Painting Expressive Trees: The Loose Approach

When you're painting multiple trees in a landscape with depth and drama, such as mountains, hills, high elevation, a river for example, it's even more tempting to overwork them. But the same principles apply. Loose expressive brushwork is what make trees sing, even when you've got a complex scene. So in this video I'm going to show you how to paint multiple trees without getting bogged down in detail, so your whole painting stays alive and painterly. So this painting is inspired by the Southern Lakes area near Queenstown in New Zealand. And I was taking photos and painting on plein air here last year, so some of these photos I've taken back and wanted to do some studio paintings of them. So I really wanted to study these trees further in a painting. Now the trees growing in this area were a mix of broadleaf trees and conifers, especially trees such as poplars, willows, maples, oak trees, and other European trees. It was also early autumn, so an excellent subject for a painting. So let's just quickly talk about my setup. I'm painting on some fine weave oil primed Belgium linen, and I've just taped it to a board. The painting size roughly measures around 10 inches by 12 inches. I'm using oil paints, and the brand of paint I'm using is Blue Ridge Oils, and if you want to get some I've put a link in the description box below. Now for anyone that's been watching my videos for a while will know that I always start my painting by painting the dark valleys and shadows first, so I also include the cloud shadows in this as well. So value refers to how light or dark your subject is, and we'll generally find our darkest darks and our lightest lights in the foreground, and as landforms recede the darks aren't as dark and the lights aren't as light. The other thing about painting the dark values first is it makes it easier to paint the areas in light afterwards, but also to establish the key of your painting, which again is really how light or dark your painting is. So I consider this a mid-key painting, although there are some quite light lights in it as well. So when it comes to painting trees we want to think about expressive brushwork and not getting bogged down in details, or like trying to paint every single leaf. So I use the biggest brushes that I can get away with. Now here I'm using Rosemary & Co brushes, and I'm using a range of synthetic brushes including some Shiraz brushes and Evergreen brushes, and the size is ranging from number eight to number five. So I want to use these big brushes to create some gestural expressive brush marks, and Rosemary & Co brushes are perfect for this. If you want to get some I've put a link in the description box below. But when it comes to painting the trees we don't want to be painting every single leaf, we want to treat those trees as masses and just think about the shapes of them. Also how the painting is composed and the shapes in the landscape. So this started off in my sketchbook, in fact I did some thumbnail sketches. I even painted a little colour study as well, and I did a master sketch which is the blueprint for my landscape painting. So before you start painting I always recommend spending some time in the planning process. So this can be sketching, especially thumbnail sketching. In fact recently I've been doing lots of thumbnail sketches just with a ballpoint pen and doing very quick sketches to give me composition ideas for paintings. So let's just quickly talk about the colour that I've used for some of these trees. So for the greens I've used varying combinations of yellow ochre, some ultramarine blue, some cadmium yellow and titanium white as the base of my green, and then I've increased the saturation by adding in a little phthalo green. But then I've also earthed those greens, like made them look more natural by mixing in some cadmium red light. For those more autumn yellow tones I've been using more cadmium yellow medium and cadmium red light. As I say I'm not worrying about the leaves at all, I'm just generally doing broad brush marks and getting the shapes of those trees. When you use big bold brush marks for painting trees it makes them look like solid masses. There's a danger that if you try and paint every single leaf that the tree will just look flimsy and overworked and not natural looking. So really we're going for a less is more approach when painting trees here. By using bigger brushes it forces you to loosen up. Now once the painting's dry and you start on the modeling stage and adding details you can add as many details as you like. Personally I'm trying to loosen up my paintings a little bit more but still have a little bit of detail and still have the painting so that it has a kind of detailed look without it being detailed. But I'm definitely leaning more towards impressionism these days. Now one thing that's helped to really improve my painting over the years is to have a system for painting. A methodology where I'm going from my sketchbook through the design process and then to my actual painting and then also having a set methodology when I approach a painting as well. Like doing things in order such as painting the dark values first and I detail this in my free landscape painting blueprint. So if you've been struggling with your landscape painting this guide will really help you. Just click the link below and I'll send it over to you. Enjoy! Now back to painting trees here and what I was doing was adding more layers to the trees and this time making them a little bit lighter than the previous layers of paint. So whenever you're starting a painting it's best to keep everything tonally darker to begin with so you've got plenty of room to build up those lighter tones and then you want to be saving your lightest lights until the end. We can use our shadow mix as well to sculpt the trees and just the elements in the landscape in general. So for example the main tree in this painting has some dark occlusion shadows especially near the base of the tree. For this I use a mix of mainly ultramarine blue with a little bit of yellow ochre. But I've used these to help make the tree look much more three-dimensional and also added some other shadows within the tree although I made these a little bit lighter. So in this case I just added a bit more yellow ochre, a little bit of titanium white and even some cobalt teal. If you look at the lighting dynamic in this painting it's actually mostly in light because the light was coming from behind me. However there's just enough shadows in it to make it look interesting and give those trees a sense of three-dimensional form. Now at this point in the painting the trees were largely underway and I was also able to fill in the negative spaces around some of these trees to help shape them as well. For example painting this straw colored grass in the foothills here to add some shape and definition to some of these little conifer trees. Now whilst I was working on these trees I was to the point where I was having to let them dry before I could add more detail to them so I was working on other elements in the scene. For example the mountain in the background here. So the mountain is quite far away so the colors are pretty low in saturation so it's really important that we use low chroma colors here so that it doesn't leap forward in the painting. So I was using mixes of yellow ochre, some burnt sienna, titanium white, a little bit of alizarin crimson and a small amount of ultramarine blue just to create those sandy tones, straw colored tones that are in the distant mountains there. I also painted a little bit of shadow in the background mountain as well which was a mix of ultramarine blue with a little burnt sienna, some titanium white and alizarin crimson. Now note that that's the darkest dark in the distance there and because it's far away it's much lighter in value than the darks in the foreground. If I was to use the same value color in the background there as I am for these dark accents that I'm painting in these trees here then the mountain would come forward and we'd lose the depth. So what I'd done next was I added more shadows to the conifer trees that are in the mid-ground there and then I started working on the sky adding another layer to it so adding some highlights to the clouds and I could also use the sky as well to help add more form and definition to the trees working in the negative spaces around it. I added another layer to the sky and for this I used a mix of ultramarine blue with some titanium white and a little bit of cobalt teal. Now whenever I paint skies I like to see nice textured brush marks in them so the flat brushes are perfect for painting skies. Now at this point the painting was coming together but I had to let it dry again so that I could add the last details to it. Now I left it for a week to dry because we painted this live at my landscape painting school and we painted this over three sessions and if you'd like to learn how to paint this and watch the full version then come and join me there. Every week we do a live painting class and you can watch all the replays along with all the other painting tutorials and landscape painting course that's at my landscape painting school. If you'd like to join just click the link below. Now then the painting was dry and this is where I'm adding the last details so I worked on the foreground here. One of the things I wanted to create with that shadow is some dappled light so I added a few highlights in there and then the other thing with the trees is this is where I'm saving my lightest lights. So we've been building up many of the elements in the landscape starting off darker and then adding lighter layers of paint. So here working on the foreground I was just reworking some of the areas of the painting just re-establishing the values in the shadows here for this track and then painting the dappled light effect. Then after that I was painting the trees and adding the last details to them. So this includes the suggestion of some branches in the trees. I just use a number three flat brush for this with a mix of titanium white some burnt sienna a little yellow ochre and a little ultramarine blue. Then I was restating some of these shadows these dark accents but also adding the lightest lights to the trees and this is where I was painting the odd suggestion of a few leaves using some lighter layers of paint but again you don't want to be painting every leaf we're just creating a suggestion of it. So here the painting was complete and I peeled off the masking tape to reveal what the painting looks like. I hope you enjoyed this video if you'd like to learn more about painting trees check out this video here. Also come and join me at my landscape painting school if you'd like to see the full version of this. Thanks for watching and I'll see you in the next video.