Painting Techniques for Autumn Landscapes Learn to Paint Trees

Welcome to the studio my friend. In this video we're going to paint this really nice autumn scene. Sycamore trees right at the turning of the season either side of this quiet country lane. Here's my compositional sketch. This is what I'm going to be referring to along with this photographic reference just shot with my iPhone as I was out for a stroll one autumn afternoon. Now I'm painting this on a 20 by 24 inch linen panel. A homemade panel. I've covered this with an imprimatura combination of burnt sienna and burnt umber. I sketch up my scene first with a combination of burnt umber and quinacridone magenta and I begin right away blocking in those big shapes of color starting with those furthest elements first. Now this first part of this demonstration I actually filmed during a live stream over on Tisch Academy and that's why you're seeing my numpty bald noggin right there in the bottom right hand corner. So there is a longer version that you'll find right now on the academy but there's also an even longer full tutorial version coming your way very soon. You've got to be subscribed to find out about the release of my upcoming tree course. I'll put that link down below. Now my process is generally three main phases. Block in, modeling, and then detail. Here with the block in everything's simplified into big shapes of color. I'm not worried about detail yet there'll be a time and place for that but I want to get some indication of how the light and depth is working in this scene. One thing that was really important about this particular scene was value. I was noticing in my photograph that those deep shadows were even darker in value in the immediate foreground. If we have a point of difference between these darker shadows and that distant mountain we're going to have some depth. When this is coupled with color then it can create a really powerful illusion of three-dimensional space. Here I'm using a bristle dagger brush really heavily loaded with all kinds of combinations. Now I've broken down all of my materials that I'm using in this demonstration on my blog. I've got a lot of information here to share with you. You'll find that link down below as well. Now there's a really cool mix of species of trees here in this painting. We've got larch way up high on that hill way out in the distance. Here this is a poplar and then either side we've got sycamore trees. I really love this scene because we've got a combination of different kinds of foliage. It's almost like some of the trees didn't quite get the memo that autumn was here and they're still clinging on to that green foliage. But the mixture of cool green notes and these rich warm oranges and reds I thought made a really powerful composition. And one of the reasons for this is because of that complementary opposite effect. Now if we have a look at our color wheel here it is right here on the screen. You'll notice that we've got six major colors and I'm playing constantly with those differences and relationships in colors. So you'll notice all kinds of complementary opposites happening. We've got a blue orange vibe going on. We've got red and green and we also have yellow and violet all within the same painting. When these are played off against one another it creates something really dramatic and dynamic. Now I'm using oils here and I'm mixing into my oil paint a bit of Liquin Original to help the paint dry a bit faster because one thing I'm going to want to do here is a layer my details over the top. Now what I'm going to do is create a little bit of tooth a little bit of texture to that painting surface. It's going to be really important for something like this road. Now I'm going to admit I've never painted a bitumen road before. I was in two minds about this road. Do I honor the memory of the place and draw upon my own experience of walking down here each afternoon or do I change it to a dirt track? I'm glad I decided to stick to the bitumen road because ultimately this is drawing upon my memory and it's a really special location for me. I used to walk with my wife here with our two dogs. We walked down the road hand in hand and it was just such a beautiful afternoon and it really reminds me of this place and this time. If I changed the road I think it would have changed the memory. It wouldn't be the same. So I want to work out a way to make that surface interesting but not only is the texture of the road going to be important but the texture of this foliage is also going to be important. I want to figure out a way to make these leaves feel real and natural without looking like a hokey mechanical pattern or looking too overworked and too detailed. There's going to be a balance between painterly and detailed that I think we'll be able to strike that'll be just right. From a distance hopefully it looks somewhat photographic but when you get up close it's going to be a mess of cool colors and thick brushwork. I love the contrasts here too in the scene. One thing I'm looking for in my paintings is a contrast of tones between lights and darks but that's not all. With contrast we're creating some sort of pattern. We're revealing one form by playing it off another. I'm going for this interesting dynamic of light against dark and dark against light but when it comes to color we're playing red off green, yellow off violet and blue against orange. With a 20 by 24 inch panel like this generally can block that in in one sitting. I did this one though over a couple of days maybe it's because I had a few other things to do but generally speaking if I've used one part medium liquid original to three parts paint it'll be dry the very next day. I won't be able to move blend or mobilize any of that initial brushwork and so it's locked in place. I can get right to on the layering. With my block in I'm identifying zones and I'm bringing those zones together focused on my edges. Now we want a little bit of brushwork texture to come through that's going to help us with our next layer. With that medium it's going to dry in place. Another medium that I use in conjunction with the Liquin original is Liquin Impasto. It's got similar constituents but it just varies in that formulation. The Impasto medium allows us to retain some of that thick brushwork and I really love applying some of this thicker texture with fan brushes like what you see here. In fact I use an old trimmed fan brush. I hack away at it with a pair of scissors to create an interesting end and this gives me the illusion of leaf texture rapidly. But there is a point of diminishing returns. You don't want to keep applying the same brush stroke over and over again if you're using texture like this. You can create something kind of artificial looking and a little bit distracting. Make sure you twist that brush handle to change the way the bristles impact the surface. That'll create some interest. I love to create some dark passages in the painting to highlight some of those illuminated leaves and make them stand proud. So here we're going to apply a darker layer with a little bit more blue coming through in the mix. I'm using plenty of teal here along with several other colors. Again if you want to know my palette and the brushes that I'm using here and a little bit about this image and how it all came together check out that blog post. Here I'll put a card up in the top right hand of your screen. You tap right there you can go ahead and check that out. There's a really interesting oil slick on the road obviously left by automobiles going down this way over the course of several decades. This provided a little bit more interest here and I was trying to pay attention to the way the light was falling across this form as the bitumen wrapped around a curve. Texture here was so important. The one thing I try to do with my paintings is create thinner shadows and thicker highlights. This aids that three-dimensionality. I even add a few little fallen leaves across the road. A bit of an indication and a note for myself for when it comes to detailing that foreground. Now sometimes in a painting I'll go ahead and apply a bit of detail right away. Finish one area off to give me a little sense of confidence and an indication about where the overall project is going. With some of these projects that I'm attempting in the studio they're often subjects that I haven't tried before. Keeps things fresh and interesting for me. I don't like painting the same thing over and over again. Now because you're probably wondering and I know some people are going to ask what am I listening to while I'm painting this painting. Well I actually had the audio version of Eric Kusky's book The Billion Dollar Painter. It's the story of Thomas Kinkade. Not that I'm a huge fan of Thomas Kinkade's art but his story is fascinating and it's something I've discussed in my art business course over on Tisch Academy. Anyway in case you were wondering, not a sponsor or anything I just know I'm gonna get asked about that so thought I'd mention it. But I just found that book really riveting. It's so interesting. I love to paint the effects of light particularly grass that's being illuminated by that bright afternoon sun. So I've been using that trimmed fan brush. It's really great for some of these dry textures like I'm applying over on the left but it helps if you want to create that grass like texture to be working in wet paint. I find this technique working wet and wet is really effective for creating the texture of grass, twigs and leaves. I'm still honing in on my aesthetic, my technique, my signature style and I don't think I've quite found it yet. But one thing I've discovered for myself is that I really love to play with paint. Pushing that paint around the surface and using more volume of paint to create interesting textures. I use a wide variety of brushes from bristles to synthetic. From brushes that are brand new out of the packet to ones that I've been mean to over the years with their bristles going every which way. Every brush makes a unique mark but it also does depend on how you wield that brush. I've found that loading more paint onto my brush tends to lead to a better result. You've got to use more paint and not expect any given brush load to go too far. I'm continually reloading that brush as I travel along. Here I'm working over the dry block and layer applying my modeling now. Getting ready and set up for that final detail. This old fan brush I figured might pick up a little bit of texture of that gravel as it catches some sunlight. With these little spots of dappled light I apply a touch of cadmium. Just work that around the periphery of any given sunspot and then we'll come back later with a brighter spot of pure white to really communicate that dappled sun. You might be wondering doesn't all this take too long? I mean is it really worth taking this long to make a painting? Is there a faster way of going about it? Well for every artist there's a different approach and a different technique. I like to take my time with my paintings and really try to work out how best to communicate something with paint. Now I'm not saying this is the right way of going about it or the best way of going about it. It's just one way that I'm doing it right now and it's continually changing and I'm developing new techniques all the time. I'm obsessed with that surface. I really want that paint to feel thick and goopy when you look up close. It might seem rather chaotic but it is so much fun to paint like this. I'm often referring to those old masters either in galleries and museums or trying to find the highest resolution images possible on the internet. The one thing I found by looking at the old masters is some of them used a lot of paint. They had incredible surfaces and the way that surface changed depending on what it was they were depicting. It was just mind-blowing and this really helped me to develop my individual style of working with that texture and that surface to communicate skies, clouds, trees, twigs, leaves, grass and doing it all with a sense of depth. It's a lot to juggle but again if you want to paint something like this I've got you covered. You can check out a longer version on Tisch Academy and coming very soon is the full tutorial version of this very painting. Now here I'm using a zero ivory rigger and I should mention that all of my brushes I get from rosemaryandco.com. There's a brush set for you right now just click that link in the description. I'm using a combination of some deeper tones and some light little accents to create a sense of texture with these bare poplar branches and that fan brush makes an appearance once again as I add some of that leaf texture over here on the left hand side. If trees are something that you're struggling with right now let me just give you a couple of pointers. Just like the process in which I'm making most of my paintings without block and modeling and detail I'm making trees in a similar way. I create big blocks and shapes first. I focus on the general outline of that tree and then I build up that mass with those leaves catching that light but they're not individual leaves. I think about it as a big volume then I hold up this volume with some sense of structure and that's what you're seeing me paint right now. Whether it sees branches that are bending downwards from the left hand edge or holding up some of those sycamores in the scene creating some sense of structure is the key component to making our trees feel realistic. Notice I haven't really brought any detail into this area yet. We're going to highlight plenty of those leaves and even bring little accents of light onto the trunk branches and twigs but if I stick generally to this sequence I can achieve a realistic looking tree within about three sittings and that's about what I had here with this painting. So I had my block in in one sitting and then modeling in another sitting and then the detail. Now I really like to take my time with this detail. That underlying paint is quite dry. It's not going to move or mobilize and we can build upon that texture that we had applied earlier but in some areas it is still a little bit wet and so this is where we can get some blending between our edges. I load up a long-handled double zero pointed round and here I just start marking in some individual leaves that are catching that sunlight but I'm trying to be as strategic as possible. It's not every single leaf though it might have the appearance of that. It's just a few highlights here and there and it gives us an enormous feeling of texture and dimension. To create more depth and increase that visual space in the painting I darken some of my tones here in the immediate foreground. A combination of phthalo green and permanent crimson creates a near black tone. With a bit more phthalo green coming through I have color coordination with some of those leaves that I'm working around. Just playing in that negative space to highlight these brighter leaves against and I love the differences and the subtle shifts in the green creating more texture. Already we're getting pretty close to a realistic result but it's the result of a bit of planning and strategy. I would love to show you how to paint trees like this again. I know I've mentioned it before forgive me but check out that longer version over on Tisch Academy. You'll find that link down below and if you're subscribed to my email list you'll hear about when the full super long version of my tree course when that's going to be released. It's incoming very very soon. Now here I'm using a Shiraz number two pointed round and I start painting leaves held out in a horizontal fashion almost hanging in the air like saucers and I love the way that their horizontal nature defines that space and a bit of that perspective as well. I find that I'm continually coming up against that boundary of over detailed or overworked I'm learning now as an artist to just embrace that and if there's a line go ahead and cross it push beyond those boundaries. Tucked away in the shadows here is a little willow tree. It's starting to turn slightly golden in color as autumn rolls in. I love the way this willow is silhouetted against some of these brighter autumn tones that are just beyond and you can see here the sheer volume of paint on the end of that brush picking up little accents here and there. Finally I get out my fan brush here and I start to draw in some more of this grass along the side of the road. I even pick up little individual blades of grass and leaves that are catching that sunlight. Now I'm deliberate about where I put my detail. I tend to concentrate on areas I want the viewer to be looking in areas that are catching the most light. There won't be detail all the way across this painting it's only going to be here and there but it's interesting how that gives the viewer the impression that the scene is detailed throughout. This is what I call strategic detail. One of the biggest things that I'm playing with in my paintings is value. This thing called hierarchy of value. It's all about relationship between light and dark. Now my students over on Tish Academy know exactly what I'm about to say but it's important when I'm painting that I save my tonal best for last. In fact you might have heard that before as well. This is where I'm preserving the brightest brights for the very end of the process. This could be areas like right here with these fresh green leaves catching that direct sunlight. Now it doesn't just go for the highlights it goes for the shadows as well. It's at this time right at the end that I'll apply some of those dark starts and I think about those areas where I really want to bring that element closer towards the viewer to really catch the eye. This has been a really fun project to work on. I hope you've enjoyed this time with me here today in the studio as much as I've enjoyed your company. But there you go. There's my painting of Ardrossan Street in the sleepy little town of Lawrence in the South Island of New Zealand. Thanks so much for joining me and I'll see you again in the next video.