43 How To Paint A Tree In Oil | Oil Painting Tutorial

Okay so once again something a little bit different. Is that even focusing on me? It might help if I turn the autofocus on. So I'm doing something much much smaller than I would normally do. I've been asked for two small panels five by seven inches and I've been putting them off and putting them off but I've got to get them done now because they're for an exhibition which is coming up soon. So I found a scene I'm going to block it in now. It's going to be a little bit different this one in style but also in the way I paint it because of the size. Let's get going. 1.39pm and all is well. Well we've got to the blocked in stage here so now it's just a case of introducing some oil. I think what I'm going to show you in this video is mainly the painting this tree in here. I mean that's the that's the feature for this picture. There's a lot going on around it but the contrast between these hills and this tree really I think is uh makes it a nice subject to paint. So we'll zip through this bit and when we get to here I'll show you how I'm going to do that. Righty-o lie so I'm at the stage now where I've finished or pretty much finished the background area. The foreground I'll do after I've done the tree. I'm going to do the tree now and I'm going to show you how we do that. So the tree is still in its blocked in state so what we're going to do is cover it with oil and I'm going to show you and the techniques are actually very similar to how we do a bigger tree on a bigger panel but just in a smaller smaller form. So let's show you how we're going to do it. Let's zoom in a bit. Okay so I would say this tree is probably about two inches tall by two inches wide so just to give you an idea of the scale of it. So it's quite tricky to get it right but first of all I'm going to work on the trunk and the branches. So I'm mixing in a little bit of burnt umber with that black there and I'm just it's not not jet black it's uh it's got a bit of lightness to it but it is probably the darkest bit in the whole in the whole picture so I'll put in the trunk here first comes down to around that area there. So it's quite diluted the with white spirit colour it's really really quite quite wet there's no thickness to it at all. So let's get these branches in now they're not they're not um I'm going to do it all the way through some of these canopies here just kind of just uh um sort of suggesting the branches really and I'm just using the very point of this Rosemary & Co rigger brush. For those of you that are interested it's the one I use for most of the small detailed work it's a series 771 and it's a size one. Okay I think that'll do for the time being so now that's in and although those branches need highlights on I'm just going to start working on the foliage now. So it's blocked in in um pretty much middle tone I would say I'm just going to now put in some darker areas and I'm going to just to begin with I'm just going to try this brush here which is I know I'm going to get people asking what brush it is but it's just in fact probably at one time looked something like see if I can find I haven't got one like it but it's it was just a it was just a flat soft brush and over the years of using it it's just I mean it's almost completely mackered now it's coming to the end of its life but we'll use that and we'll just dab on the darker areas. So I'm going to mix in some of the sap green that I've got there with a little bit of that ivory black and maybe a bit of burnt umber let's just see how that looks you can see that that's just giving you a slightly um sort of a spotty a spotty look and just just doing that is really bringing the tree to life. So I've mixed in a little bit of liquid with that and what that does is it makes it look a so on the right hand side of the tree we can be a little bit darker because that's where the shade is the light's obviously coming in from the left and then on the left hand side I can probably add a little bit of the yellow maybe a touch of that cerulean blue still quite dark more of that let's try that okay so that's that stage done now I'm going to put in some of the darker canopies that are filling up this gap here I'll just put those in quickly and then I'll put in the lighter canopies over the top and then that should pretty much it so I'm just mixing some some of that ivory black in with the green that I'd already mixed put in some of these darker areas still adding white spirit just to keep the flow there definitely drawing in the darker areas as we go okay now ready for the highlights ready for the fun bit so it needs to be quite bright I'm going to use that Windsor lemon but it's it's a bit warmer than that so I'm mixing some of the cadmium yellow and a fair amount of that titanium white just to get that nice and strong and also plenty of the white spirit in with it get a nice flow see how that looks yeah I think we could probably go a bit thicker get it to stand out more quite as strong as I would like it I think one way we can make that a bit stronger a bit more punchy that is to put it on a little bit thicker again so what I'm going to do move over to a which is a flat fine bristle Winton brush number one it's more like half a million miles away the thing is just to keep building up on this tree just putting on the canopies here until we are done and I think we'll be there just a few highlights on the branches slightly darker green just to fill in the shaded area it looks balanced all the detail is just on one side that's pretty good but this tree to make it stand out from the background it's got a lot more saturation and it is a lot warmer than the colors behind and that really helps it stand forward so it's also a little bit more contrasty than the trees behind or the background in general and that gives you the illusion that it's standing standing forward standing in front of what's what's in the background there it's pretty much there I'm just going to put in a few just a few more darker areas on this bit here just to make it look a bit less solid and then I'll put the I'll put some more holes extra work so there we have it that is the tree tree demonstration it's quite a nice little picture this but it is a very very small so obviously I've got the foreground to finish now which I'm going to do fly has been buzzing around all all cloudy afternoon so there you go that is how I painted that tree now I'm going to get on with the rest of it hope you enjoyed that if you did please subscribe if you haven't already or give it a thumbs up or please comment if there's anything else you want me to show you and I'll see you in the next video