People have often asked me how to paint trees, that essential for any landscape. How you paint any aspect of the landscape depends on what you want to achieve.
When I paint a landscape, especially trees in a landscape I want to create a sense of life and 3 dimensional realism, even capturing the characteristics of specific species of trees. I want an oak tree to look like an oak tree. To the left are the stages I took in creating my painting of an oak tree. At each stage I let the paint dry as I want to avoid the paint underneath mixing with the next stage. My approach to painting a tree follows my basic approach to painting as a whole. I paint;
i top to bottom,
ii background to foreground,
iii dark to light
These are the stages for painting a tree
1 I start the painting with the background. Trees often have gaps in the canopy and these are important to see, for giving a sense of a trees 3 dimensional structure. It never works to paint the gaps later or painting the background around the tree.
2 Next I paint the trunk and branch structure in a dark tone.
3 Following that I give the trunk and branches a second coat to make the paint more solid. I also painted the shadow on the grass and the dark tones of trees in the distance. Notice that for these distant tree I didn’t paint any branches.
4 Then I paint the dark tones of the leaves. I mix my own greens using Windsor yellow, Prussian Blue and Alizarin Crimson.
5 After that I paint the mid tones of the leaves and the mid tones of the tee trunk and branches. At this stage the painting begins to come to life as everything begins to look more 3 dimensional. At this stage you become more aware of which direction branches are going.
6 Finally I paint the light tones of the leaves on the tree and the grass and the tree trunk and even the tiny flecks of light on the branches. This is the final stage, the most rewarding stage, as I breathe life into the painting. At this stage the tree trunk gets its craggy bark and the glancing light makes the branches look truly 3 dimensional. The highlight gives the canopy the final 3 dimensional effect. You could almost sit under that tree and enjoy the view.