Beginner Watercolor Painting Tips for Trees in your Nature Journal

Hello everyone, welcome to my nature diaries. I'd like to share with you some tips on beginner watercolor trees in your journal or nature journal. I have been drawing and painting trees for all the seasons, spring, fall, and even winter, and I want to share some things that I feel like I have learned with you. No matter what level or experience of art that you have currently, you can really create something that's interesting and beautiful and unique for your sketchbook. Whether you choose a simple drawing or something that's more detailed, adding these trees to your sketchbooks or journals is just a great way to document something that's beautiful that we find in nature. As I work on this two-page spread and finish it up, I'm going to share with you my first tip, which is be creative when designing your layout. While you certainly can keep a plain white background, I love creating these borders, white borders, with just fun watercolor textures and techniques. I think this is a fun way to play and experiment in your sketchbook without feeling that overwhelming dread of, how do I do this? Tip number two is to pre-plan your layout. Whenever I feel kind of stuck when I'm designing a layout, I like to use these pre-cut squares and rectangles that I just basically made myself. I have a whole video about this that I will link up in the corner and then in the description. I first of all look at the photos that I want to use and then I just try to arrange them on the page ahead of time. Again, this takes away a lot of that fear and worry about how everything is going to turn out and look. I also like to look at my reference photos and just decide how I want them to be placed on the page. I didn't really like the way this was facing to the right because the flowers on the left were facing to the right, so I decided to switch that around. Feel free to edit your photos to work for your design concept. Inking in my drawings with permanent ink, this leads me to tip number three, which is to break down the elements. To be honest, if we want to learn about a tree or if we're curious about it, breaking down these elements of the tree are the best way to learn exactly what it is. The more time we spend in that drawing and painting as well, we are learning about it. We're just kind of looking at that photo constantly. We might be spending an hour looking at those leaves. The more we look, the more we observe and the more we are going to understand a little bit more about what it is that we are painting. I really love this tip because whether you are breaking down a tree, plant or flower, it's a great way to demystify and not be overwhelmed by all the details that we see when we're looking at a tree in front of us. I like to start off with a base coat of color and I usually try to use the lightest color that I might see in whatever it is that I'm painting. I wanted to represent the fall leaves of this tree and even though they're not the prettiest, I still enjoy the colors which are gold and copper from the way it is starting to be done for the winter. Just a reminder that if you are a beginning artist, you don't have to go to all the level of detail that I'm necessarily showing here. However, I do encourage you to push yourself a little bit past what you think you might be able to do. Even if we don't like the results of what we see when we experiment, it's so good to stretch yourself otherwise you're never gonna know exactly what you are capable of doing. Next up, try capturing different seasons. Trees are a great example of being able to journal something four seasons of the year or maybe two seasons depending on where you live. This can be especially fun if you're journaling trees that produce some kind of fruit or in this case nuts or maybe some kind of special seed. While these nuts are not edible, they are significant and I wanted to make sure I was able to journal the fruit form of this tree. I will eventually find the nut or seed of this fruit and I'm going to add that to this journal as well and I'll show you where I add my additions later on in the video. Using the same method that I use for the leaves above, I'm just adding some light layers to begin with and then gradually adding darker shades. Even though I am trying to match the colors as closely as possible, I'm also remembering that light makes a big difference and even photos don't always accurately represent what this looks like. The main thing I'm trying to accomplish is to make it recognizable in my journal so when I go see it under a tree again, I'll know exactly what it is. My next tip is to add basic details. Even if your drawing is more basic or simplistic, the most important thing to do, especially for nature journaling, is to make sure you're adding any kind of important small details. This particular fruit has some spiky parts and a lot of them did wear off, you can tell from the photo, but I do know that they are spiky so I wanted to make sure that I represented this. If you feel a little shaky holding a fine brush for these details, then try making them with colored pencil, graphite, or micron pens if you feel comfortable with ink. It's kind of a great shortcut but it's also a fun technique and a very valid technique for your watercolor studies. That's also the beauty of a nature journal is that it doesn't have to be so super technically correct. It can be very fun and experimental. Here I'm using a white Uniball gel pen just to kind of add a few more highlights. Adding these little basic details to whatever painting or drawing you're making is going to make all the difference when you are wanting to identify it later. My next tip is, when possible, try drawing from life. I found this twig sample that was underneath the tree from a local park that we have near us and I just went ahead and picked it up and brought it home. Here I want to show you how you can take something that's from life and you could trace it. Now I normally would freehand it because I am able to do that, but if you don't feel super confident with it, then go ahead and trace it. As I have said in many other videos, tracing was a way that helped me to see that I could actually become an artist because I thought, if I can trace, then I can draw. Because I am drawing from life, I am using this inexpensive magnifying glass to just check out the details and make sure they're accurate when I'm drawing. The camera angle isn't showing you exactly what I'm seeing because I'm looking at both the object and I'm drawing at the same time and I tell you, this is such a game changer. You don't have to have a fancy magnifying glass like I have for this. You can just use something simple. Because I didn't journal this tree branch right away, a lot of the elements have darkened and dried out over time. So I'll be adding more saturated colors also just to be able to represent what the plant looks like, or in this case, the tree looks like. Remember that you can have artistic license or permission to be able to tweak things just so you can represent it the way that you need to in your sketchbook or your journal. If adding all these layers seems very complicated or overwhelming to you, then just go ahead and pick several colors, at least three, and try to blend those in with your twig. You'll want to figure out what it is that you are trying to represent or educate yourself on and make sure that those are the most detailed parts of your drawing. You'll also want to make sure that the elements that you're trying to showcase are the ones that are the most saturated in color or the lightest or maybe outlined. The main thing is to just signify some way that that's the areas you want your viewer to look at. Another quick tip for watercoloring is to work in one area, then let it dry, and then go to another area of the painting and go ahead and work on that. My paper is pretty fast drying, so you just have to depend or decide upon what kind of paper you're using to see how this would work for you. If you're using 100% cotton paper, then you probably are going to have to either paint it a bit differently or just use a hair dryer to kind of dry it in between. When you put that last finishing layer or layers on, you're going to want to make sure that your painting is dry, so there's not really any blending of colors by that time. The very last layers are also the ones that are going to want to be the darkest, and by the time your painting has dried and lightened, you're going to be able to adjust and tweak those colors as you go. Remember, your drawing could be as simple as a pencil drawing or ink, but of course, watercolor does make it come to life. Making some practice paintings on versions of this in another sketchbook is a great way to, again, create that confidence that you are going to need to really tackle watercolor and maybe this type of simple illustration. Drawing objects from life, especially these types of nature finds, is just such a wonderful way to learn how to observe and to be able to draw and represent what you're seeing onto your journal or sketchbook page. Thanks so much for still being here in the video, and please subscribe if you haven't already for more nature art and watercolor tips. Like the video, that helps me out tremendously. Please leave a comment. Let me know if this is something that you have done, nature drilling trees, or would like to do in the future. Also, if you're on Instagram, you can follow me over there at my underscore nature diaries for more nature journal art. Tip number seven is focus on the tree shape. When we are actually drawing and painting these watercolor trees, we just want to keep it very simple because of the fact that we are basically looking at these trees from a distance. Of course, you can make it as detailed as you want, but for my nature journal, I don't really need to do that, nor do I want to. So the main thing that I'm trying to work on is focusing on the shape of the canopy of the tree. Here, I'm showing a pyramidal shape and also a round shape. My next tip is to add different greens to show values and shadows. What I'm doing here is just starting off with some sap green, and then I'm adding some ultramarine blue to the sap green just to add those values or dark areas and shadows. I think the important thing is to not overcomplicate the painting or drawing and just keep it simple and don't think about it too much. If you need to, you can go ahead and draw that shape in pencil lightly and then just use your watercolors to fill out the circle or pyramid or whatever shape it is. Feel free to go outside of those lines as well. In those white spaces, I'm just adding some tree branches and once again, you can do that either with your watercolor brush or if you feel more comfortable, just go ahead and use a pen or micron pen for that. It's really important to observe either when you're outdoors looking at trees from a distance or if you want to look at a photo, which is totally fine, to just see how the tree looks. And that leads me to tip number nine is to keep that painting simple. Again, this is a great tip for knowing that you don't have to make anything super detailed when it comes to these little paintings or drawings. Keeping your painting simple and loose is a way to be able to just represent or represent again this tree but not overdo it or feel overwhelmed, of course, by the details. Just to let you know, I am going to be starting a members page here on YouTube for you and what I'll be doing is showing the behind the scenes or the long form version of some of these tutorials that I show on YouTube. The videos there will be a lot more unedited and in a longer form and in real time so you'll be able to follow along and be able to journal something right with me. If you're able to help me financially, I super appreciate it as I need some new studio equipment. Almost everything I'm using is borrowed but otherwise, no worries. I appreciate you watching, liking and subscribing, sharing the videos. That helps me out greatly. On the other side of this spread, I added a pocket where I added these little card inserts. I'll make sure to link this video if you'd like to see how I created this in the upper right hand corner. I decided that I also wanted to add a card that shows the spring version of this tree in its mature form or shape. So what I'm doing here is just creating that little card of watercolor paper and adding in the background before I get on with the drawing. I'm now starting to think that I need to add some kind of pocket on every spread that I make because of the fact they're so practical and I'm almost always finding out more information later on that I want to add to my nature layout. This is also where I'll end up adding a picture or painting of the seed when I find that as well. Since I've done all my practice paintings, all I have to do is go right in and just do everything that I showed you previously in the practice sessions. The first time I ever saw this tree, I was taking a walk in a local park and the flowers were so huge that I had to go over and see what is this tree. Because of that, I want to show a distance or far off view of the tree as well as that close-up of the blossom cluster that I have on the left hand side of the page. So I am making these blossoms or these blooms really big. I want them to feel large for the tree because to be honest with you, they are pretty big. That's another tip for watercoloring trees is to find trees that have some kind of interest to them, something significant that makes them a little bit easier to paint or draw. I could of course added this little picture of the spring tree to the main page but I thought it would be kind of fun and make my journal more interactive by having these little cards. You could also carry some of these pre-made cards with you or just boxes in some watercolor paper and go ahead and draw these or paint these plein air or when you're outside and you happen upon a tree or something you want to journal. Adding in these little cards to your nature journal spread or sketchbook is also a great idea for beginners. If you don't like how a painting turns out, you can do it over and over again until you find the one that you really like the most. By making these little practice thumbnails or sketches, it's another great way that you can make art and not feel intimidated because if you don't like it then you know you can do it again and try to get to the place where you like the tree or plant that you have drawn and painted. To finish this up, I'm going to just be adding some more of this green ink because I've inked in the other elements on these paintings and so I wanted to match that up and I love the effect that ink gives to watercolor as well. I hope something resonated or inspired you from this video and let me know if it did or if you have suggestions or tips on watercolor trees for your nature journal or sketchbook. We'd love to have you subscribe and also if you feel like it to hit that super thanks button. I really appreciate all your support. Just remember, you are amazing and creative. Till next time, bye!