Watercolor Training 3: Painting Trees

Welcome to Cheap Joe's Test Studio!

We're going to put in a clump of trees first - a huge mass of trees in the distant background. Then we will come in toward the foreground with some closer trees. In the background we'll keep it cool with a mixture of blues. You can imagine they're individual trees, but we don't want to paint individual trees.

Activate your color with 2 or 3 different colors and let the colors mix on the paper. Can you see that? I'm going to add a little more blue here to keep it from getting too warm. All those trees will just blend together in the background. You can bring the color right over the trees in the foreground there. I keep the brush strokes coming this way because that's the way trees grow.

There's a whole mass of tres put in at one time. That makes it much simpler and cleaner. When you see the final painting I think you'll agree. Now we're going to put in the foreground trees. We're going to use a little different color and some will be a little lighter some will be darker. Pick up your warmer colors and come in like this. This is negative painting because we're coming in around this house.

We're starting to get a variety of color now. I'll clean my brush now and soften this edge with just clean water. When it dries you won't see anything where I lifted the color. You can go up above with a slightly darker color and cut in an evergreen tree right there. Continue your negative painting around the trees in the foreground and the buildings. We're going to finish this up by putting in the evergreen trees in the foreground, and add a little detail to this section of trees.

Let's start with the Evergreen tree here. Before you know it we have this tree right there that will hopefully be a neat little tree - or a "happy little tree" as Bob Ross would've said. Then when we come back into this area, we can make these trees pop out like this. Now we have the negative trees and the negative house.

For details I've loaded the rigger brush and I hold it up here on the tip like this. I'll come in like so and paint the branches. Part of this tree will be negative and part of it will be postiive.

Negative trees are good fun and so easy!