The Secret to Lifelike Tree Foliage – Oil Painting Tutorial

Oh well, fun's over, finished lunch, can't sit watching Brian Bro's videos all day. So for those of you that are golf fans, definitely recommend you watching some Brian Bro's. OK, right, let's get blocking a picture and I'll show you what I'm going to be working on. OK, right, so let's give you a little idea about what we're going to be painting. So this is the scene and this is the canvas, slightly larger than I'm used to. This is a 20 by 20 inch canvas. The colours aren't quite right in that reference photograph, so I'm going to be working mainly from my iPad because actually the colours on screen are a little bit better. Yeah, so that's that. Already sketched it out, going to start blocking it in. Blocking in is the first stage of my painting process. So at this stage I'm blocking in the mid-tones. Now this is a really important part of the process because it sets the overall tone and structure of the painting without getting caught up in the detail too early. I always start with the mid-tones because they sit in the middle of the value range, so from there I can more accurately judge how dark the shadows need to be and how light the highlights should go. It gives me something to measure against. If I were to start with the lightest or darkest values, I might end up pushing the contrast too far or not far enough. So by establishing the mid-tones first, I'm creating a kind of anchor for everything else. Now at this point, I'm not trying to paint anything in detail. I'm just thinking about big shapes, colour harmony and tonal relationships. I'm using thinned down paint and a larger brush so that I can work quickly and loosely, covering the canvas and getting a feel for the composition as a whole. Once the mid-tones are in place and I'm happy with the general balance, I'll start to introduce the darks. So deepening the shadows and adding definition to certain areas. Then, right at the end, I'll bring in the lights and highlights, which is where the form really starts to come alive. So in essence, the painting is built up in three levels. Mid-tones, darks and lights. It might sound simple, but when you handle each stage carefully, those three values can give you a huge range of depth and realism. The end result is a painting that feels detailed and lifelike. But it's all built on this simple, structured foundation. So I think I'm going to do this with a rigger brush. So a rigger brush, this is the series one. This allows you to get really nice control over where you're putting the brush stroke or where you're putting the brush marks. And all I'm going to do, first of all, is just put little spots where I feel the outer leaves are going to be and then I can build up to that. So that's what I'm going to do right now. So these are just a guide more than anything else. So I'm going to really pay close attention to the reference photograph. Let's bring this out here. Now I'm going to start building up. I'm going to continue with this brush. I think what maybe I'll do is go over to a smaller version of it and start putting in some branches. So one of the questions I get asked a lot is, how do we paint over wet paint, which is what we're doing here. Now, the key thing is it does depend what type of a brush stroke you're doing, but doing thin lines like I am now, the brush will make a big difference. So that is really important that the brush you use is good. So it needs to be quite soft. But the other key thing is to make sure that the paint you're putting over the surface is of a different consistency. And what I like to do is add a little bit of linseed oil. So it's slightly thinner, slightly thinner than the paint that's gone on before it. And that just allows it to just sit nicely on the surface. All right, let's go ahead now and then add the foliage to these areas. I'm going to stay with the rigger brush, I think, for the time being. And the outer edges tend to be a touch lighter as well. But because I'm now sort of having to lean on the painting surface, I'm going to use my more stick here to rest against. OK, so from the blocking added the darker elements, we've added some of the tree into the sky now. So we're now starting to lose some of that solid mass of blocking. But now what we need to do is include some of the sky into the body of trees, and that's really going to allow this to look real. You just don't want any solid hard edges. We've lost the hard edges. Let's now add some of that sky in, as we did with the areas of leaves that are over the trees. We're going to do exactly the same thing now, even with the same technique. OK, so that's broken that up. I think what I'm going to do, so we've got a choice now. What are we going to do about this gap? For me, the gap doesn't look right. We can cover it somewhat or we, you know, with just some broken branches, or we can completely cover it. I'm starting to think we need to completely cover it, but we'll leave this gap here in the reference photograph. The trees come down this line, but I think I'm going to cover some of that. I just don't like it. But before we do that, I'm going to start adding some of the highlights now to this tree. OK, so we're at this point now where I feel I need to cover some of this in. Once again, it's like we have these solid massive trees, then we have an area here that's just clear, almost as if it, the way it's been blocked in, at least it looks like it's been cleared by a bulldozer or something. And that's not looking natural. Now, if you remember the reference photograph, which I have here, it had a bank of trees covering that. I wanted your eye to be able to move through the picture a bit better, hence the reason why I cleared some of this out here. But for me, it's too much. I think if we have a little bit of a clearing, so it looks like perhaps you could get through, or certainly your eye is led into it, that would be fine. So what I'm going to do is put a few more sparse trees over here, leaving more of a gap. Once I've done that, I can then add a few little details in the field behind. But I don't really need to worry too much about the details there. Let's get these trees over the top. But anyway, that's what we're going to do. I think that should work fine. We can adjust it as we go if need be. So everybody, I hope you enjoyed that. If you did, please give it a thumbs up. Subscribe if you haven't already. Also, check out the links in the description below. There's my online painting school. We have Patreon. There are lots and lots of different things going on. So check those out. Okay, see you all in the next video. Bye for now.