How To Paint Trees

I'm going to show you how to paint trees. I started off by preparing a simple sky and a simple piece of grass and I'm going to put a clump of trees at the back of the field. I'm going to start off by painting in just a mid-tone, mixing a green using ultramarine, lemon yellow with a tiny bit of crimson red, so it doesn't come forward too much.

And I'm just going to put the shape of the clump of trees at the back, the space that they fill up, not worrying about all the details to start with, just putting in the space that they take up. This is going to be lots of little trees so they're overlapping. I'm doing a fairly impressionistic style, not worrying too much about detail, and that's the space they're going to take up.

What I'm going to do now is I'm just going to warm up the green. I'm just going to put on a shape of maybe one tree on that space there and then maybe with the space in the back like that. I'm blocking in some slightly lighter greens coming forward.

Just think about different sorts of spaces that different trees may take up like that. So, you noticed that the first coat I put on was very blue paint as it recedes further away and now, this colour with the more yellow, in the warmer stronger colour, is coming forward more. I'm going to put in a few trees so they're even brighter.

We're just adding a tiny bit of white as well so I'm going to have a much brighter bush in that space there and maybe on the top of this one. So, I'm manipulating the colour that was already down there. I'm just bringing it together to suggest that there are lots of different trees in that area.

If you highlight, a light might just be catching from coming down from the top left maybe, catching the top of some, and also if there are highlights across this, it's going to be some quite strong shadows underneath. So, take a little bit of black, mix it with some of the lemon yellow, make a really nice dark green and I can just start putting that in underneath the horizon here, under the canopies of the trees, creating a shadow under there, maybe even just some shadows around the back, right there as well. It's starting to look like it might be at the back of the field, a number of trees all clumped together.

I can put in some sky above, slightly change the sky and slightly make it paler so adding more white, and just pick out maybe the shapes of the top of the trees for a bit of variation in there, making sure not all of the shapes are the same size as well. Let's add a little bit of blue a little bit higher up and then maybe at the back of the field, I'll just increase the quality of the paint, so in this area, the back of the field across, far away. I'm just going to add a little bit of blue to it as well.

As it comes further, I'm increasing the amount of yellow. So, when you're painting a clump of trees or lots of trees together, try not to pick out the detail of each individual one. Try and see it as a whole and see whether there might be some light and some shading.

Give an impression of what's in front of you. .