel, click the button shown to create a new layer, and double-click on the layer to give it a name.
I prefer to sketch in a lighter color, like light blue. This way, it’s easy to differentiate when I draw or paint over it later.
Of course, you can just choose a light blue in your color picker, but for consistency, I like to change the color of my whole sketch layer. Enable the layer color by clicking here:
You can change the layer color if you wish by clicking the Layer Color in the Layer Properties tab, shown below. I’m just going to leave the color as-is.
Note we’re ignoring the sub color for now as it’s a whole other subject. Just know that the layer color affects colors closer to black, so for now, make sure the color you’re drawing with is black.
I use the built-in pencil tool to sketch, as I love how it feels like sketching with a real pencil.
The brush size you choose depends on the size of your canvas; use this panel to choose a brush size for the pencil that feels natural to you.
Hint: You can make the brush size smaller or larger using the shortcut keys [ and ].
At this point, I keep my sketch very rough and loose, just defining the shape of the tree’s crown, the trunk, and the main branches.
I also add in areas to show where the leaves may be clumped.
Next, I create a new layer for the trunk. Since we’re on the sketch layer now, clicking New Layer will create my trunk layer above the sketch. I use the color picker to choose a medium brown to start with. For organic shapes like trees, I prefer a paintbrush such as the built-in Oil Paint brush.
I always paint in all of the main branches, even if they’ll be mostly obscured by leaves later. The branches will always show through a little, so painting them in looks more natural.
Now that the trunk is laid out, we don’t want to shade outside of its shape, so turn on the Lock Transparent Pixels option.
Now, I choose a darker shade of brown and add some shading to one side of the tree’s main trunk, as well as the underside of the branches. This will of course be on the opposite side from the main light source in your scene.
For the crown, we’ll create a new layer above the branches. Start with a dark green color.
I know it’s tempting to use brush with individual leaves for the foliage, but for a tree in the distance, it actually looks better not to.
Leaves are so tiny they get blurred out by distance, so you can opt to either hand-paint your tree’s crown, or use a speckled brush that gives the impression of leaves instead.
Here’s a link to a great, free brush asset pack that I used in this tutorial:
The cluster of leaves follow where the branches get smaller toward the outside of the tree’s crown. Some branches will be coming toward the viewer, too, so your clusters can overlap. Be sure to leave some of the branches showing too.
Turn on Lock Transparent Pixels so our leaf cover doesn’t get too dense. Select a brighter green color and paint in some highlighted leaves. Here’s where you can really define each cluster if you have some overlapping each other.
Now’s a good time to refine your painting, adding additional shadows to your trunk and branches where the leaf cover is thicker, and perhaps some variation to the hues of your leaf cover.
Painting Trees
Treat trees as value masses and start with your darkest darks and get them down first:
Start by laying in your darkest darks-here I’m using warm darks; violet and black
Next add cool colors in the under growth of the palm, here I’m using blue violet.
Next lay in the cast shadows and trunk using cooler colors. Break them up with warm greens for grasses.
Finish off with a few light highlights where the sun hits the top of the palm. Here I’m using warm yellow and yellow/white. Some tips for painting trees
· When painting trees, try to break everything down to values. Don’t paint individual leaves, use mark-making to give the impression of leaves and fronds.
· Use bold colors instead of black, dark green and light green, look closer and see the color temperature of what you are painting. Are the sunlit leaves actually yellow? Are the shadows cooler than the color of the trunk? Try to use juicier colors, and color temperature to help describe the form of the tree. Some colors I use are:
-cool flesh tones for dry fronds and trunks
-lemon yellow and yellow-green for sunlit grasses at the base and leaves or fronds lit by the sun
-violet for shadow colors (blue violet especially)
· For a really fun experiment try painting a tree without using any green!
Misty Morning (Benedict Park) Pastel 16×20 available at Wallkill River School in Montgomery NY
Trees group together in the distance become a tree line. When painting a tree line, make sure they are not all exactly the same. Have some that are taller, wider, shorter, etc so that they look more natural. Light will fall on them differently so make sure you have some variations:
Shawangunk Ridge, Pastel 12×36 private collection
When painting fall color in trees, try to have multiple colors in any given tree so that it’s not all uniformly yellow, or orange. Have trees that have a bit of all fall colors at once, especially when the trees are in the foreground or middle ground.
Add a little red into the trees to separate dome of the warm greens from the cool greens. If you mix the red into the green it will neutralize and give you a violet color which warms up the green. This also works in pastel.
You want your greens to be varied in terms of color temperature; warmer yellow-greens, normal greens, and cooler blue-greens (aqua, teal, viridian). Think of the difference between a bowl of iceberg lettuce and a bowl of mesclun lettuce. We want all our trees to look more like mesclun than iceberg!
Spanish moss is all over the place in Florida and helps to break up the greens in the trees. Use mark-making to get the texture of the moss, and let it drip in long tendrils that catch the light and color of the sun. Spanish moss gives you an opportunity to add color to the canopy.
